#but its all better than more school work in the middle of a deep burnout | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

disgruntledspacedad · 3 years

Text

The White Room

The Better Love Series || Join My Tags

a sequel to Shit Hits the Fan

pairing: Javier Peña x Fem!Reader (Ears). Part of the Better Love ‘verse.

summary: Bill Stechner makes his move. You never even saw it coming.

words: 6.1k

warnings: 18+, plot, a little angst, a little fluff.

notes: unbeta’d. this is a big one. notes at the end.

<< Shit Hits the Fan || These Hands are Magic >>

MASTERLIST

You take the embassy steps two at a time, wishing you’d have been notified about the change in your schedule just half an hour earlier.

You’d gotten a page just as you were headed out the door of the apartment. Stechner has decided to pull you from Centra Spike’s night flight over Medellín. He wants you at headquarters this evening instead. He didn’t say why.

Part of you isn’t sorry. Escobar has been getting desperate lately, and between the outbreaks of violence in Medellín and the continued bombing campaign in Bogotá, you’ve been burning the candle at both ends. Javi, too. He’s been spending more and more time at the base in Medellín, and you’ve been spending more and more time in the skies, pulling random shifts through all hours of the day and night.

It hasn’t put a strain on your relationship, exactly. In fact, in some ways, the little moments that you steal with Javi when your schedules just happen to mesh are all the more precious because of it. You’re both exhausted and a little cranky, but there’s been an underlying desperation to your recent interactions that’s only served to stoke the flame that flickers between you.

It’s a bittersweet feeling. You cherish the time you get together, but on the other hand, it seems like even when Javi’s right there next to you, you miss him so much that your chest aches.

Which is why you’re miffed that Bill couldn’t have shuffled you around a little sooner. Javi’s been in Medellín for the past two days. He’d caught an early flight back to Bogotá just as you’d been finishing up another late shift flyover. You’d just happened to run into him at the embassy airstrip, a perfect coincidence. Your eyes had met over the tarmac, and like a pair of magnets, you’d crashed into one another. Javi had wrapped you into a fierce hug, and you’d pulled him into a heated kiss, and the two of you had spent a good five minutes canoodling in a hidden corridor near the water fountains, kissing and whispering and grappling for position as he’d pinned you against the wall. He’d breathed you in, and you’d reveled in the taste of him on your lips, each of you pressing frantically against the body of the other as if it had been weeks and not mere days since you’d been together.

“I’ve got to go,” Javi had apologized into your mouth, breathing the words between a series of soft, desperate kisses. “Fucking… fucking early meeting with Martinez.”

“It’s okay, baby,” you’d reassured him, feeling very much like it wasn’t okay. You hardly get enough of him as it is. This tiny little taste had only deepened your aching need, and you’d felt your heart splitting in two as he’d pulled away from you, a small little grimace of frustration twisting his face.

“I’ll see you soon,” you’d called as he’d hurried away, and he’d responded with a tight lipped smile and another dark look of longing.

Now, you round the corridor toward the DEA office, walking as quickly as you can without drawing attention to yourself. Javi is working late again. If you hurry, you’ll have twenty five uninterrupted minutes with him before your night shift starts.

“Ears!” You stop in your tracks, a little shudder of resentment flashing down your spine at Bill’s overeager greeting. “Just the lady I’ve been waiting to see.”

You school your face into a neutral expression of polite interest. Most days, you like Bill just fine, despite the fact that you really don’t trust him for shit.

Today, damn him straight to hell.

“What’s up?” you ask, quirking your lips into an intrigued little grin. There’s a certain informality and blasé banter that Bill’s grown to expect from your encounters, and he’s sharp enough to sense that something’s off if you don’t perform.

“Oh, loads and loads,” Bill says, leaning casually against the corridor wall with his arms folded.

You bite back a sigh. You really, really don’t have the patience to dance around him today. “Oh, really?”

Bill arches a questioning brow at you, and you remind yourself to be convincing, dammit. Usually, this isn’t an issue. Most days, you like your job, and your boss, just fine.

Most days.

“You’re bored, aren’t you, Ears?” Bill continues, pitching his voice deep, those probing eyes piercing straight through you.

“I -” you start. Bored isn’t how you’d describe it, lately.

Tired, more like.

“No, no,” Bill’s expression is patient, endearing. “Don’t deny it. I’ve been watching you. I know that hungry look when I see it. You want more. You came to Colombia to do something important with your life, I can tell.”

Six months ago, hell, even three months ago, Bill’s words would have been true. Now, the very thought of more is enough to send you crawling into bed and sleeping for a week.

‘Isn’t tracking down Pablo Escobar pretty fucking important?’ you’re half tempted to ask. You hold your tongue.

Obviously, it’s not to Bill Stechner.

“What do you have for me?” you say instead, hoping you sound intrigued, carefully not confirming or denying Bill’s suspicions.

“Real work,” Bill says with a sharp smile. Something cold jolts down your spine at the his use of the word ‘real.’

As if everything until now has been a sham.

“Follow me,” he beckons, and you have no choice but to obey.

Bill leads you past the DEA offices. You catch a glimpse of the top of Javi’s head from the corner of your eye. He’s hunched over his desk, pouring over an open manilla file. You can barely see the deep furrow in his brow. He doesn’t notice you pass by, and you don’t pause to acknowledge him.

Something throbs in your chest at that.

You follow Bill through a few more winding corridors, down into the basement, past Centra Spike’s room, right up to an unassuming little bookcase built into a nondescript wall in the middle of nowhere.

Bill pauses here, turning to look at you with shining eyes.

You meet his stare, giving away nothing.

With an enthusiasm that borders on theatrical, Bill huddles over a little keypad that’s tucked away at the edge of the bookcase. He punches in a series of numbers, glancing over to confirm that you’re still watching.

You definitely are.

Bill steps back, and like something from an Indiana Jones film, the entire fucking bookcase slides aside, reveling a reinforced steel door built into the wall.

“Whoa,” you can’t help but breathe.

Bill’s eyes glitter. He’s eating this up, impressing you.

And truly, you’re impressed. That little spark of interest that had died in the past months of your burnout has flared with a vengeance.

This is the shit that you joined the CIA for, and Bill Stechner knows it.

“Welcome to the white room, Ears,” Bill announces lowly. It’s the soft, knowing voice of a man sharing a deeply guarded secret. He opens the steel door with a flourish, and it swings slowly aside, heavy and creaking, as if its weight alone could announce the gravity of what you’re about to see.

Carefully, you step inside the room, ducking a little to avoid knocking your head against the low hanging doorway, crawling past the steel corridor entrance before you can straighten.

You blink, astounded at what you’re seeing.

Of course, you’ve heard whispers of CIA’s fabled “White Room,” a repository of classified files tucked away somewhere in the embassy basement. Even Javi’s mentioned it a couple of times, always with a hint of resentment, like he’d give his left arm for even a glimpse inside. Rumor is, Steve Murphy’s been in here before, but just once, and he was heavily supervised the entire time. It’s a fucking goldmine of intel, stacks upon stacks of carefully organized file folders, all at the fingertips of the few individuals who are important enough to be need-to-know.

“Okay,” you whisper beneath your breath, taking it all in. Reality is a little different than you’d pictured. The entrance is impressive, sure, but what you’re staring at is even more so. Box after carefully labelled box is packed atop one another, stacked six deep on a never-ending series of steel shelves.

You could spend an eternity here learning all of the secrets of Colombia. The implications are mind-boggling, and distantly, you wonder how many other well-hidden rooms the CIA has tucked away across a spread of foreign countries, a never-ending fountain of secrets related to god-knows-what.

Your brain stutters at the thought.

You realize suddenly that Bill is watching you carefully from the corner of his eye, observing your reaction as if he’s surreptitiously taking notes on every thought that flits across you brain. Again, you school your expression, reverting to that practiced, dead-eyed stare of careful neutrality.

“Cool,” you say, a little breathlessly, knowing that Bill’s eager to wow you, and not seeing any reason not to acknowledge the fact that, yeah, you’re pretty fucking wowed. You turn to face him, ignoring the temptation to sweep your gaze over the many, many labeled files at your eye level. “So, what are we doing here?”

Bill laughs. “I’ll show you.” He leads you past the shelves, and now that you’re behind him, you can’t stop your eyes from tracking over the labels at your eye level. You’re appalled by what you see.

Shelves upon shelves devoted to Escobar, and even more to the Cali Cartel, all broken down into sections of the individual godfathers. Rodriguez, Herrera, Bejarano, Moncado are all names that catch your eye. There are folders on each major sicario that you recognize from Javi’s info board: Mosquera, Lucumí, Vásquez, Gaviria... the list goes on. Even more files files are labeled Castaño. There’s a whole series of boxes on M-19, and a little past that, an entire shelf devoted solely to FARC.

It’s more than your mind can possible comprehend in one quick sweep, and hell, that’s just what you could catch at eye level.

It occurs to you that this is what Steve and Javi are always bitching about. Sure, you’re aware of the ever present pissing contest between the DEA and the CIA, but it’s always been peripheral information to you. Steve in particular is pretty vocal about his frustration with the ‘fucking CIA.’ “Goddamn file’s so redacted that it might as well be scrap,” you can just hear him muttering.

Christ, if this is the kind of intel that the CIA has open access too, you can kind of see his point.

Bill stops at a table in the center of the room, indicating it with a sweep of his hand. Reluctantly, you sit, a little annoyed that you’ve got your back to him now, but not feeling comfortable enough to twist around to track what he’s doing. Your instincts are screaming at you that this is a test. A big one. So you wait demurely in your tiny plastic chair, your hands folded primly in your lap, listening intently as Bill shuffles for something behind you.

After a long moment, Bill leans his hip heavily against the table, just a hair too close to your shoulder for you to be totally comfortable. You don’t have time to think on that, though, because he’s sliding a black and white photograph under your nose for you to view.

The man that leers up at you has a pinched face beneath a deep brow. His nose is long and lopsided, as if it’s been broken at least once. His thinning, limp hair hangs low over his eyes, giving him a mysterious, almost rebellious look. His mouth is wide, crooked teeth exposed in an open-mouthed grimace. He’s angling toward the camera, obviously unaware of its existence, leaning forward with a machine gun cradled to his chest.

“Feo,” you say instantly, your mouth working before your brain can catch up. You recognize him from the evidence board in the DEA office, and even more from your conversations with Javi.

Feo is a low level sicario, one that’s just now caught the attention of Search Bloc, mostly due to the recent chatter that Centra Spike has picked up. You’ve yet to get a positive ID on his voice, but he’s been mentioned in several conversations lately, always in reference to ‘drops.’

Javi’s been working deep in the night to decipher these conversations, eager to learn what ‘drops’ Escobar and his sicarios are so desperate to come by.

“Feo,” Bill drawls, a hint of something sharp licking at his tone. You glance up at him, curious. “That’s an unfortunate nickname.”

He’s staring down at you with eyes that are too aware. Probing, assessing.

Fuck.

“I’ve seen him on the DEA board,” you explain, grateful that you can provide an answer so quickly. You don’t like the way Bill is looking at you, like he’s daring you to confess a sin.

“I didn’t realize there were many photos of him floating around,” Bill says casually. But you aren’t stupid. You read the threat in his statement, loud and clear.

“It’s a new one,” you reply automatically, feeling as if you’re scrambling to claw yourself out of a hole.

But this is also true. Feo has been an ongoing mystery to Search Bloc, one that they haven’t taken seriously until recently. You wonder what it is about this man that’s got Bill so on edge.

Bill hums. “Good eye.” He hunches over the photograph, so close that you can feel his body heat against your neck.

“This is Raul Manriquez.” Bill taps the forehead of the man in the photograph, then turns to leer at you. “Apparently, he’s known to his friends as Feo.”

He’s watching you for a sign. You refuse to give it.

“So,” you ask after a beat. Bill folds his arms across his chest, waiting for you to continue. He’s not giving any signs either, the dickwad. “What does the CIA want with Raul Manriquez?”

Bill has never behaved this way with you before. There’s a certain weight to the way he regards you that hints at paranoia. He’s deeply, almost obsessively interested in this man, and it doesn’t make sense.

Feo is a sicario, sure. But sicarios are far, far below Bill’s pay grade. The thought is laughable, even.

Something drops in your stomach. If Feo is more than a sicario, as it seems he must be, then it is far, far above your pay grade to be this involved.

Bill pulls out a chair beside you and sits heavily. He leans on his elbow, swinging his legs so that his knees brush your thighs.

You echo him, carefully positioning yourself so that you’re facing one another, but no longer touching.

“We have intel to suggest that Raul Manriquez is connected with a Russian weapons ring,” Bill starts. You notice for the first time that he looks tired, too, his eyes a little bloodshot, heavy bags dropping darkly beneath them.

Something clicks in your brain. “He’s Pablo’s weapons guy,” you breathe. The pieces fall together with startling clarity. The drops that the sicarios had mentioned. The fact that Feo seems to stay at the periphery of things, not nearly as involved with the day-to-day bullshit that other sicarios seem to thrive on. “He’s running guns.”

“Among other things,” Bill drawls, seeming thoroughly bored by the turn in the conversation.

You ignore that. Your thoughts are spinning wildly, forging connections, solving problems. Escobar’s got to get his weapons from somewhere. In the back of your mind, you’ve always sort of known this, but the significance of it has stayed firmly out of sight, swamped by other things that, at the time, had seemed far more important.

But if you could catch Feo… If you could choke off Pablo’s lethality directly at the source…

“We could end this,” you whisper, sitting up to look Bill directly in the eye. Your voice rises. “Bill, if we neutralize Feo, Escobar’s lost his access to his guns.” Something swoops in your heart, and you feel brighter, more energized than you have in weeks. “We can end this war!”

“Oh, the fucking drug war.” Bill scoffs, waving his hand in a casual gesture of lazy dismissal. He looks frustrated, disappointed. “Ears, broaden you horizons a little, sister. Escobar is on the run. When he’s gone,” Bill leans in, the glint in his eye damned near dangerous. “And he will be gone, Ears, trust me.” He huffs a deep sigh, shaking his head as he pitches away to balance on the far feet of his chair, rocking back and forth in a way that reminds you of a restless kid in a elementary school classroom. His eyes are sharp, possessive as they pin yours. “What then?”

You stare at him flatly, a little miffed to have nearly a year of your life’s work brushed aside as if it’s just petty bullshit.

You shake that emotion away, blinking hard, reminding yourself of where you are, of who your boss is. With the lines as blurred as they are in Colombia, and your unique position dancing between Centra Spike, the DEA, and the CIA, and Search Bloc, it’s easy to forget that ultimately, it’s Bill Stechner who owns you.

For the first time, that thought deeply unsettles you.

Bill falls forward heavily on his elbows, looking at you with a furrowed brow, and you remind yourself for the umpteenth time that this meeting is a performance, one that you’ve utterly and completely bombed until now.

You brain spins, processing the little bits and pieces of information that you’ve been given. Bill sees Escobar’s fall as in inevitability, inconsequential, even. He’s concerned about Feo in the context that he’s connected to the weapons trade in Colombia.

Quickly, you consider what you know about Bill Stechner. A CIA big wig with a shady-ass military background. A man who’s mind lives in the future.

A future without Escobar. He’s made that much clear.

“You’re looking to fill a power vacuum,” you announce suddenly, knowing instinctively that you’re not far off the mark. Bill Stechner is a man who is always thinking ahead, studying the political chessboard to analyze his next move, and the one after that, too.

And that truth bomb jars free even more thoughts that have been floating untethered in the back of your mind. When he’s not skulking around his office, Bill is gone for weeks at a time, supposedly off in depths of the amazonian jungle, brushing shoulders with his right winged military buddies.

Commie hunting.

The pieces fall perfectly into place, painting a sobering picture, and all the while, Bill watches, a sharp little grin playing at his lips as you connect the dots.

“Bill,” you say, refusing to accept any bullshit. You thump your finger hard against Feo’s leering smirk, pinning Bill with a dark stare. “Is this guy connected with FARC?”

Both of Bill’s brows arch skyward, and he leans back, looking at you with a new light in his eyes. You get the impression that once again, you’ve impressed him.

You’re not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

“I don’t know, Ears,” Bill admits, glancing away to his hands, which are suddenly curling into fists in his lap. You can tell it really grinds his gears, the uncertainty. “That’s what I want to find out.”

You consider him carefully, keeping your face expressionless. This is the most open response you’ve ever gotten from Bill, and you file away that information along with everything else you’ve learned today.

It’s a lot.

“What do you need from me?”

It’s a valid question. Part of you, the part that is equally intrigued and enraptured by Bill Stechner and the CIA as a whole, genuinely wants to help.

The rest of you is just desperate to get out of this room.

Bill’s lips slide into a knowing smirk. “Well, Ears,” he drawls, eyeing you in a way that makes something sink in your gut. “I’m glad you asked.”

“I’m listening.” You deliberately leave off the ‘sir,’ that you’re tempted to tack on to the end of that statement. Damn your army background.

“This is the moment that we’ve put you in place for,” Bill confesses, hunching forward on his elbows. Again, you get the impression that he’s trying to reel you in, seducing you with a show of honesty.

You brace yourself.

“The DEA is interested in this man, too,” Bill starts, shooting you a pointed look that says ‘I know you already know this.’ You keep your face carefully blank, so Bill continues. “I know that they’ve been working to track his location.”

Something cold coils in your heart. “Are you asking me to spy on Search Bloc?” you ask point blank.

Bill shakes his head. “No, no, no, Ears,” he chides with an expression of extreme patience, as if you’re a child to him. “That would be counterproductive. We’re all on the same team, after all.” He pins you with a dead-eyed stare that sends a shiver down your spine. “I’m asking you to fully engage in your position with the CIA.” Bill stresses the last point, again reminding you of who you are, who you answer to. “You’re a liaison.” He hums a little, all casual disinterest, disarming you, reinforcing the bonds of loyalty that he’s forged with a simple shrug of his shoulders. “So, liaise.”

You realize with a starling, icy jolt of clarity that Bill Stechner has tolerated your relationship with Javier Peña for this very reason, that he’s garnered your favor - accepting your transfer request, giving you a raise, buying you drinks, playing your buddy - all in preparation for using you as his own personal mole in the ranks of Search Bloc.

And you’d fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.

Your throat works hard to swallow against a suddenly dry mouth. “I understand, sir.”

For the first time, Bill doesn’t correct your formality. You hardly notice the shift, though. You’re still reeling from the implications of what he’s asking of you, of how he’s exploited you, taken advantage of all of your vulnerabilities. Suddenly, you feel as if you’re choking, like a noose is tightening, tightening around your neck. You have to stop yourself from reaching to massage your throat, clenching your hands into tight firsts into your lap instead.

Bill watches it all in cool amusement. “Atta girl,” he praises, and you swear you taste bile. He stands, and you copy him absently, feeling detached and awkward, walking on legs that require all of your attention to keep from trembling.

Bill claps a heavy hand on your shoulder. His eyes flash with something like pride, and you decide in that moment that you hate him, this motherfucker, almost as much as you hate yourself for falling for his bullshit.

Goddammit, you’re so fucking stupid.

“Good talk,” he says, and you nod in a way that you hope is contemplative without being telling.

You follow Bill out of the room on wooden legs, your mind spinning with the implications of your conversation. He nods to you as the bookshelf slides shut behind you, and you nod back, relieved to see that he turns to head the opposite direction from the DEA office.

You glance down at your watch. You’ve got ten minutes if you hurry. With all your heart, you hope that Javi is still working.

You need to see him.

You push past his glass door, swinging it open hard enough that it bangs ominously against the wall. Javi is still slumped over his desk in the exact same position as before, studying a jumbled series of papers, a half-spent cigarette dangling from his lips.

Your breath catches at the sight of him.

His head snaps up at your noisy arrival, dark eyes narrowed at the intrusion. His expression softens when he sees that it’s you.

“Ears.” His voice is a sigh, a release of that same tension that you feel leaking from you own bones, and you dart forward, heedless of who might be watching beyond the glass walls.

“Hey,” you say, shoving aside an opened manilla folder to create a bare space for you to lean against. Javi doesn’t seem to mind that in the least, so you flop up onto his desk, pressing your thigh against his elbow, enjoying the feeling of just sharing the same space.

Javi glances at you, and your something lurches in your chest as you take him in. He looks haggard, exhausted, dark bags gathered beneath his bloodshot eyes like he hasn’t had good night’s sleep in far too long.

“Another little chat with Stechner?” he grouses, peering up at you with narrow gazed suspicion.

Your heart sinks, and you have to blink hard against the onslaught of his ire. Javi’s always been grouchy when he’s tired, and there’s nothing that drives him into a funk faster than any mention of Bill Stechner. It’s as if he has a sixth sense in that regard, like he can smell Bill on your skin.

And that’s a gross thought.

Until now, Javi’s attitude had irked you, and you’d written it off as petty, just another brand of that delightfully obnoxious possessiveness that he’s continuously displayed since your apartment was bombed.

But dammit, you’re the moron here, not Javi. He’d been right not to trust Bill.

You shut your eyes tightly. You wonder if Javi should even trust you, given your most recent assignment.

“Please don’t,” you whisper, not knowing how to put your many worries into words, and Javi must read your conflicted mood, because he lets the subject drop. He huffs, his attention falling back to the open file on his desk, his long fingers working little tapping patterns into its intricate woodgrain.

You follow his gaze, noticing that he’s been pouring over the same photograph that Bill had shown you in the white room. Feo’s ugly mug leers back at you, a knowing, secretive smirk playing at his upturned lips, like he’s mocking you, the motherfucker.

A flood of emotions swamp you. You’ve watched Javi squinting down at this same photo for days, his mind spinning as he attempts to tease out connections, completely stumped as to how this unassuming, ugly man fits into the bigger picture of Pablo Escobar and his sicarios.

And now you know, but there’s not a damn thing you can say about it. Bill’s going to be watching you. Hell, he’d admitted as much today. Verbatim. If he thinks that his little spy is sharing classified CIA intel with her DEA boyfriend…

Well, honestly, you’re not sure what would happen. You just know that it would be bad news for you, and probably even worse for Javi.

You release a deep, broken sigh, exhaling though your nose. You wonder how you’re going to balance it all, working for Bill without betraying Javi.

Well, you absolutely refuse to do that. Fuck Bill Stechner for even asking.

But now, watching Javi huddled over his messy desk, squinting in the dim light because he refuses to wear his fucking glasses, frazzled and careworn and a little cranky, something pulls at your chest.

Refusing to share this intel feels a lot like a betrayal already, and suddenly, you’re desperate to confess it all to him, to crawl into Javi’s lap and spill your guts and cry and beg for his forgiveness for blowing off his concerns about Stechner, for even entertaining the thought of withholding information from him.

Just as you feel like you’re ready to burst, Javi sighs deeply, flopping the file shut. He grinds out his cigarette and turns to glance at you, his eyes dark with need.

Your breath catches.

Then, without a word, Javi pitches forward to rest his head against your thigh. He nuzzles there for a moment, and you find yourself carding your fingers through his hair, helpless against the temptation to touch him, comfort him.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs after a long moment.

“Shh,” you whisper. Guilt gnaws at you. You’re the one who should be sorry.

But Javi huffs a hot little breath against your leg, and you brush aside all thoughts of who should trust who, of loyalty and ethics and treason and chain of command. Right now, your entire universe is resting his head in your lap, and you’re determined to enjoy this moment, fallout be damned.

“Baby,” he murmurs into the rough denim of your jeans, and your heart flutters. You bring your opposite hand to rest at the back of his neck, savoring the softness of his skin there, winding your fingers through the curls that brush against his collar.

Javi shudders at your touch, and you remember belatedly that you’re stroking at his number one erogenous zone, teasing him mercilessly without meaning him to.

Reluctantly, you pull away, resting your palm at the slope of his shoulder instead. “Whoops.”

Javi snorts, craning his neck just enough to arch his only visible eyebrow in your direction. The rest of his face is squished into your thigh.

It’s fucking adorable, and it reminds you all over again how little you deserve him, this precious, perfect man.

“What’s wrong?” Javi asks, like he’s sensed the direction of your thoughts. He twists further to frown up at you. One hand comes up to rest at the juncture of your hip, his thumb pressing deeply into your skin.

It’s a comfort.

“Nothing,” you mutter, because you can hardly say ‘everything.’ You busy yourself with working little circles at the base of Javi’s ear, hoping it’s enough to distract him from his line of questioning.

It’s not. Javier Peña has a mind like a steel trap, and he notices everything. “Bull,” he breathes, shutting his eyes despite his best efforts. “You’re worried ‘bout something.”

God, he looks wrecked.

“I just…” You struggle for the right words to to offer him, come up empty. “God, I hate this.”

That one dark eyes flutters open again, soft with concern.

“I miss you,” you blurt before he can dig any further. And oh, god, that’s not a lie. You miss Javi so much it fucking burns, even with him nuzzled right here in your lap.

Javi draws a deep breath, rolling over to expose the entire left side of his face. His opposite arm comes up to wrap around your waist so that he’s almost hugging you, his fingers digging gently into your flank. “What time is your shift over, baby?” he mumbles, his one visible eye glinting, nearly feverish with need.

“Mmm,” you hum, your pulse hammering away in response to the how he’s looking at you. “I can probably be home by eight,” you say sadly.

And really, that’s pushing it. It all depends on what you hear over the frequencies, and how quickly you can vet it. Anybody’s guess at this point in the game.

Javi blusters a deep sigh that prickles hotly at your inner thigh. “Dammit,” he groans, clenching his eyes shut in frustration.

“What’s your morning like?” In the craziness of the past few days, you’ve completely forgotten his schedule.

“Early,” Javi mutters darkly. He doesn’t look at you.

“Fuck.”

“Hardly,” he pouts against your jeans.

And god, you can’t blame him. Resentment wells hot in you. You just want a break, dammit, just a single fucking day to spend with the man you love.

Is that so much to ask?

Suddenly desperate for more contact, you bend down to drop a gentle kiss at his temple.

Javi inhales sharply as your lips meet his skin, and you lay there like that, contorting over him in a way that makes your sides ache and probably displays half of your bare back to anybody who happens to walk past the glass walls of the DEA office right now.

You don’t fucking care. You need this.

“Can I meet you for lunch tomorrow?” you ask as you finally pull away. You haven’t bothered glancing at your watch, but instinct is telling you that you’re already running late for your shift, and your back is killing you.

Javi sits up, slumping against his office chair with his legs splayed sideways. He’s all wild hair and furrowed brow, and if you weren’t at work, you’d be tempted to crawl into his lap and kiss that contemplative look right off his face.

“That might work,” he says slowly, licking his upper lip a little in that way that means he’s thinking hard. Something coils deep in your belly, and you have to shake your thoughts away from those lips and that tongue, and what all they’re capable of.

Javi cocks a brow at you, tilting his head a little. “What are you thinking?”

Fuck it, it’s late. You slide off his desk, planting yourself in his lap with your legs spread across his, grinding subtly against his thighs. His belt buckle digs into your belly, but you don’t give a shit. You tilt his face to yours, reveling for half a second in his confused, awestruck expression before you plant your lips on his for a deep, gentle kiss. Javi moans a little at the contact, plaint and responsive against your advances, his hands coming to graze at your back reverently.

“I was thinking I’d ride,” you whisper against the stubble at his lower jaw just as you lean in to suck at it.

Javi twitches against you, a tiny jolt of his hips, like he’s tempted to take you right here in his rickety office chair, damn the glass walls.

“I need to see your face,” you continue, pulling his hands up to rest at your ribs as you rock gently against him, a subtle preview of tomorrow’s menu.

Javi shudders beautifully beneath you. “What, this ol’ thing?’ he teases, nuzzling against your breastbone. You can tell that he’s pleased by the thought.

“This pretty thing,” you correct, working your way back to his lips.

Javi bites back a groan as you kiss him. “Was asking about food,” he murmurs against your mouth. “But this is better.”

“Don’t worry about food,” you say, falling forward to nuzzle against his neck. “I’ll take care of it. And it will be perfect.”

Javi snorts. “Better be takeout, then.” He gathers you against his body with strong arms, cradling you close. You breathe him in, reveling in the distant smell of coffee and stale cigarette, all mixed in with a hint of musky sweat and something smoky and dark that is uniquely Javier Peña.

“God, baby, I’m looking forward to it,” he confesses against the hollow of your throat, and you throw your head back, shut your eyes and let him ravage you there, just for a moment.

Javi pulls away far too soon, and you shudder at the loss of him, your body damn near trembling with need.

He rolls back in his chair, glancing up at you with an apology in his eyes. “It’s eight oh five,” he tells you somberly, and you wince, disentangling yourself from him, stumbling out of his chair and straightening your shirt and threading your fingers through your wild hair in an effort to smooth it down.

“How do I look?” you ask after a moment, backing up enough to give him the full effect of you.

Javi’s eyes are burning as he takes you in, damn near shimmering with want and exhaustion and pent up emotion, and you curse Bill Stechner once again for butting his big nose into your relationship, for complicating things that should be so fucking simple.

“Perfect,” Javi says lowly, his lips pursed into a thin line, his eyes glittering with some thought that you can’t name. “Fucking perfect.”

Something wrenches in your chest, and you catch your breath, feeling tears prickle at your eyes. You suck them down, frustrated at how often life in Colombia seems to draw your emotions to the forefront.

Nobody needs that.

You lean forward, unable to resist dropping one last, chaste kiss to Javi’s forehead. “Go to bed, Javi,” you whisper against his skin. You pull away, a gentle, teasing smile spreading across your face. “Seriously, baby. It’s just getting stupid now.”

You wink at him, and Javi huffs a little laugh. “Get out of here, Ears,” he grouses, waving a lazy hand at you, but his smile is gentle and soft, and you know that he’s recognized the reference for what it is.

Feeling lighter than you have in days, you shoot him one last cheeky wave. Javi blows a little kiss at you in response, and your heart stutters at the gesture.

God, he’s such a sap.

You damn near dance to the Centra Spike office, slipping into your headphones a full ten minutes later than you really should. Nobody bats an eyelash, though, and you busy yourself with the normal nightshift bullshit, sipping your coffee and switching to the proper frequencies, the promise of tomorrow glowing in your heart.

♠

notes/confessions:

I struggled so hard with this. I still don’t love it, but I’m sick of looking at it, so here ya go. Enjoy.

Okay, I know I have thrown some massive plot things at you this week. I know it’s complicated, and I know it’s a lot. Feel free to ask me questions. I’ve tried to make things as clear as possible, but I’m only human, Narcos is complicated af anyway, and Better Love is even worse, probably.

Look for updates to slow back down again, because a) I actually do have a job, and b) we’re getting close to the point where I’m going to have to start posting If I Fall, and I want to have my chapters outlined a little better and maybe even a few deep before I do that. Look for a few little fluffy one-shots scattered between then and now, but guys... for the most part, the pieces are in place, and we are in the home stretch - of the setup, that is.

Holy fucking shit.

Tags: @jedi-mando, @perropascal, @hotspacepilots, @mostly-megan, @starlight-starwrites, @thirstworldproblemss, @knittingqueen13, @yespolkadotkitty, @lv7867, @pascalisthepunkest, @sarahjkl82-blog, @corrupt-fvcker, @artsymaddie, @leonieb, @justanotherblonde23, @princess-and-pedro

Javier Peña tags: @magpie-to-the-morning, @tiffdawg, @danniburgh, @1800-fight-me, @mandoandgrogu, @hybrid-in-progress, @va-guardianhathaway, @speakerforthedead0, @feminist-violinist, @herefortheart, @dontmindifidontt, @blo0dangel

#Javier Peña #Javier Peña x reader #pedro pascal #narcos #narcos fanfic #Javier Peña fanfic #pedro fandom #pedro fanfic #reader insert #fluff #narcos netflix #narcos fanfiction #Javier Peña fanfiction #Javier Peña imagine #better love #fanfic #fanfiction #pedro pascal fandom

185 notes · View notes

margridarnauds · 3 years

Text

Things I Wish I Had Known About Being A Celticist (Before Becoming One):

1. If you’re North American, you’re going to have to work twice as hard to get the same level of respect as your peers from Europe. Get used to that now, because it won’t get any easier as time goes on. You’re also going to very likely be in classes with people who, while not FLUENT in Gaeilge, have at least some background in it. This can be a blessing and a curse - The curse is that you have less of an idea of what’s going on, the blessing is that the professors will focus a lot of the tougher questions on them, at least at first.

2. “So, do you have any Irish family?” You will be asked that question. All the time. If you’re North American or English. Unless you have, say, a grandma from Tipperary, the safest answer is always “No, not at all! I just love the literature/history/language/etc.”

3. Love languages? You’re going to! On average, depending on your program, it’s likely that you’ll at least be learning two languages. At enough of a level where you can get pretty in-depth when it comes to the grammar. Most Old Irish experts are expected to know Old Irish, Middle Welsh (at least enough for comparative purposes), and German, with Latin often being brought in. You’ll also be expected to be able to comment on the development of Old Irish, Middle Irish, Early Modern Irish, and Gaeilge - It’s essential if you’re going to date texts. There are also multiple other Celtic languages (Breton, Manx, Cornish, Scottish) that, while they might not be ESSENTIAL for whatever you’re doing, are still going to be cropping up at different times for comparison purposes - I’d be lying if I said I knew them WELL, and most people tend to stick fairly firmly to their area, BUT you will probably be learning at least a little of them. (Personally, no one asked me, but I honestly think that I couldn’t call myself a Celticist if I just knew one Celtic language, it’s why a longterm goal of mine is to build up as much knowledge of the others as I can.) I’ve seen quite a few scholars go in thinking that the linguistics part won’t be important, only to be slammed by the program early on. Even if you just want to do literary analysis, you’re going to have to explain the meaning and development of individual words, as well as situating it in the broader scope of the development of your language of choice. (IE “This is a ninth century text, and we know that because it has intact deponent verbs, the neuter article’s dying out, and no independent object pronoun. Also everything’s on fire because Vikings.”)

4. You’re very likely going to have to move. This applies mainly for North Americans who want to do it (unless you happen to live directly in, say, Toronto or Boston, in which case ignore what I said and, Bostonians, polish off your GREs and prepare to listen to Legally Blonde the Musical on repeat because you’re going to be applying for Harvard). There are very few Celtic Studies programs in the world and, in general, most of the major programs, sensibly, are in Celtic-speaking countries - So, if you want to study Scottish, you go to Scotland, you want Irish, you go to Ireland, Welsh in Wales, etc. If you already wanted to move to Europe for a year or two while you’re doing your MA, then great (and for EU students this doesn’t apply, since they can relocate much easier...unless they were planning on going to the UK in which case.....my condolences), but if you didn’t have any sudden plans to move, keep it in mind. From an American perspective, it was literally cheaper to move to Ireland and do my MA there than to deal with the school system here, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other inconveniences associated with moving to another country. Even if you’re European, the field is fickle - An Irish scholar might find themselves moving to Scotland, an English scholar might find themselves moving to Ireland, etc. etc. These things happen when you have to take what you can get.

5. You don’t need Old Irish to go for your MA in Celtic Studies. You do not need Old Irish to go for your MA in Celtic Studies. When I first applied for my MA, I thought I didn’t have a chance because I had a general Humanities degree and didn’t have any formal experience with a Celtic language, least of all Old Irish. As it turns out, most programs do not expect you to have a background in this sort of thing beforehand, and quite a few have different programs for those who have a background in this stuff VS those who don’t, so don’t feel, if this is what you REALLY want to do, like you can’t just because of that. Show your passion for the field in your application, talk a little about the texts you’ve studied, angles you’re interested in, etc., make it the best application you can, and you still have a shot even without Old Irish (or, for non-Irish potential Celticists, whatever your target is.)

6. It’s competitive - Just because you get your MA, PhD programs are fewer and farer between. Academia in general isn’t known for its phenomenal job security, but Celtic Studies in particular is very fragile, since we generally are seen as low priority even among the Humanities programs (which, in general, are the first to be axed anyway.) If you focus on medieval languages as opposed to modern ones, you might very well find your program ranked lower in priority than your colleagues in the modern departments. Especially since COVID has gutted many universities’ income. I found that getting into a MA program was significantly easier than planning on what to do afterwards, since, for a PhD, you generally have to go someplace that can pay you at least some amount of money. Going into your PhD without any departmental funding is a recipe for burnout and bankruptcy, and there are very few Celtic Studies programs that can pay. Doesn’t mean you can’t try, and, when paid PhDs become available, they tend to be quite well publicized on Celtic Studies Twitter/Facebook, but keep in mind that you’ll be in a very competitive market. Networking is key - Your MA is your time to shine and get those treasured letters of rec so that you can get that sweet, sweet institutional funding for your PhD.

7. You’re very likely not actually going to teach Celtic Studies. Because there are so few teaching positions available worldwide, it’s much more likely that you’ll be teaching general Humanities/Composition/etc. This doesn’t mean that you’ll be giving up Celtic Studies (conferences are always going to be open, you don’t have to stay in one department for your entire life and can snag a position when it becomes available, and, even if you go outside of academia, the tourism industry...well, it was looking for Celticists, before The Plague), it just means that if teaching it is what you REALLY want to do with your life, it might be good to check your expectations. A few programs even have an option where you can essentially double major for the sake of job security. (So, if you always wanted to be the world’s first French Revolution historian/Celticist/Gothic Literature triple threat......................the amount of reading you’d have to do would likely drive you insane but................)

8. Make nice with your department. Make nice with your department. Celtic Studies departments tend to be small and concentrated, so you’re going to be knowing everyone quite well by the end of your first grad degree, at least. You don’t have to like everyone in it, but they aren’t just your classmates, they’re your colleagues. You will be seeing at least some of their faces for the rest of your life. I can say that my MA department remembered students who left the program a decade ago. Your department is supposed to have your back, and they can be an invaluable source of support when you need it the most, since they understand the program and what it entails better than anyone else can. You’ll need them for everything from moral support to getting you pdfs of That One Article From A Long Discontinued Journal From The 1970s. I’ve seen students who made an ass of themselves to the department - Their classmates remembered them five years later. Don’t be that guy. Have fun, go to the holiday dinners, get to know people, ask about their work, attend the “voluntary” seminars and lectures, and do not make an ass of yourself. That is how you find yourself jumping from PhD program to PhD program because your old professors “forgot” your letter of rec until the day after the deadline. Also, since your departments are small and concentrated, it’s a good idea to prepare to separate your social media for your personal stuff vs your academics as much as you can, since it won’t be too hard to track you down if people just know that you do Celtic Studies.

9. Some areas of the field are more respected than others. If you want to do work on the legal or ecclesiastical aspects, excellent. If you want to focus on the linguistic elements, excellent. If you’re here for literature.....there’s a place, though you’re going to have to make damned sure to back it up with linguistic and historical evidence. (There’s less theory for theory’s sake, though theoretical approaches are slowly gaining more acceptance.) But if you’re here for mythography or comparative approaches...there is a PLACE for you, but it’s a little dustier than the others. There are fewer programs willing to outright teach mythology, mainly because it’s seen as outdated and unorthodox, especially since the term itself in a Celtic context is controversial. Pursue it, God knows we need the support, but just...be prepared to mute a lot of your academic social media. And, really, your social media in general. And have a defense prepared ahead of time. With citations. Frankly, I think my Bitch Levels have gone up a solid 50% since getting into this area, because consistently seeing the blue checkmarks on Twitter acting like you’re not doing real work while you’re knees deep in a five volume genealogical tract tends to do that to you. If it ever seems like I go overboard with the citations when it comes to talking about the Mythological Cycle, this is why - I have to. It’s how I maintain what legitimacy I have. I’d still do it if I’d have known, but I would have appreciated the heads up. (On the plus side - It means that, in those few programs that DO teach mythology, you’re golden, because they want all the serious students they can get.)

10. If you really, really love it, it’s worth it. After all this, you’re probably wondering why anyone would sign on for this. The work’s grueling and often unrewarding, you might or might not get respect for what you do based off of where you were born and what your interests are, and you’re subject to an incredibly unpredictable job market so you might never see any material compensation for all of it. But, if you can check your expectations of becoming rich off of it, if all you REALLY want to do is chase it as far as it can go, then it’s worth it. There’s a lot of work to be done, so you don’t have to worry too much about trotting over the same thing that a dozen scholars have already done. You might get the chance to be the very first person, for example, to crack into a text that no one’s read for over a thousand years, or you might totally re-analyze something because the last person to look at it did it in the 19th century, or you might get to be the first person to look at an angle for a text or figure that no one’s considered. If finding a reference to your favorite person in a single annal from the 17th century makes you walk on air for the entire day, then you might very well be the sort of person the field needs.

#celtic studies #long post #school tw

22 notes · View notes

athenagc94 · 3 years

Text

Just One Thing

With Beta Sandrock keys out, I’m back on my MTAP nonsense. Please, allow me to introduce my next builder - Eden King! Originally, I was gunning to have her marry Dr. Xu, but Oaks kind of snuck up on me and now, here we are. I hope you enjoy. You can also read it here on AO3

~~~~~~~

“When was the last time you had a full night’s sleep?”

Eden didn’t even look up from the monitor as she casually shot back, “When’s the last time you had a full night’s sleep?”

Petra huffed. “Don’t turn the tables on me. I asked you first.” She tried to sound irritated, but Eden heard the smile in her voice. She knew her sleep schedule was as fucked as hers, so kettle meet the pot. She had no right to lecture her. When she didn’t respond, Petra continued, “Why don’t you head out for the night? You’ve already done more than enough and I don’t mind finishing things up.”

“I like helping you.” Eden pressed a few keys on the pad in front of her. “It’s nostalgic, or whatever.”

She hit the enter key and a string of code appeared on the screen. She scrutinized it for patterns, then from those patterns, she picked out the irregularities and jotted them down on her notepad. Hopefully, they’d find something a little more useful this time around. The cooking mechanism they stumbled across last time was nice and all, but if she had to rely on her crumbling furnace for much longer, she was going to yank her hair out. This builder gig was supposed to be easier than her job back in Vega 5, but she might have made a marginal error when she drew that conclusion. Her father's old diagrams left a lot to be desired.

“You came to Portia to recover from your burnout,” she chided, jostling the back of her chair. Eden cut her with a glare, but it lacked its usual sting. “Old tech research isn’t your job anymore.”

“Old habits die hard,” she mumbled. “And then you die.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Petra tugged at her chair, pulling her just out of arm’s reach of the keypad. She almost clamored after it, but she resisted that overwhelming urge in favor of preserving some small part of her dignity. “Go home. Or am I going to have to get Phyllis on your ass?”

Eden pouted. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me,” she said, chuckling. “I can literally see the tension building around your shoulders. We both know Phyllis would love to get her hands on you for an acupuncture session.” Eden tried and failed to suppress the paralyzing fear that curled up her spine, stacking right on top of that rock hard stress that had settled in her shoulders. She liked to think she was a practical woman who trusted a vast majority of the advancements in medical sciences. And research did show that acupuncture has a positive impact on things like stress and anxiety ー both things she definitely suffered from.

That being said, fuck needles.

Petra smirked, reading her mind. “Exactly,” she snapped. “So, if you don’t want her using you as a living pin cushion, get out of here. Take the long way home. Get some fresh air. Something to unwind a little so she doesn’t have a reason to.”

“Why do you always have to be right?” Eden sighed, pushing herself out of her chair. She stretched her arms over her head, groaning as her back cracked and popped. “Can’t you just let me self-destruct in peace?”

“It’s part of my job to preserve the relic tech of the Free Cities.” Eden flipped her off and she laughed, a soft sound that reminded her of windchimes. She plopped down in her chair and turned back to the computer, picking up where Eden had left off. “I’ll let you know when I find something on these disks. A couple of days at most. So, I don’t want to see you before then unless it’s over a drink at the Round Table.”

Eden rolled her eyes. “How does Friday sound?”

“Only if you’re buying.”

“Of course,” Eden said as she shrugged on her cardigan. “It’s always on me, isn’t it?”

“Well, you’ve been threatening to get that new shop addition for months now. I think you’re purposely spending all your money on alcohol, so you don’t have to pull the trigger on it,” Petra shot back. She fluttered her lashes at her and quickly added, “I’m merely giving you an excuse to hold off on it for a while longer. That’s all.”

“I’m not afraid to pull the trigger on it,” she countered defensively, pulling the dark knit fabric a little more tightly around her shoulders. “It’s just, you know, this whole thing is only a temporary position. I plan on going back to Vega 5 once I’veー”

“Once the year is up. Yeah, I know what a sabbatical is.”

“Exactly,” Eden said, pulling the door open. The brisk spring air whipped up around her, rustling the dark curls around her jaw. She shivered and closed it a little to stave off the chill. “This is just a little vacation, I’ll be heading right back to continue my ongoing research with the Alliance by next spring. Portia is merely a stepping stone in my ten year plan.”

“That’s what I thought too when I took my internship out here, but here I am, three years later,” Petra said, with a wink. “You’ve only been a few months, but you’ll be surprised to see how quickly Portia grows on you. You’ll see.”

“Whatever you say. I’ll see you later this week.” She threw Portia a mock salute and ducked out into the Central Plaza.

The sun had long since set and if the clock on the old school building was correct (And it should be, she fixed it herself.) then it was far later than she realized. She regarded the stars that dotted the sky. The moon wasn’t out that evening, which only made the stars shine even more brightly in the sky. She smiled to herself. Maybe she would take Petra’s advice and go on a late night stroll ー just because it was such a beautiful night and not because she needed to unwind.

She rubbed her hands together, trying to warm them as she strolled out the city gates. The apple trees that grew along the path outside the city had started to bud with small white flowers, ready to bloom any day now. They filled the air with a sweet scent that reminded her of freshly baked apple pie. Eden stopped in the middle of the trail and took a deep breath. A ghost of a smile tugged at her lips as she basked in the smell and let the wind rustle her hair.

“What’re ya doin?”

Eden started, pressing a palm flat over her heart. It hammered so violently that she feared it would beat straight out of her chest. She glanced up only to find Oaks, the city vagabond, hanging precariously from one of the branches overhead. “By the Light, Oaks,” she breathed, her expression hardening. “You scared the shit out of me.”

He swung his legs up and over the branch, settling in the small nook it provided. “Sorry about that,” he said, chuckling. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look that happy before. It was nice.”

“What’re you even doing out?” She glanced at her watch, swearing. “It’s well past midnight.”

He shrugged, kicking his legs with a childlike glee. “I dunno? Papa Bear doesn’t care what time I make it back these days and sometimes I just like to sit in the trees and listen to the sounds of the forest.” He grinned at her. “You should really try it sometime. I always see you passing through here late at night anyway. Do you want to join me?”

Eden pinched the bridge of her nose. “Join you? Why would I join you? It’s late. I have to get up in the morning and work. You know a job? Like normal people.” A troubled frown tugged at the corners of his mouth and his playful kicking abruptly stopped. Only then did she realize how bad that sounded.

She groaned, scrubbing hard at her face. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong. That’s not what I meant, it’s just...” She trailed off, muffling another groan in her hand. “I don’t know what I meant.”

Maybe Petra was right. Her stress had gotten so out of hand that she was taking it out on Oaks, of all people. She hadn't spent too much time with him, but there was no denying that he was one of the sweetest residents in all of Portia. He loved to make people smile with his antics. He was especially good with the kids. She caught herself watching him dash around the plaza with them, their shrill laughter making her feel some kind of way that was hard to describe. In all, he was a good guy and now, she was screaming at him in the middle of the woods ー just like her father had done to her when he got a little too wound up.

How far she’d fallen.

He tilted his head off to one side and said, “You’re stressed.”

“Yeah,” she managed tightly. “Just a little bit.”

His frown deepened, which looked weird on a face that was always full of smiles. “Well, if that’s all that’s bothering you, I can show you what I do when I’m feeling a little stressed.”

She peered up at him, squinting. What kind of things did he have to be stressed about? As far as she knew, his days were spent wandering the fields with colorful llamas outside her workshop or snooping around the stalls in town. Sometimes, late in the afternoons, she’d catch him whittling while she was out gathering supplies. He always looked so engrossed in his work, but even then, there was a serene aura that surrounded him at all times. Frankly, it wasn’t fair.

But her curiosity got the better of her.

“What do you do when you’re stressed?”

He grinned, radiantly, and said, “Follow me.” He shifted his weight, tumbling to the ground in front of her. She flinched, but he quickly pulled himself up and wiped the dirt from the front of his pants. She never realized how tall he was before now, which was saying something considering she towered over most of Portia’s residents, even Gust. He had her beat by an inch or two, which was something. She didn’t know how old he was, but his broad shoulders and the sharp cut of his jaw suggested he was well into his twenties. She just always assumed he was a lot younger because of how he acted.

Another error. Two months into sabbatical and she was already losing her edge.

“If you liked the smell of the apple blossoms, then I think you’ll like this place just as much, but it’s top secret, you can’t tell anyone.” He leaned in, looking earnest. He smelled vaguely of apples and cinnamon. She furrowed her brow. Was that what she was smelling earlier? “It’ll be our secret. Do you promise?”

Eden sputtered, “I mean, I guess?”

Seemingly satisfied with that response, he took her by the hand and tugged her off the beaten path. Eden stumbled after him, nearly losing her footing on the roots and divots on the forest floor. She’d changed out of her work clothes earlier, before meeting up with Petra, so she wasn’t dressed for trekking through the forest. “Oaks, do you mind slowing down a little, I, uh, ahー”

Her foot caught a particularly vindictive tree root, sending her careening forward. She braced herself for the inevitable impact, but Oaks reacted quickly. He scooped her up, pulling her flush against his chest with one arm. She blinked up at him in surprise, one hand pressed flat against the bare pectoral. His heart thundered under her palm, nearly as fast hers was beating at that moment. This close, she could make out the individual freckles smattered across the bridge of his nose.

Eden suddenly found it very hard to catch her breath.

“My bad.” He pulled away, looking a little sheepish. “I got a little excited.” His hand slipped back around hers and they moved on, albeit a little more slowly. “But we aren’t in a rush. Part of the fun is the journey to get somewhere, am I right?”

“Honestly,” Eden said, smoothing her unruly curls up and out of her eyes. “I’ve never really been a fan of traveling.” That was kind of why she picked Portia for her sabbatical year. It was vaguely familiar from the one or two times she visited as a child with her aunt and uncle. She already had a connection or two with Presley and Isaac, not that she considered them close friends or anything. It seemed like a low maintenance location. Traveling always seemed like an unnecessary risk, but she needed to get away from the bustle of Vega 5 to fully recover from all her, as her therapist put it, issues

“It was never really my speed.”

“Well, with that attitude, you never will,” Oaks said with a chuckle. “Every new place is an adventure if you believe it is.” He gave her another radiant smile. “Take this top secret location for an example, you’ve never seen it before, right?” She nodded. “Well, aside from that little snag earlier, I think I can make it pretty fun for you.”

She snorted. “And how do you reckon that?”

Oaks paused, his nose wrinkling as he considered her question. Eden resisted the urge to roll her eyes. So, he didn’t even know. It shouldn’t have surprised her. After twenty six years. she still didn’t know how to cut loose and have fun. She had the PhD hanging over her desk to prove it.

“Who do you think would win in a fight ー a panbat or an illusion bunny?”

They shared a long look. “What?”

Oaks shrugged. “It’s a question. Which do you think?” He held out his hands, as if he were weighing his options. “On the one hand panbats are small and move faster than the illusion bunnies, but the bunnies have a hat, so it feels like a toss up. I’ve always been curious, but I’ve never been able to come to a decision. You seem smart, so what do you think in your expert opinion?”

Eden bit back a smile. He was too pure for his own good. “You do realize my area of expertise is in relic tech, right?”

Oaks hummed thoughtfully. “In that case, have you considered there are tech versions of panbats?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, that would be…” She trailed off and thought about it. Maybe Oaks was onto something there. A lot of people thought panbats were cute, but the fact remained that they were wild panbats. One couldn’t just pluck one out of the forest and call it a pet. “That would be pretty amazing actually. Do you think someone would invent it so they could keep a versions as a pet without the social repercussions of capturing and domesticating an actual panbat?”

Eden got swept away in their conversation. Every time she hit the proverbial wall, Oaks was right there with another wild idea that kept the momentum going. She had written off when she arrived in Portia. He was a wild child, born and raised in the forest, but he overflowed with new ideas. In Vega 5, Eden was expected to be a cog in the well-oiled machine. Cogs didn’t change. They didn’t question. But here she was, discussing the intricacies of how one would cuddle a panbot model without realizing it was a machine.

It wasn’t even possible.

She’d been in the field long enough to know that, but Oaks made her feel like she could do anything as long as she was willing to put in the effort.

And she wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“And here we are,” Oaks announced with a swipe of his hand. Eden blinked in surprise. They had been walking that whole time, hadn’t they? She didn’t even notice.

They weren’t in the forest anymore, rather, the sloping hills at the foot of the Bassanio Heights. She’d seen it from a distance, but up close, it was absolutely breathtaking. A waterfall rushed over the edge of the cliffside, coating the grass and wildflowers in a soft dew. The flowers looked freshly bloomed and filled the air with a soft floral scent that eased the tension coiling around her shoulders. She always found flowers calming, but there weren’t too many patches of green in Vega 5.

“When I’m a little overwhelmed with everything, I like to come up here and watch the waterfall. The sound is calming to me,” Oaks explained, tugging her closer to the edge of the cliff that overlooked the water. It rushed past, filling the empty air between them with a soothing white noise. The flowers reached her calves in some places. He picked one, pale blue with teardrop shaped petals, and offered it to her. She took it, twirling it sheepishly between her fingers.

“Do you know how to make flower crowns?”

She shook her head. “Do I look like someone who knows how to make flower crowns?”

“Anyone can make flower crowns,” he said with a shrug. “Looks have nothing to do with it. And Molly says that mine are the best in all of Portia.” He plopped down on the ground and plucked a few more. Pink, blue, yellow. His hands moved of their own accord as he expertly wove the stems in and out. “I can show you my secret.” He peered up at her, donning a soft smile that left her chest swelling with a warm glow. He had a dimple on his right cheek. “I mean, if you aren’t too busy with all your real adult work, that is.”

Eden laughed despite herself and took a seat across from him. “You’re a little cheeky,” she said. “I would have never expected that from you.”

“Well, Papa Bear has the best sense of humor. I learned it from him.”

“Naturally.” She regarded her flower fondly, then tucked it behind her ear.

Oaks beamed. “That color looks nice with your hair.” He immediately grabbed a few more of the blue flowers to lace into the crown that was quickly taking shape in his lap. “Molly only likes the pink and yellow flowers when I make them for her, so I rarely get to use the blue ones.”

“Use as many as you want. I’ve never had someone make me a flower crown before.”

“Well, they should,” Oaks said with firm conviction. “They’re scientifically proven to make you happier.”

“Well, I’m going to need to see your research because I’m a little skeptical.”

He presented her with the flower crown, beautifully crafted with blue and yellow. “Let us try our hand at a little experiment,” he said, imitating Merlin’s haughty drawl. He placed the crown on her head, adjusting a few of her curls. He settled back on his knees and regarded her with this fond look on his face. “Perfect.” She cracked a small smile and dipped her head, trying to hide it. “Exhibit A. You’re smiling.”

“Correlation doesn’t equal causation,” Eden countered.

“I don’t know what that means,” Oaks said. “But, I do know that people smile when they’re happy and yours just keeps getting bigger. That has to mean something, right? You normally have such a serious look on your face.” He made a face, furrowing his brow and setting his mouth in a hard line. It was the same look that greeted her when she looked in the mirror every morning. He was spot on. She couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled and burst out of her. “See, and now you’re laughing. That’s not a coral nation or whatever you said.”

“Correlation,” she corrected. “It means a mutual relationship between two things. So, just because we can measure a relationship between those two things, that doesn’t mean one is the cause of the other.” For instance, there was no quantifiable proof that the heat burning at her cheeks had anything to do with Oaks or his close proximity to her at that moment.

None whatsoever.

Still, she cleared her throat and pulled away, just to be safe. “It’s beautiful.” She straightened the flower crown, lingering on the silken petals. “Thank you.”

“I told you I make the best flower crowns.”

“Not so fast there, nature boy.” She wagged her finger at him. “I don’t know if I’ve gathered enough data to draw that conclusion.”

His brow pitched as he considered that. “Well, I can make you another one tomorrow? With more flowers if you’re worried about me not gathering enough before.” he offered after a long moment. Eden tilted her head at him, confused, but he was already moving on. “Or maybe we can go apple picking? I know where to find the really sweet ones.”

“I have a lot of work to do tomorrow,” Eden said. “I have to gather some ore in the mines, Gale wants me to catch him a few fish, and then I’m meeting with the Civil Corps to discuss the bridge construction to Amber Island.” She drafted her mental checklist for everything she still needed to get done and felt the tension pulling taut across her shoulders. There wasn’t enough time in the day to finish everything.

Oaks shrugged. “That’s just three things.”

Her thoughts ground to a halt. “W-What?”

He blinked at her. “That’s just three things,” he reiterated. “I might not be super smart like you, but even I know that’s not that many.”

When he phrased it that way, her to-do list seemed a little less daunting. “Just three things.” She chuckled to herself. “You’re a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

He wheezed and plucked another flower from the field. It was a deep red, almost the same shade as his hair. “Well, if that’s the case, you’d be the first person who thinks so.” The sad resignation in his tone made something inside her ache.

“How about this? While I’m fishing tomorrow, you can hang out with me and show me how to make one of these things.” She pointed to the crown. “I’m pretty handy myself. I might be able to give you a run for your title as the best of the best.”

He grinned. “I like that plan.”

“Me too.”

Oaks hummed contentedly and sprawled out in front of her. He pointed at the sky. “Do you want to hear the stories Papa Bear used to tell me about the stars?” Eden glanced at her watch, the back at Oaks hopeful expression. An hour had already passed, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. She would even be so bold as to say that this little adventure was fun.

He added quickly after a moment, “Or I can walk you home if you want to sleep?”

“This is just one thing.” Eden laid down next to him and smiled at him. He mirrored it. “Tell me a story.”

#my time at portia #mtap #mtap builder #mtap oaks #mtap petra

27 notes · View notes

luvargas · 3 years

Photo

i think i just saw LUCILA “ LU ” VARGAS ride by on a golf cart . at least i think it was her . after all , CREDIT IN THE STRAIGHT WORLD BY HOLE was blasting on the transistor radio . maybe she was on her way to work , i hear she’s a PERSONAL TRAINER . but she totally could have been on her way to SNEAK IN A SMOKE AT THE GARDEN . guess we’ll never know . you’ll definitely know its her when you see LOOSE AND TANGLED HAND WRAPS , BUTTON BADGES ON VEGAN LEATHER , AND HEAR THE SHRILL SOUND OF BICKERING around the country club . let’s just hope she stays off the green after hours or else the sprinklers will get her !

( new muse, messy thoughts, u get the gist. pls know the views of this chara do not reflect my own. the name’s katya, 21, she/her pronouns & im ready 2 party. feel free to hmu wnvr or drop a like to plot n ill com 2 u ! x — oh n pls be a pal n read this quick disclaimer. tysm ! )

BASICS

24 years old

15 april 1997

5′1″ or 1.55m tall

bisexual cis woman, she/her

aries sun, aqua moon, and aqua rising

love languages : quality time & acts of service

BIO POINTS

kid o’ divorce, lived w her ma in chicago til she was 6 then w her dad in highlands til 14 then back to her ma !

def a daddys gorl. so used to her white pop’s leniency that livin w her strict latina ma durin her teen yrs was So Not Her Vibe ergo * cue her rebel grrrl phase *

did not finish hs ! left senior yr 2 to go w her “ radically progressive ” college bf to [ insert dev country. ] they broke up after a few mos but she kept at that life for a couple more yrs

seen some places. lived in new countries. done some shit. some good, some sus, but all generally well-intentioned. tis a whole thing but u get the gist, nywy !

lu’s back in da usa by 21. rel w the ma is strained but the pa is chill w stuff, they kept in touch. he said shell get her college fund if she gets her ged so she does !

her dad is v active n stuff so shes just always been v sporty w him. lu turnin 23 w zilch plans worried him so he implored her to get certified as a personal trainer ! n when she did, he called in a few favors w a pal he knows et voilà ! ur hired.

LU AT WORK

shes been workin at the country club fr a little over a yr now. most her clients are influencer-type gals n they luv her bc shes can take rlly cute pics n stuff for content. lu sorta likes some of em n she fakes the rest for the bread. u can bet she clowns all em richies behind their back

unless she got clients, catch her runnin’ about the club n minglin’ w the other workers. does it annoy mngmt ? yes. n she luvs that. but bc her soon-2-b-karen clients luv her n wont stand for her bein booted, she can milk that impunity

actually knows her shit n lowkey rlly enjoys the work. she picked back up the boxing n tae kwon do she did when she was younger plus she was always in the track team at school. v healthy lifestyle save for her smokin vice n the party moments

PERSONALITY

passionate ! has lotsa opinions. helluva a drama queen, bit of a loud mouth, argumentative n stubborn but her heart’s in the right place, albeit a lil misguided. comes w the whole activist bit, bitin her tongue just aint it. highkey makes everythin political n smtms gotta realize .,.,. it just aint that deep chief. some say shes needlessly defiant, but maybe thats a in the beholder typa thing ? fingers crossed 4 lu’s sake

fun, fun, fun ! can be real naggy but shes no buzzkill. wannabe anarchist-slash-mutineer who wants 2 stick it 2 the man ! get rowdy go crazy

fight, fight, fight ! goin back to the first bit, she talks big. esp w like ,, men n the whites lol. she can actually walk her threats tho she isnt actually violent. w arguments, she likes to start em but finishin is ... ruff. also any dare, she wont back down in either doin it or arguin why doin it wld be smth-ist. shes not the sharpest tool ok rip lu

loyal legend ! fr her friends n buds, shell turn a blind eye. pals r the only exception ! truly ride or die n will do errthng 4 em. v much a believer in the power of community n ppl needin ppl or wtvr, yk, all that stuff. shes mouthy but like, she helps ppl

here’s a brief blurb n a more coherent look into lu as a character

TIDBITS

lu can understand spanish but hers is a bit broken, tis her secret shame shhh

she doesn’t believe in the institution. any institution. u name it, shes got beef

pls dont fact check her she cant hear u

probs lowkey thinks shes better than u bc shes vegan

prefers 2 be called “ lu ” n ny1 who insists on lucila is dead 2 her

comments abt her not lookin like a pt w her height n frame will result in an earful n a dramatic outburst. it aint worth it chief

watches lotsa sports w her pops. mostly indiv ones. mma, boxing, tennis, track, etc

dont ask me abt her principles n politics, i cant explain em either. v inconsistent n just messy at this point tbh but here’s a lil attempt ig

she drives a 2018 prius n lives in a p nice 1br apt outside the club

her mom’s middle class n her dad is almost upper-middle class. he isnt a member of the club but, like ,,, he cld be if he wanted to lol. he spoils her sm while she hasnt rlly Spoken to her mom besides civility, rip they both stubborn, tis a vargas thing

she is v much in a comfy position money-wise n dsnt hav much Need to hustle but sis does hav a couple of organizations she regularly sends some dough to so thats nice ig

she went fr grassroots activist to a veteran twitter/tumblr/reddit/wtvr ranter n a change.org gofundme petition regular. is it burnout ? is she ok ? honestly who knows

WANTED CONNECTIONS / TAKEN CONNECTIONS

found family ! pals n squad wanted. y’all gotta hav patience or ear plugs to power thru her self-indulgent mini-rants but shell luv ya back tenfold !

carpool buds ? cld be a pal ! or maybe yall had a lil argument or small beef but lu still drives ym bc her pride ? said mother earth first even tho the tension n silly drama is funny

homies to smoochies ! just sum nsa makin out. cld be pals, cld be flirty, idk, but if u wanna kiss her shes probs ok w that

smoke bud ! just sum1 thats her go-to 2 smoke w on her breaks. knows not to call her out on how its not healthy fr a trainer yada yada she knows ok. let her live

an ex ? idk yet shes not rlly datey but thats out there

crushes ! this bitch hot but does she know how to flirt ? not rlly. watch her fumble

debate club ! aka sum1 she bickers w relentlessly. its valid, sum1 fite her. r u a worker or a club member ? either works. its a whole club bc she can have tons, lu can be hella annoying n testy

clients ! self-explanatory. do they get along tho ? lets find out !

( im officially braindead now but if y’all got more ideas or think theres smth lu wld fit just lmk !!! down 4 wtvr, wld luv 2 hash it out w yall <3 )

#highlandsintro

10 notes · View notes

justsomekpopstuff · 3 years

Text

Life Update

Hello Everyone!

I had a little break from the chaos of my life, and this blog popped into my head. Its been a while since I've dipped my toes into the Kpop world, so forgive me if I'm a little behind. I still don't plan on fully returning, but I figured it would be nice to at least give a little life update for those who still follow me, and those of you who have just joined in.

So I graduated college. Got my Bachelors Degree with honors in Psychology. Graduated during the middle of the pandemic too which was a wild experience. I had a job for a while working for the YMCA's after school program, but had to leave due to the pandemic. It was a wild experience. I have many, many stories.

I am now finishing up my first year as a graduate student. I am studying for my Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy so that I can go on to get my therapy license! However, I plan on using that degree to work specifically with sports and athletes in the future (the title of LMFT is very misleading). I have two more weeks of summer courses before my first year is done. Then I have one and a half years left before I graduate and am able to get all my practitioner hours. Its a long process, but I have enjoyed my experience, burnout spells and all.

I've had some health complications over the last couple of months. I unfortunately contracted COVID back in mid-to-late January, despite taking every precaution possible. My case was, thankfully, mild, but still took a deep toll on my health. I am still dealing with the aftermath through chronic illness every day, seven months later. Please, get vaccinated, wear your masks, and be safe.

I am still running a sports blog on the side. Mostly hockey with a dash of baseball (lets be honest, its mostly Shohei Ohtani at this point) mixed in. It has been a very different experience than being in the Kpop sphere, but still gives me emotional whiplash constantly.

As for where I am with Kpop, I'm still listening to the music. Just got back into it recently. I feel like all the groups I follow (or have followed) have started to become obsolete on here, which is disappointing. I will still love and support them regardless.

To my mutuals, and to my long-time followers, thank you for every bit of love and support you have given me on my time here. I still think about everyone and this blog often, and I still appreciate every one of you and wish the best for you. If you want to talk, or even just say hello, my main blog (@jjtherosereblogs ) or my sports blog (@mf-mightyducks ) are just a click away.

To all my new followers, and those who have continued to show love and appreciation for my work, welcome, and thank you. I still smile every time I see a new blog liking and reblogging my work. It helps me know that all my effort is appreciated, and that it wasn't for nothing.

If you have the time, I have a list of links HERE where you can donate to different BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ organizations and help make the world a better place.

Once again, thank you all for the love and support. I'll still be lurking on here every now and again, so feel free to say hello, drop a message, rant about your biases, share a fic recommendation, anything. My blog will always be open to those who wish to share, and be a safe space where everyone can be shown love, respect, and appreciation.

All the best,

JJ ❤︎❤︎

5 notes · View notes

faireladypenumbra · 4 years

Text

Writing in 2020: Some Reflections on Creativity, Depression, and The Last Four Years

When I first started writing seriously in 2012, I declared on my earliest drafts that I would never write with the intention of publication.

This might seem odd coming from a 19-year-old whose only claim to fame by this point, were a couple a popular fanfic. I was worried then, as I began to shape up my first original novel (a half-written steampunk time-travel book that will never ever see the light of day) that the active chase that was publication would kill my relationship with writing.

The relationship I had with writing at the time was still very young, but I have always used the metaphorical well to describe where my energy to write comes from. There is a well somewhere in my brain, and in that well is all the imagery and beauty and terror that I can draw out into my works. This as a sacred space, from which That well is still the image I picture if I am conjuring some physical embodiment of my writing, or what my process might look like. It’s eight years since I started this journey, and I have watched my well diminish over the past four years in a quiet circling of the drain. It is not that the desire to write is gone, but the thing that connected my brain and my work is less palpable than it was before. It’s a complicated idea to venture on as well, knowing I still occasionally write fiction and still write a great deal academically. But there are many days when ever those parts of writing have become a trial of self-doubt and struggle.

“This is just a part of writing,” I tell myself for the hundredth time- but by this time, I’m not even really writing, and just considering the idea of making time for myself and my art makes me ill.

It is in these times that I realize how much damage- not just the pursual of publication, but the active work I did in publication, did to my process.

I: The Public- And My Complicated Relationship With It.

I really like the public, first off, and I like sharing my work to the public when I have the absolute confidence to do so. Chimehour was one of those times, in 2015, when I first emerged on Inkitt quietly. The site was still small- barely creeping over 15,000 members when I joined, so I had a fair amount of confidence that my work would be safe here.

It was. And it was not, all at once. I was revived by every good review I got, and the encouragement pushed me to finish my novel properly and even push back my release deadline. I tried to actually edit the book and revise it properly before I either released or queried it, which was a good call.

Around the fall of 2015 though, my relationship with the website and the community became something negative. Not bad, just… counter-intuitive to creativity. 2015 was a hard year beforehand: my uncle suddenly passed away on the same day I finished my, as of now, unpublished second novel. My grandparents both passed away not long after. My academic life had been unturned in the fall semester by an extremely toxic professor, who I eventually had to help report to the university. I didn’t really tell my writing community these things were happening, but I leaned into Inkitt as a support for my emotional wellbeing. I turned to the reviews, and contests, and to the public to help ease the burn from everything else going on in my life. This was the first time I felt the well begin to empty: not writers’ block, not a creative burnout, but a slow, easing drain on my resources. I suspect now that an author’s relationship with the public is complicated, and that at times, it can be more addictive to be popular than it is to make things.

II. Inkitt

I place some blame on what happened to my writing with my paid job in 2016 with Inkitt. I became their community manager for a period of time. An extremely long story lies behind that statement, but I will add that my writing was a tool that got used in the company’s favor during that period, and this wasn’t something I consented to. I was bullied, harassed, and made to feel very small for the period I spent with the company.

I started to write again in Europe that year: I remember penning chapters on a rainy afternoon in England, perched on the sofa of a hotel bar, and this was after a very long stint of creating nothing, but my work remained on the same novel.

Deep down, I felt like if I polished it enough, it would do better than any of the other pieces I’d thumbed through or reviewed for this godforsaken company. It was a nasty, mean-spirited line of thinking that led me to resent the very authors who had supported me all this time, not because I thought they were bad authors, but because I was so burdened by the company’s demands. I became angry that the other authors couldn’t see all the work I did- “how dare you ask things of me? How dare you write when I can’t? When they won’t let me anymore?”

It was a very blackened spot on my mind, and I have recognized this place for what it was: anger at my oppressive job (which I quit) and some unchecked grief over the previous year. It took me time to fully grieve my uncle, and even longer to fully bury Inkitt. I forgive nothing of them, and I can only hope my author community will forgive me for what I sometimes became in the wake of the company’s damage.

The writing well was never quite the same after Inkitt: it felt poisoned, or even hard to access. It’s important to note that I changed schools during that time, but… I knew something was unwell in the space of my brain.

III: The Aftermath

I speak of all that’s happened as if my creative force suddenly ground to a halt four years ago, but that’s not quite right. I’ve just written less and less as years have passed or contributed less with a passionate fervor. I do love some of my academic writing, I do make things from fiction that are great, but these pieces emerge from a sort of inner morass that takes a great deal of effort to push back. I have to fight with a work to make it happen.

As for the finished second novel? It remains finished: I have diced it up and attempted to rework its contents, but the original draft is very painful to read and colored by the things that happened around it. Last year, I surmised to scrap the whole draft and start Chimehour’s sequels fresh, with maybe one or two scenes intact. It was a hard call: one of the most agonizing things I have done in my writing, in fact. 188k of words, and only a few people will have ever read them. Some of it is to do with a principle character, whom my uncle inspired and who became- after his death, very difficult to write. Some of it is the flawed nature of draft that maybe, just maybe, was meant for me to grow from, and nothing else. Outside of that, I suppose I’m sharing this to admit, with confidence, that I’ve been dealing with anxiety spikes and depressive episodes for about three years. This is not new: I’ve had depression and anxiety for a long, long time, but the return of these episodes caught me off guard. I had not felt so low since I was in middle school, I had not had bad panic attacks after I settled into college. But here we are. I have not decided if I need to see a therapist yet (I might), but I do know that I feel lighter for expressing these struggles and acknowledging their realness. We’ll see what the writing well brings in the future.

#amwriting #writblr #depression #anxiety #creative

8 notes · View notes

alien-at-the-dinner-table · 5 years

Text

Roll for Panic Attack

*Trigger warning: mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts*

I am afraid of a lot of things. Clowns. Death. Answering the door when i’m not expecting it. Sticking my foot out over the edge of the bed at night. You know, rational, normal stuff. But right now, I'm scared of something that feels like it shouldn’t be as scary as it feels. For the 2nd time in my (albeit young) life, am taking online classes at my local community college. My first time was 2 years ago, and it sent me reeling into a deep depression. As ridiculous as it sounds, I never want to get back to that place. Who would have thought, right??? But im getting ahead of myself, so let me explain the past so one can see where the issues in my grimy future lies.

Sophomore year of high school is where our intrepid young hero begins (read in the voice of Brennan Lee Mulligan: DM to the stars). As anyone in a fiery hellscape would do, I explored a program that gave me a glimpse of freedom: Running Start. In this wonderful program, high school students can attend college classes either online or in person, and not only earn college credit, but can be at the high school less. Great! At first, I thought it would be amazing! I love to learn, and I love not being at the highschool. Suffice it to say, I rolled really low on my perception. But my perception got steadily higher the farther I got in the process of applying. I felt like it might be too much. That I might not be able to handle this. But everyone in my life told me, “you’ll be fine! You’re a smart girl! And your so independent!” So I continued on… feeling like something was off.

Cut to a month before Junior year starts. I feel…. Nothing. I’m bored all the time, and nothing really makes me happy. I’m so scared im going to fail college and it hasnt even started yet… To my family, I am the same. After all, I am used to faking emotions thanks to all those years of thinking panic attacks were SUPER normal right! But I began to explore what was happening. Our hero rolls her dice: 18. I realized something that made me break down in tears of shame. I realized I didnt feel love for my family. I knew I loved them, but I didnt feel anything.What was wrong with me? I tried to imagine horrible fates befalling my family to see if I could muster up some feelings then. No dice. (get it? Dice? RPG’s? Shut up this is comedy GOLD) My sister found me sobbing in the garage. Grabbing my mother, they went to see what was wrong with me. I explained how I was feeling, and even voiced my fear of being depressed. My mom wrote it off as burnout. Which to be fair, I don't blame her for. I had been acting just as I always had.

Skip ahead some more. High school is in full swing, and my college classes begin. Things feel...okay. I was taking 2 classes: General Psychology, and Introduction to Art. Psych was tough, and its reading was intense. 1 page took about 10 minutes, so 6 pages: one hour. The professor thought that because we were online, we needed to make up for being lazy and not going to a classroom. We had around…. 120 pages on a good week. Wanna do the math there? Let me break it down for you: 10 pages=1 hour, 120 pages divided by 6= hours. About. Add to that the 5 hour assignments every week, 1 hour discussion forums, and hour long tests every week. Our total for this class hours per week: 27. Now, remember, I was also taking highschool classes too, and one other class. Also remember that I was 16. With an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. All it took was a month to break me, and send me hurtling towards depression with all the force and speed of a bowling ball dropped from the top of the Empire State building.

Thanks to my natural ability to repress my emotions and fears, my body decided to send a clear message that something was afoot! I began to get full body HIVES. We went to the doctor, and she basically went, “umm wow, that's definitely an immune system reaction…. But you aren't sick…. And you haven't been sick…. So I don't know why this is happening…” Always what you want to hear from a healthcare professional! So at this point you might ask: did any of this alert you to the fact something was off? No. At this point, I was in complete denial that anything was wrong. Surely getting up in the middle of the night to count pages and double, triple, quadruple check that I had planned every single second of my week was written on my planners pages. What did catch my attention, terrorizes me to this day.

I am religious, and I do my best to pray every night. During this delightful stage of my life, I began to ask God to let me die. I asked that when I went to bed, that I wouldnt wake up. That it would all just stop. That way, I wouldnt keep on down this path, suffering. I thought if I quit, everyone would be disappointed in me. What a waste. How pathetic, right? Of course, this was myself talking. But I wanted to die. I didnt even care if I went to heaven. I thought even if I ceased to exist, it would bring peace. Inkey, dark, peace filled sleep.

This is what scares me. Because I can never get to that place. I hated myself so much. But what was worse was how I felt about my family and friends. I began to resent them a bit. Just a little. How dare they love me! Why do they have to keep me here? I knew that if I died, it would destroy them. I had no illusions that those I loved would be better off without me. While I thought I would cause them shame and disappointment in life, I knew that in death I would kill them with me. And while I might not have felt love as I do now, I never wanted to cause them pain or suffering. Ever. So here I am now. Better, because I can tell you it can get better. Scratch that, it WILL get better.

And now to the present: a full circle of sorts. I am so scared that this course will be too much, that I wont be a college graduate. Please understand: I honestly thought for a long time that I wasn't going to go to college. Not because I couldnt. But because I didnt see the point, at least for the art fields. And honestly I still do. But I know that even with a stupid certificate that I probably could have taught myself all the same information for a 10th of the price, it will open doors for me. And to be perfectly frank, I want to make my family happy. I want them to be proud of who I am. I want to be proud of myself. To prove that no stupid mental illness will take this away from me. Not again. I know I can pass and even excel in a college environment. In fact, during my tenure at Running Start, I was invited to join the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society.But I want to be able to mentally handle this. I want to be strong enough for ME. I know that finishing this won't make me weak, or if it is too much that it means I am lesser than. But I'm going to try damnit! And if it is too much, then I will stop, or at least work with my therapist to see what would be best for me.

And so, our hero begins her journey. Roll for Initiative.

#mental health #college #rpg #brennan lee mulligan

8 notes · View notes

talabib · 3 years

Text

How To Deal With Stress And Society’s Unrealistic Expectations.

Tons of products are marketed to women as stress-relievers and ways to relax and feel better about themselves. But all the spa days, coloring books and bath bombs in the world aren’t going fix the real problems that women face on a daily basis. For problems like systemic sexism, unrealistic expectations and all the stress and anxiety they can produce, the solution is much more complicated.

Fortunately, science has made some significant progress in understanding the ways in which we can deal with stress and exhaustion.

While we may not be able to topple the patriarchy today, we can fight it by becoming stronger, more informed and empowered.

Emotional exhaustion is a component of burnout, and it can happen when we get emotionally stuck.

Do you know that feeling when you’re completely and utterly exhausted, yet there’s something in the back of your mind saying you still haven’t done enough? If you’re a woman, chances are you’re all too familiar with this sense of being overwhelmed by life.

When it feels like you’re constantly trying to meet your own demands and expectations and those of your job, family and friends, you can easily slip from benign tiredness to stress, anxiety and emotional exhaustion.

Emotional exhaustion happens after you’ve spent too much time caring too much. It is the first of three components identified by psychologist Herbert Freudenberger in 1975 in his clinical definition of burnout.

Second is depersonalization, which is when you find your capacity for compassion, empathy and caring dwindles.

The third component of burnout is a decreased sense of accomplishment. In other words, that feeling of “nothing I do matters.”

All of these symptoms may sound familiar to you, but you may not know how they come about. For starters, how exactly can one exhaust one’s emotions? The answer? It happens when we get stuck.

You can think of an emotional experience like a tunnel: it starts, then you’re in the middle of it, and then it ends. However, when you’re experiencing the same emotion all day and every day, there is no satisfactory end to that feeling. You’re stuck in the emotional tunnel with no relief.

So it’s no wonder that people in jobs that require caring and helping, such as teaching and the medical profession, report very high levels of burnout. Some 20 to 30 percent of teachers admit to it, and for the medical profession, it’s upward of 52 percent. It may come as no surprise to hear that parental burnout is a fast-growing phenomenon.

Fortunately, there are strategies to keep burnout at bay. And no, we’re not talking about bath bombs and coloring books; we’re talking about real, scientifically sound strategies to make sure you don’t get stuck in your emotions.

Stress can cause terrible damage to the body, so always try to close the stress cycle.

There’s a very scientific reason for why we tend to get stuck in the emotion of stress, which also reveals just how dangerous it is to our health.

Stress is essentially a neurological and physiological response triggered by a perceived threat. However, all the neurological and hormonal responses that accompany stress are designed to help you do one thing: run.

Back when our stress-response system evolved, we needed to run for our lives a lot more often than we do now. So the stress cycle starts by releasing the hormone epinephrine to push blood into the muscles. As a result, your blood pressure and heart rate go up, your muscles tense and your breathing quickens. Meanwhile, to make sure you can haul-ass away from that theoretical charging rhino, other body functions like growth, digestion, reproduction and immunity are all slowed down.

So if the emotion of stress never ends the danger is clear. Your body will end up with chronic high blood pressure and a corresponding higher risk of heart disease. And due to its compromised immune and digestive systems, your body won’t heal as quickly as it would normally and will be at higher risk of a number of digestion-related illnesses.

All of this means one thing: you need to close the stress cycle as often as possible. Since stress is about running for your life, the natural happy ending to this cycle is that you arrive, safely and breathlessly, back home where you can celebrate with your friends.

If you’re guessing that running or exercise in general is a great way to close out a stress cycle, you’d be right. After running, swimming, biking, dancing or engaging in some blood-pumping exercise for 20 to 60 minutes you’re likely to feel a shift in mood, your muscles will relax, and you will be able to take deeper breaths. You may even find yourself crying from the emotional release. But don’t worry, this is another good sign that you’ve closed off a stress cycle.

However, it doesn’t have to be physically demanding exercise. Creative expression, be it painting, music, theater or sculpting, can also result in a satisfying closure to a stress cycle, as can positive social interactions that signal your return to safety. Affectionate moments like a more-than-just-polite hug or kiss are good, as is deep and genuine laughter or some quality time with a beloved pet.

You can manage frustration through positive reappraisal and planful problem-solving.

Working out an effective strategy against stress requires a good understanding of the difference between stress and stressors – the things that get you stressed – as well as which stressors are controllable and which are not.

Let’s say you’re a middle school teacher. In this case, there’s no avoiding the daily stressors of having to complete endless amounts of paperwork and deal with annoying school administrators. These are things you can’t control – they come with the job. What you can do is schedule daily activities that close out the stress cycle, like going to the gym or practicing with your music or theater group.

You can also manage these uncontrollable stressors through positive reappraisal. If you’re a natural optimist, you’ll probably find positive reappraisal easy since it’s a way of reframing a difficult situation to find positive opportunities.

But make sure you don’t confuse this with “looking on the bright side” since positive reappraisal is always about fact and truth, not delusion.

Controllable stressors can be managed with planful problem-solving. This is the name for analyzing a frustrating situation and coming up with a way to solve it or lessen frustration. If getting stuck in traffic is wearing on your last nerve, for example, you might apply some planful problem-solving and start using a good GPS system to tell you where the traffic is and provide you with alternate routes.

The scientific reason for many of our frustrations lies in what’s known as the Monitor, which also goes by the more scientific names of discrepancy-reducing/-increasing feedback loop or criterion velocity. The Monitor is a mechanism of the brain that constantly assesses our current situation and our future plans while keeping a ratio of how much effort it’s going to take to get there along with how much progress we’re making.

Generally speaking, the Monitor can be just as frustrated by problems that are out of your control as it can by problems you could have prevented. The important thing to know is that once you’re aware of the Monitor, you can start to work with it and lessen your frustrations using the tools we’ve just been considering.

But these tools won’t work all the time. So it’s always useful to remember that difficult and frustrating tasks are often more rewarding than easy tasks. For example, if something is hard to read, studies show that you’re more likely to remember it. So, the next time you find yourself stuck in a difficult situation, remember that this is probably a better chance for personal growth than if it were easy.

You can cope better by knowing that the game is rigged and by fighting unrealistic expectations with facts.

Let’s say you want to climb a mountain. If you think to yourself, “hey, this will be a piece of cake,” you will surely become frustrated at the first sign of struggle. But if you say, “I’m going to embark on the extremely challenging task of climbing this mountain,” then you’ll consider it normal and not frustrating at all when you find yourself struggling.

This is an example of how your expectations determine your frustrations. By managing your expectations, you can also manage your frustrations.

This approach can not only be used to tackle individual challenges but should also be applied to the world in general.

Women are told all the time that they’re not being discriminated against and that if they’re feeling frustrated all they need is to do is drink some green smoothies and finish a coloring book, and they’ll feel great again. When this doesn’t happen, it’s easy for women to feel like it’s their fault – that something’s wrong with them.

But this isn’t true. The fact is that the game is rigged, and we’re all still living in a patriarchy, despite what some might say. Understanding this will be far more effective than the greatest bath bomb ever invented.

Science backs it up. In one study, people were given an impossible task. Naturally, when they couldn’t complete it and gave up, the participants felt miserable. But the moment they were told that the test was rigged, the negative emotions immediately vanished.

Another persistent source of unrealistic expectations for women is the Bikini Industrial Complex (BIC). This is the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate that pressures women to conform to a specific and unattainable body ideal.

But here are the facts: even the concept of the body mass index (BMI), which has long been used to assess health, is rigged because the majority of the people who invented it worked for weight-loss clinics that wanted to keep women buying their services.

Furthermore, a 2016 study published in The Lancet showed that people who were labeled clinically “obese” had a “lower health risk” than people labeled “underweight.” What’s more, people in the “overweight” category were found to be at a “lower risk” than those in the low end of the “healthy” category.

BMI is bananas, and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that being skinny will make you healthier or live longer. This awareness can go a long way to making you feel better the next time you’re bombarded with ads from the BIC.

You can build your resilience to stress by aligning yourself with something larger and fighting Human Giver Syndrome.

If you’re familiar with the long line of Disney musicals, then you may have recognized that in each one, from Snow White to Beauty and the Beast, the main character will sing her “I want” song. In fact, you can gauge women’s progress in the United States through these songs. Snow White sings about wanting nothing more than a valiant prince, but Belle sings about wanting “adventure in the great wide somewhere.”

Disney princesses haven’t always been the most woke, but they’ve always shown us one thing: the importance of knowing what you want. One of the most effective ways of persisting through stressful days is to know what you want and to have your life aligned with something bigger than yourself. In other words, you need to find your meaning.

According to psychologist Martin Seligman, meaning is the secret to happiness. For others, it’s more like the secret to coping in a stressful world. Some understand meaning as spiritual or the mission of leaving a meaningful legacy behind.

There’s no right or wrong when it comes to finding your calling. The only sure thing is that the more a person is aligned with a deeper sense of meaning, the more fully they will live their lives.

But what about meaning in your own life? How do you find it? One thing that can get in the way is what experts call Human Giver Syndrome.

In her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, philosopher Kate Manne describes two classes of people, human givers and human beings. Human givers are expected to devote their time, attention and bodies to human beings, who get to express their individuality.

In many societies, women suffer from Human Giver Syndrome. They have been raised to fall into the human giver role rather than tend to their own needs or seek their own meaning. They are told that all women should want is to be pretty, happy, calm and devoted to the needs of others.

Even Joseph Campbell, the author who helped popularize the concept of the hero’s journey, doesn’t believe in such a thing as a heroine’s journey. According to him, the woman is more of a place than a person, a destination for men to reach rather than an agent on her own journey.

Human Giver Syndrome is a powerful enemy deeply rooted in female consciousness. But it is not reality. Don’t believe it and don’t punish yourself or let others punish you if you’ve “failed” to live up to the demands of Human Giver Syndrome.

Needing people is a fact of life, not a sign of weakness.

Here’s another popular myth in modern society: that life is a straight-line progression from being a dependent and needy child to being an independent adult. In fact, it’s pretty common to hear people say that a “healthy” adult is someone who can feel whole with or without other people.

But here’s the reality: we aren’t going to function at our best when we’re constantly lonely and isolated or when we’re constantly surrounded by others. We need both. We need to move back and forth between feeling connected to others and feeling autonomous.

We need connections for a lot of reasons, including emotional and medical support as well as getting information and education. Exactly how much connection someone needs varies from person to person. Introverts generally need less connection and more alone time than extroverts, who require more connection.

But it’s not just quantity that matters. Quality does too. In a study of 70,000 heterosexual marriages, the couples in what were defined as bad quality relationships had poorer physical and mental health, shorter life spans and less satisfaction in life than those who were not.

The opposite was true for those deemed to be in high-quality relationships. These people healed faster and took better care of themselves generally. Even people with chronic illnesses reported a higher quality of life as a result of a good relationship. What’s more, the quality of a relationship can be a better predictor of overall health than whether or not someone is a smoker.

So, far from being a weakness or unhealthy, needing people makes you stronger.

It can also give you a fresh perspective on who you are. When Sophie fell in love with a man named Bernard, they were a little skeptical at first. He was older, had kids from a previous marriage and wasn’t the kind of guy for whom they’d necessarily expect Sophie to fall. But she explained that by seeing herself through Bernard’s eyes, she was able to love herself in new ways. This was the power of connection at work.

Sometimes it takes a friend or partner to help you find compassion and love toward yourself. But this isn’t a weakness; it makes you stronger, and it’s part of being human.

Rest and sleep are crucial to health, productivity and avoiding burnout.

There’s an old and troubling saying that goes, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

People who believe this also tend to value our ability to push aside our needs and use sheer grit and determination to go ceaselessly from one task to the next. But this kind of life is downright dangerous. Not only will it lead to bad work but it can also take a toll on your health.

Science tells us that what really makes us stronger is rest and sleep.

If you want to do quality work, studies show that you should rest between tasks. This effectively erases the effects of fatigue from the previous task and allows you to spend twice as long on the next job as you otherwise would.

It also leads to better work. How so? Well, when you rest, your brain isn’t being idle; it’s using a group of connected areas known as the default mode network. In this state, your brain is “wandering” and is able to assess current problems and find solutions in a way that isn’t possible when you’re actively involved in a task.

So when you’re stuck on something, don’t just try to plow through it. Take a break and do some mindless task like folding your laundry for a little while. You might be surprised how often the solution will come to you.

It’s also worth knowing that you can have an “active rest,” by just switching up your tasks from time to time. Emily Nagoski, wrote Burnout while simultaneously working on a novel. Since writing fiction and nonfiction is like exercising two different muscles, it effectively allowed her to rest and return to each task feeling refreshed.

Likewise, the value of sleep should not be underestimated. When you’re sleeping, your body undergoes all kinds of bone, muscle and blood vessel repairs. This means that the benefits of any physical exercise you did during the day are really taking place while you sleep. The same is true for mental activity. Sleep is the time when all the new information you learned during the day can be consolidated and stored properly in memory.

Our culture is obsessed with productivity. But life isn’t about squeezing out every last drop of energy until you’re empty as if you’re a tube of toothpaste. Life is about you and your something bigger, and you’ll be more likely to reach this something bigger when you are well-rested.

Controlling the inner madwoman and practicing self-compassion are key to being strong and joyful.

In US actress Amy Poehler’s memoir Yes Please, she describes the nagging inner voice that has often told her she’s ugly and doesn’t deserve love. Those suffering from Human Giver Syndrome likely know this inner “madwoman,” as experts call it, as it tends to show up whenever they think they’ve failed to live up to the calm, pretty, smiling, devoted-to-others woman they’re expected to be.

Benign self-criticism can help you be more detail-oriented, but it can quickly slip into toxicity when it keeps you from doing anything. The madwoman is often a perfectionist, and she can convince you to give up when the first mistake appears or even not bother starting anything in the first place since perfection is impossible to begin with. But to grow strong and mighty you need to be able to take chances and feel free to learn from your mistakes along the way.

This means you need to control your madwoman. One of the best strategies for doing so is to create a vivid image of your madwoman. You can even name her. The more you do this, the more you’ll be able to see yourself as being apart from this toxic voice and that you don’t need to listen to her admonishments. This can even lead to a friendly relationship that allows you to be your best.

And once you have your self-critical voice under control, it becomes easier to practice self-compassion, which is another key step in growing stronger.

Self-compassion can be difficult for some because it is essentially a form of healing. And when we’re healing, be it a broken arm or our relationship with ourselves, it leads to feelings of pain and vulnerability. But if you stick with it, the healing will finish, and you’ll find that the struggle has made you stronger and mightier for having persevered.

With this strength, you can work toward joy. A lot of self-help books try to point you toward happiness, but in reality, this isn’t a good goal. Happiness will always be a fleeting moment, not a destination.

What can be sustained is joy, by staying self-compassionate and regularly taking time to feel gratitude toward the people in your life and the good events that happen each day.

There are many complex and specific reasons why women are facing burnout these days. We don’t have regular ways of closing out the stress cycle brought on by our jobs and day-to-day lives. Fortunately, this can be done through exercise, creativity and affection. It’s also important to acknowledge that we live in an unbalanced society that discriminates against women and that the health and beauty industries place undue pressure on women. By recognizing these factors and striking back against our self-critical voices, we can begin to defeat the patriarchy and be our best selves through self-compassion and focusing on following our own dreams.

#How To Deal With Stress And Society’s Unrealistic Expectations.

0 notes

eliteprepsat · 6 years

Photo

The eight Ivy League schools—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell—are full of intrigue for students and parents everywhere. Along with them, I’d also group in Stanford, MIT, UChicago and a handful of other highly selective colleges and universities. Although they're not technically in the Ivy League, the same admission standards apply, and their acceptance rates are just as low, if not lower. These schools are often seen as the gatekeepers of that elusive educational golden ticket, and if you're like thousands of high school students all over the world, you want to know how to get in.

Disclaimer: There is no secret formula to gaining admission to any of these schools. But understanding what they’re looking for in student applicants may help demystify the application process and guide you in the right direction.

Ivy league institutions and other top colleges and universities are looking to fill their campuses with impactful individuals. Any time anyone associated with a school does something remarkable, it reflects well back on the school. The more remarkable acts a school can associate itself with, the more impressive that school appears. For many schools, recruiting a dynamic freshman class is integral to sustaining this process. To maximize potential output and reduce potential risk, top colleges invest in students with proven records of excellence. It is up to the prospective student (that's you) to demonstrate such merit when applying to any of these institutions of higher learning.

So, if you're interested in applying to the Ivies, here’s my advice:

1. Be Brilliant.

Exceptional grades in rigorous courses and excellent standardized test scores are predictors of academic potential. The majority of Ivy League students are stellar in this regard. The colleges want to make sure that students who are accepted can handle the academic workload, and past achievement is the best way to assess future success.

This isn’t to say you must have straight A’s, but your transcript should not be riddled with B’s and C’s (unless you have a valid explanation). The average SAT score is about 1500 for most of these schools, and the average ACT score ranges from 31-35. However, many applicants have perfect GPAs and standardized test scores. You certainly want to aim for scores within the middle range of an Ivy League school to give yourself a legitimate shot at admission.

2. Be Engaged.

There are a plethora of ways to keep yourself busy throughout high school, and plenty of students will get involved in a variety of activities to demonstrate well-roundedness.

While it is great to be involved in a number of different areas, Ivy League schools are looking for future world-changers. How can anybody predict which of today’s 17- and 18-year-olds will develop into tomorrow’s world-changers? If we’re being honest, no one can truly predict who will change the world, but we can certainly use clues from one’s past to infer about one’s future.

Ivy League schools want students who have shown in-depth passion in an activity, ideally over a number of years, because it represents genuine commitment and offers insight into what the student may pursue on their campuses. And even if a student changes his or her mind, the school knows that the student has that capacity to go deep in a certain field and may apply that dedication to another area. High schools students have founded nonprofits, written code and developed apps, published multiple works of fiction/nonfiction, and broken national athletic records (to name a few) to get where they are today. Usually, these students are exceptional because they love what they do. It is imperative that you find what you love and pursue it as deeply as possible.

3. Be Authentic.

Students who are unashamedly themselves will almost always stand out in a crowd. People are drawn to reliability and trustworthiness, and colleges are no different in this regard. It can be difficult to express your true self amid all of society’s pressures, but those who do will find it a rewarding experience.

Much of your personal character is demonstrated through your college essays, interviews, and recommendations. It goes without saying that you'll really want to nail these aspects of your college applications. You have complete control over what you write about in your essays, so let your voice shine through and write about topics that you genuinely want to share with others. Authenticity is infectious, and colleges appreciate students who bring this quality to the table while remaining intelligent and thoughtful.

4. Be Lucky.

Collectively, the Ivy League averages an admit rate of under 10%. For every 10 students who apply, 9 are rejected. At a few of these schools, the rate of admission is as low as 5-6%. I mention this to drive home the point that there is a measure of luck involved, but applying to the Ivy League is not a free-for-all shot in the dark. Some applicants will have greater luck than others, and the factors involved are usually out of your control.

Are you an Ivy legacy student? Are you a recruited athlete? Do you attend an elite preparatory school? If so, your luck just went up. Additionally, each school has yearly institutional needs (geographic diversity, lack of students in a particular major, special talents, etc.) based on the composition of the undergraduate class, and if you happen to meet one of those needs, you could be in luck.

So, what can you do to be a better applicant? Well, hopefully, you’ve picked up on the fact that you should integrate as much of this advice in your everyday interactions because it’s applicable beyond just applying to an Ivy League institution. If you can adopt these recommendations and practice them as often and consistently as possible, you will likely find success no matter where you end up attending college.

At the end of the day, each Ivy League institution (much like each non-Ivy League institution) offers its own unique experience. When considering applying to any one of these schools, you should conduct extensive research to determine which schools best match you and what you’re looking for in a college or university.

I’d advise against pursuing these schools simply for name-brand value or because of external pressure from family or peers. You are the one who will be attending college for the next few years, so it is vital to find schools that resonate with your current passions and will prepare you for your future ambitions. If you do adequate research, you may just find that an Ivy League institution isn’t your cup of tea. Remember, there are more than 2,000 four-year colleges and universities in the United States! It is a fallacy to believe that everyone who attends an Ivy League school will be happy and successful or that everyone who doesn’t attend one will be miserable.

However, if you do find that an Ivy League school offers an environment in which you'll thrive, by all means, put together a competitive application, and go forward with the confidence that you'll make your future alma mater proud.

Jon G. is originally from Houston, Texas. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and is currently one of the resident English gurus at Elite Prep Los Angeles. Nothing makes him more proud and pumped up than watching his students succeed. When it comes to hitting the books, Jon recommends starting early and studying in increments to avoid burnout. He’s a huge basketball fan, loves green tea, and his favorite vocabulary word is “seditious.”

#appblr #college essay #Common App #applying to college #Ivy League schools

17 notes · View notes

jj-ktae · 7 years

Text

From the Aorta to the Apex (MarkxReader) (2/ ??)

Title : From the Aorta to the Apex (2/ ??)

Author : Myself

Genre : AU, Fluff, maybe smut if I HAVE TO *giggles*

Summary : Bored surgeons and boring conferences lead to not so boring encounters.

AN : Don’t know how many parts yet :D

/ PART I /

Part II

The place was nicely lit, and yet your vision was blurry from the lack of sleep and the alcohol. Talking to all these people had you all bewildered and you didn’t know if you had to put on a show and serve your best smiles or go in a corner and finish that bottle of champagne.

Accepting because of this Doctor Tuan had been a big misdiagnosis. First of all, he had disappeared a long time ago and second, you were being dragged every five seconds by your boss. Bonding wasn’t your forte, yet they were looking at you like you were a brand new gadget, all small and riddled with wit and intelligence.

So you smiled, for common sense mostly, and also peace, because you knew your boss wouldn’t let you go away so easily. They started talking about some non-relevant things and you lost track of the conversation, finger tapping the champagne flute and head swaying to the soft classical music.

Classical music is for the frigid and impotent you thought, hoping the minstrel would put his lyre down and jam something a bit jumpier, in vail.

A hand caught yours and your eyes stopped on the arm taking away from the mini conference, silent and mischievous. It looked like this body belonged to...

“Dr Tuan...?” You asked carefully and he put a hand on his lips.

“I told you not to say that. If they see me, I’m dead.” He pushed you against a hidden sculpted pillar and you finally noticed the proximity of your bodies.

“Who ?” You dared ask, not understand the need to be this close in such a common situation.

“Women. Everywhere.” He breathed and you sent a throaty laugh his way, making him sigh.

“That’s what you get for charming people.” You pay for what you buy, boy.

“It didn’t work the way I thought it would.” He let his head fall a bit and his arms grabbed your shoulders. His breath was still short, as if he had run a thousand miles to escape the swam of horny quacks.

“Life sure is hard for your sweet little face.” You breathed slowly, hoping it would be taken as a ribbing rather than a real compliment and his eyes found yours.

“So you do think I have a sweet little face...” his face was indecipherable and at some point, it almost looked like he had a spark of hope in his almond shaped eyes but you laughed and he cocked his head, just like a small confused puppy.

“Be like me, be of little importance. I swear it works well.” You answered and he scoffed, shaking his head. His short brown locks were cupping his face and you really wanted to reach for it. You didn’t move an inch, though, and he diverted his thin body from in front of yours, leaving room for fresh and needed air.

“Women have such low self-esteem.” He mocked and you remembered you were holding a flute of champagne, which you brought to your lips hurriedly. The blur was going away and it was no moment to see clear, you decided.

You felt the young man’s arm brush against you as you were both walking back to the big room and took the opportunity to take another flute, whistling. You saw the young doctor take one too, and from the corner of your eye you felt him look at you from time to time, blaming your drunk state and damp forehead for making you look like a total psycho.

From there, everything happened very fast, and it felt like you came back to your sense way too long after.

The feeling was pleasant, and for a moment, it all felt like another one of your wet dreams.

That was, until you clearly saw Mark’s face appear, his lips a bit too pink. So you blinked, once, twice.

“Are you okay..?” He breathed. Your found your arms around his naked chest and understood the whole situation immediately.

“Am...I...” You didn’t try to hide the uncertainty in your voice, and it made him stop moving, a wave of awareness going through his cloudy eyes.

“Were you too drunk to notice until now...?” He looked disappointed and you frowned.

So ok, you were in your hotel room with Doctor Mark Tuan and you were making out, no, you were having sex with him.

“I feel like I just came back to my sense.” You whispered and his mouth opened, leaving a soft scoff pass by. He shook his head and get off of you, sighing.

“And here I thought we were both just drunk enough to enjoy this.” You felt his sweaty palm slide against your chest as he lied down beside you.

“What do you mean..?” You were hesitant, but you made no move to hide your naked body, spread on the large bed like a freshly caught tuna.

“I feel like I’m abusing a poor girl.” He laughed sourly and your eyes grew big.

“Abusing? No no. I just, need time to adjust to this.” You were not like this. You were feisty, not prudish, you knew you ended like this because you wanted it, no matter how drunk. Here was the man you were drooling over earlier, naked, in a bed, and you were hesitating.

“I think we should both try to get some sleep.” He tried and your hand found his chest, a bit too hard.

“No! I’ve been clear about this, even if I was obviously out of my damn mind.” You said and he raised two beautiful brows your way.

“You don’t even remember. Don’t try to make me feel better about this.” He put a hand over his face, his cheeks taking a cute shade of pink and you knew.

You knew there was no better timing than now to claim the price.

“I’m not going to try making you feel better, because I will.” The sentence was odd, and you saw it in his eyes the minute you said it. Your body jumped on its own and a minute later you were straddling his body.

“Are you back on drunk mode? I can’t seem to follow you...” He didn’t look like his mood could be raised, but his hands were on your hips, and your hand brushed a damp bang from his forehead.

“I was never sober.” Was the last thing you said before reaching for his face, your lips brushing against his jaw. He made a weird –but cute- noise and you felt fingers on your back, gently brushing your burning skin.

Making out wasn’t something you did often, considering the fact that you had been married once and were now raising a kid, but you remembered how it was done, and you did your best working your hands everywhere they could reach. His back arched numerous times, and you were taking great delight out of the situation, because you were the one responsible for his longing.

The thing is you woke up alone in your hotel bed. With no memory of what happened and a throbbing head. The only stuff which seemed to reveal more of your past doings was your obviously naked body and a note on the nightstand.

“Stop drinking.” Was all it said and you looked around the place, in deep thoughts.

What the hell happened to you yesterday?

The alarm clock beeped and you jumped of the bed, surprised by the sound. Today was the day of departure, and you were supposed to meet with your boss and a couple of fellow doctors to go to the airport.

You ran to the bathroom, your feet meeting with the cold tiles and hurriedly got yourself ready for the journey back home.

*-*

“How could I possibly find time to get you a present? Your aunt was kind enough to buy you a car while I was away. Should have I brought tangerines from Jeju?” You joked and heard the kid laugh, his chubby cheeks bouncing.

Waking up early when you had just come back from this conference had been hard, and you could feel your heavy feet on your way to your kid’s school.

“It’s okay, my new car is super cool anyway.” He shrugged, looking like one of these embarrassing uncles you try to avoid at family meetings.

“Yeah right. Ok, kiss your mom.” You bent down and he jumped, pecking your strained face.

“Work well, and heal a lot of people!” his small hands made gestures and you nodded, tapping his little butt to make him go.

“I’ll fetch you after childcare!” You said and watched him go, your mummy pose on fleek.

Your office was still as cold as it was four days ago, and you shivered when you took off your vest to put on your white coat. A soft knock on the door made you stop to turn around.

“How was Jeju ? Here is the list of your appointments. The first one is already here, are you ready ?” A young guy put the little folder on your desk and you sighed, taking your steamy cup of coffee.

“It’s not like I have a choice, Jinyoung.” You answered and he snapped his finger at you, smiling.

“it was just out of courtesy, doctor.” He mocked.

“Yeah, right. What happened while I was away?” Jinyoung was an intern in cardiology. He was a smart and witty kid, and knowledge could be written in full capital in the middle of his face.

“Appointments. Other than that, nothing much. Everything’s under control.” His fingers formed an O and you smiled at him.

“My student is so reliable.” You answered and he bowed, pleased with the compliment.

“I might get used to this, you know.” He said.

“Don’t. I still need somebody to bully.” You answered and he laughed, nodding.

“I’m the best scapegoat out there.” His thin fingers went to his chest and he shrugged.

“Without a doubt.” You agreed.

“I have a couple of stuff to do for school, so I’ll be in the interns’ office. Call if you need.” He added and went out.

When the first patient entered, you were still sipping on your hot beverage, and you offered your best professional smile.

Come to think of it, this place wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Yes, most of your appointment were a waste of time, and a lot of patients were simply showing signs of stress rather than real cardiac diseases but it was laid back. Nobody was running after you and yelling, your student was backing you up in case of emergency and even surgeries were going okay. It would be a lie to say that you were close to the burnout, yet you were not fully happy with the way things were going, as if something sounded odd.

Your little adventure during the conference was rapidly forgotten, and even this Dr Tuan, who you didn’t even get to talk to before parting ways.

That is, until you saw his face at the hospital’s lunchroom, chatting with a couple of surgeons and people from the research team.

And right when his eyes met yours and you saw his soft smile, the way his face lit, a bit surprised but keeping a chilled position, you felt something stir, thrilling.

And it wasn’t atrial fibrillation.

125 notes · View notes

biofunmy · 5 years

Text

A New Startup Called Pattern Wants To Make Millennial Burnout Uncool

Up a skinny stairwell in New York City’s Chinatown on a sweltering late-September night, a private dining room overflowed with downtown cool kids. Some were sipping Recess, the CBD-infused sparkling water in distinctive pastel cans whose ads papered New York subway walls for a brief period earlier this year. Others stood in the open kitchen, making their own ravioli, which were then placed into plastic to-go boxes marked with each person’s name: the promise of a weeknight dinner at home.

The jumpsuited and overalled and fashion-forward mom-jeans-wearers were there to celebrate the ongoing launch of Equal Parts, the first of many planned brands from a new (and newly philosophical) company called Pattern. Equal Parts sells “modern” cookware (sturdy frying pans, mixing bowls, spatulas, knives, and a cutting board turned charcuterie plate) accompanied by cooking assistance. At the party, hip millennial cooks hovered nearby to answer partygoers’ questions, but when you purchase Equal Parts cookware, help comes via text message from friendly “coaches” ready to guide you through making a quick dinner when all you have in your kitchen is a can of black beans, some peanut butter, and a bottle of Trader Joe’s wine.

In its previous incarnation, Pattern was a hip boutique digital marketing agency called Gin Lane, responsible for the look of some of the most prominent brands in today’s bourgeois millennial marketplace: Sweetgreen, Harry’s, Everlane. They were trendsetters who made fast-but-fancy salad happen and normcore sustainable clothes cool. Events like the one in Chinatown are the sort of thing that Gin Lane had perfected: gathering cool kids who could help a product, an aesthetic, or a lifestyle choice spiral forth into the world through their Instagram accounts.

There was a lot to be wary of in that loft: the beautiful people; the gift bag, complete with butcher knife; the photo booth and the invitation to share photos from the night “with your community”; the guy with the T-shirt that read “Due to Physical Violence Shitfaced Mondays Have Been Canceled.”

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

An attendee at the September Equal Parts launch party in Chinatown.

I’d first felt that wariness back in July, when Pattern started tagging me on Instagram. The posts were vague and brand-speaky; the hashtags included #enjoydailylife and #wordsofwisdom. At that point, I was used to random brands tagging, emailing, and tweeting me. In January, I wrote a piece about millennial burnout that unexpectedly went viral. Now, every press release I received with the word “millennial” seemed to also invoke burnout — some more obliquely than others.

In August, I found an email from Emmett Shine, founder of Gin Lane and now Pattern, in my inbox. My article, he said, had a profound effect on him and the rest of his company. And now, big surprise, he wanted to tell me about his new company, which had just launched.

“Pattern’s central mission is helping young adults today ‘enjoy daily life,’” he wrote. “We’re doing this by raising awareness of burnout caused by work culture, the attention economy, and by creating brands that offer a combination of products and personal guidance around simple, everyday activities at home.” Their first product? Equal Parts cookware.

My immediate reaction was Are you fucking kidding me? A cookware brand seemed like the exact sort of expensive burnout Band-Aid I’d spent the last six months railing against, up there with overnight oats and expensive serums and meditation apps. A brand, with $14 million in venture capital behind it, to fix what brands hath wrought. When the first articles about Pattern started appearing, I tweeted a link: “A start-up….to battle millennial burnout?” The responses mirrored my own: “Please kill me,” “I hate it, thank you,” “This article gave me vertigo,” and “What is it? Why can’t I tell after reading twice?”

But I told Shine I’d meet with his team. There would be pleasure, I thought, in telling the people at Pattern that they were part of the problem. And I was intrigued by the question of what an anti-burnout company, operating within American capitalism, might actually look like. There’s a certain elegant symmetry to Pattern’s mission, after all: Who better to counter the anomie of the bourgeois millennial experience than those who’ve not only lived it — but helped construct it in the first place?

“It’s good that people are talking about burnout,” Shine told me when I visited Pattern’s Chinatown office in September, where a handful of Equal Parts mixing bowls had been positioned to capture dripping rain from the slightly leaky ceilings. “And it’s gonna get co-opted, but that’s not bad. Co-opt away. More brands should totally be pivoting to having their marketing language talk about the role of the attention economy and workism and the endless amounts of human capital and personal optimization.”

The charismatic CEOs and kombucha on tap simply distracted from the fact that the cracked foundations of most people’s lives remain unfixed.

Still. The idea that brands “pivoting” to burnout could meaningfully combat a condition that is first and foremost a product of capitalism requires a serious suspension of disbelief — or at the very least, a tempering of cynicism. That’s a difficult proposition at any given moment, but especially now, against the backdrop of the wreckage of WeWork, which inveigled thousands with open-plan shared offices, fruit-infused water, and the promise of actual community and a “work culture revolution.”

WeWork duped countless venture capitalists and employees. But it’s also become an object lesson on the unbridled tech optimism of the 2010s: Even the companies claiming to subvert the soulless capitalist systems are themselves chasing the dragon of everlasting scale and venture-backed money (or, at least, a massive payout to soften the blow of their failure). The ones who preached self-care — Make your life easier! And more meaningful! While spending money! — have perpetuated the systems from which they claim to offer refuge. The charismatic CEOs and kombucha on tap simply distracted from the fact that the cracked foundations of most people’s lives remain unfixed.

It’s easy to understand, then, why so many of us are so angry. The WeWorks of the world were built on an ethos of positive vibes and unity — replete with what tech analyst Ranjan Roy calls “high-minded, burning man-esque self-actualization language” that, today, feels offensively out of sync with people’s lived realities. So why would Pattern, or any company that applies a superficial layer of burnout-conscious buzzwords to its products, be different?

But beneath Pattern’s soothing, bucolic packaging lies a deep, and deeply generational, frustration. The company’s trajectory hasn’t followed the path of a classic rocket-ship startup but that of a striving millennial: hard work followed by deep disillusionment and now, maybe, guarded optimism. Their products, their financing structure, their work culture, their messaging, even their website and social media are engineered in a way that’s not meant to hack, or optimize, or disrupt so much as consider the question: Can a for-profit venture actually help reverse the cultural affliction it helped create?

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

Emmett Shine, cofounder and executive creative director for Pattern, at the office with coworkers.

The first time Emmett Shine remembers feeling like everything was out of control and overwhelming, it was the 1990s; he was in junior high, and his parents had just separated.

“I had to start working to support me and my family,” he told me. “My way of dealing with tough stuff was just working. In America, that’s conditioned: If you want to get out of something tough, you just work your way through it.”

Shine, who just turned 36, grew up in the Hamptons — but think more working-class Long Island, less celebrity summer palace. His mom was an artist; his dad was a fisherman and, eventually, a landscaper. Shine was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome in the second grade and ended up in a mix of special education and what he refers to as “smart kid” classes. When his parents got divorced, he had to balance work and school. “My friends helped me with food, money, everything,” he said. “Being poor is universal, and it universally sucks.”

Shine looks like any number of white kids I grew up with in Idaho, with a boyish crew cut and an omnipresent baseball cap. The night before, he had shown up at the Equal Parts party wearing shiny, knee-length basketball shorts. “Sometimes I dress like I’m in sixth grade,” he joked, before telling me, in all seriousness, that he sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and searches for No Fear shirts on eBay.

But the packaging is deceiving. Part of Shine’s charm is that he’s not slick and he doesn’t glad-hand. His sentences come out in paragraphs, with a winding intricacy that often makes sense only when transcribed, read once, then read again. He’s bad at sound bites, bad at short interviews, bad at Twitter. “I was talking to someone last night,” he told me, “and he said that he’d listened to me on a podcast talking about Pattern and was like, ‘I finally get it!’ And I was like, fuck, it took them an hour and a half?”

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

A Pattern employee works on a couch in their Chinatown office.

Shine’s official title at Pattern is “executive creative director,” which still doesn’t adequately convey how much of the company’s aesthetic and attitude — and how much of Gin Lane’s success, which laid the groundwork for it — has sprung from his cavernous, curious mind. The first time I sat down with him, he quoted from Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing and Malcolm Harris’s Kids These Days and Jia Tolentino’s work on millennial optimization in Trick Mirror. This is impressive not just because those books are good, which they are, but because I’ve encountered so few people in his position of corporate power who actually do the reading. But Shine’s current thing — and, by extension, Pattern’s thing — is introspection: trying to figure out why he, and the rest of the millennials he works with, feel the way they do even amid profound, seemingly unending success.

Shine’s current thing — and, by extension, Pattern’s thing — is introspection: trying to figure out why he, and the rest of the millennials he works with, feel the way they do.

When Shine graduated from high school, he said, college “wasn’t even in the cards.” But one of Shine’s mentors advised him: You’re a smart guy. You need to get away from here, or you’ll never leave. Shine took his savings and bought a ticket for the place that was the farthest away from Southampton he could find: New Zealand. It was the first time he’d left the country.

It was October 2001. Shine got a camera. He took photos. His mom told him he should think about applying to college, but he only wanted to be in New York City, where, growing up, he’d ride the Long Island Rail Road in to skateboard with his friends. He got into the Tisch School of Arts at NYU, and, upon returning, slowly integrated into the art world of downtown — and began to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. He dropped out before his senior year and started working as a graphic designer for Rocawear; on the side, he ran a photography business. He worked with smaller artists and avant garde designers, and helped promote art shows — work that, over time, would develop into the agency that officially became Gin Lane in 2008.

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

An old sign from Gin Lane at the Pattern office.

And he was working all the time. “I would sleep in the office,” Shine recalled. “It was classic brogrammer culture, like, in our twenties: You work, then you drink some beer afterwards, eat some Cheetos, order in.” They had a shower in the office, which made it even easier for the 10 or so employees to never leave. “It was just a bunch of people in their twenties who were lost and would find themselves through work.”

It wasn’t until around 2013 that things began to change. Gin Lane hired an account manager, Suze Dowling, and a CEO, Nicholas Ling. “Because I’ve been working for myself since I was a teenager, I didn’t always have people to hold me accountable,” Shine said. “I’m a man-boy in certain regards. But when Suze and Nick got involved, the place professionalized.” Or, at least, there was no more sleeping at the office.

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

Pattern cofounder Nicholas Ling.

Ling, age 34, has foppish chestnut brown hair in the tradition of a young Hugh Grant, and a posh British accent to match. But the accent, he admits, is learned. He grew up solidly middle class in the suburbs of London, where his mother was a schoolteacher and his father was an accountant. He’d eventually end up at Oxford, completing a degree in physics, but only because he tested into an elite school when he was 11. After graduating, he signed on for what he calls a “very traditional job” with the Boston Consulting Group.

Ling’s arrival at Gin Lane was part of the company’s second life, as it transitioned from a company that worked primarily with artists to one that worked with and for consumer brands, producing the marketing strategy that would introduce them to the world — or, in business-speak, “bring them to market.” In practice, that meant creating the client’s aesthetic, vibe, and messaging — the fonts, the subway ads, the slogans, the social media strategy.

“We had this ability to make things that aren’t cool, cool.”

In 2010, the team helped launch Stella McCartney for Adidas, which led to work for Warby Parker, which then asked them to launch their new venture: Harry’s, a direct-to-consumer shaving company that, like so many of the products Gin Lane would help popularize, was positioned less as a brand and more as a lifestyle choice. Same for Everlane, Bonobos, Sweetgreen, denim brand AYR, Hims, Recess, Alma, Dia & Co — the list of names that now haunt your Instagram feeds, largely thanks to Gin Lane, feels endless.

“We had this ability to make things that aren’t cool, cool,” Ling explained. They used the same general alchemy when approaching something like Harry’s razors as they did when designing the campaign for the plus-size styling service Dia & Co. But the better they got at it, the less invested they became. Shine rattled off what they become known for: “You know, clean aesthetics, bold sans serifs, color blocking.”

“What’s the reason people stay doing something?” Ling asked me. “The challenge. Either that or they believe in something so much that they will smash their head against the wall until they get through. Eventually neither of those was completely true for us.”

Pattern Brands

The Pattern team in one of their promotional images, enjoying daily life.

It didn’t add up to something, other than what Ling calls “massive spikes of uncontrollable stress.” The work, sure, they could control. In childhood, at school, the work was always the easy part. It was the stuff outside of work that made everything seem untenable. Specifically, Ling’s mother has been chronically ill for the last 20 years. During one of the most stressful periods at Gin Lane, her leg was amputated. Earlier this year, she survived three strokes over the course of six months. And it felt like there was nothing Ling could do about it.

Millennials have been trained to optimize themselves through any struggle, work through any problem. But it was becoming increasingly apparent that work and efficiency couldn’t fix everything. And Ling and Shine weren’t the only ones who felt that way. Despite the demand for their services, they’d kept Gin Lane purposefully small — just under 30 employees. They didn’t expand to meet demand; they just got more particular about what they agreed to do. The senior leadership had all been with the company for at least five years — and two of them, Camille Baldwin and Dan Kenger, were about to get married. As a result, the company managed to maintain the feel of a small startup or, as Shine thinks of it, an “organism.”

“There’s an innate biological clock,” he said, “and you know when it’s time to shift or change or move. People are like, ‘how did you get your team to buy in on this change? And it wasn’t that we got them to buy in. I think the collective organism was searching.”

People were, well, growing up. Getting married, getting pregnant, getting exhausted. The decision to transition from Gin Lane into Pattern “never felt like a whiteboard session in a meeting,” Ling said. “More of, like, a group of friends talking about what motivates us, what’s happening in our lives, as much as what’s the strategy for the company.”

“We were just trying to be happy.”

It was never them thinking Oh, we feel burned out, we need to solve it. It was Ling talking about cooking, and what it did for him, all the time. Camille kept bringing up Benjamin Franklin’s “13 virtues.” Shine couldn’t shake the feeling that he was like Abe Simpson in The Simpsons: an old man shaking his fist at the cloud, but with no idea what, exactly, he was so anxious and angry about. They kept talking about how they had no skills, no hobbies.

They knew they wanted to do more than just launch a product — they wanted to create it, and control where it went. But they also wanted it to be bigger than a gadget, an app, or a food item.

“We were just trying to be happy,” Shine said. “We were always presenting a good face, and everyone was telling us that we have it so good — but internally there’s just something nagging at you.” They didn’t want to feel the way they’d felt the last decade of their working lives. So they started over.

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

Equal Parts cookware in the Chinatown office.

Outside the door to Pattern’s office, there’s a stack of skateboards; mixed-media posters on the walls bear messages like “What if the future could be more human / Embrace that we’re just sapiens.” A felt message board invites visitors to ENJOY DAILY LIFE. Inside, the office is peak millennial: exposed brick walls, snack cabinets, employees with laptops slouching on couches.

“We were trying to make the knife feel like EVE, from Wall-E,” Shine told me, as we hovered near the office’s display of Equal Parts cookware. “We’re trying to make it approachable. It’s German steel, which is good quality, but there’s one that’s ‘above,’ that’s Damascus steel — but you know, it kinda just looked…Dothraki?” (As in Game of Thrones.) “This one, it has a good center of balance. It’s light.”

He gestured toward the cutting board, which I’d seen in action the night before at the launch party. “It’s solid oak. You can flip it over and use it as a charcuterie board or whatever. It’s like a two-and-one for small spaces.” The cookware is lined with ceramic, which is more stylish than the Teflon-coated stuff most of us buy at Target. It works on convection ovens and standard ones. The cores are aluminum, which makes it more recyclable. It’s all machine washable.

For now, the Equal Parts cookware line is available only in a variety of preset combinations, at price points ranging from $79 for just the EVE-like knife (with coaching included) to $499 for the “complete kitchen.” (For comparison’s sake, an 83-piece kitchen set at Wal-Mart currently retails for $69.97 and includes plates and cutlery. It’s also of significantly lower quality.) This equipment is not cheap, but it’s also not Le Creuset or All-Clad expensive. The imagined customers are people in professional jobs who either want to 1) stock a kitchen for the first time or 2) stock a kitchen like a professional adult for the first time. They’re the sort of people who, instead of stopping in at Williams Sonoma or Target, buy things off Instagram ads — and who responded to the products that Pattern, in its previous life as Gin Lane, specialized in making appealing. An Equal Parts set would be a cool-relative college graduation gift, a generous wedding gift, a “dude deciding he makes enough money to stop eating Easy Mac” gift to himself.

Basically, the brand is marketing to people like Shine. His Instagram account features shots of him sautéing onions and putting together a simple pasta using Equal Parts, proud in the charming manner of a true novice. Cooking never interested him. What did interest him was how Ling talked about it. When Ling’s mom was in the hospital, he’d only speak to her and the rest of his family in the mornings, because of the five-hour time difference between the UK and New York. And that meant there was nothing he could do, at least for his mom, in those hours after work.

“I was like, how do I manage the feelings I’m having?” Ling explained. “That’s when cooking became a very central thing for me, just in terms of being able to relax.”

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

Equal Parts cookware on display at the launch party.

This wasn’t cooking to save money, or to eat healthier, or through a meal-planning service like Blue Apron. It was cooking even when it was ugly, or when it went wrong. It was cooking just to cook. It felt like an antidote, or at the very least, a form of resistance to the feeling that everything you do in your life should be optimized, or monetized, or packaged for social media.

As millennials, “we’ve been trained to do as much as possible, get into the best school possible,” Shine told me. “And that eliminates a lot of ‘unproductive’ free time.” Time spent exploring, goofing off, staring at the wall and listening to music, just hanging out with your own mind — all of that becomes implicitly devalued.

It felt like an antidote, or at the very least, a form of resistance to the feeling that everything you do in your life should be optimized.

“You work on this 18-year-résumé to go this ‘signaling school,’ which your parents, your teachers, your guidance counselor, and everyone else told you that you have to go to, and then you come out 30, 50, 60, 100 thousand dollars–plus in debt,” Shine continued. “And you need to earn a certain amount to pay down your debt, which you might never get rid of, even if you work your entire life. … And that’s how you find yourself at 27, 28, 29, just like I did, and you have no discernible life skills, except knowing how to work.”

Whatever passions you do have, they’re enveloped by work. “Ten, 15 years ago, they started creating these workplaces to promote productivity,” Shine said. “But they made work the place you go to, to hang out and not be productive. So then to finish the expected productivity, you actually have to take it home.” When you can do work anywhere, you feel the compulsion to do it everywhere — and all the time.

“I didn’t skateboard or surf in my twenties,” Shine said. “I didn’t work out. I didn’t travel.” He joked that it took getting a girlfriend from Denmark to actually start having hobbies again, but it’s not really a joke at all. The story is devastatingly familiar: I’m still trying to recover some semblance of the hobbies that, as an Elder Millennial, I’d cultivated before transforming myself into a work robot.

And yes, sure, a millennial might Instagram themselves baking — when they do it once a month. And those who can afford to, “love” to travel often do it for 36 hours at a time, documenting themselves the entire time as people “who love to travel.” What Shine and Ling envisioned was a more holistic change in, well, the pattern of daily life. Cooking, especially given Ling’s experience with it, felt like the place to start.

“We’re trying to be approachable, attainable, regular, routine,” Ling explained. “It’s not saying you have to do it five nights a week. It’s more like, how can we help this become the rhythm of your life?”

“It’s not saying you have to do it five nights a week. It’s more like, how can we help this become the rhythm of your life?”

They’re trying to cultivate something for millennials that some younger people seem to grasp intuitively: what blogger Venkatesh Rao calls “domestic cozy.” Rao coined the term to describe “an attitude, emerging socioeconomic posture, and aesthetic,” organic to Gen Z, which “finds its best expression in privacy, among friends, rather than in public, among strangers. It prioritizes the needs of the actor rather than the expectations of the spectator. It seeks to predictably control a small, closed environment rather than gamble in a large, open one. It presents a WYSIWYG facade to those granted access rather than performing in the theater of optics.”

Domestic cozy focuses on the cultivation of pleasure for pleasure’s sake, rather than the performance of pleasure. It retreats from the harsh, combative, hyper-political world, rather than engaging it. You can see the manifestations of domestic cozy life all over: in the popularity of Minecraft, in knitting (but not things to sell!), and in a new “inactive wear” company that markets big, pillowy garments to “improve quality of life in the home.”

That’s where Equal Parts fits in: cookware that makes cooking enjoyable for you, personally — nice to use and nice to look at, but not designed with Instagramming in mind. It’s a starter kit, with a low barrier to entry, especially when paired with a cooking coach who communicates with you via text.

When you “onboard” with the service, you answer a bunch of questions: What day do you shop for groceries? What’s your level of skill or ambition? What are your dietary preferences? Then the coach knows when to text, when you need support, how to provide the sort of tips that’ll actually be useful. The coaches aren’t chefs, just people who love to cook — and they’re all boomers, many recruited from cooking schools, from a broad range of backgrounds across the United States. It’s not unlike having a mom-like figure on call to text you tips, only without the baggage of actually texting with your mom.

“We don’t want our coaches to send people recipes,” Ling said. “That’s the antithesis of what we want them to do. They can be like, ‘Hey, what have you got in your kitchen? And then say, ‘Here’s what you could do with what you’ve got, and here’s what you could do if you got one or two extra things.’ Or they’ll send a text that says, ‘Hey, you’re on your way home. You’re feeling tired. Send me a text and tell me how you’re feeling about dinner.’” Those interactions aren’t oriented toward a specific type of meal prep, but getting over mental barriers that keep you from doing things you actually want to do.

Sure, it’s a bougie solution to a bougie problem. A lot of people who are burned out, especially those who aren’t part of the so-called professional class, don’t have the luxury or time to cook for sustenance, let alone fun or relaxation. But one of the things that Pattern is bullish on is that the bougieness doesn’t obviate the problem-ness. You can maintain perspective — you’re not starving, you have a place to live, you have electricity — and also want things to be, or feel, different.

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

The Equal Parts aesthetic in action.

The day before I was set to visit Pattern’s office, I received an email from a youth-trend forecasting company called Cassandra, a division of the global marketing firm Engine. Over the summer, they’d shifted the focus of their quarterly report from “Free Time” to the more pointed “Burnout,” asking questions about how burnout affects daily life and consumer habits among focus groups across the country. The specific findings of the report are behind a paywall, accessible only to brands eager to know how they can begin to pivot to accommodate their customers, and attract new ones, in the months and years to come.

Back in 2015, Cassandra published a similar report focusing on “wellness” — predicting that the new millennial focus would shift, even ahead of the 2016 presidential election, to various elements of what’s become known as “self-care”: in diet, in skincare, in mental health. They’re predicting a similar wave with burnout, which, according to their findings, is already cutting across class, race, and urban/rural/suburban demographics. As Melanie Shreffler, one of Cassandra’s VPs, told me, “Burnout is the green juice of 2019.”

When I told the authors of the report about Pattern, they said that it was “on the tip of the spear” — the sort of brand with which so many others, especially the less nimble ones, would soon find themselves playing a clumsy game of catch-up. But if anti-burnout marketing is poised to become mainstream, brands like Pattern can quickly come to feel exploitative.

After all, our current iteration of capitalism can’t fix the problems that our current iteration of capitalism has wrought. If we’ve learned anything from all the millennial-oriented books on how to unfuck your life, the meditation apps, the organizational apps, and the profusion of $3,000 exercise bikes, it’s that a thing can’t fix what ails both millennials and society as a whole. Maybe Pattern’s pivot to anti-burnout philosophy is just its way of being, once again, perfectly (and profitably) attuned to millennials’ desires.

When I laid out this argument to Shine and Ling, they shook their heads. “I’d rather be accused of being dumb than having malicious intent,” Shine told me. “The way we got to what we got to with Pattern was a form of self-therapy.”

“I’m gonna try and say this in a way that isn’t like, pullquote-y and bad, but I think we found ourselves in a good wave position.”

“Listen,” he continued, the frustration palpable in his voice. “I like surfing. I like waves. Look around and you’ll see pictures of waves everywhere in this office. If you go on Wikipedia and you type in waves, it’s all math. The entire universe is constructed of waves. If you’re surfing, and you’re ahead of the wave, you get toppled over. If your ratios are behind the wave, it just goes underneath you, and you can’t catch it. And I’m gonna try and say this in a way that isn’t like, pullquote-y and bad, but I think we found ourselves in a good wave position.”

The goal for Pattern is not to move fast and break things in order to disrupt cooking — after all, there’s no shortage of direct-to-consumer kitchenware brands already on the market — but to create something meaningful in the long term. “The number one thing is just for us to keep raising awareness,” Shine continued. “And if we can provide solutions, then that’s a bonus. Of course we have to, like, build a sustainable business that makes sense and makes money. That’s gonna take a long time, and we know that. There’s no expectation of, like, a quarterly return. We’re in it for seven to 10 years, minimum.”

Earlier in our conversation, Shine had brought up what he saw as the three pillars of contemporary American society — the three areas where you can affect change: within the community, in politics, and within markets.

“I just keep going back to the fact that I am not a community organizer,” he said. “I am not a politician. I am a goddamn marketer. And I’m good at it! So why shouldn’t I use what I’m good at for what I think will make things one step better, not one step worse?”

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

A participant photographs ravioli-making during a cookware demonstration at the Equal Parts launch party.

Shine’s argument is reminiscent of recent conversations about various presidential candidates on the progressive left: Can a candidate like Elizabeth Warren, who’s open about believing in markets while also advocating for meaningful, systemic moderation of those markets, actually create change? Is antipathy toward capitalism, and true socialist ideals, the only real solution? Or, given the reality of the political and economic realities of the country, is the most productive change made by renovating the existing system?

The team at Pattern understood that if they were going to try and market this sort of from-the-inside change to a mass audience, they needed to reflect it themselves: individually, but also as a company. Because that’s the other reason for the disillusionment with companies that market themselves with a philosophy, from social justice to feminism. When you treat your women employees like garbage, it doesn’t matter how many feminist T-shirts you sell: You’re not a feminist company. When you keep hiring white men for positions of power, invocations of social justice become meaningless.

That means an anti-burnout company can’t be burning out its employees. On the HR side of things at Pattern, that translates to 20 days of PTO, 10 of which are mandatory; completely closing down the office between Christmas and New Year’s; 12 weeks fully-paid leave for primary caregiver leave and 6 weeks to secondary caregivers; flexible scheduling for parents; cultivating a 6 o’clock end to the workday, with Shine and Ling leading by example. Their sacred text is “Pattern’s 10 Simple Steps to Help You Enjoy Daily Life,” which includes “Do one thing at a time,” “Each morning, do something before checking your phone,” “Let your mind wander,” “Take control of your leisure time,” and “Embrace mediocrity.”

An anti-burnout company can’t be burning out its employees.

Every week since launching this summer, the company has oriented itself toward one of those 10 steps; at their weekly meeting, Shine and Ling share their own experiences and failures with each. If an employee shares their personal experience on Slack, they get a raffle ticket for a weekly drawing for, wait for it, a houseplant. When Pattern posted the 10 Simple Steps on its Instagram, the post was “saved” twice as many times as it was shared or liked: proof, Ling says, that it’s maybe, actually, meaningfully useful.

Pattern proclaims that it’s guided by five core values — which, as the company’s website states, “represent our character, our process, and how we push ourselves to be better.” Some of them are easy: hospitality, curiosity, acceptance. But others are a struggle, or at the very least an area for constant improvement. “Responsibility” means considering the impact of their products not only on the people who buy them, but the people who make them — which, in turn, makes the product more expensive, and/or the profit margin smaller. (When I asked if depending on venture capital might eventually put pressure on the team to focus more on profit and less on principles, Shine and Ling told me in an email that their investors “fully support the time and energy we spend everyday on internal culture and making Pattern a great place to work.”)

And then there’s “Equity.” Each Pattern brand will dedicate 1% of its revenue to a local nonprofit organization (for Equal Parts, it’s the Chinatown-based Two Bridges Neighborhood Council). Shine and Ling also foresee themselves working for and collaborating with politicians who aim to address financial inequality. But the staff, at least in its current iteration, is very white — something that, when the first publicity photos of the staff went public, attracted attention. They’re also very international, and hail from a range of economic and educational backgrounds. But for Pattern to meaningful address what “enjoying daily life” might look like for all different sorts of people, they need those sorts of people in the company as well. In other words, there’s still a lot of “equity” work to do.

Shine and Ling are cagey on the exact identity of the next Pattern brand, set to launch in early 2020. It might be something that helps people learn to sew just to sew, but also to make the things you own last longer. Or products to help people do simple handy tasks around the home, not because you want to make it look like a West Elm catalog, but because there’s pleasure in getting something done yourself — rather than looking at the framed piece of art, still on the floor after two years in your apartment, shaming you every morning on your way out the door. The only real stipulations are that it has to make money, and it has to be part of the company’s overall mission to help others “enjoy daily life.”

“I was looking at this Ernst and Young report about how they’re helping people manage their workplace habits better during peak season for accounting,” Ling said. “And I was thinking, why does that feel like it’s really going to make a difference? You know, Ernst and Young, they’re a great company, I’m sure. But not everything about their being is going to catalyze that change. Everything about their being is going towards whatever their mission statement is — like, making sure people have good accounting practices, or whatever. Which is why I think you need companies like Pattern at the center of things like this — to set the standard that we will drag other people to.”

That’s Pattern’s answer to the critique that cookware won’t fix burnout — especially cookware at a price point that’s only available to a particular type of consumer. The cookware isn’t really the point. The overarching Pattern brand, and what it represents, is the point. In her newsletter write-up of Pattern’s launch, marketing analyst Emily Singer pinpointed this exact tension: “I hope that [Pattern] finds way for people who are not customers to engage with the brand,” she wrote. “Its message is meaningful and universally applicable. It would be a shame if the only way to access it was through a transaction.”

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

Camille Baldwin prepares avocados at Pattern’s offices.

At precisely 5 p.m. on the day of my visit to Pattern’s office, the sound of jazz began to filter into the conference room where we were finishing our interview. The rest of the team began to slowly transition from their workplace postures: Some started pouring a low-alcohol aperitif, previously launched by Gin Lane, that’s marketed toward people who wanted to be social but not get wasted. Camille, pregnant in overalls, peeled an unending supply of avocados on the Equal Parts cutting board using the Equal Parts knife. (When I tried to get in touch with a few follow-up questions for her this month, she’d just given birth — and was really and truly off email.)

Everyone at Pattern told me they loved working there — what else would they tell a journalist covering their newly launched company? But they offered convincing testimonies, and not just from the leadership suite: One employee had worked for a startup “industry disrupter” with ads currently blanketing the New York subway; the management and work-life balance was so toxic that Pattern’s philosophy and policy still felt mildly shocking. A new employee, on the job for just three months, was amazed the office actually cleared out at 6 pm. The mom of a toddler twirling around in an office chair told me that her daughter’s presence in the office at that moment is indicative of the Pattern culture. There’s no compunction to pretend that children have no effect on your life, your schedule, or the number of days you have to work from home. Having a kid doesn’t make you a worse worker, or a less attentive one. It just makes you a parent.

Gabriela Herman for BuzzFeed News

A child of a Pattern employee during an all-company dinner in the office.

I walked home to my hotel that night in the rain, flicking at my phone, barely avoiding the traffic on Bowery. Every time I come back to New York, so, too, do all of my worst burnout habits. I stayed up too late scrolling Instagram; I woke up too early; I never drank enough water. The year before, I’d stumbled around the city after working so hard, and flying so much, that I gave myself a case of vertigo that lasted for 10 days.

This time, I tried to be better. I’d gone to SoulCycle for the first time, thinking it might center me. I left feeling mostly just wet. I ate the same Sweetgreen salad for two meals a row. They tasted like robot food, like nothing at all. I realized, when I got home, that I’d left my planner in the Pattern conference room. I emailed in a panic: “It’s the only thing keeping my life together.” They sent it to me the next day, and I opened the package and began to stroke it like it was a lost sacred artifact.

How can we actually change the patterns of our lives — in a way that accommodates their current complexities without capitulating to them?

What holds your life together? What keeps us going? What if it were a daily practice instead of a planner? How can we actually change the patterns of our lives — in a way that accommodates their current complexities without capitulating to them?

When I flew home to Montana, there was an email from Shine waiting. He rarely talked about his childhood in a public way, he said, and our conversation had loosened some threads he wanted to tie back together. Pattern is, in many ways, a way to redo so much of what he missed: “Making brands to teach myself and people around me the life skills I think so many of us missed, trying to make seeking balance cool, being present cool, and working like a dog to survive not as cool.”

That circles back to Shine’s understanding of how change actually happens: Community leaders advocate. Politicians draft and pass regulations and legislation. And the market helps shape the way the public feels and thinks: They make things seem cool and uncool, defensible and indefensible, right and wrong, the future and the past.

Pattern’s Equal Parts brand might, at best, make it cooler to cook for cooking’s sake — might help create personal change. But there’s also a chance that Pattern, alongside other anti-burnout, pro-sustainability industry leaders like Patagonia, might make their vision of corporate culture cool. And if they can change the way other companies conceive of work, and prove that their model creates a better outcome for everyone involved — that won’t bring down the system, but it has the potential to help make living in it more bearable.

I typed that sentence and impulsively opened Instagram. Whoever is running Pattern’s Instagram account has just liked a photo of my dog. The sun is bright outside the window, the sky the clearest October blue. In a few minutes, I’ll close the laptop, and forget my phone, and walk out the front door and into the woods along the creek, with nothing to listen to and nowhere to be.

Later, I’ll come home and make something for dinner that’s ugly but tastes good. It won’t be with Equal Parts cookware, but I don’t think Shine and Ling would mind. I’ll have a thought, and I won’t tweet it. I’ll take a picture, and I won’t post it. I’ll open a book, and I’ll read it. And I’ll tell everyone I know: Did you hear the good news? It’s cool, these days, to enjoy daily life.●

Sahred From Source link Business

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2ouGyBW via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

ihtspirit · 5 years

Text

Houston-area schools adopt mindfulness practices to increase learning

Houston-area schools adopt mindfulness practices to increase learning Originally published July 31, 2019 in the Houston Chronicle. By Allison Bagley You don’t need a mat to get the centuries-old benefits of yoga, experts say. As the school year approaches, districts across Houston are incorporating basic chair-based yoga movements, intentional breathing and other mindfulness practices into the daily classroom routine. https://ihtusa.com https://ihtusa.com/houston-area-schools-adopt-mindfulness-practices-to-increase-learning/ Originally published July 31, 2019 in the Houston Chronicle. By Allison Bagley You don’t need a mat to get the centuries-old benefits of yoga, experts say. As the school year approaches, districts across Houston are incorporating basic chair-based yoga movements, intentional breathing and other mindfulness practices into the daily classroom routine. [caption id="attachment_19221" align="alignright" width="500"] Getty Images[/caption] The techniques are calming and lead to better learning. The benefits extend to teachers, too. “In the classroom, you’re not going to break into downward dog,” says Helen Wagner, physical education and wellness coordinator for Humble ISD. However, when children spend about three minutes stretching from their chairs, it resets their mind and helps them to better focus. She trains teachers on movements that direct kids to physically cross the body’s midline and engage their core, such as a small twist with both hands to their left side, then their right. Another simple practice is ankle and wrist rotations. Kids are taught basic breathing exercises, such as a deep inhale while holding up their arms. Once the practices are learned, students can practice the calming exercises on their own when needed, Wagner says. “Something is stressing me out,” she imagines kids thinking. “I’m working on a problem that’s difficult. When that tension begins, what are some techniques I can use so I can be a better thinker?” Students benefit when they can self-manage and regulate their own behavior, she says. Yoga helps with all three types of learning — visual, kinesthetic and auditory, she says. In Humble schools, some physical education classes have added yoga units, with positive feedback from students. After a few minutes of mindful breathing and stretching, perhaps with the lights turned off in the gym, middle schoolers will tell their instructors, “Wow, I just needed that time to slow down, take a breath and relax,” Wagner says. “They felt like they reconnected with their inner self,” she says. “To me, that was extremely powerful.” They’ll return to class ready to learn. In the classroom, Humble ISD allows kids opportunities to get out of their chairs for movement to increase memory, recall, attention and focus. This kinesthetic-based learning is used only for reinforcing lessons, Wagner says, not for new learning. To get the blood flowing to the brain, kids can stand and use a balance board while practicing math facts, for example. Some rooms offer standing desks and other flexible seating options. Stretch bands, juggling scarves and fidget busters are on hand in others. “We know when people are moving they’re engaging more,” Wagner says. Movement strengthens neural pathways, which “makes the learning stick,” she says.

Yoga off the mat

As the founder of Yogiños: Yoga for Youth, Houston-based Beth Reese has trained teachers and staff on mindfulness practices at independent school districts in San Antonio and Corpus Christi. Locally, she works with Montessori schools including The Post Oak School. “I often joke ‘yoga’ in school was like a bad word,” Reese says, explaining the “dramatic shift” she’s observed in the past decade of more schools adopting yoga-based and mindfulness practices. The practices result in better attendance, better test scores and less after-school detention, she says. She tells teachers it’s the frequency of the practices, not the duration, that makes a difference. In this way, it’s not unlike practicing spelling words or lifting weights. When she leads professional development, teachers sometimes tell her they’re worried the practices will take away from instruction time. Reese says the opposite is true. Teaching self-regulation to kids will decrease the time teachers spend managing behavioral issues and interruptions. Adults often realize they benefit from the practices, as well. Teachers get tired, anxious and frustrated, too, Reese says. Practicing what she calls “yoga off the mat” calms the nervous system. One example is pausing to give yourself a bear hug. Or, before or during a test, kids can do a simple twist in their chair. “It helps your body to wake up a little bit,” she says. At some schools she works with, the principal incorporates the practices over the loudspeaker during morning announcements.

Reducing school-day stress

Some districts are incorporating mindfulness practices most heavily at the elementary and middle school levels, but Amanda Thompson says it’s crucial for high schoolers as well. Thompson is a licensed social worker contracted at Stratford High School in Spring Branch ISD through Communities in Schools. “The stress level, I believe, for high school students is so extremely high,” she says. “The expectations are so high, thinking about college and just trying to balance everything on their plate.” In addition to schoolwork, some students have after-school jobs or are responsible for babysitting their siblings, on top of extracurricular activities. Students visit counselors experiencing panic attacks, high anxiety, burnout and depression, she says. Staff are trained to incorporate mindfulness activities that make the students aware of their five senses, she says, to reduce heart rate and blood pressure. In one group counseling session last year, Thompson led a group of girls in guided meditation. She also launched Stratford’s first Wellness Week. Part of Wellness Week was a one-hour yoga class. The optional session took place between lunch periods and was attended by about 50 students. High schoolers tend to be boisterous, Thompson says. Most of them arrived in packs of friends and as the session started, there was a lot of laughter and jokes. “By the end, it was totally calm — there wasn’t a noise to be heard,” she says. The kids might have been as surprised as she was. “They said they felt so incredibly relaxed and felt more in tune with their bodies and better prepared to handle the rest of the day,” she says. “It was something they hadn’t felt in a long time.” On other days during Wellness Week, students made stress balls by filling balloons with flour and decorating them. They popped away stress with bubble wrap and blew childhood-era bubbles. On “Keep Your Cool Day,” they enjoyed popsicles. Another morning, doughnuts were served with the message “Donut Worry About It.” At all the events, kids received flyers with quick stress-reducing practices. Along with practicing positive self-talk, all of these are forms of self-care, Thompson says. “Mindfulness is really about being self-aware of the thoughts that you’re having,” she says. “Society is having an epidemic of burnout and stress. We’re in this culture of busy-ness and we don’t take the time to check in with ourselves.” For its part, HISD began incorporating mindfulness training for staff in 2015, says Felicia Ceaser-White, the district’s manager of health and physical education. In the upcoming school year, many teachers of core curriculum will begin class by leading simple breathing techniques while the kids close their eyes and hear verbal affirmation and motivational messages. “Kids come to school with a lot of things,” Ceaser-White explains. Across the nation, she says, opportunities for students to be physically active during the school day is decreasing. Teachers are looking for chances during the day for physical movement to propel learning. During recess, some HISD instructors walk or run the track with their kids. Seeing their teacher exercise encourages the students to do the same, Ceaser-White says, and the teachers feel reenergized when they return to the classroom. “Students are ready to learn and teachers are ready to teach, just after a brief moment of physical activity,” she says. Pairing that with lessons in nutrition helps HISD develop a “whole child,” she says, rather than focusing only on academic success.

Putting the practice to paper

Adiaha Spinks-Franklin is a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at Texas Children’s Hospital who works with patients with developmental disabilities and behavior disorders. She says the practices she uses in a clinic setting can be applied to the classroom to reduce anxiety, worry, temper outbursts and self-control. Yoga-based exercises and breathing techniques calm the sympathetic nervous system, she says, which activates our sense of fight-flight freeze. That “survival mode” is triggered by physical, emotional or psychological stress, she says. Kids need to turn off that response to think more clearly, and she recommends the 4-7-8 technique. It’s a practice of inhaling for four seconds, holding the breath for seven seconds, then slowly exhaling for eight seconds. The exercise should be repeated at least five times to be successful. It’s helpful with test-taking anxiety and before a performance, speech or concert, she says. “It’s very easy. Heck, I even do it in traffic.” Another practice Spinks-Franklin recommends is gratitude journaling. Emerging research shows this deliberate form of journaling produces endorphins the developing brain craves, she says. On a daily basis, she tells kids to write down three things they’re grateful for. It might be as inconsequential as seeing a butterfly or sitting next to their best friend at lunch. The practice forces the brain to process positive thoughts, in addition to negative thoughts adolescents might be feeling. Patients tell her the journaling decreases their worries and helps them sleep. “The more they journal, the more things they can think of they’re thankful for,” she says. Not unlike yoga-based movements and breathing techniques, the key is daily practice. “It’s good for the mind and the mood as well.”

Seeking IHT Spirit System information?

[contact-form-7 id="3054" title="How'd you find us?"]

[turbo_widget widget-prefix=pw_call_to_action&obj-class=PW_Call_To_Action&widget-pw_call_to_action--text=%5Bbutton+href%3D%22ihtusa.com%2Fzone%22%5DIHT+Zone+Heart+Rate+Monitor+Demo%5B%2Fbutton%5D&widget-pw_call_to_action--button_text=]

0 notes

actfact2-blog · 5 years

Text

Adrenal Fatigue 101: Symptoms, Testing, Diet, and Supplements to Support Adrenal Burn-Out Recovery

People joke that you can catch adrenal fatigue just as easily as a head cold in New York City.

Especially if you’re a woman during the holiday season, juggling family obligations, end of year office grunt work, and a finely calibrated hormonal motherboard. So yeah, that’s everyone right?

In reality, adrenal fatigue is not something you catch, but rather a slow unraveling.

These little glands are in the endocrine chain of command (along with your thyroid), and are in charge of regulating the body’s stress response through adrenaline and cortisol, our chief fight or flight hormones.

If you’re a member of the HashiPosse or your thyroid is out of commission, the adrenals have to work extra hard to generate energy for the body. It’s the actual scenario of “running on fumes.” Without proper thyroid hormones to keep the wheels moving, you might be barreling full speed ahead on adrenaline and cortisol alone.

Unfortunately, like any well-oiled, but overused machine, your adrenals can only hang in there for so long without a break. Adrenal fatigue is what happens when you’ve used up all your cortisol reserves due to constant daily stress, another hormone imbalance (like hypothyroidism), or often, both.

I’ve struggled with adrenal fatigue symptoms on and off for the last decade, but it wasn’t until this past spring that I actually took a test. Since then, I’ve been meaning to write this deep dive on the best natural treatments, supplements and lifestyle strategies we can use to support our adrenals and give them a much needed recharge.

Below I get into what adrenal fatigue testing looks like, whether or not it’s actually worth knowing for sure, common symptoms, and ideas for recovery. Some include the usual de-stressing activities—tubbing, meditating, skipping your 3rd ugly sweater party. Things we should be more equipped to do in cold, cozy January. But I’ve also given some more specific tips that I use in my course 4 Weeks to Wellness for getting people back on track.

If you’re looking for a helping hand to implement any of these habits, it’s not too late to join my new year’s session, which starts January 14th. If you sign up before the 3rd, you’ll even get early bird pricing. Click here for more info.

In the meantime, read on for more on adrenal fatigue (how it differs from adrenal insufficiency) and how to recover from it.

With health and hedonism,

Phoebe

HOW TO TEST FOR ADRENAL FATIGUE

There’s much debate in the medical community about whether adrenal fatigue is an actual syndrome. The full-blown expression is Addison’s disease, also known as adrenal insufficiency, and you can test for it using the ACTH Stimulation Test, where cortisol levels are checked in the blood before and after a synthetic hormone (ACTH) is given by injection.

Adrenal fatigue, on the other hand, can be tested for using an at-home saliva test, which is more convenient, but not always covered by insurance. The feeling that testing for adrenal fatigue is unnecessary has also been seconded by plenty of holistic practitioners, since the reality of the matter, as I joked earlier, is that there are so many women who could benefit from more adrenal support.

For what it’s worth, I took the Labrix at-home saliva test for Adrenal Hormone Function. It involves spitting into a tube upon waking, shortly after waking, noon, evening and night. Your cortisol levels have a natural rise and drop throughout the day, so mapping the pattern via saliva is a more convenient way than via one blood test, since the levels can fluctuate quite a bit depending on when the blood is drawn.

The Adrenal Stress Index (ASI) test is another option that’s recommended by Dr. Jolene Brighten, one of my go-to’s for anything hormone health related.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF ADRENAL FATIGUE?

First, let’s talk about what proper adrenal function looks like so you can better spot disfunction.

Ideally, your cortisol levels are highest in the morning, around 8am. Think of it as the body’s natural caffeine, helping us stay tuned in during the day. It gradually tapers off through the afternoon and evening, and hits its lowest point at 3am, since you need very little motivation while sleeping.

Things can go haywire in a variety of different ways. If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, it’s a sign that your cortisol might be spiking too early. More commonly, what leads to adrenal fatigue is ongoing high levels of cortisol during the day, thanks to too much coffee, stressful work schedules, disrupted sleep, and general anxiety.

You might be one of those high-functioning stress cases that feed off of the energy of cortisol. But when levels stay elevated, that’s a recipe for burnout.

When someone has adrenal fatigue, their tests will indicate that cortisol has flat-lined. You might still be following the right pattern throughout the day, but it’s far below the normal levels of production. This is adrenal fatigue at its core.

You’ll find many lists out there for adrenal fatigue symptoms, but I’m going to unpack some of the most common ones for you one by one so you can understand how these issues are interconnected and relate to your fluctuating hormone levels.

Exhaustion and fatigue: If you feel yourself dragging throughout the day, even after plenty of sleep, or dozing off during meetings, that’s an indication that your cortisol levels have been exhausted, and your whole body feels it. If you’ve ever pulled all-nighters to get through exams, then gotten home and slept for 5 days straight (and potentially also come down with the flu) this is low grade adrenal fatigue. In the real world, our exams don’t come along once a quarter, and it’s when a finals week situation turns into a full month of added stress and bad habits, that things can really go awry for your adrenals.

Weight gain: A very common symptom of adrenal fatigue, especially for women, is packing on pounds around your waistline. I’ll often hear this complaint from people in my program: “I’m working out constantly and eating the healthiest diet ever, and I can’t seem to lose a pound.” This really comes down to hormones. When your cortisol is spiking constantly (and this, by the way, can also happen from high intensity exercise) it indicates to your body that you’re in a life or death situation. Back in the bush, that meant food resources might be scarce for a while, so your body converts all the excess energy it can into fat for the “long winter” to come. Counterintuitively, skipping that high intensity workout might be a better course of action to lose weight if your adrenals are fatigued.

Disturbed sleep and waking up in the middle of the night: I already mentioned how cortisol patterns being off might cause a 3am wake-up. But it can also happen from unstable blood sugar. Which, of course, is usually one of the culprits of any hormonal imbalance. When your blood sugar is on the fritz, it might cause you to be hungry all the time, even an hour after a meal. You crave sugar and simple carbs, even though those things deregulate your blood sugar even further. A 3am wakeup is your body crying out for energy, and one way to fix it is to drink something high in fat before bed that can nourish you overnight. Mix some coconut oil into your nighttime tea, or drink a golden milk latte with coconut milk. Like high intensity exercise, it can also be counterintuitive for weight loss, but restricting calories or intermittent fasting will only make your body more stressed about its reserves and want to hold onto them.

Dehydration and dry skin: I talk about this one a bit in the water chapter of The Wellness Project book. Since the adrenals sit just above your kidneys, their other main function is to control your water levels. The more stress you have, the more hormones and salt they send out to circulate in the body. When your stress levels fall, all that sodium needs to be evacuated. Just think of a nervous puppy that has to pee all the time. That’s the stressed-out you, constantly flushing fluids, along with sodium, down the toilet. People with adrenal fatigue can drink their full daily water quota and still be dehydrated. If your lips are perpetually chapped and your skin is dry, yet you’re drinking plenty of water, it might be an indication that some electrolyte supplements are needed.

Digestive issues: You may remember from middle school science class that our nervous system has two modes: sympathetic and parasympathetic. The first is fight or flight, the second rest and digest. Needless to say, when we aren’t spending enough time in the latter, it can affect our stomach and gut. Elevated levels of cortisol can reduce levels of good bacteria in the gut, leading to more digestive issues down the line, even once cortisol reserves are depleted.

Anxiety and depression: Feeling on edge is a natural byproduct of too much cortisol, and the downstream effect of having too little can lead to depression. Also, given the powerful studies linking a damaged microbiome to depression and mood disorders, it’s no wonder why after periods of intense stress and adrenal burn out we might feel symptoms of depression.

Here are some other common indications of adrenal fatigue:

• Body aches and soreness • Dragging ass out of bed in the morning • Blood sugar imbalance / sugar cravings throughout the day • Getting sick all the time • Breakouts and acne • Low libido (see depression above) • Brain fog and memory loss • Poor circulation and dizziness • Irritability and mood swings • Hunger shortly after eating • Feeling at the end of your rope / snappish / about to crack

ADRENAL FATIGUE SUPPLEMENTS THAT SUPPORT RECOVERY

B Vitamin Complex: Tends to be deficient in people with adrenal fatigue (and Hashimoto’s for that matter!)

Liquid B12: If you can do at-home injections, even better for absorption.

Adaptogens: Those commonly used to support adrenals are ashwagandha, ginseng, holy basil, and rhodiola. Careful with blends, however, as not every adaptogen is for everyone.

Magnesium: Use a magnesium spray or a good old Epsom salt bath. I love the supplement magnesium calm. This will also help with hydration.

Electrolytes: Coconut water has natural electrolytes, but if you’re trying to balance your blood sugar at the same time, it might not be ideal. Something like this that’s sugar-free and can be added in drops to your morning water would be great.

Vitamin C: Helps with absorption of other vitamins and minerals, plus hydration.

THE BEST NATURAL TREATMENTS AND STRATEGIES FOR ADRENAL FATIGUE

If developing adrenal fatigue is a slow unraveling, you have to think of recovery as a long, steady climb back up Health Moutain. You know I already think of everything this way, but with healing your adrenals it is especially true. The process could take up to a year. It’s a marathon not a sprint.

That said, you don’t have to be perfect every day. You can, however, live every day with your adrenals in the back of your mind. For me, that has meant staying in more than I go out, setting myself up for success with my work expectations (which, as a self-employed blog lady means that the high bar usually comes from ME), and reducing caffeine to only when necessary.

In general, the themes are pretty obvious: rest as much as you can, reduce stress, eat an anti-inflammatory diet that doesn’t put added stress on the body, choose gentle movements, hydrate, sleep. You know, The Wellness Project. (Wink)

Here are some of my favorite healthy hedonist tips for adrenal fatigue:

Regulate Your Blood Sugar with a Vice Detox: If you’ve read The Wellness Project, you know that 30 days without caffeine, alcohol and sugar was as painful as it was beneficial. Part of getting your blood sugar and hormones back on track is giving your liver a boost so it can eliminate all the excess. My favorite way to do this is to get out of my own way. If this sounds miserable but you want to give it a try, we do a mini vice detox in my 4 Weeks to Wellness program and I have a ton of tips to make it easier. These 3 vices also are stimulants that increase cortisol and stress in the body, so it’s important to find moderation on going forward.

Eat Consistent Meals with Fat and Protein in the Morning: Going completely carb-free or intermittent fasting—two big trends right now—is probably not right for you if you have adrenal fatigue and your blood sugar is all over the map. A work around is to get a lot of healthy fats into your meals to make you feel full for longer, and to make sure to start and end the day with a good dose of them. If there’s any meal to go carb-free, it’s in the morning. This is called “carb cycling.” One study showed that people with cortisol issues were able to reprogram their curves by eating low-carb breakfasts, moderate amounts in the afternoon, and higher amounts of healthy carbs in the evening. See below for what that means.

Choose Complex Carbs: People are always talking about how you should eat “whole foods, ” but whole wheat bread does not a whole food make. The less processed an ingredient is, the better. Pasta made from brown rice flour is healthier than bleached white flour, yes, but eating a bowl of whole brown rice is far better. In general, whole foods—meaning literally whole foods cut into pieces and not pulverized by an industrial grinder—keep your blood sugar down and your gut bacteria happy, while simple carbs, though easy to digest, cause more long-term inflammation. Stick with brown rice, quinoa and sweet potatoes.

Add a pinch of sea salt: Salt has gotten a bad rap in the age of processed foods, despite the fact that it’s an essential nutrient. Salt is in the makeup of virtually all our bodily fluids, which means we’re constantly losing it in the form of sweat, urine, and tears. I recommend pink Himalayan sea salt because it’s less processed and thus retains important minerals that also aid in absorption and support electrolyte balance. I try to add a pinch of it to my morning lemon water or smoothie.

Make bone broth the new coconut water: Bone broth is literally so hot right now. If you want to maximize absorption, this is a much better option than sugar-packed coconut water. As the bones simmer for hours, they release amino acids, collagen and nutrients that help your body make the most of the liquid you put in it. It turns out that homemade chicken soup is just as good for your immune system as it is for the soul. And that’s especially important when you’re healing adrenal fatigue and your body might not be able to fight off pathogens as readily. It’s also a salve for your gut.

Don’t Do High-Intensity Workouts at Night (or At All): When you have adrenal fatigue, gentle and slow is better than fast and loose. Think pilates, yin yoga, walking, biking outside, or anything leisurely in nature. Cardio kickboxing is probably off the table, but especially at night when it can create an artificial cortisol spike and disrupt your sleep patterns. Cortisol and melatonin work in tandem, and the former needs to drop, for your chief sleep hormone to take over.

Get 8+ Hours of Non-Disrupted Sleep: Yes, that’s easier said than done. If you’re doing everything right from a lifestyle perspective—not drinking caffeine after noon, keeping your blood sugar stable, getting gentle exercise in the morning, keeping a consistent wake-up time, avoiding blue light before bed—you might want to explore these natural sleep aids to get the ball rolling.

Take a bath before bed: A drop in body temperature is a key prelude to sleep. If your internal thermostat is off, one way to hack it is to take a twenty-minute bath or shower. Though it’s counterintuitive that a hot tub will cool your body temperature, the sharp rise brought on by the warm water will be followed by a sharp fall once you’re out. Adding some relaxing lavender bath salts and sipping some ginger tea while in there is a sleep prep triple threat (in a good way). Plus, all these things are also great for de-stressing.

Choose a sacred night to refuel: I know that picking and choosing social plans so I can get eight hours of sleep will make me a better friend to others and myself. It’s not just alcohol or sugar or gluten, but the hustle and bustle of a night on the town that can overwhelm a sensitive system recovering from adrenal fatigue. I try to say yes to adventures that feed my spirit, not obligations that feel like drudgery. And a few nights a week—Sunday and Monday work well—I keep the schedule clear to have some downtime and catch up on sleep.

Have any more questions about adrenal fatigue recovery? Please leave them in the comments.

Need more help refining your habits around diet, sleep, detox, movement and more? Let’s work together to create your path forward. My 4 Weeks to Wellness Course might just change your life. With 4-weeks worth of elimination diet-friendly recipes that are gluten, dairy, corn, soy and refined sugar free, not to mention tasty AF, it’s a perfect way to explore your food sensitivities and heal inner and outer chaos. Plus, one of the weeks is completely dedicated to overhauling your sleep hygiene, stress management and morning routine! Beyond natural remedies, I’ll help you set up all the rituals you need for a good nights sleep and recharged adrenals for the long haul.

FIND OUT MORE HERE

Source: https://feedmephoebe.com/adrenal-fatigue-101-symptoms-testing-diet-and-supplements-to-support-adrenal-burn-out-recovery/

0 notes