#i had seen this in my notifications earlier today. i used it as motivation to complete my work.

[libraryofloveletters]

The Arrangement

Matt Simmons x Reader 

Warnings: fem!reader, mentions of choking, fingering, mild degradation, making out

Category: Smut

Word Count: 2.4k

Author’s Note: Based on this request, this one and this one too! Thank you darlings for these ideas!

*Bolded italics are flashbacks* 

------ 

You and Matt had been friends since he joined the IRT. You didn’t get to see each other very often other than that one case you guys had in Barbados together. The two of you have always been close, he was best friend even though you barely saw each other. 

After that case, everyone went out for drinks and dinner. The two of you traded flirty glances all night and when he pulled you to dance, which you found strange because he wasn’t much of a dancer. You ended up back in bed with him, it didn’t surprise you but it didn’t exactly go as planned either. 

You hadn’t seen him since that night, you left before he woke up because you had an early flight. You’ve had a few late night phone calls and texts but other than that, nothing. 

When Matt was reassigned to the BAU, you became attached at the hip. Everything that he did, you were there with him and vice versa. The two of you were still single and clearly into each other, so hence begins the arrangement.

---

The two of you were sitting in his apartment, he asked you to come over and help him unpack. He had just bought a new apartment and with all the traveling, he had barely unpacked and he couldn't keep living out of boxes. 

The two of you were taking a break, he had ordered pizza for dinner. You were currently on the couch, Matt was on the floor between your legs. His head rested on your inner thigh as he watched some movie that was on TV.  Running your hands through his hair, he hummed. 

“I’ve missed you” 

“Missed you too Matt” 

He turned around to face you, his head still on your thigh. You smiled at him while he kissed your inner thigh. 

“Hold on babe” 

“What?” he looked up at you. “If we’re going to keep doing this, we need to talk about something”  He waited for you to talk. 

“One, no sleeping with other people, simply because of the fact that I don't want a std from whoever you hooked up with.” he laughed but nodded. “Two, if you find someone or if I find someone, we end this. No hard feelings and we’ll still be friends ?” 

“Yeah, of course angel” You smiled at the nickname.

“Anything you want to add?” 

He pushed you back on the couch, getting on top of you. His hand wrapped itself around your throat squeezing slightly, your breath hitched as a smile washed across your face 

“You’re mine and only mine.” 

------ 

Emily had called in the team early one morning because a case had come in. Everyone seemed like they had just rolled out of bed and showed up except Penelope and Rossi, the two of them were always dressed for an emergency fashion show.

Emily and Penelope explained to the team that a family had been kidnapped in North Carolina. She was going over the details when you felt a hand on your thigh. You were wearing a skirt that you had found and honestly, it wasn't your choice in work clothing but it was the first thing you found. 

You glanced at Matt who sat beside you and had a smile on his face as his hand slowly made its way up your thigh. Your hand rested on his to stop him but he didn’t, making you shift in your seat. 

“y/n are you okay?” Luke asked you from across the table, 

you nodded “just a cramp in my leg, I'll be alright” 

Rossi and Spencer were talking about if this unsub was a family annihilator or if there’s a different motive behind this kidnapping. Matt’s hand slides under your skirt, his fingers brushing against your panties. You give him a warning look but he slides a finger in you anyways. 

You bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from moaning as Matt curls his finger. You grab his hand, squeezing his wrist and giving him a look, practically begging him to stop until you can be alone with him.

For some reason, probably because Emily asked him to help Garcia with something, he let you go. You let out a breath you didn’t even realize you were holding. 

“Are you sure you’re okay y/n?” Luke asked you once more

“Oh yeah, I think I pulled something working out and I've been getting cramps all morning” he looked like he didn’t believe you but he dropped it.

--- 

The case had taken you guys a little less than a week to solve. The unsub had kidnapped one more family but you took him into custody alive, you had some peace of mind knowing he’d spend the rest of his life in jail for what he did. 

You were now on the jet counting the hours until you could be back in your bed. You somehow got stuck sharing a room with Matt and Luke, it would have been weird if you and Matt shared a bed only for Luke to wake up and see you cuddling so Matt shared with Luke instead. Matt did like to cuddle regardless of who it was, so you now had a few pictures of Matt and Luke cuddling which you totally didn’t and by totally didn’t, you 100% did send to Garcia. 

Matt sat beside you, everyone was either asleep or too busy doing something to even notice the two of you. “Hey princess” he whispered as he fixed the blanket so it was over the both of you. 

You hummed, too tired to talk and rested your head on his shoulder. “I missed this, cuddling with Luke isn't the same” he whispered, making you chuckle, you shifted closer to him as you basically ended up half way onto him. Your arm was stretched over his lap, your hand right above his dick. 

“Don’t” he gave you a warning look, you ignored him rubbing your palm against his dick. He let out a little groan, his head leaning back against his seat. He moved your hand only for you to put it right back, slipping them into his pants. 

Your hand just rested there, not moving, not doing anything. He looked over at you. 

“Seriously ?”

“Hm? Is there an issue agent?” 

“Oh no issue baby, just wait until we get home and I deal with you. You can’t go without it huh?” he chuckled, you looked at him 

“Without what?” you asked 

“Without touching me. Without being a needy little slut” he whispered in your ear making you blush and squeeze your thighs together. 

“That’s what I thought.” 

---- 

A few weeks later and you guys finally had a paperwork day, you’re all just minding your business and doing your own thing. You were typing up a report when your phone buzzed. You picked it up to see a notification from Matt, you opened it to see a shirtless picture he probably had taken earlier in the day. The longer you looked at the picture, the more you realize that it wasn’t taken at home, but in the bathroom at the BAU.

To Matt: Stop being horny and go back to work 

From Matt: Don’t tell me that you didn’t like that ;)

You chuckled, looking up to see that no one was paying attention to you. Everyone was doing their own thing so you sent back a quick reply before turning off your phone 

To Matt: never said I didn’t, but I know exactly what you like. 

You turned back to your paperwork, only getting a few lines into it before your phone buzzed again. Spencer looked over at you, “you’re popular today” he smiled making you chuckle.

“Hm, yeah it’s my cousin” You felt bad lying to Spencer but you couldn't tell him about your secret workplace lover even though you knew he’d keep it a secret. 

“Do you want some coffee?” you asked Spencer as you got up, he nodded. You walked over to the coffee machine, Matt walked back into the bullpen. He smiled at you as he walked past you, you smiled back and turned your attention back to the coffee machine.

A few minutes passed and you walked back to your desk, Matt passing by you again, flashing you a smile as he walked past. 

You set Spencer’s mug on his desk, “there you go doc” he smiled at you and took a sip. You made sure to make his with 98% sugar and 2% coffee. “Just the way I like it, thank you y/n” you smiled at him as you sat down “you’re welcome” There was a bright pink piece of paper folded on top of your files when you got back to your desk, you picked it up and opened it. 

“Meet me in the office in 10″ 

Matt scribbled onto the first thing he could find, you figured he probably went to visit Garcia and took a piece from her. 

“Spence?” you looked up at him, 

“Yeah?” he mumbled, not looking up from his book. 

“If anyone asks where I am, tell them I've gone to the bathroom. Okay ?” you slipped the piece of pink paper into your desk drawer before getting up. 

“Okay” Spencer mumbled again before going back to his book. 

You walked out and headed towards Derek’s office, the lights were off but the door was unlocked. You pushed open the door and stepped inside, a pair of hands grabbed your waist and pushed you up against the door. You gasped when you felt his hands on you, you knew he was in there but you didn’t expect him to scare you. 

“Dude, seriously ? You can’t turn on the lights like a normal person?” you asked him, wrapping your arms around his neck. 

“Hi angel” he kissed down the side of your neck, his hands slid up your side and moved to the front of your shirt to unbutton it. 

“Whatcha doing ?” you asked him,

“Nothing really” his lips moved towards your chest, kissing and sucking as he went. You knew you’d be covered in hickeys by time he’d done but you could care less. 

Matt’s arms were around your waist, he guided you over to the couch. The two of you had been in Derek’s office enough that you knew it like the back of your hand. You kind of felt bad using his office, he was like a brother to you and you knew his office was Penelope’s little space but it was the only office outside of the bullpen with a couch and a lock on the door. Derek had came to visit once, you bumped into him moments after you had stepped out his office 

---

You were walking back towards the bullpen, you were fixing your shirt, shifting it back to its original position. Derek was standing in the hallway talking to Spencer, you weren’t expecting him to come by today and it caught you by surprise. 

“Hey D!” you walked over to give him a hug, his hugs were the best. 

“Hey mama, I missed you” he smiled at you, 

“Awe I missed you too, what are you doing here? Isn’t there a lil man that requires your attention at home?” 

He chuckled, “he’s actually here, Penelope whisked him away to her office so I went to find pretty boy” he ruffled Spencer’s hair. “He’s more like bothering me” Spencer mumbled, trying to fix his hair. 

“I came to pick up something from my office actually. Babygirl forgot to put it in the box with my stuff” he explained to you 

“Oh” you nodded, you causally pulled out your phone and texted Matt, telling him to make sure everything to spick and span because Derek was here. 

“I’ll see you two around, I've got to pick up Savannah soon” He hugged Spencer goodbye before he hugged you 

“Tell her I said hi and give Hank a kiss for me” You smiled at him before letting him go.

--- 

Someone pulled on the door knob, you and Matt ignored it. You pulled him closer, it was impossible to be any closer but either way you still did. You were on his lap, straddling him and his hands on the back on your thighs. The two of you found yourselves in this position very often, clothes thrown all over the floor, making out on the couch like teenagers. Usually whoever was at the door left after a minute or two. 

Today was different. 

The last thing you expected was Penelope to walk in, with Derek. 

She flipped the light switch and gasped, “Oh! Guys, I- uh- oh my god I'm sorry” She pushed Derek out, who was laughing and pulled the door shut behind them. Matt looked at you, the door and then back to you before he started laughing. You could help but laugh too. 

“Okay, stop it’s not funny” you got off his lap to get dressed while you tried not to laugh. 

“It’s funny angel, I can tell you wanna laugh” he chuckled pulling on his shirt. You shook your head and fixed your hair before stepping out. 

“Penny, D” you smiled at them, Derek chuckled while Penelope just nodded. 

“Sorry if we traumatized you” Matt told them, although it was directed more towards Penelope rather than Derek. 

“How long has this been going on ?” Penelope asked you guys

“And why my office ? Use Emily’s or Rossi’s” Derek laughed. 

“Since Matt joined the BAU and a little bit before that” you told them, 

Penelope’s eyes went wide. “What?! Matt’s been there for a year and a half!” she shouted, Matt nodded. Now that Penelope knew, you knew the secret wouldn't last long. 

There goes your secret arrangement. 

#matt simmons #ssa matt simmons #matt simmons smut #matt simmons x reader #matt simmons x you #matt simmons x y/n #matt simmons oneshot #matt simmons imagine #matt simmons imagines #cm #cm smut #cm imagine #cm imagines #cm oneshot #criminal minds #criminal minds imagines #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds smut #criminal minds oneshot

[iamtheblondestblonde]

The Clark Kent Effect

Part Two

AN: Here’s part two!! Since the cat is out of the bag now, please go listen to my ex’s best friend by MGK, which was my first inspiration for this story and is the song I always have in mind when working on it. I loved hearing everyone’s opinion on the first part so please keep it up, it really motivates me a lot to see that people actually appreciate my writing. I hope this is living up to everyone’s expectations.. I’m sure everyone has already figured out that there will be angst in this one. 

Word Count: 3.6k

Warnings: none (a first for me)

Part One

My other writing can be found here

When Tito had made you promise to stay in touch you’d thought nothing of it. It was something lots of people said every day without having any real intentions of ever keeping their promise. A trait especially prominent among Americans as you’d come to realize. How many times had some of your colleagues mentioned that you definitely had to make dinner plans together sometime only for that sometime to never come? And while Tito wasn’t an American by all means, living among them tended to force a fast adaptation.

So to say you were surprised when he reached out to you a couple of days later would be a big fat understatement. You’d thought of him from time to time since Halloween, reminiscing what once was but also thinking about what could’ve been with a certain dark haired friend of his if it weren’t for the connection between the two of them.

You’d checked your phone during a trip to the bathroom, waiting on an update on the current office drama from Emily – as the personal assistant she had the inside scoop on one of the chief editors who had apparently managed to knock up one of the models – when you saw the Instagram notification.

@titobeauvi91 wants to send you a message

For a second you were wondering why he was sending you a message on Instagram instead of a text before you realized that neither of you probably still had the same phone number from when you were 18. You’d definitely switched to an American phone number in time with your move and he’d be stupid if he hadn’t done the same thing, especially considering how much longer he’d lived here than you.

For him to go out of his way to dig up your Instagram profile only so he could send you a message really spoke volumes for his character. Your grandma had been right when she’d said that he was going to make someone very happy some day but although she’d had you by his side in mind at that point, you liked to think that it was still going to be true with someone else.

You accepted the request without thinking twice about it and then had to read his messages multiple times to make sure you were seeing correctly.

@titobeauvi91: Would it be totally weird to meet up for coffee together sometime?

In your wildest dreams you never would’ve imagined your ex willingly asking you to spend time with him. But perhaps it didn’t surprise you as much as it should. 

Yes, breaking up with him had hurt a lot, but it had also been a long time ago and it wasn’t like either of you were at fault for your time together coming to an end back then. You couldn’t blame him for his dream coming true after all. The fact that he’d always planned on leaving was no secret, it had only been a matter of time. So when those feeling had shifted from friendship to something more you’d known how things would end but still fell for him. And you’d had an amazing time with him because of it. And then some not so amazing time without him afterwards.

Some of your girlfriends in college had gone through break ups at the same time but you could never really relate to them sobbing in the living room with ice cream and alcohol to help soothe the pain. Your sadness had been more subtle. It was things like wanting to call him whenever something newsworthy happened in your life, missing his comforting hugs and wanting to hear his laugh again that made you feel like a part of your life was missing.

But you’d always been a fan of clean cuts so you’d never allowed yourself to reach out to him, tempting as it was. You had instead focused on building yourself a new life, one without him and without even realizing it your daydreams of conversations with him came to an end. At last you had reached the stage of acceptance. Now, as you stared at your screen you realized that the cut had been made and the edges had already healed, the possibility of something new, or rather something old, but very much something different hanging up in the air above the gap now.

What would you do?

You didn’t respond right away, waiting until your lunch break finally arrived so you could ask Emily for advice. That meant that you would have to fill her in on some things she had no idea of and she definitely wouldn’t be happy about having been left in the dark, but you really had no other choice.

The two of you met up at your usual salad bar around the corner from the office building, a not only convenient but also very delicious place. She’d shown it to you back in the days of your internship and when you’d reconnected after you finally got the job after graduating it had somehow become your regular spot for a shared lunch.

She was the first to make it today, which was rather unusual since her boss liked to give her some last minute errands to run, but you weren’t going to complain about the steaming mug of coffee already waiting for you on the table at your arrival.

“Alright, start talking girl”, she said in lieu of a greeting while you settled into your seat, referencing the text you’d sent earlier about needing some advice. So you did, telling her everything about your relationship with Tito back in 2015 and how the two of you had mutually broken it off after he got drafted. How weird it had been to not only lose your boyfriend, but also best friend at the same time. By the time you reached the more recent part of your story, the one involving Mat in the club, your lunch had arrived and you had to take a quick break so you could actually get some eating done instead of talking.

“Shit I’m so sorry for interrupting your moment back then, I didn’t even realize you were talking to someone. But I also can’t believe I’m only now hearing of all this drama!”

You waved her off, already knowing full well that she hadn’t intended to do so. “That’s because there wasn’t any drama up until a week ago, but now I don’t know what to do. Would it be weird for me to grab a coffee with my ex?”

“Well.. if you say it like that…”, she trailed off jokingly, jabbing her fork in your direction before continuing, “I’m just kidding. You guys were friends before all of that happened so no, I don’t think it’d be weird. But it’s ultimately your decision, do you want him back in your life?”

“I think so, yeah.”

-

Meeting up for coffee had somehow turned into meeting for lunch and slowly but surely Tito managed to secure himself a spot in your favorite contacts again. Seeing him in daylight for the first time after all these years had been weird and it had been obvious that the two of you were very nervous about rekindling again but it didn’t take long until you fell back into your old routine.

Pre-relationship, of course.

He’d make flirty comments from time to time and complimented you often, but you knew not to dwell on it for too long because he’d always been that way. You knew his mother well enough to know that she would be pissed if it were otherwise, you’d heard her chide her son in French for his bad manners more times than you could count when the two of you were younger.

Since you’d mostly seen him one-on-one you didn’t have to deal with any of the complications that stemmed from him being a part of your life again but it seemed like your reprieve was coming to an end. You knew that Tito was just trying to be nice when he’d invited you and your friends to meet up with some of the team at a bar after their game, hopefully celebrating a win but definitely celebrating having the day off afterwards before having to leave for a short trip, but you were having mixed feelings about the entire thing.

It wasn’t like you didn’t want to go, in fact you could use a good night out and some fun, but you knew full well that Mat would be there as well and you had no idea how you were supposed to interact with him. You’d anticipated having to face him again of course, but if it were up to you you’d do it rather later than sooner, especially now since you were close with his best friend again. Tito was no help of course, you couldn’t exactly tell him that you were having unholy thoughts about one of his close friends.

Because that was the truth, Mat Barzal had been on your mind ever since that one faithful night which was now weeks ago. It was ridiculous really, how one guy had managed to infiltrate your thoughts from such a short interaction. He’d only really spoken one sentence to you before your plans and hopes for the night had been crushed and yet you kept seeing him in every guy with glasses that passed by you. Kept hearing him in every booming laugh. 

You should be ashamed of yourself, really, for how easily he’d managed to put you under his spell. Still your thoughts kept wandering back to that little bubble you had shared with him on that dance floor, still remembering how nothing else had mattered in that moment. It wasn’t just lust that had attracted you to him that faithful night, though it certainly played a part in it, but you could tell that there was something more, or at least a possibility of something more.

But you couldn’t have him, a fact that had become blatantly obvious during your time spent with Tito. You were sure that he was interested in you like that at all anymore, but you were also convinced that he still wouldn’t be a fan of you going after his friends. You didn’t want to drive a wedge between the two of them, especially having learnt how important Mat was to Tito since getting reacquainted, something that would be inevitable once the ‘Bro Code’ was violated.

You had to keep your mind, and your hands, away from Mat.

Which proved to be harder than one might think.

You’d donned your favorite overknee-boots for the night out, loving the height boost they gave you, and paired them with a plaid skirt and a cute top, adding a warm pea coat so you wouldn’t freeze too much in the cold winter air. You’d long mastered dancing the line between sexy and sophisticated and if you were being honest, you were quite proud of tonight’s look.

It hadn’t been hard to convince your closest friends to come out along with you, all of them excited for a night out with New York’s finest. Since the guys had a game to play however, the lot of you met up at your place beforehand so you could pre-game a little and save some money in turn. You’d put on the game for background noise and by the time the final buzzer sounded you were definitely also buzzed thanks to Emily and her dangerous ability of funneling alcohol down your throat. The uber ride was short thankfully, the car was pretty packed with the four of you after all and yet you had somehow managed to arrive at the bar Tito had texted you before the team.

“They probably got held up in interviews and stuff, should we get some drinks while we wait?” Your suggestion was apparently a very welcome one so Dana and you made your way over to the bar while the other two set on finding a booth where you could sit down. By the time you had everyone’s drinks they’d managed to secure a place towards the back and you were more than happy to slide in next to Emily.

You were the first one to spot Tito, getting up and excitedly waving him over. They all sported big happy grins, most likely due to the victory over the Leafs earlier. Letting your eyes wander over your group you noticed that Mat wasn’t with them but you didn’t dwell on it too much, instead focusing on congratulating Tito on his two goals. Introductions were quick and in your state of mind you’d forgotten half of the names already but that didn’t stop you from having a good time. 

The group of guys that had sat in the booth next to yours had recognized the hockey players and willingly cleared the table for them after congratulating on a great game and taking some pictures, which was a pretty nice bonus. Mat had apparently forgotten to bring a change of clothes and had to make a detour to his apartment so he wouldn’t have to come to a bar in his game day suit.

All this liquid had taken it’s toll on your bladder though so it didn’t take long until you got up to make a trip to the restroom, telling Emily to stay put when she made a move to come along with you. There would probably be no long line in a bar like this so you could do without company and you also didn’t want to interrupt her conversation with Tito, whom she was asking all kinds of questions about teenage you. Maybe you would regret that later on, Tito was more than willing to give her ammo to roast you for the next few years but right now you didn’t care, just happy that everyone got along so well.

Walking without swaying proved to be more difficult than anticipated, you’d somehow consumed more alcohol than you’d thought and you made a mental note to grab some water afterwards as you pushed through the doors. Once they were shut behind you the music wasn’t as loud anymore and for the first time tonight you could actually hear yourself think, not distracted by noises. Of course your thoughts wandered to Mat, and the reason for his absence tonight.

Were they telling the truth earlier or was he avoiding you?

Unfortunately, this was a question you couldn’t find an answer to and even if you did, there was nothing you could do about it. What you could do however, was get back outside to your friends and have a great time tonight. Without Mat. You checked your notifications on your phone while quietly singing along to the song blasting over the speakers as you made your way out of the restroom, not looking up as you walked.

And then collided with something solid.

With a gasp you quickly grasped on to whatever you could reach so you wouldn’t tumble over and the only reason you knew you hadn’t managed to run into a wall was because strong arms immediately wrapped around you to steady you. Walls didn’t have arms, that much you knew, even in your intoxicated state.

“We really have to stop meeting this way”, a familiar voice sounded above you and your eyes involuntarily snapped up to meet his. Just like last time everything else stopped mattering as soon as you looked up to him, wrapped safely in his arms with your hands splayed on his chest, your phone still clutched tightly in your left one. His gaze made your brain short-circuit so you really couldn’t be held accountable for your next actions.

“I don’t know, I kind of like it”, you hummed while brushing your free hand across his chest and up to his shoulder. You could feel the firmness of his muscles underneath the fabric of his shirt and how his heart picked up its pace at your actions. He pulled you in even tighter and readjusted the position of his hands on your back, one of them now caressing the thin sliver of exposed skin between your top and the skirt, the movement burning itself into your memory.

Your bubble burst when there was an uproar near the bar, a group of guys yelling at a re-run of some football game on the TV responsible for the intrusion. As soon as you realized what you were doing you awkwardly cleared your throat and stepped out of his embrace, his arms dropping from your body immediately. The spot where his hands had rested only seconds ago was now cold as ice in their absence, shivers running up your spine. All of a sudden you wished you had your coat with you so you could wrap yourself up in it, maybe even hide a little from the intense look in his eyes and the rest of the world as well.

Mat seemed to snap out of his spell as well, quickly looking around to check if anyone had seen the two of you with a panicked expression on his face but you were well hidden from your friends, who were sat around a corner. You couldn’t help but feel like a dirty little secret then, something that hurt more than you liked to admit, despite his actions probably being the right thing. If anyone had seen you right now you’d definitely have some explaining to do. So instead you focused on feeling anything but hurt to mask your true feelings.

“Ashamed of being seen with me, Barzal?”, you asked in a flat tone, deliberately choosing to address him with his last name so he knew that you weren’t exactly pleased with him right now. Your words caused the intended effect and he looked like you’d slapped him across the face.

“Don’t be like this, please. You have to know where I’m coming from”, he sighs with a desperate expression, taking a moment to himself to gather his thoughts before continuing, “I have a moment with this girl in a club, a girl that somehow manages to put me under her spell in less than five seconds, and then I have to find out she’s the infamous Y/N, the first love of my best friend.”

His admission left you speechless, unable to form any kind of response as you stared up at him, watching him run his hand through his hair. Oh how you wished you could do the same.

“I know all about you, you broke his heart back then”, he continued and you flinched, not having expected this of all things.

“That’s not fair and you know it. He was the one who left!”, you hadn’t even noticed you’d raised your voice until the group of people in the booth closest to you turned towards you so you took a deep breath before continuing, “I was the one who had to stay back and listen to everyone talking about him.”

“He talked about you as well, you know. When we met at World’s he told me one night how he knew that your relationship would be over soon and how much he missed you already. He knew you’d walk out of his life without looking back. And then you did exactly that.” You closed your eyes at his words, never having heard of the situation from Tito’s standpoint. It didn’t exactly help that it was coming from Mat as well.

“You have no idea how excited he was to finally see you again. I had to listen to him talk about asking you out to lunch for days.” He reached out to brush a strand of hair behind your ear that had fallen into your eyes but you hadn’t even noticed until now, too busy staring at the beautiful specimen of a man in front of you.

“It’s not like that. We’re just friends now.”

“I know, but you weren’t back then”, and with that he dropped his hand again. He smiled softly at you but it was obvious that it didn’t reach his eyes, his sad expression overpowering everything else.

Perhaps this was the universe’s way of saying that you couldn’t have two great guys in your life, that you’d missed out on your chance already. You couldn’t think of any other way to explain this cruel twist of faith otherwise. You wished you could go back to the club, but you didn’t know if you wanted to relive those few blissful moments before everything came crashing down or prevent yourself from stumbling into him altogether. The second option would certainly make everything easier.

But since time traveling wasn’t an option yet you were forced to stand in front of him, thoughts of what could have been running through your mind. Right now he was so close to you but there could’ve been kilometers between the two of you and it still wouldn’t have made a difference.

You knew that and you could tell that Mat did as well, the defeat clearly written on his face and telling you everything you needed to know. At least you weren’t the only one who suffered.

With one last look he moved past you and towards the restrooms, probably his destination all along until he’d run into you. Or more like until you’d run into him, literally. In a split second you decided that you didn’t want your interaction to end quite like this.

“Hey, Barzal?” You didn’t like calling him by his last name one bit and it definitely felt wrong, but perhaps it would allow you to keep the distance you desperately needed.

“Yeah?” You could’ve sworn that a glimmer of hope crossed his face as he turned back towards you but perhaps it was just the shitty light in the bar playing tricks on your mind. Or wishful thinking.

“Good game earlier. Two points is very impressive and I’m sure you made lots of people very proud tonight.”

“Thank you.” 

This time his smile was genuine.

Tagging: @itrocksmysocks​ @nazdaddy @teenagekook

#mat barzal #mat barzal x reader #mat barzal imagine #hockey rpf #nhl #new york islanders #hockey writing #nhl imagine #the clark kent effect #my writing

[hheeyyhay]

The Familiarity of New Memories

Pairing: Hitoshi Shinso x Reader (can pass as gender neutral if ya squint)

Summary: Old traditions make way for new ones as reader makes new friends with the help of a certain ball of fur. 

OR Shinso volunteers at a shelter with a grumpy old cat who just so happens to play matchmaker between himself and the newcomer to town.

A/N: Hope you guys enjoy my contribution to the Konoha Simps’ latest server collab!! You can check out all the other wonderful pieces in this event right here. This is the first piece of fan fiction that I have written since high school, and the first piece I have ever put out into the world for others to see. I cannot thank the members of the Konoha Simps Server enough for giving me the motivation and courage I needed to FINALLY do this-- I love you guys so much!! 

Warning(s): fluff, mentions of anxiety/depression

quirkless college AU

Word Count: ~3K

There was no doubt about it, summer was officially on the way out. You could tell by the way green leaves were giving way to crisp splotches of red, yellow, and orange. In the way the cool breeze kissed your cheeks as it danced by. Most importantly, you could tell by the way your workload for classes picked up.

You tried to take in your surroundings-- take a moment to process a quick hello to autumn, and with it a farewell to simpler times. Gone would be the times where your biggest worries were what kind of trouble you would have to convince the rest of your friends to stay out of in between shifts at the local cafe. Normally, this goodbye was easier to say as it leaned to the happier side of bittersweet. After all, back home fall was your favorite season. That was all in the past though.

In your hometown, your walks around the neighborhood at the start of fall were comforting. You could stroll the streets with a snack in one hand, and a warm drink in the other as you headed to meet up with your friends under the canopy of changing leaves at the park. With textbooks sprawled across picnic tables and blankets the support of your friends kept you all warm against the slowly dropping temperatures. However, it was no longer the streets of your hometown that you were strolling along with a backpack over your shoulders, and it was no longer your friends at your side, but strangers.

You shivered, pulling your thick cardigan closer around yourself with a heavy sigh. You had been so certain that moving hundreds of miles away from home to finish your college work was a good idea. You had told your anxious family and friends that you would be fine, being alone in a new place for a while was just a sacrifice you had to be willing to make in order to pursue your dreams. Yet you began to doubt the truth in your own claims as the usual cold autumn wind whipped your hair about. It felt foreign rather than welcome as it would back home. The chill sunk into your bones where it mixed with your new found loneliness causing you to wrap your arms around your middle.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” you thought to yourself pulling out your phone to see no new messages in response to all the ones you had sent out. You had known your friends for years and were lost without them. You sighed once more, shaking your head as you pocketed your phone. It had been the fifth time in an hour that you checked your phone knowing there were not any notifications you had already seen. You scolded yourself for being foolish and worrying that your friends had moved on without you. 

You had been distracted by the chatter of your own inner demons the entire rest of your walk, and it was not long before you were turning off the sidewalk onto the back walkway leading around to the front of the library.

You were headed inside to study on your own at the tables inside. It had become your new tradition after having found it too hard to study outside at any of the parks, where all the passerby would remind you of just how lonely you were here in this new town. As you rounded the corner and came up alongside the library you paused, noticing a lot more noise and chatter than usual. Balloons and signs amongst the visitors caught your eye. “Adoption day?”

You wandered closer to the tents that were set up in a corner of the parking lot. Upon closer inspection you realized that the people were gathering around various cages, crates, and pens filled with pets from the local shelter. There were as many different people there looking for new four legged family members to bring home as there were animals. Some children were leaning over a crate full of guinea pigs, others were picking out rabbits from one of the other pens, and still others were begging their parents for either a puppy or kitten. There were couples young and old alike speaking with the volunteers about which cat or dog was the best fit for them. You wished you could hang around a little longer, but there were so many people in such a small space that you could not help, but feel anxious. Turning away to finally walk inside you pulled out your phone once more to smile down at your lock screen; a photo of your cat from back home. 

Pocketing your phone you caught a glimpse of something familiar out of the corner of your eye. Following your line of sight as you walked away, you were surprised to recognize a boy from campus. If his wild purple hair and dark under eye bags were not enough to make him stand out from the crowd then his lanky limbs decked out in his unique dark, edgy style definitely was. You paused at the top of the staircase to the library and watched as he spun around to crouch in front of a cage. As he stood there squatting in front of the cage you realized that he was a volunteer from the shelter along with the others.

With one last final look over your shoulder you walked through the door, leaving the boy and all the homeless pets outside. As he disappeared from view at your departure, you caught a last glimpse of him pulling a rather forsaken cat out of the cage he had previously been standing in front of. Heading to your usual secluded table behind some less frequented bookshelves you tried to not think of the cat or the boy who held it in his arms. From what you had observed from your short visit to the Adoption Day Event, no one else had shown the poor old cat any sort of attention. The lump of fur was not only fluffy, but a bit on the large side, and while his coat was far from scraggly you could tell that he had only recently fallen on some sort of good fortune. He was missing a leg and both eyes, rendering him blind. It made you sad to think that the others were more than likely passing over the cat in favor of the other healthier, younger cats who would not have as many problems. As far as the boy, you could not even begin to guess why he seemed to be clouding up your thoughts. It was not like you had ever spoken to him before. 

Your thoughts were a jumbled mess and before you had known it you were throwing your pen down in frustration. “Ughhhh! This is useless! It has been two hours and I have barely put a dent into this chapter,” you dropped your head into your notebook as you slammed your textbook closed. 

“Maybe I would have been better off just studying at home afterall,” you thought to yourself as you packed up the rest of your belongings. 

You stopped at the circulation desk on your way to the exit to check out a book you had reserved on your previous trip in. “At least today wasn’t a total loss,” you thought to yourself as you gripped the book to your chest and headed for the door.

As you threw open the door and made your exit you were once again met with the chill of the outside air. It did not feel as cold as it had that morning though. You looked down at the book clutched to your chest and then back out across the parking lot. With a smile on your face and a new sense of determination that you had not felt since you had moved you found yourself walking across back to the makeshift shelter. The crowds from earlier had long since thinned only serving to further justify your impulsive decision. 

With a deep breath you had brought yourself up to one of the tables where the last few volunteers were congregated around the forlorn cat. Everything else was just about picked up and it was clear he had not been able to find a “furever” home at the event. The volunteers, mostly middle aged women with bright smiles, greeted you and asked if you wanted any information on the shelter they were from or if you were perhaps interested in volunteering yourself.

You explained that you had recently moved to the area to finish your schooling, but that you had been especially missing your cat from back home. You showed them a few pictures as you expressed interest in the cat lounging on the table and using his one good front paw to swat away anyone who tried to pet him.

A deep voice from behind you startled you out of your conversation, “You really want that mangey thing instead of a cute kitten?” 

You turned around and were met with the lanky boy from campus. You had been about to argue with him, stand up for your new feline friend when you noticed the boy was giving you a devilish smirk and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Shinso Hitoshi,” he extended his other hand to you, “I’ve uh--seen you around school a few times.”

You shook the offered hand and introduced yourself as well, “We have two classes together. I’d hope you’ve seen me around at least once or twice.” You tried to play it off cool as a blush crept up the back of your own neck. Your eyes searched each other up and down briefly and it took a lot of self control to not make an attempt to hide your face as you felt the blush grow across your cheeks as you watched Shinso’s own face begin to turn red. 

“Ahh, well, I’m fostering old Charlie here until he recovers more from his surgery,” Shinso made a show of gesturing to his own eyes and then to Charlie’s like it was some secret or he did not want to hurt the cat’s feelings. You could not help, but stifle a laugh. From the impressions you had of Shinso you had not expected him to be so forward, or funny for that matter. “Lucky for you, Charlie is quite picky and has scared away any potential suitors.”

Shinso reached around you and was able to give Charlie a few successful scratches under his chin. You reached forward too and copied Shinso’s movements. While Charlie was a little hesitant at first, he quickly warmed up to you and much to Shinso’s surprise, even let you pick him up and give him forehead kisses.

“Alright, well I guess you passed the test,” he congratulated you as he took Charlie from your arms and gently placed him into a carrier. “He has another week or so, until he’s ready to go to a new home. If you want you can fill out one of the adoption contact cards and then one of us at the shelter can give you a call when it’s time for him to get ready to go home to you?” Shinso turned away as he once again began rubbing the back of his neck as he started turning red again, “Orrrrr, I don’t know. Maybe you could give me your number and I could text you updates or something?”

The other volunteers had slowly begun to disperse during your interaction with Shinso, and the last older woman who was left chuckled a bit to herself as she passed you a clipboard with the adoption paperwork. “Just fill this out for me dear and then Charlie will be all yours pending his final follow up with the vet. Shinso can go ahead and answer any questions you may have.” She gave you a final pat on the shoulder as she wandered off to help the others finish cleaning up.

You quickly filled out the paperwork and handed it back to Shinso, your phone sitting on top of the clipboard unlocked and already opened to the messaging app so he could add his number, “Please don’t tell me you volunteer at the shelter just to use the poor animals as your wingmen.”

Shinso made quick work of adding his number to your contacts and made sure he had yours as well before adding the clipboard to a pile on the table. “Only when they help me get the courage to finally talk to a girl I’ve had my eye on since she first transferred a couple weeks ago.” His face was red and his eyes were downcast. You wondered if maybe your first impressions of him were true and that Charlie had inspired him to do something out of his comfort zone just like the cat had done for you.

You could not put your finger on it, but you once again found your thoughts swimming with the boy from campus. This time though you had a name and even a voice to put to the face. You were not ready to say goodbye and decided to stay to help Shinso and the other volunteers finish cleaning up. The sun was quickly setting at that point and as the darkness rolled in so did another bout of cool autumn wind. However, this time you hardly noticed it. It carried a clean, crisp scent of fall that felt the most familiar than it had since your move. 

You passed the time with idle chit chat, quickly becoming closer and closer to Shinso. You learned a lot about each other and came to realize you had a lot more in common than you would have ever thought. 

Pausing you closed your eyes and tilted your head back taking a few deep breaths. It had been ages since you felt this content. You were not alone, you were not worried about the many different reasons your friends could possibly have for not texting you back, and you were not worried about the fear of never finding somewhere to fit in within this new place. You walked over to where Shinso had Charlie’s carrier resting on the sidewalk leading towards the back of the library. Kneeling down you poked your fingers as far through the bars as you could manage, “Thanks Charlie. Without you, I really wouldn’t have any friends here and I don’t think I would be able to love the fall anymore. With you by my side maybe I’ll be able to remember being stuck in this new place will be worth it all in the end.” 

You had not realized that Shinso had come up behind you, and you bumped into him as you tried standing up. He gripped your elbow tightly as you regained your balance, “So you really are new around here huh? I thought so, but. Well. I don’t know.” Shinso shrugged his shoulders sheepishly as he let go of you and quickly gave you back your space. As he avoided your gaze and looked up at the setting sun you noticed just how dark the circles under his eyes really were. 

“Yeah. Uhm,” you shifted your weight back and forth nervously as you tugged at your own sleeves. “Thanks for helping me with the adoption stuff. I hope Charlie doesn’t give you too much of a hard time before he can come home.”

There was a tension in the air as you were both starting to get cold as the dark approached, but neither of you particularly wanted to be the first to leave. You tucked a strand of loose hair between your ear, using the action to hide your face a bit as you gnawed on your lip. Shinso mirrored your uneasy behavior, staying halfway turned away and pulling his fingers through the mop of purple hair on his head. Luckily, Charlie had woken up and given a pitiful meow that sounded more like a chirp. It was just the encouragement you both needed as you and Shinso were once again able to make eye contact.

“It’s getting pretty dark and looks like it may rain,” Shinso broke away and looked up at the sky momentarily. You could not help, but be mesmerized by the way the sunset played on his pale features, accentuating his jawline. You felt the blush making its presence known on your face once more and simply nodded. Charlie chirpped again as if he were trying to encourage Shinso to continue on before he blew his shot. “My place isn’t too far from here. We could head there and hangout with Charlie for a bit to wait out the rain, and then I could walk you home if you’d like?...”

You could tell Shinso was nervous to hear your answer as he began rubbing at the back of his neck. Grabbing his wrist to gently guide it back down you flashed him a genuine smile as it felt like a weight was being lifted from your shoulders. The moment was interrupted by Charlie who decided that was the perfect opportunity to make it known that it was past his dinner time. “Come on Shinso, we wouldn’t want to make old Charlie think we’re planning on starving him.”

Shinso laughed and bent down to grab the carrier. “Wait until he realizes he’s going on a d-i-e-t after he’s fully healed up,” he spelt out. Charlie made a noise from the back of his carrier like he understood what Shinso was saying and was not pleased about it, which only made you laugh that much harder.

You once again found yourself taking the rear pathway behind the library into town. This time was different though. You were no longer alone. You had two new friends you could confide in. The leaves dancing in the autumn breeze were once again a welcomed sight. The dropping temperatures no longer reached the innermost corners of your bones amplifying your loneliness. The ghosts of the memories of your friends were no longer haunting you everywhere you looked as you walked down the street. There was now someone special you could create new memories and cherish the autumn with.

#hitoshi shinsou #hitoshi shinso x reader #shinso #bnha shinsou #mha shinsou #bnha shinso x reader #bnha #bnha x reader #fan fiction #shinso x y/n #bnha imagines #mha imagines

[artificialqueens]

Level Up, Chapter Seven (Branjie) - Holtzmanns

“Mom, I’m not going on a date with your financial advisor.” Vanessa has to resist the urge to roll her eyes, knowing that her mom won’t hesitate to rip her a new one for it if she catches her.

“He’s young and tall and wears a suit.” Vanessa’s mom points the spatula in her hand in her direction. “Don’t you wanna date a suit?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s you that wants to date a suit.” Vanessa raises an eyebrow as she hops onto the counter, her legs dangling.

AN: New chapter time - thank you guys for being so patient and waiting for this one. Writing is going a bit slow for me these days, which means slower updates. To anyone who’s left a review on this story, hi I love you, thanks for being great and giving me even more motivation to write. Seeing people are actually reading and enjoying a fic because they say so is a good kick in the butt for any author’s muse. Let me know what you think of this chapter, too. As always, thank you writ for betaing <3

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not, he’s cute! And polite too, you know how much I like that.”

“Mom, I’m not going on a date with your financial advisor.” Vanessa has to resist the urge to roll her eyes, knowing that her mom won’t hesitate to rip her a new one for it if she catches her.

“He’s young and tall and wears a suit.” Vanessa’s mom points the spatula in her hand in her direction. “Don’t you wanna date a suit?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s you that wants to date a suit.” Vanessa raises an eyebrow as she hops onto the counter, her legs dangling.

Vanessa’s mom shrugs her shoulders. “Just tryna help you out, baby. You haven’t dated anyone in a while, have you? Who was the last one? That ugly looking-”

“No need to roast my exes.” Vanessa makes a face when her mom snickers.

Vanessa appreciates her mom’s intentions, but sometimes they’re a little off the mark. Or a lot off the mark, from the guys that she’s tried to set Vanessa up with lately.

It’s not as if Vanessa isn’t out to her mom. She is, or rather, has tried to be. Multiple times. The first time was in high school, when Vanessa had kissed her best friend and cried about it to her mom after her friend had started to avoid her, and her mom had told her that it was a phase that she’d grow out of. And then there was college, where Vanessa’s mom would meet her various girlfriends with brightly coloured hair and piercings and eclectic fashion senses, only to call them her close friends. It’s the difference in how Vanessa’s mom has treated her ex-boyfriends versus ex-girlfriends, paying way more attention to the boys even when they hadn’t been anything to write home about.

Vanessa’s tried. But it’s hard to make the point stick when her mom laughs off the idea of having a girlfriend, changing the subject a little too quickly. But hey, it’s better than her mom wanting to disown her. Vanessa will take it.

A knock on the door gets Vanessa out of her head and she hops off the counter to pull it open, as her mom sets the dishes on the table. The pastry box in Alexis’ hands makes Vanessa light up and she grabs it, bringing it to the table while Alexis follows her inside.

“Nice to see you, too, Vanj.” Alexis sits down across from her, sticking out her tongue.

Vanessa sticks hers out right back. “I saw you earlier today at our place, chill. Didn’t even have time to miss ya.”

Their mom, at the head of the table between them both, waves her hands. “Shh. Don’t ruin the family dinner ambiance.”

Alexis snickers. “As if we don’t get into at least two arguments every time we all have dinner together.”

The monthly dinners remind Vanessa of a simpler time when the three of them were always under one roof. Her mom would make an extra effort to get home from work on time, cook them something that they could all eat together rather than something for Alexis and Vanessa to reheat when they got home from school. It’s nice that no matter how old they get, the dinners have stayed the same. The dishes are the ones that Vanessa’s enjoyed since being a kid, ones that she’s tried to replicate in her own kitchen with little success. But at least she still gets to enjoy them now, as an adult, at her mom’s.

“Pass me the rice.” Alexis holds her hands out, wiggling her fingers, and Vanessa’s about to reach for the corningware before noticing the glinting on Alexis’ wrist.

“Where’s that bracelet from? Damn, Rob splurged. Good for him.” Vanessa has to admit, Rob doesn’t have bad taste. The bracelet on Alexis’ wrist is delicate, the stones on it sparkling under the light.

“It’s from dad.” The nonchalant tone of Alexis’ voice makes Vanessa’s fork clang harder on her plate than she intends it to.

She has to resist the urge to roll her eyes. “Really? He’s buying your love now? That’s what it’s come to?”

“Don’t be jealous that he’s buying me gifts and not you.” Alexis sniffs, before taking another sip of her drink. “At least I’m making an effort with him.”

“I’m not jeal-”

“Stubbornness doesn’t get you anywhere. He says he misses you, ‘cept you won’t give him the time of the day.” Alexis shrugs, and Vanessa can feel her hands balling into fists.

“‘Cause he doesn’t deserve it, that’s why.”

“Not that he’d want you around with that attitude anyway.” Alexis raises her eyebrows, and Vanessa’s seeing red, she really is, because fuck her sister-

Vanessa’s mom’s hand is up at her shoulders, blocking her from standing up before she can do so. “Don’t punch your sister.”

“I’m going.” Vanessa growls out, trying to scoot her chair back because she hates it, the smugness radiating off of Alexis for absolutely no reason. When she has nothing to be proud about.

“No you’re not. Sit down and eat your food.” Their mom looks tired as she takes a drink of her wine, nearly draining the glass.

Vanessa scowls. “How do you not care about this? Doesn’t it bother you?”

Because heaven knows, it bothers Vanessa. It doesn’t make sense, their dad wanting to connect now after not giving a shit for so long, and why is Alexis playing right into it? Why should their dad just get whatever he wants whenever it’s convenient for him?

Their mom sighs. “Because I am an adult, and so is Alexis. And so are you, if you’d mature a bit. It’s not a bad idea to give people second chances.”

“He’s not buying my affection back. Fuck that.” Vanessa crosses her arms. “How’d he even afford that bracelet, anyway? He’s never been the type to be financially stable.”

“If you’d ever talked with him, you’d know he’s turning his life around. He’s doing better.” Alexis’ smug tone is nauseating, enough to make Vanessa’s skin crawl.

It all sounds so fake, so put on. Like their dad’s trying hard to impress them and the fact that Alexis is buying into it? Pathetic, in Vanessa’s opinion.

She can do better. They all can. Not that Alexis seems to want to do so.

Vanessa’s brain feels like it’s floating inside of a dark cloud as she leaves her mother’s apartment with Alexis. The subway is only a few blocks away, but it feels so much longer to Vanessa while trying not to talk to her sister, as to not give her the satisfaction she wants. Because she knows Alexis thinks she’s in the right, and that she always is, as the older one. That Vanessa’s eventually going to give in and follow her advice.

Her phone buzzes as they wait at a busy intersection, and Vanessa almost misses the signal to cross when she sees the picture that pops up on her screen.

It’s a cat so fluffy that it’s reminiscent of a mountain lion, and Vanessa can’t help but squeal. Brooke’s mentioned her cats before but Vanessa’s never seen pictures of them, because she’d definitely remember such a sight.

The cat in the picture is stretched out on a couch, his paws up in the air as he sleeps. Vanessa hits the text notification that follows, trying to ignore the smile growing on her own face.

BLH: Henry’s as excited for our practice tomorrow as we are. His hands are already protecting his face.

VVM: WHY IS YOUR CAT SO CUTE

VVM: sorry no caps lock

VVM: but also yes caps lock

BLH: You should meet him and his brother sometime!

VVM: PLEASE

“Alexis? We should get a cat.” Vanessa nudges her sister as they descend the steps towards the subway.

Alexis rolls her eyes. “Oh, so you’re talking to me now?”

Vanessa doesn’t respond right away, in favour of looking at the second picture that pops up on her phone, the grey cat sleeping on Brooke’s coffee table. “Bet Rob would like one.”

“He already gets enough p-”

“Don’t complete that sentence, ew!” Vanessa pretends to dry heave as her sister cracks up, the ice that has been building up between them the entire evening breaking into pieces.

Vanessa knows Alexis and her will be fine because they always are, for how much they bicker. It would just be easier if neither of them were so stubborn. Not that Vanessa’s going to be the one to give in this time.

Brooke’s already in the gym when Vanessa pushes her way in the next morning, trying to hide the yawn behind her hand that betrays the fact that it’s 6:45 and the sun still hasn’t risen outside. Vanessa’s eyebrows push together when Brooke spins almost comically to face her, coffee in one hand and breakfast burrito in the other.

“Why are you so perky this morning?” Vanessa herself isn’t, that’s for sure. Not when she’s used to pressing snooze on her alarms until the last possible moment before she has to get up for work.

Brooke shrugs, though her energy is nervous, her foot tapping on the floor. “This is our first training session.”

“You’ve been training me for months.” Vanessa replies, raising an eyebrow as she does, and Brooke shrugs.

“Yeah, but this is the first actual session. I’m coaching you. Trying to get things into your brain.”

“You’ve done that plenty with your terrible singing. There’s no way I can get that belting out of my brain, ever.” Vanessa snickers, reaching out to pat Brooke’s shoulder as she pouts. “Kidding.”

“I’m a great singer. I got the gumption,” Brooke sniffs, “I can’t help it when Celine is on.”

“Is that why your workout playlist has so many ballads?”

Vanessa ducks out of the way when Brooke grumbles, reaching over to shove her shoulder. “Tell me why I should coach you again?”

“‘Cause I’m a delight, and you know it.” Vanessa grins, batting her eyelashes, and Brooke rolls her eyes.

“Go get changed, you delight. We have stuff to do.”

Vanessa pauses at the locker room doors once she’s in her workout clothes at the sight in front of her. There’s a mosaic of pages ripped out of notebooks scattered along the floor, interspersed with diagrams drawn on chart paper, all neatly arranged while Brooke sits in the middle.

“Wanna explain?” Vanessa’s not sure if Brooke hears her at first, from the way she’s furiously scribbling on the page in her lap, but then Brooke’s head comically bobs up as her fingers tap on her knee.

Brooke shifts in place. “Okay, so I didn’t exactly know where to start. I mean, I was thinking I could try and think back to how my dad used to coach me but that’s not a box worth opening right now, y’know? I mean I could, but repression is way more tempting. So then I was looking up coaching methods and what works for one person may not work for another, and then I started thinking about how I really didn’t know what style worked for you best and what would be the most effective way for us to collaborate and…” Brooke cuts herself off as she takes a breath, weakly pointing to the mess around her. “So we have this.”

Vanessa whistles, crouches down beside Brooke while trying not to rustle any of the papers. “There’s a lot to untangle here.”

“We can’t go wrong with being too prepared, right? At least we can try everything and then maybe one thing is going to work and I’ll actually be useful as a coach.” Brooke shrugs sheepishly.

“What are you out here talking about, useful as a coach? You’re plenty useful. Look at how much I’ve improved over the last few months.” Vanessa throws a look at Brooke, who for once, looks slightly self conscious, from the way she fiddles with her sleeves. “You’re telling me our practices together haven’t made a difference in my fighting skills?”

“Maybe a little,” Brooke admits, “but how do you know any of it was me? You’re taking classes at the same time, you’re building that muscle memory. That plays a big part.”

“And how would I build muscle memory if it wasn’t for our practices?” Brooke looks unconvinced, so Vanessa carries on. “Look. I ain’t asking you ‘cause I think you’re an Olympic champion boxer, or anything like that. I’m asking you ‘cause you know your shit and you can handle me in the gym and know how to get me to cool down. I need that.”

Vanessa thinks back to their last practice, when all Brooke had to do was hand Vanessa a granola bar to give her some sugar and Vanessa found herself able to focus, less frustrated during their drills. It’s almost like Brooke is learning the little parts of her that don’t necessarily come up in conversation, more so the ones that only become obvious when you truly pay attention.

She nudges Brooke’s side. “I don’t care if you haven’t coached before. I’ve never been a boxer before any of this shit. You think I know what I’m doing? I don’t care if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Okay, but I really, really, don’t know what I’m doing-”

Vanessa shrugs. “Well then, we make a good team. If we’re gonna do this blindly, at least we’ve got each other for the journey.”

Brooke gathers up some of the papers around her, holding them out in front of Vanessa. “We won’t be doing it completely blindly, though, I was thinking we could try out methods that are evidence based and see what works the best and what leads to carryover-”

“I don’t know why you’re bringing up some academic shit right now, in a gym of all places, but what we’re gonna do is try shit until something sticks.” Vanessa grabs the pile of papers in Brooke’s hands, smoothes them out.

Brooke snorts. “That’s basically what I said.”

“Be less boring about it, then.”

It’s enough to get Brooke smiling, though, reducing the nervous energy that is radiating off of her in waves. “Get your gear on. We’re going to get to work.”

“That’s more like it.”

And so it begins. Vanessa’s alarm clock is set an hour and a half earlier every morning, the sun rising in tandem with her body heat during her first workout of each day. Brooke doesn’t pull any punches with the conditioning routines that she drafts every morning - Vanessa had thought in the past that Kameron was bad with the cardio and strength outside of the ring, but Brooke’s making her feel like she’s a beginner again, from how much her muscles are complaining with every move she makes.

Take today, for example. The circuit that Brooke’s written out on her clipboard is torturous, positively torturous, and Vanessa knows that she has to get through it eight times, but she’s only on her third round and she’s already about to collapse, never to get up again. She wipes the sweat off of her forehead before resting her hands on her knees, bending over in half to try and catch her breath, before Brooke’s voice behind her rings like a bell.

“Mountain climbers, let’s go! No stopping.”

“Bitch, do you want me to die?” Vanessa pants out as she gets on all fours nonetheless, her arms shaking as she presses her palms into the ground.

“No. But what I don’t want is for your endurance to putter out during a match at the worst time. You’re gonna have to build it, and not only that, but learn to push through when it feels like you can’t.”

Maybe if Vanessa wasn’t currently dripping sweat onto the mats below her, her arms about to give out, then she’d be moved by the almost poetic words. But she’s too out of breath to care, especially when all she can focus on as she stands back up is the way her legs feel like jelly and her arms like anchors that are about to break off.

Brooke’s look is sympathetic as Vanessa rolls out her shoulders, preparing to do her set of burpees next. “It’s not always going to be this difficult. Your body is going to build and build and build that strength and endurance and soon, you’ll be able to do all of it without breaking a sweat.”

Vanessa has to pause as she crouches down to shoot Brooke a look. “See, I’d believe that, pants on fire, if you weren’t making the circuits longer and more intense every damn session. How’s it gonna get easier if you keep upping the difficulty?”

“You haven’t died yet, have you?” Brooke sips on her iced coffee almost languidly, not a hair out of place, and Vanessa has to hold back a grumble.

She’s going to kill Brooke one of these days, she really is, if Brooke doesn’t kill her with these workouts first.

But Vanessa does trust Brooke, and so keeps pushing herself, follows each routine as best as she can and not skipping reps if she can help it. Sure, she can’t move her muscles without pain, and Silky and A’keria look at her funny even though she swears that her waddling isn’t because she’s getting some good dick, she’s just working out, that’s all, but…it’s worth it. It has to be worth it, Vanessa isn’t going to allow herself to believe anything else. She’s pushing her body to the limit for a purpose, and that purpose is to kick some ass in a boxing ring and feel good about it.

That’s what Vanessa tells herself at least, as more and more of her hours not spent at work become dedicated to training, going for massages for her sore muscles, and watching old boxing matches instead of Netflix whenever Brooke gives her boxers to research. It doesn’t feel like it’s a drastic change because it’s still fun to Vanessa, pushing her in ways that she’s never expected.

A’keria gives Vanessa an apprehensive look, though, when she hides one too many yawns behind her palm one day at work. She’s not necessarily falling asleep as she does the client’s makeup, but her morning workout today had been more grueling than usual, and having to stand for hours on end at the moment isn’t doing her sore limbs any favours.

“Can I ask you something, Vanj?” A’keria’s eyes remain on the client in front of her, the comb in between her fingers expertly parting the woman’s hair.

Vanessa squints her eyes as she blends the shadows on her client’s crease, trying to get both eyes to match. “Yeah, what?”

“Why are you doing all of this? The boxing, the gym?” A’keria looks up at Vanessa, the motions of her hands stalled. “What’s the point?”

“Didn’t I tell you at the beginning? Alexis made me so I’d stop blowing up in her face.” It may be the short answer, Vanessa knows, but it works for now.

A’keria sighs, and her eyes are too knowing, too willing to look into Vanessa’s soul. “Sure, I get a couple of classes here and there. But you’re running yourself ragged.”

Vanessa scoffs. “Am not.”

Because she’s not. It’s just what she needs to do, and how’s she going to get anywhere if she doesn’t? The next tournament is coming up soon, and if she does well in this one at the higher level then hey, maybe she can compete even more regularly and maybe have a proper match and-

“Just promise me that you’re taking care of yourself. And I don’t want an empty promise of you just nodding your head and saying yes, Kiki, I will, I want an actual promise that you’re gonna put yourself first.” A’keria points her comb towards Vanessa and she feels like she’s five, being reprimanded by her kindergarten teacher.

“I am putting myself first. Have you seen my guns? That’s self love, baby.” Vanessa flexes her bicep, pretends to give it a kiss and it’s worth it when the client in front of Vanessa lets out a giggle, and even more so when A’keria rolls her eyes.

“Tell me why I still care about your stupid ass.”

Vanessa doesn’t miss a beat. “‘Cause you love me.”

“Somehow.” A’keria mutters, turning back towards her model. “But if you don’t take care of yourself while doing this boxing nonsense, I’m gonna have to whoop your ass.”

“Duly noted.” Vanessa snickers, and it’s enough for A’keria, whose frown lines smooth out between her eyebrows. “Didn’t know you were so worried ‘bout me.”

A’keria shoots her a look. “Why wouldn’t I be? You’re one of my best friends. And who else would listen to me griping about my man? You think Silky pays any attention to anything but Jerry Springer on the TV?”

“You’ve got a point there. So, update me,” Vanessa leans towards A’keria, a conspiratorial tone in her voice, “are y’all back together yet? Or are you still leaving him on read for exactly seventy two hours before texting him back? Which, by the way, makes no sense as a strategy.”

“It’s kept him for this long, hasn’t it?” A’keria shrugs her shoulders, a proud smile playing on her lips. “He always comes back. It’s like I have him on a rubber band that always snaps back into place. Never fails.”

“That makes no damn sense, and you know it. But men never do.”

Vanessa’s glad she’s not with a guy for now. She’s always found it so confusing, with the games and the signals that inevitably get crossed and the misunderstandings and it’s much easier, really, hearing about it secondhand from her friends.

Not that being interested in girls can be any better, from what she notices at their next practice before the next tournament. Vanessa had her session with Brooke in the morning and she’s back now hours later in the gym, a place that she feels like she never leaves anymore, curled up on a bench in the locker room and watching the scene that’s unfolding in front of her.

To any ordinary bystander, this scenario would be representative of any millennials - a girl swiping through Tinder with her friends providing commentary beside her. But what Vanessa really sees is Monique showing off the various pictures that pop up on her phone, while remaining completely oblivious to Monet sulking on the bench that is perpendicular to her. Sulking may be a stretch, but Vanessa can tell that the force with which Monet tugs on the zipper of her gym bag isn’t typical - it’s a sign that she’s unhappy with the situation.

“What about this girl? She put a quote from Shark Tale in her bio. And she lives on the east side. Imma swipe right.” Monique holds up her phone, and the brunette on her screen is cute, yes, but Monet’s shoulders slump a little and it becomes just a little bit harder to react in a blase way.

“Uh, yeah. Super cute. Love that.” Vanessa gives Monet a thumbs up, and she can feel Asia’s elbow in her side because of how unconvincing she is but hey, she’s trying.

She scoots down slightly on the bench, leans over to whisper. “What do you expect me to even say?”

“I dunno, but flashing a thumbs up ain’t gonna do the trick.” Asia mutters under her breath, jerking her head towards Monet, who’s begun to braid her hair with a scowl on her face.

Vanessa shrugs her shoulders, trying to keep her voice from exploding as much as it wants to. “So what the hell do we do?”

“What do you mean, what do we do? We don’t do anything because they’re adults, and they can sort it out themselves.” Asia’s look is pointed, one that Vanessa delicately chooses to ignore.

“We can’t do that. They’ll be miserable. Neither of them even realizes how much they like each other, and they’ll just keep doing this stupid dance.” Vanessa chances a glance towards Monique, who’s slowly lowering her phone back towards herself after Monet turns away with a curt nod. “This is ridiculous.”

Asia sighs. “You think they’re gonna hear a word we say? Hey, dumbasses, you both have a crush on your best friend, spoiler alert, it’s each other. They’re gonna tell us that we’re being silly and they’ll be in even more denial.”

Vanessa bites her lip, because the jealousy that’s radiating off of Monet is hard to miss, except apparently for Monique, who shuts off her phone and sighs as she stands up. “Ugh. You’re right. Doesn’t make this shit easier to watch.”

Vanessa keeps an eye on them throughout the class, nearly catching a jab in the face from Asia in the process. Monet and Monique seem to be back to their normal selves, bickering as they practice their drills but Vanessa doesn’t miss the lingering glance from Monet as Monique fills up her water bottle, or the way that Monique opens up her mouth to say something, eyes wide, as they finish an exercise before abruptly closing it. Vanessa feels like she’s watching a movie where she just wants to yell at the main characters to kiss already, except it’s two of her friends who should be together but are only now beginning to realize how much they like each other.

“Don’t do it.” Brooke’s holding back a smile at her desk when Vanessa falls into the chair across from her once the class is over, after regaling Brooke with Monique and Monet’s situation.

“Not doing anything. But I want to.” Vanessa slouches in her seat, resting her cheek on her palm. “Those two clowns are perfect for each other. Hell, I thought they were already together when I first started here.”

It’s not a lie. Vanessa remembers the way that Monique and Monet would always finish each other’s sentences, and be holding on to each other in some form or another. They still do, though Vanessa does notice more hesitancy lately in the way they reach out, more tentativeness in their words.

Brooke shakes her head, leaning forward on her desk. “You have to let them work it out themselves. Forcing something between them when neither of them seems fully ready is only going to lead to a mess.”

“You say that as if we’re all not already a mess.”

Brooke snorts. “True. You most of all.”

“Rude-”

“Kidding.”

“Good, you better be.” Vanessa sniffs, though she can’t keep a straight face for long, not when Brooke’s already holding back a laugh.

Brooke shrugs, thumbing through a pile of papers on the corner of her desk before pulling one from the stack, turning it towards Vanessa. The flyer for the upcoming tournament is a bit of an eyesore with the neon colours, but Vanessa tries to ignore the attempts at graphic design as Brooke points at the upcoming date. “Isn’t the tournament that you all signed up for coming up soon, anyway? It’s at least a three hour drive to get there. Maybe the two of them will talk it out during the ride.”

“Or they’ll ignore the huge elephant in the room and just pretend like absolutely nothing is going on.” Vanessa shrugs. “I feel like it could go either way.”

“Sooner or later, they’ll reach a point where they have no choice but to confront it. And when they do, they’ll see what’s been in front of them this whole time.” Brooke leans back in her own seat, and Vanessa can’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“That’s somehow the sappiest thing I’ve ever heard you say. Are you a secret romantic?”

Brooke makes a face. “Most definitely not. I’ll take a comedy over watching something like The Notebook any day.”

Vanessa’s mouth drops open. “You take that back. That’s my favourite movie!”

“The Notebook? Really? You can’t call me sappy if that’s your favourite. Do you cry every time you watch it, too?”

“Maybe?” Vanessa raises her hands in surrender. “I can’t help it! It just tugs on the heartstrings.”

“Why watch it if it just makes you sad?” Brooke has confusion written across her face, and Vanessa has to pause while she thinks of an answer.

“I dunno. It’s sad but it’s a good sad, y’know? The kind that makes you feel something ‘cause even if there’s loss they still had so much love, and those moments are the ones that make everything else worth going through.”

Vanessa can’t help the longing in her voice because as silly as it sounds, she wants something like that. Something worth fighting for. Maybe it’s cliche, maybe it’s the thoughts of a teenage Vanessa from all those years ago who’d watched the movie for the very first time, but she still wants that feeling.

But who knows. Teenage Vanessa had also wanted a perm back in the day, and that had been a mess that had taken years to grow out.

“You’re the secret romantic between the two of us.” Brooke tilts her head and Vanessa shrugs, because she can’t deny it, not really.

“Who said it was a secret? I got taste between the two of us.” Vanessa can’t help but snicker at Brooke’s mock offended face.

“Just for that, we’re starting half an hour earlier tomorrow for training.”

Vanessa though, is unperturbed. “Liar. You hate waking up early as it is. I know you too well.”

“Maybe.” But the way Brooke’s eyes are glimmering, the way she has a grin of her own, somehow makes Vanessa want to know her even more.

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #branjie #lesbian au #level up #holtzmanns

[badstoriesaboutgoodpeople]

Finally Mine Part 2

AN: So before you guys read this I want to apologize for how long it took me to write this. I lost motivation for a while (nothing new there lol) but today was a really productive day for me so I decided to just finish it. A few notes about this story: One, the timing of this whole series is a lil awkward because these are based off real games that happened this season, and while it technically could have happened with how the schedule worked this season we’re just going to pretend there was a few weeks between the Vancouver game and the home game. Two, this is kind of a really shitty thing to do to somebody’s ex and while it’s fun to write about I would never imagine doing this in real life. I really hope you guys enjoy this!!

Based off of this series of gifs, and a series of asks a lovely anonymous user sent me that I’ll make sure are tagged under finally mine so you can find them https://pyatts.tumblr.com/post/183739792171/mzibanejad-26319-nyicbj

Word Count: 2,182

Warnings: smut, filming sex (not full out, just short clips), threesome

Translations for the French: “Merde, tu es si belle come ça, mendiant pour moi,”= Shit, you look so good like that, begging for me

“Oh mon dieu, tu es si belle, j'ai regardé les vidéos encore.....”= Oh my god, you’re so hot, I watched the videos again...

Pierre had practically begged you to fly to Columbus to watch him play the Islanders, and after the night you spent together in Vancouver you couldn’t pass up the offer. PL once again insisted on paying for the flight and hotel. You made it into town the day before the game, the same day the Islanders arrived. Pierre had told you he was meeting up with Mat and Beau for dinner, they hadn’t properly hung out since they played together in 2015. You cringed at the thought of your ex eating with, well, whatever PL was to you, especially since PL knew how things ended between you. You made him promise not to bring it up, and keep his responses brief if Mat said anything. He promised, but he also promised to bring Beau home with him for dessert. You’d seen the video, PL sent it to you one night after you asked what the wildest thing he’d ever done was. You knew Beau had wanted something to happen between you, him, and Mat, especially after the incident in his back seat. However, Mat was never willing, claiming he was too possessive over you and couldn’t watch one of his teammates do that to you. Now that he was out of the picture, well, nothing was stopping you. PL had done it before and was willing to do it again. So, it was decided that you’d meet them at the hotel where the Islanders were staying after they got back from dinner, and PL would be in Beau’s room. You went to your own hotel, and ordered room service for dinner. Soon you received a text from PL, much earlier than you’d expected. 

“Hey, Mat really wants you back. Beau and I are trying to convince him not to but I think he’s going to text you and try to get you back. Please don’t respond to him, let me handle it when you get to the hotel.”

You typed out a hasty reply promising you’d ignore it. Soon enough, you heard the text tone you’d set for Mat go off. You didn’t even open the message, knowing it would make you angry, sad, or all of the above. You just patiently waited, eating the food you ordered, until Luc texted you again.

 “Hey baby, just ordered you an Uber to Beau’s hotel. Should be there in about five minutes. His room # is 214.”

You texted back a thumbs up, and went downstairs. Once you were in the Uber it was a short ride to the other hotel, and it wasn’t until you were in the elevator that you felt yourself growing nervous. You weren’t quite sure what to expect tonight, but the nervousness was quickly overshadowed by excitement. You walked down the hallway and quietly knocked on the door. Beau answered, and quickly wrapped you up in a big hug. You hadn’t seen him since you broke up with Mat, and you hadn’t realized how much you missed him until now. He ushered you in and said something to Luc in French, before having you sit down on the edge of the bed. PL walked over and placed a kiss on your forehead before sitting next to you. Beau did the same, and moved to whisper in your ear.

 “Dinner was good, but boy am I excited for dessert.”

 “I’ve wanted this for so long Anthony, ever since I saw that video.” You couldn’t help yourself, you wanted him to know that you were equally excited.

 “Seems like everyone’s eager, what are we waiting for?” asked PL and his hands moved to the hem of your t shirt before pulling it off your body. He slipped his hand into your back pocket and grabbed your phone. He handed it to you to unlock, and once you did he opened the message from Mat. He rested his hand on your thigh and took a photo, and sent that to Mat in response. The three of you ignored the buzzing noises it made when he set it down on the bedside table before moving to slide your jeans down. He and Beau discarded their shirts and pants, and soon enough you were completely naked in Luc’s lap, back to his chest, with him leaning against the headboard. Beau sat at the foot of the bed, watching what was happening in front of him. PL had his two middle fingers buried inside of you, and his other hand had moved up to stroke your hair, and eventually muffle your moans when you began to grow louder. 

“Shhhhh, Mat’s in the room next to us. Don’t want to make him angry do we?” You shook your head as much as you could with Luc’s hand pressed over your mouth. You tried to be quiet but you couldn’t hold back a loud groan as he made you come. He ordered you to turn around and face him. He grabbed his phone from where he’d put it, gave you a look as if to ask permission, and once you nodded your head he hit record. He kept your face out of frame, showing you from the shoulders down. He brought his free hand down to rub your clit gently, and you quietly moaned his name. It was partly for show, knowing he loved when you called him Luc. 

“Please daddy,” you whimpered, and you watched his cock twitch in response. He sent the video, captioning it “guess who?” and you saw Mat’s name show up on his phone screen soon after, you could only assume that’s who he sent it to. You didn’t want to think about him right now, so you stroked Luc a few times before lining your hips up and sinking down slowly. You both let out out breathy little noises, trying to stay quiet. You moved slowly at first, rocking your hips back and forth rather than moving up and down. Beau came to kneel beside PL’s legs, leaning over to place kisses on your neck and collar bone. He left small marks that would be covered by your jersey tomorrow night, sucking an especially dark bruise into the skin between your breasts. He kissed the tattoo on your shoulder, before turning your head to kiss your lips. He bit your bottom lip gently, but didn’t move to deepen the kiss when you let out a small gasp. He pulled away slowly and moved back to the foot of the bed, explaining he was content to wait his turn. Luc began to thrust upwards to meet your hips as they moved up and down, dragging you closer to the edge each time.

 “Fuck, I’m close, please Luc please,” you begged. 

“What did you call me?” PL whispered in your ear, accent bleeding into his words.

 “Please daddy,” you said, unable to form a coherent sentence. 

“Merde, tu es si belle come ça, mendiant pour moi,” said Pierre under his breath, the French meaning nothing to you but sounding nice nonetheless. You draped yourself across Luc’s chest, not trusting yourself to stay upright otherwise. This gave him the perfect opportunity to lift your chin and force to look into his eyes. 

“Come on, Y/N, come for me.” You weren’t sure if it was the look in his eyes, his husky voice, or the way he moved his hips, but he made you come so hard your mind went blank. You couldn’t think about anything except the waves of pleasure coursing through your body. Pierre brought his lips to yours to muffle the noise you made, and rocked his hips slowly as you came down. Your body felt like jello, and his voice sounded far away when he spoke up. 

“Let’s let Tito have a turn, eh?” You simply nodded your head, and PL lifted you out of his lap. You eventually ended up on all fours with Anthony behind you and Pierre still sitting against the head board. You leaned down to take Pierre’s dick into your mouth, focusing on the head before starting to bob your head slowly. You moaned around him when Anthony slowly slid into you, causing his hips to buck slightly. Anthony’s phone buzzed and he merely picked it up, and chuckled once he read the notification. 

“It’s a text from Mat. He said ‘can you keep it down over there? Some of us are trying to sleep.’” Pierre’s quiet laugh turned into a moan when you took him particularly deep. 

“What do you say we show Mat what he’s missing, hm sweetheart?” asked Anthony, and you pulled off Luc to nod. He took a video of himself slowly fucking into you, his other hand grabbing your ass and smacking it lightly. Another video showed Luc’s fingers threaded through your hair. You knew Mat would be able to see the tattoo on your shoulder, and you knew if he put two and two together he’d realize it was you. However, you couldn’t find it within yourself to be too upset about that. Soon enough Pierre choked out that he was close, and you swallowed him down as far as you could. He came down your throat with a groan, trying and failing to muffle it by biting down on his lower lip. Anthony wasn’t far behind him, and you felt him spill inside of you, filling you with his cum. He pulled out slowly, taking another video when his cum started to slowly drip down your inner thigh. You all stayed there for a minute before deciding to get up to shower. What began as cleaning you up turned into making out with Anthony while Pierre fingered you until you came again, moaning against Tito’s mouth. You slowly got dressed and made your way into the elevator and eventually into the Uber one of the boys had called for you. You eventually collapsed into the bed in your hotel room, quite frankly exhausted. You dawn you had notifications from Pierre, Tito, and Mat. You opened the one from Anthony first, a simple thank you and the offer to hang out once you were both back in New York. Then you skimmed through what Mat had sent you, not really bothering to read it properly. Finally you opened the videos Luc had sent you. You were greeted with the sight of him palming himself through his grey sweatpants. He said something in French that you couldn’t quite understand, but he sounded turned on to say the least. 

“Oh mon dieu, tu es si belle, j'ai regardé les vidéos encore.....” he hadn't sent anything else, except a black screen with the caption "you're going to be the death of me baby girl". You sent back a selfie, caption telling him you couldn't wait for the game tomorrow. You found yourself drifting off, scenes from earlier that night on repeat in your mind. The next day you didn't do anything interesting until heading to Nationwide for the game. You had your Dubois jersey on, and went down to the ice for warm ups. You thought nothing of it until the Islanders skated out and you locked eyes with Mat. If looks could kill, you'd be dead in a second. You could tell there was something he wanted to say to you but he couldn't exactly skate over to where you were standing and talk to you, so he had to settle for shooting you dirty looks. You were startled out of your thoughts when Pierre tapped his stick on the plexiglass next to you. Once he had your attention, he mouthed the words "You okay?" to you, a look of concern dancing across his face. You nodded, not wanting to let Mat spoil your evening. Your focus turned to the Blue Jackets for the rest of warmups. Once the game started you could tell Mat was angry, and Pierre was having none of it. Mat must have been mouthing off on his way to the bench, because seemingly out of nowhere Pierre took it upon himself to shove him, hard. This of course only served to annoy Mat further, and soon the two of them were tangled up, inches away from fighting. They were separated before punches could be thrown and sent to the box for roughing, but you'd be lying to yourself if you said you weren't turned on by the whole ordeal, and you didn't find the smug look on Luc's face on his way to the box oddly endearing. Columbus ended up shutting out the Islanders 4-0, and it felt like some small form of revenge watching Mat skate off the ice with a scowl on his face. You found yourself thinking bout the next time you'd be able to see Pierre on the Uber ride back to your hotel, already looking for the opportunity to spend time with him again. You could figure out the details later, talk like adults and define your relationship. For now, all that you wanted to do was stay up way too late talking to a boy you liked a little too much.

#pierre luc dubois #pld #anthony beauvillier #tito beauvillier #nhl imagines #nhl imagine #nhl smut #hockey imagines #hockey smut #finally mine

[jacobsiman-blog]

Yahoo Help Guide

Not with standing its undertakings to fix vulnerabilities, Yahoo's Mail customers continue posting hacking events ...

Yahoo Mail customers have been seeing their records broken into for a wide timespan. While Yahoo says it has completed at any rate two separate security openings instigating records getting seized, it shows up the issue pushes ahead. contact yahoo support

It's dull to what degree these ambushes have been proceeding for, paying little notification to we did from the most short Yahoo Helpline starting stage report Yahoo Mail customers were seeing their records exchanged off back close to the start of January. We're in a short timeframe period length in Spring, and irrefutably Yahoo paying little brain to everything has a true issue on its hands.

Vindicating how we are starting at beginning late getting reports from express Yahoo customers about their records getting hacked, notwithstanding we are seeing spikes in striking time gridlock from Google to our past stories. We see these snaps address a move in customers understanding their inboxes have been seized in the wake of programming engineers pass on an epic level of messages from starting late undermined accounts.

Ambushes commonly comprise of Yahoo customers bearing an email from a companion or accomplice (and, considering, a general dull social affair) containing an understanding that at whatever point tapped on, comprehends the record being seized. Some express their comprehended records send messages to pick individuals, others report they get sent to the aggregate of their contacts, and one even saw that they went out to "anyone I had ever gotten what's enduringly settled a relationship with.

We asked the customers who related with us in case they got such an email and tapped on the association. Reports were mixed: some said they got an email and tapped the association, some said they got the email yet didn't snap, and others said they never got such an email.

Among those that tapped on a relationship, notwithstanding, there was at any rate one point of view that starting late seems to perceive: the aggressors have clearly been referencing a non-existent MSNBC news report in the email. The bit.ly URL that is obliged (we're not accomplice it here for clear reasons) combines a fake MSNBC page that purportedly gets your Yahoo Mail account quickly if you are wandered in.Contact yahoo support

At any rate many interest they never got such an email or snap on such an intrigue: their records were on an essential level got away from no spot. These individuals for the most part found a couple of structures concerning the event from contacts who got rot messages from them.

Coming up next are three decisions from what Yahoo customers have been setting us up concerning these ambushes. The standard beginnings from a Yahoo customer who is really an indisputably supervisor comprehension:

We were hacked close to the completion of January. They spammed everyone in the "contact" facilitator and butchered all the contacts. We from a general perspective had another yahoo account hacked yesterday. Pardoning the way that it spammed the entire "contact" facilitator, paying little heed to we can't pass on messages or access our "puzzle question" to change the issue verbalization.

There was a cost free number to call and when we did so we exchanged words with people who talked poor English, and they referenced a one time charge of $100 for help with the issue. Unequivocally when we declined they hung up on us. We called the number twice, the huge event when we exchanged words with a woman and the second time we called we conversed with a man. The on different occasions we called when we exonerated the bit of $100 we were hung up on.

Most would concur that this number being proposed doesn't have a spot with Yahoo. These are swindlers endeavoring to get a piece pack taking into account a record they have undermined.

Another story begins from a Yahoo customer who needs to simply be known as someone in yahoo support

Considering, my yahoo account is a fake record. Hooray has my space for another email address and I never send/get using the yahoo email address. That is the explanation I feel so sure that the hack expected to have been on the yahoo-side. In like manner, the spam that went out was to people who had sent messages to my enabled space name – not the yahoo account (paying little caution to the way that the message they got was FROM my yahoo account).contact-yahoo-support.

so whatever the hack was, they had the choice to interface the phony yahoo record to the kept up space account. I know this since express recipients were people that were not in my general zone book and wouldn't have even idea concerning the yahoo record to ever have sent anything to the yahoo account. Their single alliance was messages in the space busy with box. Other clarification I see that it's not fixed (and not just me) is that the spam channel for this record (my work email) found an okay pace yahoo spams like mine simultaneously. They were – like the condition in mine-from people who no shortcoming had an email from me in their in encase offering little appreciation to how I wasn't their zone book.

This is one of various records we have seen that show those behind these ambushes are using held records to vivaciously spam others. This is one motivation driving why this fight is advancing and doesn't show up comparably as it will dial down at whatever point sooner rather than later. The best framework to Contact yahoo supportHttps://mckarma.com/contact-yahoo-support/.

A Canadian in like manner had a comparative story to tell:

My yahoo.ca email account was undermined the earlier night and a comparable spam email, something to do with working at home for bewildering money, was sent to the whole of my contacts. Fortunately the record list that was added to this email address was multi year old (it has now been tended to) and a monstrous zone of the messages returned as undeliverable. I other than got a comparable spam message seven days sooner from a companion who sent it from her yahoo.ca account.

My Yahoo email account was set up during pre-BlackBerry days to recoup messages remotely from other mail servers and is on a key level used nowadays to follow degrees of progress from e-retailers and to get notice of updates from programming providers and clear unessential stars who require their clients to pick to find a standard pace. It has been related idly to phones for by a wide edge a gigantic bit of 10 years and I set apart on yesterday to pound the old contact list and to change puzzle express staggering for unequivocal years. As the record is been completely spamless and requires no affiliation effort in any capacity utilizing any techniques, I will continue using it as an electronic letter box.

For reference, here's the timetable of events up until today:

On January 7, a lone fashioner by the name of Shahin Ramezany moved a video to YouTube referencing that the best way control direct course of action a Yahoo account by using a DOM-based cross-site scripting (XSS) shortcoming exploitable in each and every epic program. That day, Yahoo came back to TNW with two clarifications, first saying it was seeing what's additionally supporting it fixed the distortion.

On January 8, controllers from Revoking Security let TNW study that they had discovered that the shortcoming is starting in the for the most part progressing past present, showing a workaround indicating they can at present undertaking the mutilation being proposed.

On January 11, Yahoo gave a third explanation to TNW: "The cross-site scripting shortcoming that we saw on Friday was fixed that day. We can request that we've finally fixed the nonattendance of security on all combinations of the site." Contact yahoo support

On January 28 and January 30, two Yahoo customers came to TNW to communicate their record was undermined by systems for what they saw was a comparable way that was delineated in our past articles.

On January 31, we found a story concerning a known mutilation in the SWF Uploader part of Yahoo's modeler blog as raised by Bitdefender Labs. Yippee says it fixed this imperfection and proposed impacted customers change their passwords.we are yahoo partner with client care.

On February 25, February 27, Walk 1, and Walk 4 we got more messages from Yahoo customers saying their records had been undermined.

We appeared at Yahoo about this issue at any rate the course of action everything contemplated turned its past position. "The XSS absconds offered an explanation to Yahoo! have been fixed and we keep on agreeably look at reports of any email accounts exhibiting atypical lead," a Yahoo delegate told TNW. "We're made on guaranteeing our customers and their data. We truly request that our customers change their passwords every once in a while and to use uncommon, alphanumeric passwords for each online webpage page they visit."

Yahoo is the third most clear email provider after Microsoft and Google. Regardless of whether the imperfections haven't been fixed properly or if these are new curves, it's in a general sense denied for Yahoo Mail customers to have their records commandeered so reasonably and for Yahoo to remain yielded for so long. The affiliation needs to accomplish more. a minor piece at a time going to Contact yahoo support

See other than – Yahoo Mail customers clearly given HTTPS security decision after weight from insistence advocates.

[orbemnews]

Victims of the spa shootings highlight the vulnerability of working-class Asian women as more Asian Americans get attacked “This one fact alone highlights the vulnerability, the invisibility, and the isolation of working-class Asian women in our country,” Nguyen said at a Thursday news conference. “When they go missing, or when they die, the loss of their lives will not incite the same kind of rage. And they won’t even be treated with the same humanity,” she said. “And in this case, they’ve been characterized as a problem that needed to be eliminated.” Authorities have not yet confirmed a motive for the shootings at three Atlanta-area spas, which killed eight people — including six Asian women. A suspect is in custody. Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Charles Hampton Jr. said Wednesday the suspect, Robert Aaron Long, frequented the two Atlanta spas and bought the gun used in the shooting the day of the incident. President Joe Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff Thursday to honor the victims. Biden also plans to visit Atlanta on Friday to meet with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, as well as Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders, according to Georgia State Rep. Bee Nguyen. Among the issues they will bring up is the concern that the shootings be “taken seriously” and seriously considered as a hate crime against Asians and not dismissed as the suspect having a “bad day,” Nguyen said. Shootings part of hostility toward Asian Americans Across the US, Asian Americans are riddled with fear as unprovoked attacks against them intensify. Anti-Asian hate crimes have more than doubled during the pandemic, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. The violence has surged amid racist rhetoric during the coronavirus pandemic — some popularized by ex-President Donald Trump. Many Asian Americans have been subjected to vitriol about the “China virus” or the “kung flu” — even those who have never been to Asia. Asian American communities are on edge after Tuesday’s deadly shootings. “I feel like that just took it to a whole other extreme,” said Hanna Kim, a teacher from Novi, Michigan. Nguyen said as a public official, whenever anyone disagrees with her opinion or policies, the first thing they do is criticize the country her parents came from and, second, her gender. “I have experienced a lot of targeted misogyny, targeted xenophobia, messages of going back to your own country, even though I was born here, raised here, I’ve lived in Georgia almost my entire life. It is very real,” Nguyen said. Actress Lucy Liu told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday that she believes race relations will get worse before they can get better. “I think culturally, we are not a people that speak out and talk about being victims and I think that’s something that we learn” from previous generations, Liu said. Bottoms told CNN that nowadays “there seems to be permission now to be hateful.” She’s spent the past days reaching out to members of the Asian community in Atlanta “to make sure we have all of the information we need to make sure that our communities are protected,” adding the dialogue will continue. “There seems to be a permission that I’ve not seen, at least in my lifetime,” Bottoms said. “It does predate Donald Trump, but he certainly has given permission and done his part to elevate the hatred.” Kim, a 24-year-old Korean American, said she often feels like she has a target on her back. Last year, she said a parent wanted to remove one of her students from her second-grade class because Kim was Asian. “Are people going to say things to me?” Kim said she often asks herself. “Are people going to avoid me because they think that for some reason I’m going to be the one that’s spreading the virus?” Yet despite outrage over the shootings, attacks against Asian Americans continue. An Asian man and woman were assaulted Wednesday by the same suspect in separate attacks, San Francisco police said. Investigators are trying to determine whether bias was a motivating factor in the attack. “While we’re relieved the suspect was quickly apprehended, we’re certainly not at peace as this attack still points to an escalating threat many in the Asian American community feel today,” said Margaret Huang, president and CEO of Southern Poverty Law Center. What we know about the victims Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, of Acworth; Paul Andre Michels, 54, of Atlanta; Xiaojie Tan, 49, of Kennesaw; and Daoyou Feng, 44, were all fatally shot at Youngs Asian Massage in Cherokee County. Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, of Acworth, was also shot at the spa but survived. Three more victims were found dead at Gold Massage Spa in Atlanta, and another victim was found dead across the street at the Aroma Therapy Spa. The names of those four victims have not yet been released by authorities. Three of the victims were 52, 75 and 64 years of age, according to birth years listed in an Atlanta police incident report. “We need to make sure we have a true verification of their identities and that we make the proper next of kin notification,” Hampton said Wednesday. What we know about the suspect Long, 21, faces eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault. Long was on his way to Florida, possibly to take the lives of more victims, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said, citing investigators. The suspect told police he believed he had a sex addiction and that he saw the spas as “a temptation … that he wanted to eliminate,” Cherokee County sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker said. But Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant said it is still too early to know a motive. It’s not clear whether any of the three businesses offered sexual services in addition to massages. But authorities have given no indication the three businesses were operating illegally. Capt. Jay Baker on Tuesday said Long “was pretty much fed up and had been kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.” Baker is no longer the spokesperson for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office’s case investigating the spa shooting, the Sheriff’s Office confirmed to CNN. CNN has reached out to Baker for comment. Sheriff Frank Reynolds said in a statement Thursday he has known and worked with Baker for many years and his comments “were not intended disrespect any of the victims, the gravity of this tragedy or express empathy or sympathy for the suspect.” How the attacks unfolded Shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday, deputies were called to Youngs Asian Massage between the Georgia cities of Woodstock and Acworth after reports of a shooting, Cherokee County sheriff’s officials said. That shooting left four people — two Asian and two White — dead and one person injured, Baker said. About an hour later and 30 miles away, Atlanta police responded to the Gold Massage Spa on Piedmont Road in Atlanta. Police said they found three people dead. While there, police received another call of shots fired across the street at the Aroma Therapy Spa, where they found one person dead, Bryant said. The names of those four victims have not yet been released by authorities. Investigators found surveillance video of a suspect near the Cherokee County scene and published images on social media. Long’s family saw the images, contacted authorities and helped identify him, Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds said Wednesday. “(The family members) are very distraught, and they were very helpful in this apprehension,” Reynolds said. ‘It would be appropriate’ if the suspect was charged with a hate crime, mayor says Long has claimed responsibility for the shootings at the spas, the Cherokee County sheriff’s office said. He is facing four counts of murder and a charge of aggravated assault, according to the county sheriff’s office. He also has been charged with more four counts of murder, Atlanta Police Department said. A law enforcement source told CNN that Long was recently kicked out of the house by his family due to his sexual addiction, which, the source said, included frequently spending hours watching pornography online. Bottoms, the Atlanta mayor, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday she thinks the shootings were a hate crime. “It looked like a hate crime to me,” she said. “This was targeted at Asian spas. Six of the women who were killed were Asian so it’s difficult to see it as anything but that.” “Sex” is a hate crime category under Georgia’s new law. If Long was targeting women out of hatred for them or scapegoating them for his own problems, it could potentially be a hate crime. The shootings don’t have to be racially motivated to constitute a hate crime in Georgia. Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace released a statement Thursday saying “we are acutely aware of the feelings of terror being experienced in the Asian-American community.” “We hear your concerns and want it to be known that these victims will receive the very best efforts of this office,” Wallace said. “We anticipate beginning to meet with the impacted families in the near future, and earn their trust, as we continue to develop our case against the defendant.” Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Xiaojie Tan’s last name based on information provided by the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office. CNN’s Amanda Watts, Stephen Collinson, Audrey Ash, Casey Tolan, Nicquel Ellis, Nicole Chavez, Artemis Moshtaghian, Raja Razek, Jamiel Lynch and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report. Source link Orbem News #Americans #Asian #AsiansintheUSsuffermoreattacksasdeadlyshootingshighlightthevulnerabilityofworking-classAsianAmericans-CNN #attacked #Highlight #shootings #Spa #us #Victims #Vulnerability #Women #workingclass

[dipulb3]

Victims of the spa shootings highlight the vulnerability of working-class Asian women as more Asian Americans get attacked

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/victims-of-the-spa-shootings-highlight-the-vulnerability-of-working-class-asian-women-as-more-asian-americans-get-attacked/

Victims of the spa shootings highlight the vulnerability of working-class Asian women as more Asian Americans get attacked

“This one fact alone highlights the vulnerability, the invisibility, and the isolation of working-class Asian women in our country,” Nguyen said at a Thursday news conference.

“When they go missing, or when they die, the loss of their lives will not incite the same kind of rage. And they won’t even be treated with the same humanity,” she said.

“And in this case, they’ve been characterized as a problem that needed to be eliminated.”

Authorities have not yet confirmed a motive for the shootings at three Atlanta-area spas, which killed eight people — including six Asian women. A suspect is in custody.

Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Charles Hampton Jr. said Wednesday the suspect, Robert Aaron Long, frequented the two Atlanta spas and bought the gun used in the shooting the day of the incident.

President Joe Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff Thursday to honor the victims. Biden also plans to visit Atlanta on Friday to meet with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, as well as Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders, according to Georgia State Rep. Bee Nguyen.

Among the issues they will bring up is the concern that the shootings be “taken seriously” and seriously considered as a hate crime against Asians and not dismissed as the suspect having a “bad day,” Nguyen said.

Shootings part of hostility toward Asian Americans

Across the US, Asian Americans are riddled with fear as unprovoked attacks against them intensify.

Anti-Asian hate crimes have more than doubled during the pandemic, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

The violence has surged amid racist rhetoric during the coronavirus pandemic — some popularized by ex-President Donald Trump. Many Asian Americans have been subjected to vitriol about the “China virus” or the “kung flu” — even those who have never been to Asia.

Asian American communities are on edge after Tuesday’s deadly shootings.

“I feel like that just took it to a whole other extreme,” said Hanna Kim, a teacher from Novi, Michigan.

Nguyen said as a public official, whenever anyone disagrees with her opinion or policies, the first thing they do is criticize the country her parents came from and, second, her gender.

“I have experienced a lot of targeted misogyny, targeted xenophobia, messages of going back to your own country, even though I was born here, raised here, I’ve lived in Georgia almost my entire life. It is very real,” Nguyen said.

Actress Lucy Liu told Appradab’s Erin Burnett on Thursday that she believes race relations will get worse before they can get better.

“I think culturally, we are not a people that speak out and talk about being victims and I think that’s something that we learn” from previous generations, Liu said.

Bottoms told Appradab that nowadays “there seems to be permission now to be hateful.” She’s spent the past days reaching out to members of the Asian community in Atlanta “to make sure we have all of the information we need to make sure that our communities are protected,” adding the dialogue will continue.

“There seems to be a permission that I’ve not seen, at least in my lifetime,” Bottoms said. “It does predate Donald Trump, but he certainly has given permission and done his part to elevate the hatred.”

Kim, a 24-year-old Korean American, said she often feels like she has a target on her back. Last year, she said a parent wanted to remove one of her students from her second-grade class because Kim was Asian.

“Are people going to say things to me?” Kim said she often asks herself. “Are people going to avoid me because they think that for some reason I’m going to be the one that’s spreading the virus?”

Yet despite outrage over the shootings, attacks against Asian Americans continue.

An Asian man and woman were assaulted Wednesday by the same suspect in separate attacks, San Francisco police said. Investigators are trying to determine whether bias was a motivating factor in the attack.

“While we’re relieved the suspect was quickly apprehended, we’re certainly not at peace as this attack still points to an escalating threat many in the Asian American community feel today,” said Margaret Huang, president and CEO of Southern Poverty Law Center.

What we know about the victims

Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, of Acworth; Paul Andre Michels, 54, of Atlanta; Xiaojie Tan, 49, of Kennesaw; and Daoyou Feng, 44, were all fatally shot at Youngs Asian Massage in Cherokee County.

Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, of Acworth, was also shot at the spa but survived.

Three more victims were found dead at Gold Massage Spa in Atlanta, and another victim was found dead across the street at the Aroma Therapy Spa.

The names of those four victims have not yet been released by authorities.

Three of the victims were 52, 75 and 64 years of age, according to birth years listed in an Atlanta police incident report.

“We need to make sure we have a true verification of their identities and that we make the proper next of kin notification,” Hampton said Wednesday.

What we know about the suspect

Long, 21, faces eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault.

Long was on his way to Florida, possibly to take the lives of more victims, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said, citing investigators.

The suspect told police he believed he had a sex addiction and that he saw the spas as “a temptation … that he wanted to eliminate,” Cherokee County sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker said.

But Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant said it is still too early to know a motive.

It’s not clear whether any of the three businesses offered sexual services in addition to massages. But authorities have given no indication the three businesses were operating illegally.

Capt. Jay Baker on Tuesday said Long “was pretty much fed up and had been kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.”

Baker is no longer the spokesperson for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office’s case investigating the spa shooting, the Sheriff’s Office confirmed to Appradab.

Appradab has reached out to Baker for comment.

Sheriff Frank Reynolds said in a statement Thursday he has known and worked with Baker for many years and his comments “were not intended disrespect any of the victims, the gravity of this tragedy or express empathy or sympathy for the suspect.”

How the attacks unfolded

Shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday, deputies were called to Youngs Asian Massage between the Georgia cities of Woodstock and Acworth after reports of a shooting, Cherokee County sheriff’s officials said.

That shooting left four people — two Asian and two White — dead and one person injured, Baker said.

About an hour later and 30 miles away, Atlanta police responded to the Gold Massage Spa on Piedmont Road in Atlanta. Police said they found three people dead.

While there, police received another call of shots fired across the street at the Aroma Therapy Spa, where they found one person dead, Bryant said.

The names of those four victims have not yet been released by authorities.

Investigators found surveillance video of a suspect near the Cherokee County scene and published images on social media.

Long’s family saw the images, contacted authorities and helped identify him, Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds said Wednesday.

“(The family members) are very distraught, and they were very helpful in this apprehension,” Reynolds said.

‘It would be appropriate’ if the suspect was charged with a hate crime, mayor says

Long has claimed responsibility for the shootings at the spas, the Cherokee County sheriff’s office said.

He is facing four counts of murder and a charge of aggravated assault, according to the county sheriff’s office. He also has been charged with more four counts of murder, Atlanta Police Department said.

A law enforcement source told Appradab that Long was recently kicked out of the house by his family due to his sexual addiction, which, the source said, included frequently spending hours watching pornography online.

Bottoms, the Atlanta mayor, told Appradab’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday she thinks the shootings were a hate crime.

“It looked like a hate crime to me,” she said. “This was targeted at Asian spas. Six of the women who were killed were Asian so it’s difficult to see it as anything but that.”

“Sex” is a hate crime category under Georgia’s new law. If Long was targeting women out of hatred for them or scapegoating them for his own problems, it could potentially be a hate crime.

The shootings don’t have to be racially motivated to constitute a hate crime in Georgia.

Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace released a statement Thursday saying “we are acutely aware of the feelings of terror being experienced in the Asian-American community.”

“We hear your concerns and want it to be known that these victims will receive the very best efforts of this office,” Wallace said. “We anticipate beginning to meet with the impacted families in the near future, and earn their trust, as we continue to develop our case against the defendant.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Xiaojie Tan’s last name based on information provided by the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office.

Appradab’s Amanda Watts, Stephen Collinson, Audrey Ash, Casey Tolan, Nicquel Ellis, Nicole Chavez, Artemis Moshtaghian, Raja Razek, Jamiel Lynch and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

[quarantingz]

on podcasts and being okay for now.

17 april from approx. 8:30 to 8:55 am. 

Today started out fine. I woke up to the tune of my Sleep Cycle app alarm, checked my time asleep versus my time in bed. 5h 40m for the former and 7h 51m for the latter. If I had seen this last week I would’ve beat myself up internally for still not reaching my time asleep goal of a full 8 hours. Today, though, I choose to be okay with it for now.

As I took Archie out for our morning walks (I would say daily but I’d rather not get us both wet if it’s a rainy day, and this has been a particularly rainy week), various thoughts swarmed my mind. Some were simply observations of what’s occurring in the present and others not so. Like the adjustments I have to make (to be honest, quite dreadfully) for this project I’m working on, why my neighbours are up so early and communing loudly in their garage (which is quite nice now that I think about it), flashbacks of sweet memories or what to say to this person I purposefully didn’t reply to yesterday because I started overthinking what to text back.

Then I remembered Alyssa’s latest post and what I said to her in reply, that every day is essentially a battle between our two selves — the rational (kind and loving) versus irrational (the one who constantly tells you you’re not doing enough and therefore you’re not good enough). I even told her this battle may well occur hourly or minutely which personally is evident in my thought spirals. I used to surprise myself whenever I’d openly tell people that I often have these but now that I think I’ve reached the point where I could tell anyone anything (or more like my closest friends at least), I seem to thrive off of open [brutally honest] conversations nowadays. I think hearing about other people’s experiences and thoughts makes us realise that we’re all inherently the same. No one is born better than someone on something. Unless they practice. Like meditation for example. I used to tell everyone that I’m bad at meditation. Now I’m giving myself permission to again, be okay for now. I heard this line from an episode of Tim Ferris’s podcast titled something along the lines of ‘Having peace amongst COVID-19’ but having listened to the full 2 hours, it delved deep into so much more. I wrote down notes from it while doing work at the same time and the inner critic in me would say this is bad. It’s multitasking. However the loving and kind person in me whispers in my ear, if it’s working for you just let it be. Right now I’m sitting thinking this pretty much applies to everything in life. So long as that thing is good and not like metamphetamine or something.

The Genius Life’s most recent episode (shoutout to Cullz for introducing me to this awesome podcast) talked about how focus is a verb and therefore it is a choice. We don’t just wake up with focus or motivation. It’s something we have to, I would say channel but I don’t think that’s the right term, but I guess activate? Which is another verb. We have to actively choose to do something over another and do it well. For me that’s been work-related work and if I’m being honest I only get about 3 hours of deep work if we want to call it that and it’s usually between 9 and 11 am, given that I’ve put my phone on airplane mode. Without which there would often be this unwelcome stimulus in my brain — my amygdala, caused by messages and notifications. These rewards that keep me wanting more whether that’s validation, attention or the mere fact of my existence being acknowledged. I don’t know where exactly I’m going with this but I will try and link it back to the random thoughts that seemed to link (in my head at least) earlier at the park.

All the principles I’ve learned from self-help books, podcasts and TED Talks on  YouTube can sometimes be paradoxical. They preach self-discipline, productivity and working hard, but also accepting things as they are, being kind to yourself and allowing yourself to make mistakes. Knowing this in itself can be quite overwhelming, “Where then do I place myself on this spectrum?” I think to myself. But this, also in itself, is self-pressuring. Why can’t I just accept things as they are? I told Cathy but more myself that pressure often just comes from within. They’re self-inflicted. No your boss won’t kill you if you didn’t get through the list of changes he gave you after your design review yesterday. 

“There’s always going to be more work tomorrow and the day after that,” my colleagues would always say about why you shouldn’t do overtime or why taking time off is important. And while I’m still navigating the long and windy road that is life, I want to end this entry on a positive note and something I strongly stand by as a freshly turned 21 year old. Just as there’s more work coming beyond what we can foresee, similarly, there’s always going to be more challenges but also good times ahead of us so let’s be okay with whatever is here now.

- p

[r0guewrites]

Confidence [On - Hold]

Honoka’s life has been on a constant downward spiral since she left high school. She used to love singing, but as she struggles to get her career off the ground, she’s begun to feel more tired of it every day. The only person in her life who has managed to keep her motivation in a good state is her best friend, Kotori. However, things start to change after the two decide to meet up at the local bar.

Kotori, on the other hand, has recently started going out with Umi, and has been having a difficult time of breaking the news to Honoka. Her work has slowed down, and she has been struggling to make ends meet, as a result. One night, they call Honoka up and invite her to the local bar, intending to break the news thereupon...

Honoka fell to her knees as she left the building. Cries of happiness from her competitors could be heard as the results were displayed upon the screen. She never looked to see her own score, knowing that she was last. How could she have compared to them? They just had so much energy. She picked herself up off the ground and made her way home, never once looking back.

Her apartment was a mess, dirty clothes strewn all over the floor, empty bottles scattered about the counters and the bin overflowing with rubbish. She paid no attention to any of it and collapsed onto the closest chair, picked up the remote and turned on the TV.

It was around midnight when her phone rang. She didn’t look to see who it was before she answered. “Who is it?”

“Ah Honoka, it’s Kotori,” a familiar voice answered. “How did the competition go? Knowing you, you’ve done brilliantly.”

“Oh,” she replied, pausing afterward. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“That bad?” Kotori paused for a moment. “Hey, tell you what, come down to The Millennium and I will help you cheer up.”

Honoka sighed, “I really can’t be-”

“Great, I will meet you there,” and with that Kotori hung up the phone. Honoka sighed for the second time. Kotori had always been there for her, for longer than she could remember. Despite how everything seemed to go wrong, Kotori always managed to stay optimistic. Recently, however, she had begun feeling something a little more. She started to think about Kotori as more than a friend, wondering what would happen if it turned into something else. That seemed impossible, though. Kotori had never had an interest in other girls before, why would she change now?

Half an hour later and Honoka had managed to pull on some random clothes that were less dirty than the rest, tidied up her hair and had a quick wash, then made her way to the entrance to The Millennium.

The Millennium was a small bar. It was never very crowded and so most of the patrons knew each other. It was a rather old building, with large oak beams supporting the rest of the walls and keeping the building standing. The atmosphere was always welcoming, but it reeked of alcohol.

When Honoka entered she instantly spotted her best friend, sitting at their usual table. This time, though, Kotori was accompanied by another woman with long blue hair. They seemed to be chatting away. As Honoka approached they both looked up.

“Ah Honoka, you made it,” Kotori said, jumping up from her seat and giving Honoka a hug. “I hope you don't mind if I invited a… uh… friend… of mine?”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Umi.” The woman said, giving a small wave, “Kotori talks about you a lot.”

“Oh… she does?” Honoka replied, feeling her face heat up a little. “What sort of things does she say?”

“Nothing in particular,” Umi said. “Apparently you were in some sort of competition earlier.”

“Yeah, I kinda was bu-”

“Anyway,” Kotori cut in. “Do you want a drink Honoka?”

“Sure... just uh... get my usual.” She answered, thankful that Kotori butted in when she did. After the two of them left for the bar, Honoka slumped herself in a chair and took a look around the bar.

There were a few faces that she recognised from the couple of times that she had visited recently. The majority of people were new to her. They seemed to be keeping to themselves, with the occasional shout of people watching some kind of sporting event in the corner.

“Here you are,” Kotori said, making Honoka jump. There were now three drinks on the table, Umi, however, was nowhere to be seen. “She just went to the bathroom,” Kotori said before sighing. “Um… Honoka… what is your opinion of her?”

“She seems nice...” she tried to think of something else to say.

“Ok… it is just...” Kotori said after a few seconds of silence. “I just wanted to know…” she paused again, staring at the wall. “It is just… I… uh… kinda like her.”

A feeling of dread washed over Honoka. “Oh…” It was all she could possibly say. How else could she react to news like this? The girl she liked just told her that she liked someone else.

“Um… Are you okay Honoka?” Kotori asked, staring dead at Honoka. “You look incredibly pale.”

“Oh… uh… yeah…” She couldn’t bring herself to look at Kotori. “I… uh… need to... go to the bathroom.” Before Kotori could stop her, she had gotten up and pretty much sprinted to the bathroom. She locked herself in a cubicle and buried her face in her hands.

After about half an hour of just sitting there, she pulled out her phone and sent a text to Kotori, Hey, sorry for running out like that, I just felt really ill. I am probably gonna head home for now. She then quickly left the bar before anyone could notice her.

By the time Honoka made it home, she was exhausted. She didn't even bother taking her clothes off, she just flopped down on her bed and fell asleep.

She was woken up by the sunlight piercing through the gap in her curtain. She reached for her phone to check the time but was greeted by a bunch of notifications. Right at the top of all of them was a text from Kotori. Pausing, she opened it. Are you ok? You looked really pale last night. When did you leave? We waited for you for ages. I guess I should apologise, I did kind of drag you out after you had a bad performance. Sorry. You aren't mad at me, are you?

Honoka sighed with relief. It didn't seem like Kotori caught what had caused her breakdown. Hi there. Sorry, you were probably really worried. I just felt kind of sick, it was probably just that I needed some form of sleep or something. I’m all good now. I will probably lay off the nights out for a bit though.

A few seconds after she sent her message her phone buzzed. Ok thank god, I thought you were in a really bad state. I will talk again later, I have to go out now.

When she finished reading the text, Honoka just chucked her phone onto her bed and collapsed.

A few minutes later she got up and sauntered over to the shower. A quick wash later and she had pulled on some clothes. “Right Honoka, today is the day that you finally sort your life out.” She said to her reflection in the mirror. She went back to her room and pulled out her laptop. It was open on Facebook and she was about to exit the tab, but something caught her eye.

Kotori Minami is now in a relationship.

#honokoto #kotoumi #honoka kousaka #kotori minami #umi sonoda #drama #romance #one sided love #one sided honokoto #friendship #light angst #unrequited crush #alternate universe #ooc

[a425app]

Interview 05

How are you?

Good.

What is your name?

Sean Wyatt

What is your age?

53

What gender do you identify as?

Male

What are the things that have been on your mind today?

Watercolor and various art projects. Dinner / what about dinner?/ what I am going to prepare and what other people want.

What's been the most enjoyable part your day so far?

Being able to spend time with people I love

Is there something you’re looking forward too?

Yes. It’s a couple of things, seeing a friend I haven’t seen in 35 years and taking care of cleaning the garage so I have space to do creative projects.

What is the most important thing that matters to you at the moment?

Health and wellbeing of myself and my family

Do you work? If so how many hours a week and what sort of job is it? / do you work on site or at home (or alternate location)

Retired

What are some things you like to do on the weekends?

Cook, bake. Go on a photoshoot, processing pictures, spending time with family, playing games. Getting out to parks, nature.

Is there something you do on the weekend that you don't do during the week?

No

What is your living situation like?

I live in a 3 bedroom duplex with two and a half other adults and three cats

is your living space organized to help you accomplish your tasks or goals, whatever they may be?

Not at all

If so, what does that look like to you?

If not do you wish it was?

Oh yes. /Look like to you?/ everything would be categorized according to activity and purpose and a place for everything and everything in its place. Allow to remove clutter. / so having a pretty tidy place would be important to you?/ Extremely.

/and you think that would help you accoplism your goals?/ absolutely

What are some of your goals for your daily life?

I try to achieve organization and creativity and take care of responsibilities without too much of a battle.  

/any personal things?/ I wanna be the best artis and human being I can possibly be and I try to waork towards that.

/what about healthwise?/ I do try to eat healthy and try to take care of myself, no carbs little sugar.

What are some of your goals in general?

Would be to feel better and healthier and be able to experience more things like traveling and activities like building and creating.

What kinds of chores did you do during childhood/teenage years?

Everything pretty much. Self-sufficient from age 7 along with hold hold responsibilities, cleaning cooking, pets.

Would you say you actively seek out new things to try?

Everyday.

What are some things that make you feel proud of yourself?

When I am inspired by people or activities that I can share in. I can share in those experiences and I can add to those experiences

What activities give you the most satisfaction?

Experiencing nature, hiking, biking. Photography. Photographing experiences. I really love to play music. I really love music and being creative

What kinds of things do you to relieve stress?

Usually I work on project or activities. I keep busy. Or otherwise try to remove myaself from the stressful situation.

What is something you wish you had more time to do?

Being creative. Inventing paintintg, shooting, pet art projects. And of course spend time with others.

What kinds of things take up most of your time?

The usual daily activities. Cooking cleaning, shooping, helping others. Taking care of responsibilities.

How do you feel after you have completed a task.

Sometimes I feel realy really good then theres a certain reward if it’s a big taks but other tasks are more mundane and done come will any reward really beyaoind being able to say I completed them

How do you reward yourself?

I will indulge in activities I enjoy, I will try to give myself the time to spend in ways I really want to spend it for myself

How often do you successfully use these rewards to motivate yourself?

Dialy, when most activities are mundane you gotta have something to look forward too. I have too.

How much time do you take just for yourself?

I don’t take that much time that I would consider for myself. Hour-two

What are the most frustrating aspects of your daily activities/ day?

Trying to live a normal likfe but not be able too because of pain.

What time of day do you tend to do your work/chores?

Usually spread out. Usually earlier in the morning bewttwen 8-10am and in the afternoon between 3-6pm

Do you feel like you have a good balance between work and personal life?\

N/A

How consistent is your schedule?

Fairly so or moderately so. I would say I am on a schedule like 60% of the time.

Can you describe a typical day for you from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed?

Get upp

Make coffee

Take my medicine

See if there are any household needs

Take whatever time I can with family

Then usually household responsibilities

Prepping for dinner

Try to gersome creative or learning time in.

Watch some TV then bed

What time of day do you feel the most alert

Usually 2-3 hours after I wake up and how long it lasts varies

/happy?

Don’t have a perticulary time

What do you think having a routine means?

It means havind a consistant like list of things that you do on a regular basis.

Do you have a daily/weekly routine(s) If so, What are some of your daily/weekly routines?

Yeah, pretty much as outlined by my activities earlier

What tools do you use to plan or remind yourself of activities or a routine if any?

For daily ones usually notepad(comp.) or pad and paper. For more infrequent things I will use a calendar on my computer

Do you think having a daily routine would/does benefit you? Why or why not?

Absolutely.

Why?

Because then I could be sure what I was doing and when, it would help with my mental health

Have you done any research / read articles about having a routine?

Numerous.

How often would you say you search for things involving lifestyle: blogs, articles, magazines etc.

Daily

/how do you search for these things/ via google or social media

Would you be interesting in learning how to best establish and stick to a routine?

I believe everyone is different and that it’s a leanred process and everybody will be differet. I would like to know what would work best for me but I don’t know what that is. Which is why I research stuff all the time.

What would that look like to you?

I think the way I am doing it now is so far the best?

/how are you doing it right now?/ do to liststs, calendars and try to make sure that some routines that are shared routines are on the same page.

Do you use technology for planning and/or reminders?

Absolutely I use the calendar.  It is a PC only program that is almost journal in nature.

If so, what are your favorite tools/programs?

No.

Why are those your favorite?

What are some of your favorite apps to use?

I don’t think I use any apps exceot for simple notpad and simple calendar

Why those? How do you use them? How often do you use them?

Would you use and app for keeping track of a routine?

Yes.

If you could make an app for keeping track of a routine what would be some of the features you would want?

Easily accessible – could access it anywhere at any time with any device, would need to be secure, be able to set alarms, reminders and reminder destinations, or push notifications, need to have a calendar,

journaling function – comments that attached to takes or goal or plan, as well as possible way to journal how they are feeling, stuff that happens after the fact.

good intuitive way to enter information  - would remember past tasks and would automatically fill according to user

Have you ever failed to stick to a routine?

Yes

If so, why do you think that was?

Mostly because of mental and or physical limitations and consideratios for others

Do you have any medical conditions that you think might affect your ability to stick to a regular schedule or routine?

Yes

Do you think your profession has an impact on your routine?

The same

To what degree do you think other people impact your routine?

70%

Would you be more likely to do something if someone was holding you accountable?

No

If so what does that accountability look like?

If we came back in 5 years to have this conversation again, what would you like to be different?

Have more experiences had more time.

Would love to be 100% organized and have a less cluttered, simplified lifestyle

Is there anything I’ve missed that you would like to tell me?

no

Any questions?

What is this interview for?

[onenationprinc-blog]

Facebook faces Senate, potential government regulation — and big changes

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images The Mark Zuckerberg that walked into a Senate hearing Tuesday afternoon in a suit and tie to the clicks of several dozen cameras is a very different Mark Zuckerberg than the college sophomore that created a social media platform out of a dorm room. Gone are the hoodies and t-shirts, replaced with a somber blue suit and tired eyes. And just as the social platform changed from a dorm room start-up into a two billion user behemoth, Facebook could very well be at the precipice of another major change. The Facebook creator and CEO testified before the Senate on April 10 in the wake of a “breach of trust” that had a third-party app collecting user data of up to 87 million users and selling the information to Cambridge Analytica. And while Zuckerberg released his prepared statements ahead of the testimony, which echoed earlier statements on the issues, Zuckerberg also faced questions from each member of the Senate in attendance, addressing concerns from privacy to election interference.  During the course of the hearing, Zuckerberg took responsibility for some of the company’s actions and deflected other topics, saving some questions he couldn’t immediately answer for the written portion of the hearing. Zuckerberg said that the social network is shifting from a reactive approach to how it handles abuse to a proactive one. The Facebook CEO also said that he would support some legislation for social media regulation and privacy laws, in addition to implementing the changes for Europe’s upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws worldwide.  Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) pointed out that the Global Science Research app terms itself gave the app permission to sell the data, terms that were in violation of Facebook’s policies. Zuckerberg says that those terms should have meant that the app was never approved for the API program. “Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring,” he said in both the prepared statement and during the hearing. “…But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.” The platform has already limited third-party data access, drafted new data policies designed to be more clear, notified affected users, re-designed the security settings menu, and launched investigations into every app that had access to friend data prior to Facebook’s API changes in 2015. Earlier on Tuesday, Facebook announced a new bug bounty to find potential insecurities. Facebook has a lot at stake — the CEO arrived to around 100 cardboard cutouts of Zuckerberg wearing a shirt saying “fix Fakebook” on the lawn. Facebook says they haven’t seen significant drops in user counts with the #DeleteFacebook movement, but the company has lost $100 billion dollars in stock value since the scandal and Zuckerberg’s own net worth has dropped over $10 billion. The company is also facing lawsuits and some investors are calling for Zuckerberg to step down. Zuckerberg says Facebook’s approach is now more proactive When Facebook first started, Zuckerberg explained that the artificial intelligence to monitor the content of posts didn’t exist. Now, the company is shifting towards a more proactive approach, rather than simply reacting to posts flagged by users, Zuckerberg says. For example, Facebook can now remove 99 percent of ISIS posts through AI without not human reviewers. The shift isn’t entirely motivated by Cambridge Analytica, as the platform’s AI tools have already been implemented into several areas. That capability doesn’t extend to every category, however. Hate speech, for example, is difficult for an AI to detect because of linguistic nuances, slurs, and slang. For what AI can’t detect, Facebook began the process last year of expanding human review staff and is now up to around 15,000 and will reach 20,000 before the end of the year. In the UN, Facebook’s inability to remove hate speech quickly is being questioned in ethnicity-based violence in Myanmar. Zuckerberg says that the company is expanding review staff in the Burmese language, stating that removing hate speech is difficult without a native speaker. Cambridge Analytica isn’t the first time the social network has apologized over privacy practices — Senator John Thune (R-SD) called the company out on a pattern of lax privacy practices, asking Zuckerberg to clarify how Facebook’s statements now are different than the past apologies. “It’s impossible to start a company in your dorm room and grow to the size Facebook is now without making mistakes,”  Zuckerberg said. He explained that the company would be taking a broader philosophical approach than in the network’s early years, focusing not just on building tools, but on preventing those tools from being abused. “We need to take a more active view in policing the ecosystem and making sure these tools are being used in a way that’s healthy.” The hearing also looked at Facebook’s business model, with a large majority of the company’s revenue coming from advertising and using user data to deliver those ads to relevant audiences. Zuckerberg says that the network isn’t planning a move to a business model generating revenue by charging users. “There will always be a version of Facebook that’s free,” he said. “It’s our mission to connect people around the world and to do that, [Facebook] has to be free.” New privacy legislation and opt-in requirement proposed The hearing also looked at potential legislation for social media regulation — and on the same day, Blumenthal and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) on Tuesday also introduced the CONSENT Act. The bill, short for the Customer Online Notification for Stopping Edge-provider Network Transgressions, proposes opt-in permission rather than the sometimes hidden opt-out. Zuckerberg also said that the upcoming GDPR laws will also be adopted outside Europe, regardless of if Congress decides to pass similar privacy laws in the U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) asked the Facebook CEO to offer insight into what legislation would help and what legislation wouldn’t help. Zuckerberg suggested looking at three different points. The first, creating a simple way to understand data use, presented in something easier to understand than a legal document. Zuckerberg also suggested allowing the user to remain in complete control over the data and who sees that information. The Facebook CEO also suggested the lawmakers ensure that any legislation finds a balance between upholding privacy and preventing innovation. Another senator suggested requiring networks to inform users within 72 hours of a data breach. Zuckerberg said that the suggestion “made sense” but should be discussed in more detail. The idea of regulating social media wasn’t uniformly supported across members of the Senate. Senator John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) told Zuckerberg that he didn’t want to regulate Facebook, but that he would if he felt regulation was necessary. “Our promised digital utopia, we’ve discovered, has a minefield,” he said. “There are impurities in the Facebook punch bowl that have to be fixed — and I think you can fix them.” Regulation, whether by the government or the social media company itself, however, tends to bring concern over censorship and ensuring the network isn’t removing posts from one group more than another.  Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that Facebook has blocked a Fox news reporter, dozens of Catholic Pages, and the pro-Donald Trump Diamond and Silk page, and asked the CEO if he knew the political orientation of those 15,000 review staff members. Zuckerberg called Facebook “a platform for all ideas” and said that the company doesn’t ask for political views when hiring. The company has never fired an employee for political views either, he said. The five-hour session also examined other abuse on the platform, including interference in the U.S. election. Zuckerberg said that, while the company hasn’t found a connection, that the data used in the Internet Research Agency campaigns could possibly have some overlap with the data used by Cambridge Analytica. The new verification process to verify political advertisers using a physical address and government ID will also be applied to administrators of “large” Pages, though Zuckerberg didn’t clarify at what point a Page is considered large. “I believe deeply in what we’re doing,” Zuckerberg wrote. “And when we address these challenges, I know we’ll look back and view helping people connect and giving more people a voice as a positive force in the world. I realize the issues we’re talking about today aren’t just issues for Facebook and our community — they’re challenges for all of us as Americans.”  Editors’ Recommendations https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-zuckerberg-testifies-before-congress-cambridge-analytica/ https://blog.cyberprosocial.com/2018/04/11/facebook-faces-senate-potential-government-regulation-and-big-changes/

[kristinejrosario]

218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year

Using the SMART Approach to Set Your Blogging Goals for 2018  

It’s that time of year where many of us are reviewing the year gone by and setting our blogging goals for 2018.

Goal setting is really important in any venture. Without goals, your actions tend to be aimless and random. By setting something specific to aim at, you’ll  be motivated and more focused in your efforts.

A lot has been written about goal setting over the years. But one way to set your goals is to use the SMART approach, where SMART is an acronym for characteristics of good goals.

Most people say Peter Drucker came up the idea, while others say it was George Doran. In any case, both men were almost certainly contributors.

Today I want to work through one version of it (there are a number of subtle variations) and see what we can learn about it as bloggers.

Join our Facebook Group

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Hi there, and welcome to Episode 218 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, series of ebooks, and a job board all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog, to build an income around your blog, and hopefully change the world and make it a better place at the same time.

Today in Episode 218, I want to talk about goal setting. It is that time of year where I know many of you are beginning to wind down a little bit. You’re beginning to do some reviews of your blog and you’re starting to think about next year. You’re thinking about what you should be trying to achieve in the year ahead. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably starting to think about some goals or objectives for the year ahead. That’s something that we’re talking about as a team for ProBlogger and Digital Photography School at the moment.

I thought I would share some tips on setting some goals. Goals that are going to stretch you, but also goals that would be realistic. Goals that will move your business forward and move you forward, I guess, in many ways as well. I want to give you a bit of a framework for thinking about those goal settings.

You can find out a little bit more about what I’m doing today on today’s show notes. There’s a full transcription of today’s show, as well as some further reading as well. Go to problogger.com/podcast/218. There’s also an opportunity for you to sign up for our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter on the show notes. And simply, that is a weekly email that I send out every Thursday, Australian time, on Thursday morning US. That’s just a recap of what we’ve published over the last week. You get a little notification of our new podcast and new blogpost and if I’ve done a Facebook Live as well. Anyway, I want to get on with today’s show. Show notes again at problogger.com/podcast/218.

As I said in the intro, it is that time of the year where many bloggers are reviewing the year gone by, beginning to think about goals for 2018. Also, many of us are looking forward to a little bit of a break over the holiday period. Here in Australia of course, we’re going into Summer at the moment. I’m standing here in my shorts and t-shirts which is a welcome relief after a long winter. We’ll be having a warm Christmas and New Year’s period with a bit of a break. That’s what, us, Aussies do. But also, in the midst of all that planning for a break, we’re beginning to think about next year, 2018. I can’t believe it’s almost upon us.

Goal setting of course is so important in any part of your life really. If you want to achieve things, it’s much easier to make those achievements if you’ve actually got a specific goal in front of you. Your actions tend to be pretty aimless in life and random if you don’t have something to actually aim for. How do you come up with that thing that you’re going to aim for?

There’s been a lot written about goal setting over the years both on ProBlogger. I’ve covered this topic almost every year. I’ve done a blog post or a podcast on it and in the broader blogger sphere, there’s been many books written about it as well.

One of the approaches that has come to my attention over the years that I’ve found helpful in thinking about my goals is to use the acronym S.M.A.R.T. This doesn’t tell you how to come up with goals, but as you’re thinking about your goals it’s a good framework to run your goals through to make them more effective goals.

I don’t know who came up with the S.M.A.R.T. framework for goal setting. Some people say it was Peter Drucker, other people say George Doran’s. I want to give those men credits but they have both certainly written about this and contributed to this framework. There’s been plenty of others over the years as well. I’ve done research into the S.M.A.R.T. goal setting, there’s lots of different translations of it. The S.M.A.R.T. can actually stand for different things. I want to give you one version of that today. And as I’ll go along the way, I’ll also mention a few other words that I think could be useful as you’re thinking about your goals.

Let’s look at them one by one. To start off, I’ll give you the overview. The overview is that your goals should be S for smart, M for measurable, A for achievable, R for relevant, and T for time-bound. As I said before, there’s a few other words that I’ll throw in along the way. Let’s look at each one in turn.

Let’s start with S for specific. Make your goals as specific as possible. Don’t make your goals something like, “I want more traffic for my blog,” or, “I want more money from my blog,” or, “I want to write more often.” These are good goals, they’re good things that you should be probably wanting to do as a blogger. But they’re very fuzzy. Make them more specific. If you want more traffic, how much more traffic do you want? If you want more money, how much more money do you want? If you want to post more often, how often do you want to post? Get as specific as possible.

You might say, “I want 100% more traffic this year than I had last year,” or, “I want to earn $50,000 this year,” or, “I want to publish a blog post every week this year.” They’re very specific goals. They also tap into the next letter which I will talk about in a moment.

The other S word that I came up with that I haven’t really seen too many people talking about but for me, is an essential to any goal. It’s to make it as significant as possible. Don’t just set goals for the sake of having goals. Choose goals that will take you towards your overarching, long-term goals, the things that you are wanting to achieve – not just this year but in the next 10 years. What is the goal of your blog? Why are you blogging? Your goals need to tap into that why on a deeper level.

If your goal is to make a million dollars, then you’re probably not going to do that in the first year. But make your goal something that is going to help you to achieve that overarching goal. If your overarching goal is to get a book deal, you may not get that this year. But what do you need to do this year to take you towards that long-term goal? If your goal is to retire by the time you’re 60, then unless you’re 59, that’s probably not going to happen this year. But what can you set as a goal that’s going to take you towards the long-term goal?

Consider the big picture and also consider, I guess, what is significant to you. What are you passionate about? What is meaningful to you as well? It’s really important to have significant goals because those kinds of goals, they’re going to be much more motivating for you than just a general fuzzy goal like, “I want more traffic,” or, “I want to double my traffic.” If you tap into the why you want more traffic, that is going to make the goal more significant to you. Make your goals specific but make them also significant.

M is for measurable. If you can’t measure, then it’s not a S.M.A.R.T. goal. In the examples I gave earlier, “I want to increase my traffic by 100%,” or, “I want to earn $50,000.” “I want to publish a blog post every week.” They are not only specific goals but they’re also measurable because I can tell whether I have achieved those things or not. I will know by the end of the year if I have increased my traffic by 100%. I will know if I have published every week whether I’ve published every week. I can see whether I’ve achieved those goals or not.

Measurable goals are great for that reason. You’ll know if you’ve reached them or not, but they’re also great because they can help you to track how you’re going in those things as well. For example, the $50,000 this year. Fifty thousand dollars might be more or less what you want to achieve. But whatever it is that you want to make, you can then break that down into a monthly, weekly, daily total. I know if I want to make $50,000 this year, then I need to make $4,166 every month. I can see how far through the month am I on track to make that target. Same, you can get even more granular thinking about $137 a day to help you reach that goal.

Measurable goals are great because they help you whether you’ve got it or not but also, it can give you motivation along the way that can spur you on and see how you’re tracking with your goal. The other M word that I would encourage you to think about, it kind of taps into the significant one that I was talking before, but it’s to make it meaningful.

Make your goals meaningful to you. Try to choose goals that have meaning to you personally but also to your business. Like I said before, this taps into those significant goals as long-term goals, but also, what else is meaningful to you. Your goals could actually be other things that you want to achieve.

For example, I talked to one blogger recently who told me that her goal for next year is to raise $10,000 for school of orphans in Africa. That’s what she wants to achieve. Whilst that’s not going to grow her business, it’s meaningful to her. She actually visited that orphanage a few years ago and it’s a meaningful goal for her. She wants to raise that, and she wants to raise that through her blogs.

Choose goals that are not just going to further your business, but are going to further other goals that you might have, other meaningful things that you have. Your goals need to be measurable and also if you can, make them meaningful.

Now A, a is for achievable goals. Your goals should stretch you. There should be things that are going to make you work hard. But they should also be realistic, based upon the situation that you’re in. If you’re blogging in the evenings after work, after other family commitments, it may not be realistic to set your goal to publish a blog post every day. It may not even be realistic for you to publish every week. You may want to come up with a different goal based upon the situation that you’re in. If you are able to dedicate full time, you’ll probably be able to reach some of those goals of publishing weekly, maybe even daily.

Setting your goal too big could actually hurt your blog. It could impact your motivation but also, it could hurt the quality of the work that you’re doing and as a result, could hurt your brand. Do stretch yourself, but don’t bite off more than you can chew. Take account of your available time, the resources that you have, also the stage of your blog, are things really important? I see a lot of bloggers who say, “I want to be a full-time blogger by the end of the year,” and they actually haven’t started their blog yet. That may not be realistic. It might be a stretch goal.

I have certainly seen a couple of bloggers go full-time within a year, but in most cases it’s not actually achievable for most bloggers. Usually, it takes a couple of years to kind of get to that stage. Take into account your time, your resources, the stage of your blog, where it’s sitting at the moment. Also, look at previous performance, how’s your blog been tracking, and the experience of others as well. You can certainly ask around to find out whether a goal sounds realistic to other people.

It’s also worth saying that another A word is often translated into S.M.A.R.T. goals as agreed-upon. I’ve seen a number of people write about this. Your goals need to be agreed-upon. This is usually said in the context of a team. The A, agreed-upon, everyone in the team should know and agree upon the goal.

This isn’t going to be as relevant for all bloggers because I know a lot of ProBlogger and podcast listeners are single person blogs, they’re just them blogging. It’s not too hard to have an agreed-upon goal if you’re the only one there. But if you do have a team, I think it’s really important to communicate those goals that you have.

The worst thing you can do if you’re in a team is for you to have a goal and not communicate that to your team. Make sure everyone else knows what the goal is, and get buy in from them as well. A goal really is useless in a team environment if everyone doesn’t know it, but also they don’t buy into that in some way. A is for achievable goals, but also if you have a team make sure that they are agreed-upon as well.

R, make your goals Relevant. Make your goals sit alongside each other really well. This is thinking about you’re going to probably come out with multiple goals for your blog in a year. If you’re thinking about that sort of whole year, you probably should have a number things that you are trying to achieve. But sometimes goals can clash with one another.

I think back over the years, there’s been tons of set goals that I realized one of the goals that I’ve set for the year stands out on my list as being something that just doesn’t fit with others. Many times the reason is that it’s just not the right time to pursue that thing.

For example, I think it was back in 2015, I had on my list of goals that I wanted to run an event in the US. It’s something that I felt strongly about – we’ve got a lot of readers in the US – I wanted to do this, and I felt it would be worthwhile. I thought it would serve our readers. I thought it would be profitable.

But as I looked at that complete list of goals that I wanted to achieve in 2015, it became clear to me that if I was going to put an event on this US, it was going to hurt some of my other goals.

It was going to take a lot of the focus away from some of these other things that really needed to happen first. I needed to get some more foundational things done before I put on that event in the US. So I decided to put that goal on hold. It wasn’t something that I killed. I knew I would do it eventually. But I decided not to pursue it in 2015.

This year, when I decided to look at my goals, it was something that we were much more ready to do. I already met some people who can help us to make that event a reality, and I had freed up some time in my own schedule to be able to put attention into that. This year in 2017, we ran the Success Incubator event.

It was a good goal but it just wasn’t the right time for that goal. It wasn’t a relevant goal for 2015. As you look at that list of goals that you’ve got, bring some critical thinking to it. It’s great to have sort of big goals. I think there’s a place for blue sky thinking, brainstorming, when you’re coming up with goals. But also bring some critical thought to it as well. This might be something that you want to involve some other people in. Show your goals to someone else. Often they will say, “Hmm, this one doesn’t quite fit.”

There’s some other questions you might want to think about. Do your goals sit well with each other? Are there any in your list that could clash with others, one goal might hurt another? Is now the right time to pursue all of those goals? Will one of the goals cause you to be distracted from some of the other things because it’s so big or it’s so new? Is the current environment suitable for the goal? Maybe your goal is to come up with a new type of product and maybe the market’s not ready for that product yet.

Or maybe it’s an old-fashion kind of goal. It would have been a good goal ten years ago, but it’s not so good now. Do other things need to be achieved first? Are there some foundations that need to be laid this year so that you can achieve those other goals next year?

Those are some of the questions I will encourage you to ask once you’ve compiled a list of goals to actually think about. Not only are they specific, measurable and achievable but are they actually relevant for my business today? Are they relevant to what’s in front of me right now, the current situation I’m in? That’s R.

T in the S.M.A.R.T. is to make them time-bound. It’s perhaps a bit of a stretch too because it’s not a word I would usually use. For me, I would say put a deadline on your goal. This is part of making your goal specific and measurable. It’s also about helping you to begin to think about the how, how you’re going to reach that goal. Once you put a deadline on it, you begin to see what needs to be done at certain times of the year.

Put a deadline, “This goal needs to be achieved by August.” I begin to then kind of work backwards from August and begin to slot into place other smaller goals or objectives or milestones that need to happen along the way. It’s also, I find personally, my personality type. Having a deadline actually helps me with my motivation. I work really well with a deadline. A deadline helps me to stop procrastinating. I’ve talked about that in previous podcast as well. Put a deadline on it.

One tip I would give you with deadlines. Don’t make all your goals by the end of the year because you’re going to get into a problem at the end of the year. It could mean that you have a really hectic last month of the year. December might be crazy because you’ve got all these goals that haven’t been met yet and you’re trying to work on them all. Think about spreading some of your goals out through the calendar so that you are working on different things at different times of the year.

For my blogs, for Digital Photography School for example, we create a calendar for the whole year. We’re actually will be doing that in the next week or so. We begin to slot those goals in as we go. Once we have our overall goal, we might have an overall goal. This year we want to launch three new products. We begin to think about when will those products fit in? Another goal might be we want to do five affiliate promotions. Now, we’ve got our products slotted in, we can begin to see where our affiliate promotions might go in. We might want to have four opt-ins, four lead magnets. Where are we going to slot those in? We’ve already got all these other projects on the go, so we’re able to begin to slot those in.

Having a deadline in place means that you are motivated. But it also begins to help you to plan that year so that you’re not doing too much all at once. Really helpful. Another T word that I want to throw in for S.M.A.R.T. goals is to make your goals as thorough as possible. I’ve already alluded to this in some ways. I think you probably should come up with more than one goal for the year. I don’t think you should come up with too many, but think about all of the different aspects of blogging.

As I’ve talked about in previous episodes of this podcast, I believe there are certain pillars of pro blogging. If you want to have a profitable blog, there are a variety of things you need to be working on in any one at a time. You need to be thinking about content. You need to be thinking about traffic. You need to be thinking about engagement and building community. You need to be thinking about monetization. For me, they’re the four pillars of pro blogging. It makes sense to me that you probably want to be thinking about coming up with at least one goal for each of those four areas; some goals for your content, some goals for your traffic, some goals for engagements, some goals for monetization.

Then of course, there are some other aspects of blogging like design, like tech, the tech side of your blog, your servers and that type of thing and also, your productivity and how you are going to do all of this stuff. You might want to have other goals in some of those areas as well. By doing so, you’re coming up with a holistic kind of thorough approach to goal setting. You’re not just saying, “I want more traffic this year,” or, “I want more money.” You’re actually beginning to break down where does more money actually come from? Well, it probably comes from working on my content, my monetization, my traffic, my engagement, my productivity, my design, my tech. All of these things will help contribute to some of those bigger goals that you might have as well.

For me, the areas that I would always be thinking about were content, traffic, engagement, monetization, productivity, design, and tech. They’re probably the seven main areas that we will be coming up with goals for across my blogs.

S.M.A.R.T. goals, S.M.A.R.T. goals are specific, they’re significant, they’re measurable, they’re meaningful, they’re achievable, they’re agreed-upon if you’ve got a team, they’re relevant, they’re time-bound or they have deadlines, and they’re thorough. There’s this smart approach to that. A few other thoughts that I would pop in there, write it down, I think it’s so important to not just come up with the goals in your mind because if you’re anything like me, you’ll forget those goals or they won’t be at the top of your mind, actually write them down, put them into a calendar. I think that is so important.

If you’ve got a goal and it’s measurable and it’s got a deadline, then it should automatically go into a calendar at that deadline and you should probably even be working backwards. Once you’ve got the goal in the calendar, you want to start thinking about what needs to happen to make that goal a reality. This is where you get into the planning. Work backwards from the deadline. What needs to happen for that ebook that you want to have launched by October? What needs to happen by August? What needs to have happened by April? What needs to happen in the next week? You can begin to put some milestones in place. You can begin to work out the order of what needs to be achieved, and who needs to do it as well.

The last thing I would say is make your goals accountable to people. Maybe that’s another A word there. But be accountable to someone with your goals whether that be a family member, a partner, a friend or maybe some other blogger that you want to pair up with this year. Or maybe it’s in your Facebook group or another Facebook group as well.

If you want to join the ProBlogger Facebook group, we’ll have a thread where you can share your goals for the year and maybe just by putting it out there to the group, maybe that will make you a little bit more accountable. I would encourage you though to find someone else who will keep you accountable to that, a buddy or maybe a mentoring group as well.

I hope that’s been helpful for you. I’d love to hear what your goals are for the year, either in the Facebook groups or in the comments on the show notes as well. Today’s show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/218 and of course, the Facebook group, if you do a search for ProBlogger Community on Facebook, you would find that group immediately.

Lastly again, do sign up for our newsletter. It is the best way to keep up with our latest content. We definitely, this year, slowed down in the content creation that we’ve done. This is really as a result of your feedback. We were getting a lot of feedback from people saying, “I didn’t want too many articles every week.” So we slowed it down, there’s only ever going to be one blogpost, one podcast, and one Facebook Live over the next year. Occasionally, we might slip something if we’re doing a series that’s on top of that. But we want to make it achievable for you to consume our content at ProBlogger. That ProBloggerPLUS newsletter, which you can sign up for anywhere on ProBlogger, will help you keep in touch with that new stuff as well.

Hopefully that’s helpful for you today. I’ll look forward to travelling with you over the next few weeks as we approach the end of the year. I’ll look forward to chatting with you in the New Year as well. As I said last week, we’ve got a brand new course that we’ll be launching that’s going to help people to start a blog early in the year next year. If you know anyone who is kind of thinking about starting a blog, let them know that we’ve got that coming. Then we’ve got something else coming up straight after that course that’s going to help us establish bloggers to kind of get their blogs firing up again as well. That’ll come out probably on February as well. Some exciting things coming. Can’t tell you much more than that at the moment, but I look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks. Thanks for listening, chat with you next week.

How did you go with today’s episode?

Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts.

The post 218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year appeared first on ProBlogger.

     Related Stories

214: 4 Realities of Blogging All Bloggers Need to Talk About

205: 5 Obstacles Bloggers Face (And How to Get Over Them)

204: 6 ‘Ordinary’ Things That Will Grow Your Blog into Something Extraordinary

  from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/ttBlDgE3jI0/

[richardrobertsimsuccessblog]

218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year

Using the SMART Approach to Set Your Blogging Goals for 2018  

It’s that time of year where many of us are reviewing the year gone by and setting our blogging goals for 2018.

Goal setting is really important in any venture. Without goals, your actions tend to be aimless and random. By setting something specific to aim at, you’ll  be motivated and more focused in your efforts.

A lot has been written about goal setting over the years. But one way to set your goals is to use the SMART approach, where SMART is an acronym for characteristics of good goals.

Most people say Peter Drucker came up the idea, while others say it was George Doran. In any case, both men were almost certainly contributors.

Today I want to work through one version of it (there are a number of subtle variations) and see what we can learn about it as bloggers.

Join our Facebook Group

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Hi there, and welcome to Episode 218 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, series of ebooks, and a job board all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog, to build an income around your blog, and hopefully change the world and make it a better place at the same time.

Today in Episode 218, I want to talk about goal setting. It is that time of year where I know many of you are beginning to wind down a little bit. You’re beginning to do some reviews of your blog and you’re starting to think about next year. You’re thinking about what you should be trying to achieve in the year ahead. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably starting to think about some goals or objectives for the year ahead. That’s something that we’re talking about as a team for ProBlogger and Digital Photography School at the moment.

I thought I would share some tips on setting some goals. Goals that are going to stretch you, but also goals that would be realistic. Goals that will move your business forward and move you forward, I guess, in many ways as well. I want to give you a bit of a framework for thinking about those goal settings.

You can find out a little bit more about what I’m doing today on today’s show notes. There’s a full transcription of today’s show, as well as some further reading as well. Go to http://ift.tt/2BpCS69. There’s also an opportunity for you to sign up for our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter on the show notes. And simply, that is a weekly email that I send out every Thursday, Australian time, on Thursday morning US. That’s just a recap of what we’ve published over the last week. You get a little notification of our new podcast and new blogpost and if I’ve done a Facebook Live as well. Anyway, I want to get on with today’s show. Show notes again at http://ift.tt/2BpCS69.

As I said in the intro, it is that time of the year where many bloggers are reviewing the year gone by, beginning to think about goals for 2018. Also, many of us are looking forward to a little bit of a break over the holiday period. Here in Australia of course, we’re going into Summer at the moment. I’m standing here in my shorts and t-shirts which is a welcome relief after a long winter. We’ll be having a warm Christmas and New Year’s period with a bit of a break. That’s what, us, Aussies do. But also, in the midst of all that planning for a break, we’re beginning to think about next year, 2018. I can’t believe it’s almost upon us.

Goal setting of course is so important in any part of your life really. If you want to achieve things, it’s much easier to make those achievements if you’ve actually got a specific goal in front of you. Your actions tend to be pretty aimless in life and random if you don’t have something to actually aim for. How do you come up with that thing that you’re going to aim for?

There’s been a lot written about goal setting over the years both on ProBlogger. I’ve covered this topic almost every year. I’ve done a blog post or a podcast on it and in the broader blogger sphere, there’s been many books written about it as well.

One of the approaches that has come to my attention over the years that I’ve found helpful in thinking about my goals is to use the acronym S.M.A.R.T. This doesn’t tell you how to come up with goals, but as you’re thinking about your goals it’s a good framework to run your goals through to make them more effective goals.

I don’t know who came up with the S.M.A.R.T. framework for goal setting. Some people say it was Peter Drucker, other people say George Doran’s. I want to give those men credits but they have both certainly written about this and contributed to this framework. There’s been plenty of others over the years as well. I’ve done research into the S.M.A.R.T. goal setting, there’s lots of different translations of it. The S.M.A.R.T. can actually stand for different things. I want to give you one version of that today. And as I’ll go along the way, I’ll also mention a few other words that I think could be useful as you’re thinking about your goals.

Let’s look at them one by one. To start off, I’ll give you the overview. The overview is that your goals should be S for smart, M for measurable, A for achievable, R for relevant, and T for time-bound. As I said before, there’s a few other words that I’ll throw in along the way. Let’s look at each one in turn.

Let’s start with S for specific. Make your goals as specific as possible. Don’t make your goals something like, “I want more traffic for my blog,” or, “I want more money from my blog,” or, “I want to write more often.” These are good goals, they’re good things that you should be probably wanting to do as a blogger. But they’re very fuzzy. Make them more specific. If you want more traffic, how much more traffic do you want? If you want more money, how much more money do you want? If you want to post more often, how often do you want to post? Get as specific as possible.

You might say, “I want 100% more traffic this year than I had last year,” or, “I want to earn $50,000 this year,” or, “I want to publish a blog post every week this year.” They’re very specific goals. They also tap into the next letter which I will talk about in a moment.

The other S word that I came up with that I haven’t really seen too many people talking about but for me, is an essential to any goal. It’s to make it as significant as possible. Don’t just set goals for the sake of having goals. Choose goals that will take you towards your overarching, long-term goals, the things that you are wanting to achieve – not just this year but in the next 10 years. What is the goal of your blog? Why are you blogging? Your goals need to tap into that why on a deeper level.

If your goal is to make a million dollars, then you’re probably not going to do that in the first year. But make your goal something that is going to help you to achieve that overarching goal. If your overarching goal is to get a book deal, you may not get that this year. But what do you need to do this year to take you towards that long-term goal? If your goal is to retire by the time you’re 60, then unless you’re 59, that’s probably not going to happen this year. But what can you set as a goal that’s going to take you towards the long-term goal?

Consider the big picture and also consider, I guess, what is significant to you. What are you passionate about? What is meaningful to you as well? It’s really important to have significant goals because those kinds of goals, they’re going to be much more motivating for you than just a general fuzzy goal like, “I want more traffic,” or, “I want to double my traffic.” If you tap into the why you want more traffic, that is going to make the goal more significant to you. Make your goals specific but make them also significant.

M is for measurable. If you can’t measure, then it’s not a S.M.A.R.T. goal. In the examples I gave earlier, “I want to increase my traffic by 100%,” or, “I want to earn $50,000.” “I want to publish a blog post every week.” They are not only specific goals but they’re also measurable because I can tell whether I have achieved those things or not. I will know by the end of the year if I have increased my traffic by 100%. I will know if I have published every week whether I’ve published every week. I can see whether I’ve achieved those goals or not.

Measurable goals are great for that reason. You’ll know if you’ve reached them or not, but they’re also great because they can help you to track how you’re going in those things as well. For example, the $50,000 this year. Fifty thousand dollars might be more or less what you want to achieve. But whatever it is that you want to make, you can then break that down into a monthly, weekly, daily total. I know if I want to make $50,000 this year, then I need to make $4,166 every month. I can see how far through the month am I on track to make that target. Same, you can get even more granular thinking about $137 a day to help you reach that goal.

Measurable goals are great because they help you whether you’ve got it or not but also, it can give you motivation along the way that can spur you on and see how you’re tracking with your goal. The other M word that I would encourage you to think about, it kind of taps into the significant one that I was talking before, but it’s to make it meaningful.

Make your goals meaningful to you. Try to choose goals that have meaning to you personally but also to your business. Like I said before, this taps into those significant goals as long-term goals, but also, what else is meaningful to you. Your goals could actually be other things that you want to achieve.

For example, I talked to one blogger recently who told me that her goal for next year is to raise $10,000 for school of orphans in Africa. That’s what she wants to achieve. Whilst that’s not going to grow her business, it’s meaningful to her. She actually visited that orphanage a few years ago and it’s a meaningful goal for her. She wants to raise that, and she wants to raise that through her blogs.

Choose goals that are not just going to further your business, but are going to further other goals that you might have, other meaningful things that you have. Your goals need to be measurable and also if you can, make them meaningful.

Now A, a is for achievable goals. Your goals should stretch you. There should be things that are going to make you work hard. But they should also be realistic, based upon the situation that you’re in. If you’re blogging in the evenings after work, after other family commitments, it may not be realistic to set your goal to publish a blog post every day. It may not even be realistic for you to publish every week. You may want to come up with a different goal based upon the situation that you’re in. If you are able to dedicate full time, you’ll probably be able to reach some of those goals of publishing weekly, maybe even daily.

Setting your goal too big could actually hurt your blog. It could impact your motivation but also, it could hurt the quality of the work that you’re doing and as a result, could hurt your brand. Do stretch yourself, but don’t bite off more than you can chew. Take account of your available time, the resources that you have, also the stage of your blog, are things really important? I see a lot of bloggers who say, “I want to be a full-time blogger by the end of the year,” and they actually haven’t started their blog yet. That may not be realistic. It might be a stretch goal.

I have certainly seen a couple of bloggers go full-time within a year, but in most cases it’s not actually achievable for most bloggers. Usually, it takes a couple of years to kind of get to that stage. Take into account your time, your resources, the stage of your blog, where it’s sitting at the moment. Also, look at previous performance, how’s your blog been tracking, and the experience of others as well. You can certainly ask around to find out whether a goal sounds realistic to other people.

It’s also worth saying that another A word is often translated into S.M.A.R.T. goals as agreed-upon. I’ve seen a number of people write about this. Your goals need to be agreed-upon. This is usually said in the context of a team. The A, agreed-upon, everyone in the team should know and agree upon the goal.

This isn’t going to be as relevant for all bloggers because I know a lot of ProBlogger and podcast listeners are single person blogs, they’re just them blogging. It’s not too hard to have an agreed-upon goal if you’re the only one there. But if you do have a team, I think it’s really important to communicate those goals that you have.

The worst thing you can do if you’re in a team is for you to have a goal and not communicate that to your team. Make sure everyone else knows what the goal is, and get buy in from them as well. A goal really is useless in a team environment if everyone doesn’t know it, but also they don’t buy into that in some way. A is for achievable goals, but also if you have a team make sure that they are agreed-upon as well.

R, make your goals Relevant. Make your goals sit alongside each other really well. This is thinking about you’re going to probably come out with multiple goals for your blog in a year. If you’re thinking about that sort of whole year, you probably should have a number things that you are trying to achieve. But sometimes goals can clash with one another.

I think back over the years, there’s been tons of set goals that I realized one of the goals that I’ve set for the year stands out on my list as being something that just doesn’t fit with others. Many times the reason is that it’s just not the right time to pursue that thing.

For example, I think it was back in 2015, I had on my list of goals that I wanted to run an event in the US. It’s something that I felt strongly about – we’ve got a lot of readers in the US – I wanted to do this, and I felt it would be worthwhile. I thought it would serve our readers. I thought it would be profitable.

But as I looked at that complete list of goals that I wanted to achieve in 2015, it became clear to me that if I was going to put an event on this US, it was going to hurt some of my other goals.

It was going to take a lot of the focus away from some of these other things that really needed to happen first. I needed to get some more foundational things done before I put on that event in the US. So I decided to put that goal on hold. It wasn’t something that I killed. I knew I would do it eventually. But I decided not to pursue it in 2015.

This year, when I decided to look at my goals, it was something that we were much more ready to do. I already met some people who can help us to make that event a reality, and I had freed up some time in my own schedule to be able to put attention into that. This year in 2017, we ran the Success Incubator event.

It was a good goal but it just wasn’t the right time for that goal. It wasn’t a relevant goal for 2015. As you look at that list of goals that you’ve got, bring some critical thinking to it. It’s great to have sort of big goals. I think there’s a place for blue sky thinking, brainstorming, when you’re coming up with goals. But also bring some critical thought to it as well. This might be something that you want to involve some other people in. Show your goals to someone else. Often they will say, “Hmm, this one doesn’t quite fit.”

There’s some other questions you might want to think about. Do your goals sit well with each other? Are there any in your list that could clash with others, one goal might hurt another? Is now the right time to pursue all of those goals? Will one of the goals cause you to be distracted from some of the other things because it’s so big or it’s so new? Is the current environment suitable for the goal? Maybe your goal is to come up with a new type of product and maybe the market’s not ready for that product yet.

Or maybe it’s an old-fashion kind of goal. It would have been a good goal ten years ago, but it’s not so good now. Do other things need to be achieved first? Are there some foundations that need to be laid this year so that you can achieve those other goals next year?

Those are some of the questions I will encourage you to ask once you’ve compiled a list of goals to actually think about. Not only are they specific, measurable and achievable but are they actually relevant for my business today? Are they relevant to what’s in front of me right now, the current situation I’m in? That’s R.

T in the S.M.A.R.T. is to make them time-bound. It’s perhaps a bit of a stretch too because it’s not a word I would usually use. For me, I would say put a deadline on your goal. This is part of making your goal specific and measurable. It’s also about helping you to begin to think about the how, how you’re going to reach that goal. Once you put a deadline on it, you begin to see what needs to be done at certain times of the year.

Put a deadline, “This goal needs to be achieved by August.” I begin to then kind of work backwards from August and begin to slot into place other smaller goals or objectives or milestones that need to happen along the way. It’s also, I find personally, my personality type. Having a deadline actually helps me with my motivation. I work really well with a deadline. A deadline helps me to stop procrastinating. I’ve talked about that in previous podcast as well. Put a deadline on it.

One tip I would give you with deadlines. Don’t make all your goals by the end of the year because you’re going to get into a problem at the end of the year. It could mean that you have a really hectic last month of the year. December might be crazy because you’ve got all these goals that haven’t been met yet and you’re trying to work on them all. Think about spreading some of your goals out through the calendar so that you are working on different things at different times of the year.

For my blogs, for Digital Photography School for example, we create a calendar for the whole year. We’re actually will be doing that in the next week or so. We begin to slot those goals in as we go. Once we have our overall goal, we might have an overall goal. This year we want to launch three new products. We begin to think about when will those products fit in? Another goal might be we want to do five affiliate promotions. Now, we’ve got our products slotted in, we can begin to see where our affiliate promotions might go in. We might want to have four opt-ins, four lead magnets. Where are we going to slot those in? We’ve already got all these other projects on the go, so we’re able to begin to slot those in.

Having a deadline in place means that you are motivated. But it also begins to help you to plan that year so that you’re not doing too much all at once. Really helpful. Another T word that I want to throw in for S.M.A.R.T. goals is to make your goals as thorough as possible. I’ve already alluded to this in some ways. I think you probably should come up with more than one goal for the year. I don’t think you should come up with too many, but think about all of the different aspects of blogging.

As I’ve talked about in previous episodes of this podcast, I believe there are certain pillars of pro blogging. If you want to have a profitable blog, there are a variety of things you need to be working on in any one at a time. You need to be thinking about content. You need to be thinking about traffic. You need to be thinking about engagement and building community. You need to be thinking about monetization. For me, they’re the four pillars of pro blogging. It makes sense to me that you probably want to be thinking about coming up with at least one goal for each of those four areas; some goals for your content, some goals for your traffic, some goals for engagements, some goals for monetization.

Then of course, there are some other aspects of blogging like design, like tech, the tech side of your blog, your servers and that type of thing and also, your productivity and how you are going to do all of this stuff. You might want to have other goals in some of those areas as well. By doing so, you’re coming up with a holistic kind of thorough approach to goal setting. You’re not just saying, “I want more traffic this year,” or, “I want more money.” You’re actually beginning to break down where does more money actually come from? Well, it probably comes from working on my content, my monetization, my traffic, my engagement, my productivity, my design, my tech. All of these things will help contribute to some of those bigger goals that you might have as well.

For me, the areas that I would always be thinking about were content, traffic, engagement, monetization, productivity, design, and tech. They’re probably the seven main areas that we will be coming up with goals for across my blogs.

S.M.A.R.T. goals, S.M.A.R.T. goals are specific, they’re significant, they’re measurable, they’re meaningful, they’re achievable, they’re agreed-upon if you’ve got a team, they’re relevant, they’re time-bound or they have deadlines, and they’re thorough. There’s this smart approach to that. A few other thoughts that I would pop in there, write it down, I think it’s so important to not just come up with the goals in your mind because if you’re anything like me, you’ll forget those goals or they won’t be at the top of your mind, actually write them down, put them into a calendar. I think that is so important.

If you’ve got a goal and it’s measurable and it’s got a deadline, then it should automatically go into a calendar at that deadline and you should probably even be working backwards. Once you’ve got the goal in the calendar, you want to start thinking about what needs to happen to make that goal a reality. This is where you get into the planning. Work backwards from the deadline. What needs to happen for that ebook that you want to have launched by October? What needs to happen by August? What needs to have happened by April? What needs to happen in the next week? You can begin to put some milestones in place. You can begin to work out the order of what needs to be achieved, and who needs to do it as well.

The last thing I would say is make your goals accountable to people. Maybe that’s another A word there. But be accountable to someone with your goals whether that be a family member, a partner, a friend or maybe some other blogger that you want to pair up with this year. Or maybe it’s in your Facebook group or another Facebook group as well.

If you want to join the ProBlogger Facebook group, we’ll have a thread where you can share your goals for the year and maybe just by putting it out there to the group, maybe that will make you a little bit more accountable. I would encourage you though to find someone else who will keep you accountable to that, a buddy or maybe a mentoring group as well.

I hope that’s been helpful for you. I’d love to hear what your goals are for the year, either in the Facebook groups or in the comments on the show notes as well. Today’s show notes are at http://ift.tt/2BpCS69 and of course, the Facebook group, if you do a search for ProBlogger Community on Facebook, you would find that group immediately.

Lastly again, do sign up for our newsletter. It is the best way to keep up with our latest content. We definitely, this year, slowed down in the content creation that we’ve done. This is really as a result of your feedback. We were getting a lot of feedback from people saying, “I didn’t want too many articles every week.” So we slowed it down, there’s only ever going to be one blogpost, one podcast, and one Facebook Live over the next year. Occasionally, we might slip something if we’re doing a series that’s on top of that. But we want to make it achievable for you to consume our content at ProBlogger. That ProBloggerPLUS newsletter, which you can sign up for anywhere on ProBlogger, will help you keep in touch with that new stuff as well.

Hopefully that’s helpful for you today. I’ll look forward to travelling with you over the next few weeks as we approach the end of the year. I’ll look forward to chatting with you in the New Year as well. As I said last week, we’ve got a brand new course that we’ll be launching that’s going to help people to start a blog early in the year next year. If you know anyone who is kind of thinking about starting a blog, let them know that we’ve got that coming. Then we’ve got something else coming up straight after that course that’s going to help us establish bloggers to kind of get their blogs firing up again as well. That’ll come out probably on February as well. Some exciting things coming. Can’t tell you much more than that at the moment, but I look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks. Thanks for listening, chat with you next week.

How did you go with today’s episode?

Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts.

The post 218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year appeared first on ProBlogger.

     Related Stories

214: 4 Realities of Blogging All Bloggers Need to Talk About

205: 5 Obstacles Bloggers Face (And How to Get Over Them)

204: 6 ‘Ordinary’ Things That Will Grow Your Blog into Something Extraordinary

  218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year

#Richard Roberts IM Success Mix #218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year

[bizmediaweb]

218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year

Using the SMART Approach to Set Your Blogging Goals for 2018  

It’s that time of year where many of us are reviewing the year gone by and setting our blogging goals for 2018.

Goal setting is really important in any venture. Without goals, your actions tend to be aimless and random. By setting something specific to aim at, you’ll  be motivated and more focused in your efforts.

A lot has been written about goal setting over the years. But one way to set your goals is to use the SMART approach, where SMART is an acronym for characteristics of good goals.

Most people say Peter Drucker came up the idea, while others say it was George Doran. In any case, both men were almost certainly contributors.

Today I want to work through one version of it (there are a number of subtle variations) and see what we can learn about it as bloggers.

Join our Facebook Group

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Hi there, and welcome to Episode 218 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, series of ebooks, and a job board all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog, to build an income around your blog, and hopefully change the world and make it a better place at the same time.

Today in Episode 218, I want to talk about goal setting. It is that time of year where I know many of you are beginning to wind down a little bit. You’re beginning to do some reviews of your blog and you’re starting to think about next year. You’re thinking about what you should be trying to achieve in the year ahead. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably starting to think about some goals or objectives for the year ahead. That’s something that we’re talking about as a team for ProBlogger and Digital Photography School at the moment.

I thought I would share some tips on setting some goals. Goals that are going to stretch you, but also goals that would be realistic. Goals that will move your business forward and move you forward, I guess, in many ways as well. I want to give you a bit of a framework for thinking about those goal settings.

You can find out a little bit more about what I’m doing today on today’s show notes. There’s a full transcription of today’s show, as well as some further reading as well. Go to http://ift.tt/2BpCS69. There’s also an opportunity for you to sign up for our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter on the show notes. And simply, that is a weekly email that I send out every Thursday, Australian time, on Thursday morning US. That’s just a recap of what we’ve published over the last week. You get a little notification of our new podcast and new blogpost and if I’ve done a Facebook Live as well. Anyway, I want to get on with today’s show. Show notes again at http://ift.tt/2BpCS69.

As I said in the intro, it is that time of the year where many bloggers are reviewing the year gone by, beginning to think about goals for 2018. Also, many of us are looking forward to a little bit of a break over the holiday period. Here in Australia of course, we’re going into Summer at the moment. I’m standing here in my shorts and t-shirts which is a welcome relief after a long winter. We’ll be having a warm Christmas and New Year’s period with a bit of a break. That’s what, us, Aussies do. But also, in the midst of all that planning for a break, we’re beginning to think about next year, 2018. I can’t believe it’s almost upon us.

Goal setting of course is so important in any part of your life really. If you want to achieve things, it’s much easier to make those achievements if you’ve actually got a specific goal in front of you. Your actions tend to be pretty aimless in life and random if you don’t have something to actually aim for. How do you come up with that thing that you’re going to aim for?

There’s been a lot written about goal setting over the years both on ProBlogger. I’ve covered this topic almost every year. I’ve done a blog post or a podcast on it and in the broader blogger sphere, there’s been many books written about it as well.

One of the approaches that has come to my attention over the years that I’ve found helpful in thinking about my goals is to use the acronym S.M.A.R.T. This doesn’t tell you how to come up with goals, but as you’re thinking about your goals it’s a good framework to run your goals through to make them more effective goals.

I don’t know who came up with the S.M.A.R.T. framework for goal setting. Some people say it was Peter Drucker, other people say George Doran’s. I want to give those men credits but they have both certainly written about this and contributed to this framework. There’s been plenty of others over the years as well. I’ve done research into the S.M.A.R.T. goal setting, there’s lots of different translations of it. The S.M.A.R.T. can actually stand for different things. I want to give you one version of that today. And as I’ll go along the way, I’ll also mention a few other words that I think could be useful as you’re thinking about your goals.

Let’s look at them one by one. To start off, I’ll give you the overview. The overview is that your goals should be S for smart, M for measurable, A for achievable, R for relevant, and T for time-bound. As I said before, there’s a few other words that I’ll throw in along the way. Let’s look at each one in turn.

Let’s start with S for specific. Make your goals as specific as possible. Don’t make your goals something like, “I want more traffic for my blog,” or, “I want more money from my blog,” or, “I want to write more often.” These are good goals, they’re good things that you should be probably wanting to do as a blogger. But they’re very fuzzy. Make them more specific. If you want more traffic, how much more traffic do you want? If you want more money, how much more money do you want? If you want to post more often, how often do you want to post? Get as specific as possible.

You might say, “I want 100% more traffic this year than I had last year,” or, “I want to earn $50,000 this year,” or, “I want to publish a blog post every week this year.” They’re very specific goals. They also tap into the next letter which I will talk about in a moment.

The other S word that I came up with that I haven’t really seen too many people talking about but for me, is an essential to any goal. It’s to make it as significant as possible. Don’t just set goals for the sake of having goals. Choose goals that will take you towards your overarching, long-term goals, the things that you are wanting to achieve – not just this year but in the next 10 years. What is the goal of your blog? Why are you blogging? Your goals need to tap into that why on a deeper level.

If your goal is to make a million dollars, then you’re probably not going to do that in the first year. But make your goal something that is going to help you to achieve that overarching goal. If your overarching goal is to get a book deal, you may not get that this year. But what do you need to do this year to take you towards that long-term goal? If your goal is to retire by the time you’re 60, then unless you’re 59, that’s probably not going to happen this year. But what can you set as a goal that’s going to take you towards the long-term goal?

Consider the big picture and also consider, I guess, what is significant to you. What are you passionate about? What is meaningful to you as well? It’s really important to have significant goals because those kinds of goals, they’re going to be much more motivating for you than just a general fuzzy goal like, “I want more traffic,” or, “I want to double my traffic.” If you tap into the why you want more traffic, that is going to make the goal more significant to you. Make your goals specific but make them also significant.

M is for measurable. If you can’t measure, then it’s not a S.M.A.R.T. goal. In the examples I gave earlier, “I want to increase my traffic by 100%,” or, “I want to earn $50,000.” “I want to publish a blog post every week.” They are not only specific goals but they’re also measurable because I can tell whether I have achieved those things or not. I will know by the end of the year if I have increased my traffic by 100%. I will know if I have published every week whether I’ve published every week. I can see whether I’ve achieved those goals or not.

Measurable goals are great for that reason. You’ll know if you’ve reached them or not, but they’re also great because they can help you to track how you’re going in those things as well. For example, the $50,000 this year. Fifty thousand dollars might be more or less what you want to achieve. But whatever it is that you want to make, you can then break that down into a monthly, weekly, daily total. I know if I want to make $50,000 this year, then I need to make $4,166 every month. I can see how far through the month am I on track to make that target. Same, you can get even more granular thinking about $137 a day to help you reach that goal.

Measurable goals are great because they help you whether you’ve got it or not but also, it can give you motivation along the way that can spur you on and see how you’re tracking with your goal. The other M word that I would encourage you to think about, it kind of taps into the significant one that I was talking before, but it’s to make it meaningful.

Make your goals meaningful to you. Try to choose goals that have meaning to you personally but also to your business. Like I said before, this taps into those significant goals as long-term goals, but also, what else is meaningful to you. Your goals could actually be other things that you want to achieve.

For example, I talked to one blogger recently who told me that her goal for next year is to raise $10,000 for school of orphans in Africa. That’s what she wants to achieve. Whilst that’s not going to grow her business, it’s meaningful to her. She actually visited that orphanage a few years ago and it’s a meaningful goal for her. She wants to raise that, and she wants to raise that through her blogs.

Choose goals that are not just going to further your business, but are going to further other goals that you might have, other meaningful things that you have. Your goals need to be measurable and also if you can, make them meaningful.

Now A, a is for achievable goals. Your goals should stretch you. There should be things that are going to make you work hard. But they should also be realistic, based upon the situation that you’re in. If you’re blogging in the evenings after work, after other family commitments, it may not be realistic to set your goal to publish a blog post every day. It may not even be realistic for you to publish every week. You may want to come up with a different goal based upon the situation that you’re in. If you are able to dedicate full time, you’ll probably be able to reach some of those goals of publishing weekly, maybe even daily.

Setting your goal too big could actually hurt your blog. It could impact your motivation but also, it could hurt the quality of the work that you’re doing and as a result, could hurt your brand. Do stretch yourself, but don’t bite off more than you can chew. Take account of your available time, the resources that you have, also the stage of your blog, are things really important? I see a lot of bloggers who say, “I want to be a full-time blogger by the end of the year,” and they actually haven’t started their blog yet. That may not be realistic. It might be a stretch goal.

I have certainly seen a couple of bloggers go full-time within a year, but in most cases it’s not actually achievable for most bloggers. Usually, it takes a couple of years to kind of get to that stage. Take into account your time, your resources, the stage of your blog, where it’s sitting at the moment. Also, look at previous performance, how’s your blog been tracking, and the experience of others as well. You can certainly ask around to find out whether a goal sounds realistic to other people.

It’s also worth saying that another A word is often translated into S.M.A.R.T. goals as agreed-upon. I’ve seen a number of people write about this. Your goals need to be agreed-upon. This is usually said in the context of a team. The A, agreed-upon, everyone in the team should know and agree upon the goal.

This isn’t going to be as relevant for all bloggers because I know a lot of ProBlogger and podcast listeners are single person blogs, they’re just them blogging. It’s not too hard to have an agreed-upon goal if you’re the only one there. But if you do have a team, I think it’s really important to communicate those goals that you have.

The worst thing you can do if you’re in a team is for you to have a goal and not communicate that to your team. Make sure everyone else knows what the goal is, and get buy in from them as well. A goal really is useless in a team environment if everyone doesn’t know it, but also they don’t buy into that in some way. A is for achievable goals, but also if you have a team make sure that they are agreed-upon as well.

R, make your goals Relevant. Make your goals sit alongside each other really well. This is thinking about you’re going to probably come out with multiple goals for your blog in a year. If you’re thinking about that sort of whole year, you probably should have a number things that you are trying to achieve. But sometimes goals can clash with one another.

I think back over the years, there’s been tons of set goals that I realized one of the goals that I’ve set for the year stands out on my list as being something that just doesn’t fit with others. Many times the reason is that it’s just not the right time to pursue that thing.

For example, I think it was back in 2015, I had on my list of goals that I wanted to run an event in the US. It’s something that I felt strongly about – we’ve got a lot of readers in the US – I wanted to do this, and I felt it would be worthwhile. I thought it would serve our readers. I thought it would be profitable.

But as I looked at that complete list of goals that I wanted to achieve in 2015, it became clear to me that if I was going to put an event on this US, it was going to hurt some of my other goals.

It was going to take a lot of the focus away from some of these other things that really needed to happen first. I needed to get some more foundational things done before I put on that event in the US. So I decided to put that goal on hold. It wasn’t something that I killed. I knew I would do it eventually. But I decided not to pursue it in 2015.

This year, when I decided to look at my goals, it was something that we were much more ready to do. I already met some people who can help us to make that event a reality, and I had freed up some time in my own schedule to be able to put attention into that. This year in 2017, we ran the Success Incubator event.

It was a good goal but it just wasn’t the right time for that goal. It wasn’t a relevant goal for 2015. As you look at that list of goals that you’ve got, bring some critical thinking to it. It’s great to have sort of big goals. I think there’s a place for blue sky thinking, brainstorming, when you’re coming up with goals. But also bring some critical thought to it as well. This might be something that you want to involve some other people in. Show your goals to someone else. Often they will say, “Hmm, this one doesn’t quite fit.”

There’s some other questions you might want to think about. Do your goals sit well with each other? Are there any in your list that could clash with others, one goal might hurt another? Is now the right time to pursue all of those goals? Will one of the goals cause you to be distracted from some of the other things because it’s so big or it’s so new? Is the current environment suitable for the goal? Maybe your goal is to come up with a new type of product and maybe the market’s not ready for that product yet.

Or maybe it’s an old-fashion kind of goal. It would have been a good goal ten years ago, but it’s not so good now. Do other things need to be achieved first? Are there some foundations that need to be laid this year so that you can achieve those other goals next year?

Those are some of the questions I will encourage you to ask once you’ve compiled a list of goals to actually think about. Not only are they specific, measurable and achievable but are they actually relevant for my business today? Are they relevant to what’s in front of me right now, the current situation I’m in? That’s R.

T in the S.M.A.R.T. is to make them time-bound. It’s perhaps a bit of a stretch too because it’s not a word I would usually use. For me, I would say put a deadline on your goal. This is part of making your goal specific and measurable. It’s also about helping you to begin to think about the how, how you’re going to reach that goal. Once you put a deadline on it, you begin to see what needs to be done at certain times of the year.

Put a deadline, “This goal needs to be achieved by August.” I begin to then kind of work backwards from August and begin to slot into place other smaller goals or objectives or milestones that need to happen along the way. It’s also, I find personally, my personality type. Having a deadline actually helps me with my motivation. I work really well with a deadline. A deadline helps me to stop procrastinating. I’ve talked about that in previous podcast as well. Put a deadline on it.

One tip I would give you with deadlines. Don’t make all your goals by the end of the year because you’re going to get into a problem at the end of the year. It could mean that you have a really hectic last month of the year. December might be crazy because you’ve got all these goals that haven’t been met yet and you’re trying to work on them all. Think about spreading some of your goals out through the calendar so that you are working on different things at different times of the year.

For my blogs, for Digital Photography School for example, we create a calendar for the whole year. We’re actually will be doing that in the next week or so. We begin to slot those goals in as we go. Once we have our overall goal, we might have an overall goal. This year we want to launch three new products. We begin to think about when will those products fit in? Another goal might be we want to do five affiliate promotions. Now, we’ve got our products slotted in, we can begin to see where our affiliate promotions might go in. We might want to have four opt-ins, four lead magnets. Where are we going to slot those in? We’ve already got all these other projects on the go, so we’re able to begin to slot those in.

Having a deadline in place means that you are motivated. But it also begins to help you to plan that year so that you’re not doing too much all at once. Really helpful. Another T word that I want to throw in for S.M.A.R.T. goals is to make your goals as thorough as possible. I’ve already alluded to this in some ways. I think you probably should come up with more than one goal for the year. I don’t think you should come up with too many, but think about all of the different aspects of blogging.

As I’ve talked about in previous episodes of this podcast, I believe there are certain pillars of pro blogging. If you want to have a profitable blog, there are a variety of things you need to be working on in any one at a time. You need to be thinking about content. You need to be thinking about traffic. You need to be thinking about engagement and building community. You need to be thinking about monetization. For me, they’re the four pillars of pro blogging. It makes sense to me that you probably want to be thinking about coming up with at least one goal for each of those four areas; some goals for your content, some goals for your traffic, some goals for engagements, some goals for monetization.

Then of course, there are some other aspects of blogging like design, like tech, the tech side of your blog, your servers and that type of thing and also, your productivity and how you are going to do all of this stuff. You might want to have other goals in some of those areas as well. By doing so, you’re coming up with a holistic kind of thorough approach to goal setting. You’re not just saying, “I want more traffic this year,” or, “I want more money.” You’re actually beginning to break down where does more money actually come from? Well, it probably comes from working on my content, my monetization, my traffic, my engagement, my productivity, my design, my tech. All of these things will help contribute to some of those bigger goals that you might have as well.

For me, the areas that I would always be thinking about were content, traffic, engagement, monetization, productivity, design, and tech. They’re probably the seven main areas that we will be coming up with goals for across my blogs.

S.M.A.R.T. goals, S.M.A.R.T. goals are specific, they’re significant, they’re measurable, they’re meaningful, they’re achievable, they’re agreed-upon if you’ve got a team, they’re relevant, they’re time-bound or they have deadlines, and they’re thorough. There’s this smart approach to that. A few other thoughts that I would pop in there, write it down, I think it’s so important to not just come up with the goals in your mind because if you’re anything like me, you’ll forget those goals or they won’t be at the top of your mind, actually write them down, put them into a calendar. I think that is so important.

If you’ve got a goal and it’s measurable and it’s got a deadline, then it should automatically go into a calendar at that deadline and you should probably even be working backwards. Once you’ve got the goal in the calendar, you want to start thinking about what needs to happen to make that goal a reality. This is where you get into the planning. Work backwards from the deadline. What needs to happen for that ebook that you want to have launched by October? What needs to happen by August? What needs to have happened by April? What needs to happen in the next week? You can begin to put some milestones in place. You can begin to work out the order of what needs to be achieved, and who needs to do it as well.

The last thing I would say is make your goals accountable to people. Maybe that’s another A word there. But be accountable to someone with your goals whether that be a family member, a partner, a friend or maybe some other blogger that you want to pair up with this year. Or maybe it’s in your Facebook group or another Facebook group as well.

If you want to join the ProBlogger Facebook group, we’ll have a thread where you can share your goals for the year and maybe just by putting it out there to the group, maybe that will make you a little bit more accountable. I would encourage you though to find someone else who will keep you accountable to that, a buddy or maybe a mentoring group as well.

I hope that’s been helpful for you. I’d love to hear what your goals are for the year, either in the Facebook groups or in the comments on the show notes as well. Today’s show notes are at http://ift.tt/2BpCS69 and of course, the Facebook group, if you do a search for ProBlogger Community on Facebook, you would find that group immediately.

Lastly again, do sign up for our newsletter. It is the best way to keep up with our latest content. We definitely, this year, slowed down in the content creation that we’ve done. This is really as a result of your feedback. We were getting a lot of feedback from people saying, “I didn’t want too many articles every week.” So we slowed it down, there’s only ever going to be one blogpost, one podcast, and one Facebook Live over the next year. Occasionally, we might slip something if we’re doing a series that’s on top of that. But we want to make it achievable for you to consume our content at ProBlogger. That ProBloggerPLUS newsletter, which you can sign up for anywhere on ProBlogger, will help you keep in touch with that new stuff as well.

Hopefully that’s helpful for you today. I’ll look forward to travelling with you over the next few weeks as we approach the end of the year. I’ll look forward to chatting with you in the New Year as well. As I said last week, we’ve got a brand new course that we’ll be launching that’s going to help people to start a blog early in the year next year. If you know anyone who is kind of thinking about starting a blog, let them know that we’ve got that coming. Then we’ve got something else coming up straight after that course that’s going to help us establish bloggers to kind of get their blogs firing up again as well. That’ll come out probably on February as well. Some exciting things coming. Can’t tell you much more than that at the moment, but I look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks. Thanks for listening, chat with you next week.

How did you go with today’s episode?

Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts.

The post 218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year appeared first on ProBlogger.

     Related Stories

214: 4 Realities of Blogging All Bloggers Need to Talk About

205: 5 Obstacles Bloggers Face (And How to Get Over Them)

204: 6 ‘Ordinary’ Things That Will Grow Your Blog into Something Extraordinary

  218: How to Set Smart Blogging Goals for the New Year published first on http://ift.tt/2u73Z29

[pdztoronto-blog]

Racism

Starting with my identity: I am a fat poor brown woman with multiple health conditions. I acknowledge my privileges around being:

 Straight

Cisgender & gender-normative in many ways

A non-black & non-indigenous POC, who is therefore exempt from the toxicity of anti-black & anti-indigenous racism

Young

Mobile (relatively - pain affects my mobility somewhat, but I don’t use any mobility devices)

High-functioning re: mental illness (also relative, and the past two months have been especially bad, and this group sure isn’t helping as of late)

fluent in English

a Canadian citizen

Canadian-born & raised, giving me familiarity with Canadian societal norms

University-educated

 There are likely other privileges I have not mentioned/considered, and I’m open to being called on them in the comments or via PM.

 I am writing that out to acknowledge that I, like many folks, have an intersectional identity that includes multiple privileges as well as multiple axes of marginalization.

I’d like to encourage all of you reading this (but especially white people) to think through their identities and the multiple overlapping privileges & axes of marginalization.

 I am also announcing that I am stepping down from the group as an admin as of July 31st, if not earlier. The only reason I’m giving it (a bit more than) a month is to wrap up some loose ends. I am burnt out. I dread every notification that comes from this group, and always click through wondering “What  fresh hell is it today?” While I sat down to typed this, another post about this same issue came up that had to be addressed. My writing here is probably gonna come across as angry, and that’s because I am angry.

 I care deeply about racism. It has affected me my entire life (though again, I want to  acknowledge that the especially violent forms of anti-black & anti-indigenous racism do not affect me.) Fighting racism has always been a motivating force for the (unpaid) work I do within this group. Before the recent uproar, I was drafting some writing around how the expectation of English-fluency to the level of someone who speaks English as their first language is xenophobic & exclusionary, based on some shit I’ve seen go down in the group. (White queer people, check yourselves. I see you.) That’s still on my list of things to address, but it’s been pushed back by the more urgent need to address racism in dating.

 Regarding racism within PDZ

 The narrative within PDZ reflects a wider narrative regarding racist preferences in online dating. (Non-online dating too, but especially online, where people can filter who they interact with very quickly.) There are lots of articles and there is lots of data to support this. I’m a trained researcher, and I could put together a perfectly referenced summary piece including the primary research with perfect APA-style citations, but I sure as fuck won’t be doing it for free. For free, I’ll link to this piece I like from what google found me on a search for “racist dating preferences”:

 https://theestablishment.co/yes-your-dating-preferences-are-probably-racist-e58ae2fd625d?gi=15627c8cf61c

 and I will not engage in debate around the topic of whether racialized dating preferences are inherently racist or not. I think they are, and I don’t have the time or energy to argue with anyone who isn’t already convinced by the information provided in that article. If other people do want to engage, that’s great! But remember, no one owes you “debate”, no one owes you a reply, and someone can stop engaging with you at any time.

 To say that PDZ reflects other online dating arenas is NOT saying that racist dating preferences are acceptable, but rather that they are not surprising. Interest in non-monogamy - which is the ONLY thing all our members have in common - does not somehow make us better people. In fact, we need to drop that smug polyer-than-thou attitude ASAP. We, as a group, need to be JUST AS mindful of propagating oppressive shit like racism (and sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ageism, etc, but the topic right now is racism) as others, IF NOT MORE mindful. We are not somehow enlightened by our mutual interest in non-monogamy.

 I echo many members’ comments encouraging white people to do some self-crit and reflect on your preferences. (We will be posting a master list of resources on anti-oppression soon as well, which may help with this.)

 For the problem of POC feeling excluded in the group, the following potential solutions were proposed:

Only allowing white people to post on certain days (i.e. banner days, but using white people as the group who are limited to certain days rather than tokenizing poc)

Allowing for anonymous ISO posts (text ISOs that aren’t linked to pictures) to reduce preferential treatment based on physical appearance (skin tone, attractiveness, etc)

Creating an introduction thread to create more individual accountability for the ghosts who pop up to sup hot young white cis women then go back to silence

 If you have any other suggestions, please let us know, either by commenting here or PMing an admin.

 Regarding only allowing white people to post on certain days

 I worry that this is a non-starter just by numbers as there are very few POC in the group. The non-white days are either going to be very quiet OR there will be pressure on the few POC to post on these days. This is an option we can consider moving forward, although I don’t know how to seek input from the group on this. A poll is an option, but if many of the white members of the group are against the idea, they can potentially drown out those  in favour just by sheer numbers. A democratic one-vote-per-person solution doesn’t acknowledge that this problem affects a small group of people most. Input is welcome regarding this.

 Regarding anonymous ISO posts

 I want to start with My PERSONAL opinion - WHICH IS NOT MEANT TO BE A RECOMMENDATION TO ANYONE ELSE ON HOW TO LIVE THEIR LIFE. I expect that making an anon ISO post, though it could theoretically benefit me as someone who receives less attention in dating spaces because of how I look (fat, brown), would be disappointing. I am not a brain in a can. I am a person who lives in my body, and I want to be wanted for all of who I am, including my non-normatively attractive body. (Acknowledging, still, that I have some privilege in this field due to being younger, relatively light-skinned, on the smaller end of fat, relatively symmetrical, a non-black & non-indigenous poc and therefore exempt from the toxic reality of anti-black & anti-indigenous racism). I have been on dates with people who were trying to prove to themselves how good and noble they are for giving a fat brown woman a chance, and it was the most uncomfortable and miserable time for me. I do not want to be anyone’s learning exercise. Another potential problem with voluntary (i.e. non-mandatory) anon ISOs is that they are less likely to be used by normatively attractive people. So, in replying to an anon ISO, there is a built-in expectation regarding the person behind the anon ISO. (This could be addressed if more normatively attractive folks decided to also use anon ISOs, or if they were made mandatory. But - I don’t think that blind dating, which is what picture-free ISOs promote, is something lots of people are interested in.) Again, input welcome regarding how this could be implemented.

 Regarding unpaid labour

 At a conservative estimate, I give this group an hour of my time per week. (If, somehow, that seems excessive to you, remember that it breaks down to less than 10 minutes per day. In fact, the actual amount of time I give to this group is significantly more than 1 hour/week, but let’s use that figure for the sake of this argument). I’ve been an admin here for a year (52 weeks). If my labour is worth at least minimum wage - which I’ll round down to $10 for easier math - I’ve given this group $520 of my labour for free. (I’d value it above minimum wage, but again, for the ease of argument.) That’s substantial! Being a part of the admin team for this group - or most facebook groups, really - is a volunteer gig, which means it is unpaid labour.

  Many of the solutions people are asking for - anonymous ISOs, themed days - require more admin labour. That’s fine, if we can add admins to our team who are willing to take on the work - but I am not one of them, and our current team does not have the time to support this. If you are passionate about any of these labour-intensive solutions, consider volunteering to help implement them. Put your time where your mouth is.

 When the admin team asks for input from marginalized folks, we are aware we are asking for unpaid labour. But where is this pay supposed to come from? We have no money. No one on the admin team earns an income from the group.

 Consider the catch-22 here. It seems noble to seek out representation and input from marginalized folks, to amplify their voices. BUT, that also asks those same marginalized folks to put forth their unpaid labour. In a system where there are no resources to pay these folks, I don’t see how this can be navigated any more ethically.

 Also, it’s a situation where you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. If a group does anything without seeking input from marginalized folks, they will be criticized for speaking without the input of marginalized folks. If their input is sought, the group will be criticized for asking for unpaid labour. So what should be done?

 Regarding anti-authoritarian spirit

 Something I see all over Leftbook is a distrust of authority and an anti-authoritarian approach. That’s understandable, especially considering all the abuses of authority we see all around us.. When this spirit informs how group members interact with the UNPAID VOLUNTEER ADMINS, most of whom are from marginalized communities, it doesn’t pan out with the same ethics. Consider whose lap you’re dumping onto with your activism. For example, in this group, specifically regarding issues surrounding racism, any uproar is basically dumping labour on my lap. (This is not me calling out the rest of the admin team, who are supportive and kind, and ask how they can support me. They just, rightfully, feel that they shouldn’t speak about racism from the position of their white privilege.)

#polyamory #pdztoronto #racism