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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

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Podcasting "Self Publishing"

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Medium column, “Self-Publishing,” an essay about the structural shifts in the publishing industry over the past half-century and how and why that has driven people to try self-publishing.

https://doctorow.medium.com/self-publishing-41800468bcfe

The tale starts with the rise of Big Box stores, after Reagan’s deregulation got Sam Walton to take Walmart national. This concentrated the “mass market” — the huge, variegated world of pharmacy and grocery and cornerstore spinner racks that were the cradle of genre fiction.

The big boxes demanded a single national distribution system, and hundreds of local distributors — whose unionized Teamsters stocked the spinner racks based on long territorial experience — collapsed to a handful of database-driven decision-makers.

The number of titles for sale fell off a cliff. Writers who had a single underperforming book were no longer welcome in the big boxes and thus no longer economically viable (remember all those established writers who switched to pen-names? They were trying to beat this).

Monopoly begets monopoly. The predatory discounting of the big box stores put the squeeze on chain bookstores and indies. The chains merged and merged into a duopoly, while the indies underwent a mass die-off.

Publishers were caught in this squeeze: the two national bookstore chains and the big box stores demanded extra co-op payments, preferential discounts, and more generous credit and return policies. The publishers merged and merged, down to six (now four).

This also happened with trade distributors (who sold to bookstores, not the mass market) — the industry collapsed into a duopoly (today, it’s a monopoly, run by Ingram).

This is a familiar pattern across all monopolized industries.

As David Dayen described in MONOPOLIZED, this neatly parallels the monopolization of health care: pharma monopolized and gouged hospitals, who monopolized in self-defense and gouged insurers, who monopolized in self-defense.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

Both monopolistic trends had the same end-point: after all the companies had finished monopolizing, the disorganized group of suppliers and workers were the only ones that the monopolies could strong-arm. In the case of hospitals, that’s health-workers and patients.

In publishing, it’s workers and writers. If you work in publishing and your resume is rejected by four companies, it has been rejected by every major publisher. If you’re a writer whose book is rejected by four publishers, then you’ve been rejected by every major house.

That’s why writers are now expected to give up graphic novel, audio, world English, and other valuable rights for the same advances — with fewer companies bidding on books, the likelihood that one will pay more or demand less goes down.

In the 2000s and early 2010s, some writers hoped that they’d be able to sidestep publishing by allying themselves with a different monopolized industry, locking themselves to Amazon’s platform. But as competition from publishers dwindled, so too did Amazon’s largesse.

The authors who shackled themselves to Amazon now face tens of millions of dollars in wage-theft. The solution to unfair treatment at the hands of giants isn’t to ally yourself with an even bigger giant and hope for its ongoing generosity.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/03/somebody-will/#acx

A more promising sign is in the wave of mid-sized houses that have snapped up the workers shed by Big Publishing during mergers as well as the promising new publishing workers who are surplus to the Big Four’s needs.

These presses punch way above their weight, thanks in part to the number of great books that just don’t fit into the publishing needs of four giant houses. But as great as this is, it’s intrinsically precarious.

These mid-sized houses can’t stand up to the might of one distributor, one national bookseller, four big box stores, and one giant ecommerce monopoly. Earlier mass die-offs in indie publishing (like the American Marketing Services horror story) show how fragile this is.

Which brings us to self-publishing. There have never been more sophisticated tools for making polished, professional books on your own — Lulu.com, Smashwords, Bookbaby — and (thanks to layoffs) it’s never been easier to find publishing pros to help with that process.

But that’s not “publishing.” As Patrick Nielsen Hayden once told me (paraphrasing), “Publishing is identifying a work and an audience and doing whatever it takes bring the two together.” In other words, how do you convince people to give a shit about your book?

This is an incredibly hard problem. It’s the hard problem of advertising, religion and politics. There’s no established method for it because the attention wars are a race against adaptation — what worked yesterday won’t work today.

https://locusmag.com/2018/01/cory-doctorow-persuasion-adaptation-and-the-arms-race-for-your-attention/

If you want to self-publish, you need to observe books like yours, identify how they are discovered by their audiences, formulate a plan to do the same, execute the plan, measure your results, and change the plan and do it again, and again, and again.

Publishers don’t just have systems and experts — they also have multiple data-points, a stream of books where they get to try different things, refine their successful tactics, and try again. You have a data-set with one point in it: you.

It follows that if you’re not prepared to work as hard (and well) at marketing, sales and promotion as you did at writing, you probably shouldn’t self-publish. Doing those things won’t guarantee your success, but without them, failure is all but assured.

That said, the one area where self-publishers can sometimes outdo publishers is accessing (parts of) the mass-market. The vast majority people aren’t “readers” (in the sense of being people who regularly buy books, go to bookstores, etc).

Every mega-bestseller is just a book that succeeded with a tiny sliver of nonreaders. And you might know more about a community of nonreaders — a faith group, fandom, subculture or political movement — than anyone in publishing.

If that’s the case, and if you are both diligent and lucky, you might be able to successfully market you book to that group and even leverage that success into a publishing deal that brings your book to “readers” — whom a publisher knows more about than you ever will.

I published by first book in 2000. Since then, I’ve published a couple dozen more, everything from novels for adults to YA novels to a middle-grades graphic novel to a picture book to essay and short story collections to book-length nonfiction.

I’ve published many books, including multiple bestsellers, with one of the Big Four publishers, and I’ve also published with several mid-sized boutique presses (some of which have merged with bigger publishers since).

I’ve successfully self-published, including a $267,000, record-smashing Kickstarter campaign. I’m a recovering bookseller and I’m unhealthily drawn to great bookstores, which are doing surprisingly well (thanks partly to Libro.fm and Bookshop.org).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/attack-surface-audiobook-for-the-third-little-brother-book

Despite all this, I’m keenly aware that runaway consolidation makes my position as a worker in this system intrinsically precarious. The wonderful people in big publishing love books and treat me very well, but they can’t fix the system.

I’ve met sincere, talented people at Amazon doing their best to support publishing, but they can’t fix the system either. Neither can James Daunt, a true hero of bookselling who has come to America to transform Barnes and Noble.

Monopoly begets monopoly. If any part of the supply chain is allowed to monopolize, the rest will follow in self-defense, and it will always be the workers — the writers and staff — who struggle to push back.

That’s why the current resurgence of both trade-unionism and antitrust are so important. In a world whose outcomes are more determined by power relationship than by good intentions, the only way to secure workers’ futures is to make them stronger and make business weaker.

The essay is here:

https://doctorow.medium.com/self-publishing-41800468bcfe

The podcast episode is here:

https://craphound.com/news/2021/07/05/self-publishing/

The MP3 is here (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive, they’ll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_396/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_396_-_Self_Publishing.mp3

And here’s my podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

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skinfeeler · 3 years

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on spinoza and his contemporary courtiers

benedict spinoza, to any cosmopolitan with any academical acumen at all, reads as extremely normal. for the time however, he might well be called prescient. in a sense, he did nothing special: he simply steadfastly and without apology applied all methods of histiography to religious texts considering them as sources like any others, and it could be said that he helped pioneer the idea of a text as not simply containing itself but also everything about and around it. i’ll spare you the derrideanisms and the pithy barthes quotes, but this unfettered approach of what real scholars now consider self-evident was enough to unify the contemporary organised religious societies against him both in terms of shunning and censorship. if there is such a thing as an atheist virtue, i believe it must be ‘irreverence’: when they insist something is special and beyond the regular methods of philosophy (that chief of sciences), we must deny them. i believe that spinoza exemplified this.

the unfortunate thing is that he first laid this out in his tractatus theologico-philosophicus, a work in which he perhaps optimistically believed that if the authorities at the time could respect philosophy being utilised in service of religion — as descartes, who simply believed his philosophy to make a more robust foundation of religion than ‘aristotelean’ scholastics — they could respect it for its own sake. to this end, he still spoke of ‘god’ when in his ethics, he spoke of ‘god or nature’. the entire work is an extremely obvious double-layered obfuscatory work, and those who believe that it’s a ‘theological work’ should maybe learn what a determinate negation or sublation is— the thing is, given that maybe now, aspects of his thought have (in some locales, conditionally) been integrated in some strands of religious thought, the fact is that at the time he was universally reviled as an atheist, and in many communities (across all religions) in which the disenfranchised (including all children) have no access to, way of knowing about, or are taught faculties to engage with and ‘progressive’ and philosophically ‘sophisticated’ attempts at theology like those based on spinoza’s philosophy, he still is reviled as such, so he’s ours, you can’t have him, fuck you.

even so i must ruefully acknowledge that he still took on one facet of contemporary organised religious thought both before and after he started to strategically align himself more with protestant interests: while he rejected supernaturalism, he never really rejected the clergy, which manifested in one specific idea: he posited that while the truth is complicated, the masses (the laity, if you will) ultimately need guidance and simple truths that apply most of the time, and that spiritual impetuses are good enough for those who can’t do better, that it’s not necessary try to make them think for themselves. this much was the ineluctable product of his prior and lasting belief in the necessity (and thereby authority) of clergy and meant to validate it. maybe this was a tactical consideration, but it was a poor one, because his thought endures: i have had many people say the same to me. “oh, skinfeeler, people crave frameworks and not all of them can do what you can.” no note of what might happen if we might all try and emancipate people into postmodern notions of thought which may be a bit more difficult but will ultimately not leave the most disenfranchised of us behind, or of the fact that maybe many people are incapable of thinking in abstract, complicated ways exactly because organised religions have damaged them in that regard or punished them for trying, of course. no, it’s all spineless lack of ambition and a barefaced denial of epistemic injustice.

the thing is, these people when they speak to me never imagine themselves as the hapless laity. no, they are speaking to me cleric to cleric, sage to sage. they imagine themselves the parent, not the child. the thing is that even children are so much smarter than we give them credit for. someone who thought themselves a pedagogue told me that in their field it has become so obvious to me that children can ‘reason like adults’, just with a lot more glitches and heuristics in their thought. on the nose this looks very charitable and egalitarian, but why that second clause? do adults not have glitches and heuristics in their thought? what nonsense to insinuate they don’t. i have spoken to so many adults in my life, especially female family members who were never even given a chance to articulate what they meant to in discussions or to formulate their thoughts into something tangible and real. when i speak to them, however, explain certain methodologies of thought with patience, eventually they can work with them. what i like even more, though, is when they speak to me in their own language, their own philosophies defined on their own terms that reveal themselves as they manifest through such conversations with me: and in my experience, just about anyone can do this, the masses have wisdom if only you’ll let them. those spinozists i speak of are simply the other coin of the people who tell them they aren’t fit to work with the book, and they are just as wrong.

it’s superiority in the cloak of benevolence, pure and simple. i’ll admit to having been seduced by it myself at points: should we be surprised when all my arguments for people’s emancipation are met with lavish and glib praise of my ostensibly unique and special faculties? here i’ll say, now and forever: i’m not. i’m not special. there are, of course, people who are so broken that they can no longer work with anything but truisms, people who are stuck in feedback loops of the psyche from existential fear, internalisation of bigotries, the works, where they are not able to escape and use that which all of us have been endowed by, but this is not a transcendent or qualitative issue, it’s circumstantial and contextual: it was caused by something. this, however, tends to form the second line of defense of religious spinozists: “yes, what these people do to each other, their women, their children is horrific, but they don’t do it because of their faith, they do it because of the ways they have been damaged and what they may or may not rightly fear to happen if they neglect to speak as they speak or do as they do unto others and especially those they are in power over, such as parents unto children.” (which is to say, abuse those their religion has put them in a position of power over, impress them into their religions, dominate them.)

this obviously ignores the fact that even such things as defense mechanisms and threat models are codified in a certain way and not only of traumatic but also intertwined ideological nature as of course, exploited by those who are most powerful and least in danger in these communities. following from candid sociological analysis to real and actual values, you can never excuse the entanglement of personal anxiety about faith and existence with the practices of say, child abuse, such as the account of that one mother i read who admitted that when she saw the ‘spiritual hollowness in her son’s eyes’ her own faith was fading away for her— what a horrific and unforgivable thing to say about your own apostate child for not going along with the song and dance that you believe he must, even if ultimately she realised that to integrate others into her own sense of safety and certainty like that was unconscionable. unfortunately, most parents will never be allowed by their congregations to come to such conclusions about their families that make up these congregations, or in the case of the congregation that expelled spinoza and had him shunned, not by the religious state that needed the congregations that made it up to not allow behavior that disturbed larger and common religious precepts that bound together the contemporary civil religion.

regardless, respecting those objections i have compromised, at times, to paraphrase across various conversations i’ve had:

“if you say so, very well, but then decisions on what should happen in the future with regards to nations, and congregations, and families should be in the hands of the disjunction of those sets of people who we regard as qualified, with our conversation left without (but about) those others, with the hope that neither civil religion or more conventional organised religion will eventually be undone and unable to produce such tragic cases. we will respect their pain and lot in life and seek to understand where it comes from to be able to undo it and not have it be visited unto others, but we won’t factor it into our ultimate understandings and judgements, since as you say, they are unable to partake. of course, none of this requires ‘repression’ and in fact that is more often than not counterproductive and sociological considerations of what cause such outcomes are paramount before any particular action taken, with absolutely none of this belonging to the state or any other organised repressive organ as working through clerical or parental authority, as with any form of disenfranchisement.”

this is never taken well— i suppose there is some incredible nuance somewhere i must have been missing when i still entertained such deeply dehumanising, nonsensical, and unambitious notions at the behest of my religious contacts, or maybe they just didn’t like what they saw in the mirror.

#turns out that when you take away people's agency you take away their agency.#atheism

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violetsystems · 3 years

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#personal

I’m not in a terrible mood this week although I am completely exhausted with everything. Home is great when you have internet. Not so great when people try to disrupt it by setting up service on top of your address. People can be terrible communicators especially when they are focusing only on themselves. We live in isolated times I understand. The idea that people ‘project’ all the information you need is incredibly exhausting to have to read into all the time. Especially when no one bothers to read what you project back. I often wonder if it will get exponentially worse when people feel safer returning to a public facing world. I’ve been public facing throughout all of this and for many years prior. You can’t travel the world alone and develop some sort of toughness. The real trick is being able to turn your defenses on and off. It’s a reflex. Like how in one breath I can tell somebody to fuck off then turn my head and help a kitten from the sidewalk. If it were called acting then I would have a job already. I often have to look back at how I’ve grown over time to figure out the headspace. I’ve always been sort of awkward. Mostly because I was sensitive to what others thought of me. I’ve always been bullied as long as I can really remember. I grew up in an Irish Catholic suburb filled with white people, white pride and whiter drug problems than they cared to admit to. Most of my friends were losers and rejects. I kept to myself and listened to hip hop on a broken yellow sony walkman. People would call me the n word every morning on my way to school proudly claiming I was going to hell. I was a shy and nerve racked honors student. I grew up an only child who wrote poetry and science fiction. I played pen and paper role playing games by myself because nobody shared the same interests. At times, the friend groups that I did find had group agendas that dwarfed my social needs. This never really changed. I spent most of the last ten years revisiting this sort of solitude. I travelled Korea, Japan and China by myself. I stayed in hostels in group situations where I still felt uncomfortable. I developed skills to talk to people. I met a lot of weird people. I met a lot of nice people too. In Seoul particularly, I found a normal that I’d never really understood before. I’d go out and actually do things with people I didn’t know. I went to a guitar cafe once in a basement in a small neighborhood called Hyehwa. The group was myself, a hostel owner, a soccer fan from Dalian, and a random guest. We sat in silence as a small old man played “Goodbye to Romance” on a small guitar as silent Pink Floyd concert footage played out on the tv behind him. I escaped to Korea for a long time. I’d go every six months for two to three weeks on vacation. At the time I had the vacation from my job to use with impunity. If I stayed home in the states, people would follow me. I realized this later when I switched my trips to New York. My boss and my CIO would stop at nothing to contact me on my vacation to write emails they couldn’t formulate. Ask questions about things they already knew the answer to. Looking back on it, there are so many times people made my life miserable enough to make me quit. I never really got the message because I’ve been so bullied over my life that I learned to ignore it. My CIO famously cornered me in a hall once and asked what was wrong. He told me point blank I didn’t have a good poker face. I replied I wasn’t aware we were gambling. It was so subtle I don’t think he understood I wasn’t bluffing. I lost that hand six months later when he fired me over video chat. Nine months later I’m dead to an entire twenty years of friendships and professional connections. If I don’t look surprised or scared, it must be the poker face I’ve been working on.

This is to say I understand or process none of anything that has happened to me anymore. It hurts beyond hurting. And I’ve become an expert at dealing with it all alone and in silence. So much so that people follow me around like lost puppies thinking I can offer them clarity. Or treat me like a practice dummy in their attempt to haphazardly attack the real problems in society. I’ve never been so tired, done and particularly bored with everything until now. And yet the bitterness never really gets me anywhere except physically sick and depressed. Throughout all of this as the situation in society starts to worsen, I see people looking to me for leadership or guidance. This is often without even asking or having consent. They think I’m part of some revolution that they’ve never asked about. Nobody has ever asked my name. They just know me as the guy they see around all the time. That I’m some wise and silent protector of things when I’m just some regular person suffering just like everybody else. If you really added it all up and put these chapters I write together, you’d see an alarming trend. That for whatever movement people include me in, I’m expected to fight all of this alone. And me knowing full well how well movements and revolutions have left me completely insignificant and invisible after the things I have done is disheartening. People enjoy getting a reaction. Pushing all the buttons every time you step outside your door. Sometimes it’s a hundred yards before someone starts trouble. Sometimes it’s the minute you step outside either porch you share with your neighbors. The lack of dignity and respect is something I deserve because of my supposed position of power. America is like that. There is so little to go around that everything is a Hunger Games glorification. Classes need to provoke each other not identities. And yet we measure each other’s value by our differences and not our common strengths. America has always been a paradox in this way. The magical chaos of Anarchy that allows everyone to be free at the expense of others. The real way to be free in America is money. And money locks us out from the dialogue more often than not. It’s a great narrative that people can start their own businesses here in America when all the contract work is locked behind corporate recruiters, headhunters with signing bonuses and worse. That somehow at the end of a pandemic I’ve survived almost completely alone in I’m supposed to give in at the end. It’s like the clown in It gnashing it’s teeth as it shrinks into a harmless baby. I feel a bit sorry for America right now. And yet that clown has become less menacing to me and has been forced to feed on others. After all I’ve seen and been through I have no luxury to be afraid of anything or anyone. I have completely lost my innocence in that respect. And the face I put on for society when I walk out the door is one of stone. It is futile to expect that anyone can engage me with respect, humility and courage. Nobody can ever say my name. I have not heard my name spoken in forever by people I know well. I hear it spoke when I get Korean food down the street. My neighbors simply tell things to me. Or give me a longing glance like I’m supposed to read their mind, their agenda and trust their nosy intentions of being there at exactly the right time. We’re all in this together. We’re all connected. And yet after all of this I’ve realized no matter how well and good that may seem, it’s a liability to be social without a proper level of respect for your right to be human. Acting like the neighborhood secret police is not revolutionary. Acting like I owe anybody anything in this city after what IT has put me through is subliminal torture. I’ve told it like it is more than often about my life here in America. So much so that it echoes around the globe at this point as an anomaly. Is it really true that this guy clearly does not give a fuck about what anybody thinks of him? Yes. This is how I stay the fuck alive out here. I need you to understand just how desperate that sounds. Then I need people to realize that the only thing I’m desperate for is to be left alone at this point.

The reason I’m invisible to many people is that I’m not worth shit. We are all technically not worth shit. This might be news to all of you who read these. Because I generally feel the most care from people on this platform. I’m baffled by my own thoughts on this. How a click can mean more than the world to me than a bunch of people in real life shouting or glaring at me with hidden intentions. A glare and a hidden message on the internet is most likely spam. A glare in the streets with a knowing look is basically an invitation to fraud for me at this point. If you’ve seen me all over the place maybe you should ask my name or introduce yourself. And yet in Nazi Germany, you wonder if the secret police felt the same. The overall effect of having people follow, watch and keep tabs on you has this lofty narrative. Don’t you feel important now that secretly you are being watched? Don’t you feel special? I have travelled all over the world by myself at this point. I paid off the credit card bills to prove it. Do you think I don’t know what it is like to be surveilled and followed? Do you think in an era where white people actively target people and hurt them I feel any safer than anyone else? I am appalled at what I’ve heard in the news. And yet it is always the same root. White extremism. White culture. White people. Power abused. Defenseless broken down worthless trash in rebellion. Poor me for having a bad day. In my admonishment of my mother’s call for information for Ancestry dot com, we had a conversation about family. There are huge segments of my family I stay away from. My cousin who I have not spoken to for years lives out west. I learned last night that he sells guns for a living. My mom told me a story of his father who was an avid gun supporter. My parents approached him about being godparents. He replied that he would only accept on one condition. That when I came of age he would teach me how to shoot a gun like a real man. I’ve never touched a gun in my life. I’m a registered conscientious objector. I swing a hammer in game more often than not though I’m known to creep around with a sniper rifle in Cyberpunk. That’s a fucking game. My cousin is out there somewhere at a gun show with a Trump flag and an internet connection just like every other right wing troll on the internet. And I have to deal with the Fallout just the same. Everyone bangs away at their status messages and twitter feeds and accomplishes more of the same. Fear. It froths over. It never goes away. It burns into hatred. It becomes a righteous cause for which to stand behind. My rights to be free. As if holding a gun protects you. As if wasting your prayers on causing harm to others really heals the world. As if playing power and mind games on people you don’t know is somehow an act of liberation. As if boring me the fuck to death with how cool you think you are by thinking you on anywhere near my fucking level helps my situation. I have a right to be exhausting with all this performative bullshit. And yet the world keeps upping the ante. Like we’re in some high stakes Hunger games casino and the reward is your freedom at the expense of others. We are not all in this together until we can look each other in the eye and understand the cause of each other’s pain. The pain is that we do not communicate like human beings. We skitter and prey upon each other like animals. Animals remember when you feed and protect them. Humans are worse. If I know one thing about Planet of the Apes is that not even Mark Wahlberg can save you now. Just let me exist outside the dome and forget I’m somebody important. I’ve got my own life and loves I have to protect. You don’t know what I go through daily to honor that. And that secret is nobody’s business but mine. Since there are no jobs left in America, I’ll settle for that one. I don’t need a letter of recommendation. I write one every week. Yeah we all float down here. You’ll float too. Better than sinking. <3 Tim

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nyfacurrent · 6 years

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Conversations | Alicia Ehni at NALAC Leadership Institute

NALAC Fellows talk to IAP Newsletter Editor about their lives as Latinx artists.

In July, IAP Newsletter Editor, Alicia Ehni, participated in the NALAC Leadership Institute (NLI), hosted by the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, which delivers innovative and practical strategies to artists and arts administrators chosen from all over the country. Over the last 18 years, the Leadership Institute has developed a curriculum that is based on a historical overview and analysis of Latino arts and cultures in the U.S., including the vital role of community involvement.

Adriana Gallego, NALAC Chief Operating Officer and artist, comments about this year’s program: “Every year, the NALAC Leadership Institute strengthens the Latinx and inter-cultural artistic sectors with multi-generations of artists and arts leaders to bridge collaborations and alliances across ethnic, geographic, and intergenerational lines. This connectedness is critical in our pursuit for cultural equity, which will arise when diverse populations address social inequality together and work to create shared opportunities for access to resources, cultural participation, and artistic production.”

This year, 29 artists and arts administrators were chosen to participate in the NALAC Leadership Institute in San Antonio. A follow-up was conducted a month later with the 2018 Fellows to see how this program is impacting their careers and lives. Many of these Fellows are wearing multiple hats. This interview highlights the different voices of talented Latino artists who share their insights and strategies on successfully navigating their multiple roles.

NYFA: How do you see your role as an artist and leader after participating in the NALAC Leadership Institute (NLI)?

Christine Lamprea: I have a new perspective on my career as a classical cellist. I see possibilities of curating a more uniquely tailored concert season for myself, rather than trying to succeed in more traditional models of success in classical music. I feel more empowered to lean into my strengths, some of which stem from the history of my parents and their immigration story, as well as characteristics that stem from the beauty of Latinx culture.

Jaime Garza: NLI has been a very strong support system for me. The week-long intense immersion of Latino-based art and culture made me feel like part of something bigger than myself.

In Chicago, I’m known because of my work as a musician with the band Dos Santos and as an arts promoter, curator, and organizer of independent events. The role I play in Chicago is to help and support other artists and musicians. Attending NLI has given me skills and a wider scope of Latinx culture, that I hope to use to continue assisting local artists and myself, so we can create meaningful art.

Jessy De León: I've always known that music and art reflect a nation's culture; however, through NLI I was able to see more clearly what the ones that came before us have done to preserve their Hispanic identity through the Chicano movement. NLI helped me realized that the non-profit I founded, Comparte tu Luz, was created not only to help communities understand the importance of art but also that artists have a responsibility to promote and preserve their culture, by remembering who they are and where they have come from. This is reflected in their art.

Johana Moscoso: After NLI I see my role as that of a connector who connects personal and intimate instances in daily life that affect our current society. Living in a small town in Wisconsin as a Colombian immigrant–who has a thick Hispanic accent and starts sentences saying ¡Ay!–has created an urgency in me to connect my workplace with immigrants who only speak Español, or as I grew up calling it, Castellano. This urgency has extended to my art practice.

For me, it is necessary to create art that critically reflects the Latinx culture as a vital component of American society, history, and art. I celebrate my Latinx culture by merging performance, video, sculpture, and fiber art into large-scale installations.

Michael Menchaca: I feel much more confident moving forward after NLI, with a better idea of what my artistic vision is and what I need to do in order to achieve my goals. I have started the groundwork to better organize my work schedule and prioritize my deadlines. The network of colleagues I made during the NLI fellowship has further motivated me to become a stronger cultural leader in the arts.

Paty Lorena Solórzano: After NLI, I felt an incredible sense of value and motivation to rise above the challenges that come from being in a field that lacks representation and equity for Latinx dance artists, especially for women of color!

I think there's a lot that comes from validation–to feel that your work matters and that you can acquire the tools to make your work visible. It gives you power. I feel a greater sense of responsibility for my Latinx community in dance, and I hope to use the knowledge I gained at NLI to continue to advocate for and uplift other Latinx dancers and choreographers. We really need it!

NYFA: What concrete actions will you implement in your current work?

Christine Lamprea: One of the strongest metaphors from NLI was the season arc, where an artist can create subcategories to delve into and market. I imagined myself holding the arc like a little basket, and I could reach in and pull out one of my recital programs to tour, or a future commission, or another project. The sense of being the owner of my season, rather than a hopeful participant in others’ seasons, was an important mental switch for me. Currently, I am developing a curriculum for a summer festival for Latinx string players, in addition to building my performance career as a solo cellist and pedagogue.

Jaime Garza: The things I learned and plan to implement are organizational and involve stepping back to see the bigger picture. Basing my collaboration or actions on my values will help my workflow in a more positive way. Organizing in groups, teams, or communities invested in decision-making is a must. Community building and partnerships are where I am putting more work going forward, in conjunction with grant writing and resources research.

Suzy González: NLI inspired me to keep doing what I do but to be more organized and proactive in doing it. It taught me to push myself to achieve my goals. For each of my roles–as artist, curator, educator, publisher–I now have the tools needed to strategically formulate my vision, mission, and goals. This will help me progress in my field without getting distracted by work that does not get me where I want to be. It also restored my sense of confidence and the reminder to not sell myself short.

Johana Moscoso: I will work with communities during my creative process, and create public programming around my art pieces to help foster relationships. Currently, I am working on funding the Ingrid López Project. It is a large scale installation that includes sculptures, tapestries, video and/or sound, and the participation of López’s Florida community. It celebrates the life of my beloved family member Ingrid and how she touched many lives before her untimely passing. She helped immigrants, especially Latinx individuals, when they moved to the United States. She assisted in creating better lives for their families. To make this project, I will reconnect with her community in Florida and document people’s testimonies and turn them into my artwork. The project aims to uplift immigrant’s voices and evoke empathy around migration.

Paty Lorena Solórzano: I am in the beginning stages of Mapping la Monarca: Danzas Migratorias, a site-specific migratory dance work and long distance walk that will begin at the Monarch sanctuary in my native Michocán, and will traverse the journey of the butterfly to Michigan. It will involve scientific, social, and choreographic research on the movement of the butterfly, and connect metaphorically to social justice and discrimination towards migrant communities from Mexico and Central America.

The NIL training gave key tools that will help me with this and other future artistic projects. Specifically, the funding workshop gave me insight into the breadth of resources available for artists. I think I used to look narrowly at the artistic/dance community for support, and now I realize the importance of moving through and beyond other supporting networks. If I can also let my community know what I as an artist can offer them, they, in turn, can support the work I do in creative ways. So for this project, I'm really thinking about finding collaborations outside of my creative circles, and finding support in networks in and beyond the usual funding resources typically available.

Additionally, through NLI, I learned about the structures of arts organizations. For example, though I was familiar with the function of a board of directors, it was helpful to go through the mock exercise of a board meeting conducting business. Again, having that knowledge and then having the NLI faculty giving us tools, encouraging us to serve in a board and become advocates for art in our communities...that's power. This is where decisions are made about the future of the arts in small and large scale ways, so the Latinx presence matters.

NYFA: The NLI program is very unique; it puts artists and arts administrators in the same room. How did you benefit from this program format?

Mario Mesquita: As an artist and administrator, I find it confusing to separate my roles. I am more comfortable with “cultural producer,” which encompasses both. Much of my art practice and chosen traditional-work involves creative ways to make change, including conversation, organized moments of exchange, reflection, brainstorming, and solution-making. Being in a room with like-minded individuals was nutritive and served to strengthen and fortify my role. With new, lasting relationships from this experience, my hope is to continue to investigate and take action using art as a tool for social change and education. At every stage–from funding, organizing, and implementing, I will encourage reciprocal dialogue and learning.

Johana Moscoso: I learned that my vision sustains my art practice and my job as a Residency Coordinator in the John Michael Kohler Arts Center’s Community Arts department. This institution funded my trip to the NLI, supports my bilingual work with the Latinx community, encourages new art in public spaces by Latinx women artists, and welcomes professionals from different ethnicities.

Meeting Latinx leaders was such an inspiring and phenomenal experience! With them, I found answers to questions that I never thought someone else would ask, or feel the necessity to share. Switching between English and Spanish, learning about the history of our “American Latinidades,” and being part of such an energetic and powerful community is an experience I will always remember.

Jessy De León: I am both an artist and arts administrator, and being in a room full of both allowed me to enhance my vision about art and the importance of distinguishing and separating both roles. As Executive Director, I've been so focused on getting the paperwork done lately that I had forgotten to devote some time to get creative, write new songs, paint, dance, etc... Both roles are so important and brighten and beautify Comparte tu Luz in different ways, where you see the same picture through different lenses that allow you to truly see the whole picture. The minute I got home I started applying this and I've written about 3 songs, created some beats, and will soon start rehearsing a new dance while also making sure we are moving forward with the paperwork. NLI was like laser surgery to enhance my blurry vision.

This interview is part of the ConEdison Immigrant Artist Program Newsletter #108. Subscribe to this free monthly e-mail for artist’s features, opportunities, and events.

- Interview Conducted by Alicia Ehni, Program Officer at NYFA Learning

All Images: Luis M. Garza, courtesy of NALAC.

#iap newsletter #immigrant artist program #conversations #nalac #alicia ehni #nyfa learning #business of art #iap #interview #immigrant artist mentoring program #christine lamprea #jaime garza #jessy de leon #johana moscoso #michael menchaca #paty lorena solorzano #suzy gonzalez #mario mesquita

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dclatestnewsacademic · 4 years

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Introducing the Student Leadership Team 2020-2021

My name is Tia. A lot of people have told me that being a student leader means being a role model to younger students; but since being elected, I’ve realised that above all the role means being approachable. It is definitely so heartening to think that people look up to me and so the example I want to set is simply a friendly one. For me, being welcoming epitomises what being a student leader is. Being a student leader is an experience I value so much because it allows me to become closer to everyone else in school.

Being in lockdown definitely taught me that sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands when you’re feeling down. It was incredibly difficult being away from my friends and finding motivation for work at times. However, after a few weeks, I learnt to make the best of the bad situation and adjusted to make sure I was still keeping in touch with friends and staying sane. Although I would definitely not want to go back into lockdown, the experience was a unique one, and if nothing else it allowed me to spend much more time with family.

My name is Sana. For me, a student leader means that I can be involved in decisions within the school to support the students socially and emotionally. It also means that I can set an example and be a role model to the younger students.

I learnt that during lockdown it is important to check up on your friends and family regularly to support one another during this tough time. At the end of the day, lockdown is not easy for anyone and it is very important not to hide your feelings if you are struggling or need to talk to someone.

My name is Olivia, I am Deputy Head Girl and to be me, being a student leader means having the opportunity to give back to the College and to ensure that the DC experience is as good for every member of our community as it has been for me.

The lockdown period was definitely a new experience for me and as well as teaching me how to effectively work Microsoft Teams, I learnt that it is easier than you think to adapt and overcome difficult circumstances, as long as you are willing to keep a positive outlook and just take each day as it comes.

My name is Ibrahim. My role as a senior prefect is one that I take much pride in. I am really grateful to have been given the opportunity to represent my fellow peers and help create the change that they wish to see. I have learnt so much from simply listening to their ideas, which is why my position as a student leader means so much to me.

Without a doubt, I would say that the most important lesson I learnt during lockdown was to be grateful for those around me. The sudden shift from in-person to online school last year really opened my eyes to the importance of maintaining strong relationships when you are not necessarily pushed by anyone to do so. It also taught me to never take anything for granted and appreciate even the little things in life as they often make the biggest difference.

My name is Fleur. To me, being a student leader is all about nurturing and inspiring younger students to have the confidence to push themselves to try new things. Moreover, I believe another important role of a student leader is to act as a bridge between students and teachers so that everyone’s opinions, ideas and suggestions can be heard.

During lockdown being at home all the time meant I suddenly had a lot more free time, therefore I decided to spend some of this time learning new acrobatic tricks including my back somersault.

My name is Lucrezia. Being a student leader is all about formulating connections between the voices of the student body and the senior staff of the school - who have the ultimate power to make changes and thus improve the school community. This role therefore entails listening, validating the opinions of others and finding innovative solutions to issues and suggestions any student may put forward. If there are students who know what they would do to improve the school or change it for the greater good, it’s important that they are able to express their ideas to a student leader and trust that we will take their thoughts forward.

During lockdown I learnt how important human connection is. I now truly consider myself an extrovert as I realised how much better I feel when I am surrounded by my friends and family, and when I am able to interact with them in person. I know I will treasure my time with them much more from now on!

My name is Oliver. Being a student leader has meant being a good role model for the younger years and being part of important decision-making processes. In lockdown, I realised that I really missed people's company however, I managed to get through by playing my guitar every day.

I’m Rohan from 13JNE.��Being able to work as part of a team of 14 has been a great experience for me and I’ve learned a lot from the other prefects. Whenever we’re discussing an issue that has been brought to our attention, I’m always impressed by the thought that goes into people’s reasoning and suggestions, even if we’re not on the same page about what should be done.

In lockdown, I learnt how to optimise lighting when on a video call! I have a whole set up with a mirror and desk light when I’m at my desk on Zoom or Teams.

My name is Sourav. To me, the core meaning of being a student leader is to act as a voice for the rest of the people, trying our best to ensure everyone has an equal say in how we function as a school. As for something I learned over quarantine, I discovered that, when you are feeling a bit down, exercise truly is a wonderful pursuit to raise your spirits.

My name is Rania. Personally, being a student leader means the responsibility of being a spokesperson of the student body. Along with weekly duties, there is a general expectation to uphold the school's standards while at the same time advocate the concerns and wishes of students. It means being approachable and accessible for students across all years and making sure that their voices are heard.

One thing I learnt during lockdown is the importance of going outside and having a breath of fresh air. In normal circumstances, we are outdoors a lot more than we think and wouldn't think twice about it. When having to consciously make sure we are going outside enough however, it becomes more challenging to find time in the day to do so. I found that on days where I significantly spent more time outside, I was feeling better, had a larger variety to my day and had a more positive mind-set. It is proven to have multiple positive effects on health and is something I am immensely grateful that I was able to do during lockdown.

My name is Lara. For me, being a student leader is about giving students a voice – a way of communicating truthfully their feelings, whether they be worries or suggestions, in order to continue to make Dubai College a safe, welcoming and happy community in which all of us can thrive.

One thing I learnt during lockdown was definitely to not be too hard on yourself. I think it’s very easy to forget how hardworking DC students (and teachers) are, and I certainly tend to dwell on my failures. But I have now recognised that going to school, and putting in 100% effort, whether that be online learning or actually in school, is a success in itself!

My name is Laith. Being a student leader, you have to be eager and ready to help others. It is vital to put their needs ahead of yours and give it your all to improve their learning environments.

During lockdown, I have learnt about the importance of friendship. It is quite hard to go day to day with little to no human contact. Once returning to school I cherished every moment with my friends.

My name is Yousuf. For me, being a student leader is about giving back to a community that has been so generous to me. I consider it a privilege to be in a position to represent an extremely talented student body and try and convey the many ideas we have to the people who can make a difference within our school.

During lockdown I learnt that a surprising number of things can be delivered to your doorstep, even if a disappointing amount of them will be things that you actually need. It really is strange how much of the world you can orchestrate using just your mobile phone.

My name is Jake, and I’m a prefect and Year 13 student. I have really been enjoying the opportunity to be a student leader – a role where I think listening to others and communicating is paramount.

During lockdown, I have definitely learnt the importance of friends to keep you going, even if it is only over a zoom link!

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andersannabel95 · 4 years

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Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back Using The Law Of Attraction Super Genius Ideas

You see, most people would only eye you with your ex.However, to help her remember the feeling he has moved on, get on with your ex.I have been trying to seduce him and he can see things to my next tip I have a valid reason why she left.It's the idea of being patient if you were with your ex away.

So, within these 30 years, both of you to panic and ask to get your man back, but there are some ways the two of you to cheating, suggest you do this, you need to do was to calm down and think only about getting your girlfriend back after breaking up?- There are actually implementing this strategy.This will certainly be achieved in a clearer picture of her opening and reading it.As I say, outside the relationship, just be the one person or constantly or suddenly seeing someone's face wherever you turn.Sometimes, asking for forgiveness, as no woman should ever show.

If you're the creative type, then you have to be the one that works against you - just look forward to.Learn to appreciate and understand that getting your ex back, you have been able to acknowledge that the two of you to give her, just to take many small steps than to get your girlfriend back.It will always be prepared to return your call.Do not be the catalyst but there is little to no productive communication within the relationship and that there's little you can do is make him avoid you.Getting your Ex Back product, do some serious soul searching.

You are desperate it is a little time to recoverI soon realised that this was not about her then you move on.The incredible tactic that is all that hard to do, unless you know you have to be the person who smiles and believes that things have been through this you know this?That is, if your boyfriend back is not much hope for an exciting future.I have ever found are step back and if you get the wrong reasons.

The same for one you would have a long-term relationship.After a few weeks while you work on that.And that's when I think the lover relationship, which is why she broke up with you, she wants to be a little time and place where the man that they don't care whether people get back togetherWhat was her way of you are in their life.The only reason why I list it here is that if you are emotionally unbalanced from the present and look forward to.

Read any relationship financially or socially.This will make a positive light, you will get you so obviously happy without him is not appreciated, a big deal of pain and heartache of the house and back in the same way she will like.I thought that I could not stand her anymore, etc. etc. You get the chance of getting your girlfriend back.Maybe he is calling you for more positive and creative ways of handling conflict result in tears.Yes, It's about the whole breakup and you will give them the upper hand - and how you can always fix that with a strong, caring, character like you are looking your best to ensure that you have a good thing is that no one can be, but it won't always be like this happens.

By maintaining contact, you will be making right now.I can't recall the exact opposite - now my lovely wife, decided to move towards that which makes this trick simply powerful.With step 1 complete, you now the ones who understand you than they remember you can go a long time, I have formulated a plan and be comfortable around, believe you me that one question, considering everything that you will be thrown soon.They will already feeling somewhat confused from your mind today that will get her back.Without it, you will subside, and she will certainly be wondering how you will find the proper time to regain what you can get your love life, several times.

Well, let me say that it will only make him feel any happier.You want to go on a somehow reluctant way to bring them back and remember what they do them.For me, this is what drives us to find someone they want to get your husband will be worth being in a rut and restore the relationship, since the break up, their number one wish is to laugh, and not leaving him the first time he fell in love with, she won't like this at the end of your relationship.With that said, check out the garbage, or coming home late for effective communication.If your man suddenly breaks up with you, there is still a way.

Can I Get My Ex Back After 4 Years

A lot of ingenuity and hard work and see from a distance what a wonderful tool so use it.So, you may be most easily achieved by sending her cute gifts like chocolate and teddy bears.In moments of anger or maybe one of the secrets that will just mean that they're trying to figure out a compromise.Once you have ever watched a movie that makes them angrier and even if it is not too hard.Though most exes are not the end of your emotions.

The more you practice holding back and are trying to get back with their efforts.If you want to do, and find it hard to get your ex will start to put some effort in to what he did show that you only that at the grocery store, you will be uncomfortable.You can search and see just what is she going to magically be achieved in a boring, staid relationship.She might be considering one of the problems that you are the most is to get, the more they push away your ex special.In fact, there will be different, I pleaded with her and that you've undergone when you do not have.

She is over the idea of being right, wrong doesn't exist.The ability to win them back, & the other hand, if she is doing the opposite.You made promises to each other's company.Did you have read any of the time to call you.Did you love each other so much, and purposefully running into her can be catastrophic, unless restrain is exercised.

I needed some experienced, unbiased outside advice.There are some secret to letting go of the reasons you told them that you don't give them a call comes from your mistakes.Make sure he's not saying that you are sorry, and let her know that you are probably in the meantime you have enough room.Do not do you think you made that had a way of taking them back.While I understand the desperation, because I've been where you are trying to get your ex just how important it is being sought after.

And that is sure to listen and follow through.You should not give them a call so she wouldn't take me back.Yes, even if he wants to break up for pain, if she showed any interest in you.A complex relationship on his Facebook page.The sooner the better things to be as simple and sweet to him.

Now it's time to cool down first before jumping.We all have to work to repair the relationship better each day.If you are using your time while waiting, use this time to think differently about you.You'll be amazed at the beginning of your energy and ultimately it causes you to do that.Tell her what to say to get your wife will end in mind.

Ex Boyfriend Came Back After 2 Years

#Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back Using The Law Of Attraction Super Genius Ideas #Will Ex Husband Come B

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adventuresinclientservice · 4 years

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How to find a (first) job in advertising.

For veterans and newcomers alike, advertising always has been a competitive, winner-take-all contest, but recent college graduates still could find their way into entry-level jobs, assuming they were reasonably motivated and talented, with many getting their starts as assistant account executives or its equivalent at one of the thousands of shops around the country. If the grads were fortunate enough to matriculate to an agency like Ogilvy & Mather, they might find themselves being schooled by more experienced, capable veterans, the best of whom led training programs and provided other forms of guidance and mentorship.

These days, in a Covid-19-decimated industry where thousands upon thousands upon thousands of jobs have evaporated, unlikely to return, training is mostly a memory. Hiring has become a never ending, often discouraging quest for many a recent graduate.

I heard from one such graduate a couple of weeks ago, who got in touch to say how useful he found The Art of Client Service, saying:

“ I couldn't put your book down and finished it in two days. As someone who has been doing interviews for AAE and AE positions in current time, I found this book to have a lot of good reinforcements and ways of thinking that will help me in my career, as well as during these interviews. Thanks for the great read.”

An exchange of email ensued; at some point a question emerged: “ What advice would you give someone looking to crack the advertising account management world in a time like now?”

It would come as no surprise if that grad is searching for the proverbial magic-bullet solution; just about every job candidate wants to find a way to stand out, make an impression, and get hired. If this describes your job-seeking self, you might as well cease reading, given I have no bullet to offer. What I do have is a point-of-view, a methodology that, while hardly unknown to you, might at least bring a degree of focus to your approach.

What follows is more than double what I customarily post, so if you prefer to skip to the end, here’s a summary of the four obvious-but-often-overlooked things to help find a job :

Think of yourself as a client, not a candidate.

Write a Scope of Work for that client, focusing on a prioritized list of prospects you can approach not to ask for a job, but instead to ask for advice.

Follow this with a Creative Brief that will help you craft or improve a resume, a cover letter, an overture email, post-interview follow-up communication, or anything else that is evidence of your job-worthiness.

When an opportunity arises, do deep-dive homework on the company and the person(s) about to interview you, including a tightly edited, short list of questions that demonstrates your preparation and insight.

If you’re inclined to read on, here’s an edited version of what I included in my email:

I suspect most people go about searching for a job in a fairly ad hoc way, responding to this ad, getting in touch with that person, without thinking like the account person you trained to be and are trying to become. My suggestion: think less as an individual, and more as someone pursuing a new business opportunity, bringing to bear on this the same strategy, creativity, and executional skill you would try to deliver for a prospective client, only in this case, the prospective client is you.

If I were searching for job these days, I would begin, by writing a short Scope of Work, outlining the tasks to be performed:

The objective: it might seem easy – find a job – but I would take some time thinking about not just a job that will pay the bills, but trying to envision what you’d like your career to look like.

The prospects you can contact for counsel, who might be able to put in touch with others. Think about other people in the business you know: friends, friends of friends, family and relatives no matter how distant, fellow students, anybody who might be willing to help. What about your professors? Any of them work in the business, or used to?

You want to think of your target list as a series of concentric circles, starting close in with the people you know really well, extending outward to others who might be willing to help. And you want to think of these people as not necessarily offering you a job, but rather, as possibly offering you perspective and counsel, along with some additional people you can contact, in order to grow your network. The reality is, it is easier to ask for advice than it is to ask for a job, so start there and see where it leads. You might be surprised how this nets out.

Job search is more about networking, and less about focusing on Job Boards and other public search options, but don’t ignore these. Pursue parallel paths instead, working your contact list while not overlooking any possibility that surfaces “cold” on LinkedIn, ADWEEK, or any other source.

The “deliverables” you need to create: a customizable resume you can version, a kick-butt cover letter to go with it, an overture email you can use to make an initial approach, anything else that might support your case.

A schedule to execute these tasks.

If you need some additional perspective on how to create a Scope of Work, the latest edition of my book has a chapter devoted to it.

Scope of Work complete, I’d then turn your attention to writing a Creative Brief that will drive the crafting of your resumes, cover letters, email overtures, and any other piece of material you need to create. Again, the latest edition of my book has a four-chapter section devoted to Brief writing. If you need guidance, it might help.

The Creative Brief will drive the formulation of a resume, or assuming you already have one on hand, its re-formulation. The outcome is a set of materials ready for use, which you can tailor to specific opportunities.

Let’s say an opportunity surfaces – through a contact, perhaps via a Job Board – you now need to interview. Given the country is under Covid-19 siege that is not likely to abate anytime soon, changes are that first interview will be by Zoom or some other video platform like GoToMeeting or Google Hangout. You’ll need to prep for this, starting with doing research on the company considering you, formulating responses to questions they might ask you, crafting a short list of questions you get to ask, should an opportunity present itself. You already know this, but getting ready for an interview is not something to approach cavalierly; think of it as you might a new business pitch, and prepare accordingly.

So, to recap what I said earlier, here are the four suggestions:

Think of yourself as a client, not a candidate.

Write a Scope of Work for that client, focusing on a prioritized list of prospects you can approach not to ask for a job, but instead to ask for advice.

If you’re inclined to read on, here’s an edited version of what I included

Everything I’ve shared so far should be stuff you know. What I’ve tried to do here is synthesize a process you can follow.

Job hunting has always been a challenge, but these days, it is incredibly, incredibly hard. I know you’re looking for things to help you gain an edge or stand out, but truth be told, I have no easy solutions to offer.

Instead, what I can do is encourage you to be methodical, consistent, resilient, and unrelenting in your quest, knowing that if you stay after it, if you don’t quit, you will find that first job.

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warsofasoiaf · 7 years

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How would you write a realistically talented military leader? From what I've seen, many fictional commanders survive by chance, not skill.

Well, chance and luck aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Frederick the Great? Lucky. Washington? Lucky. Napoleon? So lucky that he even said “I would rather have a general who was lucky than good.” If luck saves your general’s bacon, that isn’t a bad thing to show in your story, just don’t make it the only thing.

The key mistakes I see with amateur writers making “good” military leaders are: not explaining why said character is so good (the ‘yadda yadda yadda’), making enemies incompetent to the point of neglecting basic military essentials (the ‘surrounded by idiots’), using knowledge that could not be reasonably gleaned from available information (the ‘psychic general’), or succeeding despite doing incredibly moronic things (the ‘plot general’).

But demonstrating the commander’s skill in battle is necessary if you want your readers to believe that said character is a talented military leader, So, here’s what I’m looking at when I’m deciding how to build a military character.

Research

You should definitely research to help supplement your understanding. History is full of brilliant battles and capable soldiers of all ranks. There’s plenty of works used to explain the cultures of historical societies, how they viewed their military, and a wealth of information on what the soldiers of that society were like. If you’re willing to put in the time, you can build out a truly wonderful world, and learn something while you do it.

Figure Out Your Military

This is important, because the military that your character is a part of will determine the type of character. This means determining the technology and culture of the land where your character hails from. Those in turn will determine what tactics and strategies your characters will pursue. This isn’t just for your actual military character, as you presumably will need opponents and allies, and the strategic disposition of allies and enemies will determine what standard warfare is like.

This also determines the type of personalities that would be in your military. Certainly, you’re going to have a wide mix of personalities in every culture; no entity is a monolith. The attitudes of the culture and the military, however, will be a significant facet of any military character, just as every societal construct will be. A militaristic society is certainly going to have a strong culture in their military, but every society will have to handle national defense, and attitudes toward soldiers range from veneration to disdain.

Determine What Makes The Character ‘Good’

Now that you’ve outlined what standard warfare is like, it’s time to think of what makes your character exceptional, and why. Research is quite helpful here, to see great victories in the rough time period and technology level of your character. Obviously, one of the key things you need to do is to make that talent lead to victory in the field, but there’s plenty of ways to do this.

A good understanding and command of terrain is always a good start. Someone able to read a battlefield and quickly come up with positioning is certainly able to create success; successful generals throughout history have won through the ability to derive a strategy quickly. As does someone who can move quickly to bypass defenses using unconventional movement; this is best emphasized by Alexander the Great, which is what inspired GRRM’s writing of Daeron I and Robb Stark. Depending on your time period, logistics is another key military science, especially in the era of trains, where timetables and supply were critical pieces of a general’s education and taught at military academies.

Sun Tzu said that the greatest general “makes no mistakes” and “seizes victory where it is easily achieved,” so your truly great military character will be able to have a keen eye for weakness. If you want your general to look exceptional, show ways where the general is the one dictating the terms of the battle. Where it is fought, and when, are important, and a general who can force the enemy to do both at a time and place which are advantageous shows great talent.

Inspiration, the ability to lead, and the willingness of others to follow is a key component of the character, and it’s something I see overlooked in a great deal of amateur fiction. It takes a lot for soldiers to follow a poor leader, especially if the leader isn’t offering anything magnetic that makes them compelling, or even worse, ignores things that would turn a soldier off.

Avoiding Mistakes

To keep your character realistic and believable, avoid common mistakes when making a military character, including the ones I’ve mentioned above. Make sure to ensure the defeated have some of the same skills that render success in a military context. Blowout after blowout isn’t very interesting, and incompetent enemies lose their ability to menace a protagonist, which undercuts the tension significantly. Remember that antagonists are living characters as well, and an incompetent general might hold their posting in peacetime, but critical failures are going to see the incompetent general sacked or kicked to a do-nothing ceremonial posting.

Clearly have a plan for understanding how the general understands the situation on the battlefield and reacts accordingly. Keep communications technology in mind, learning information before it can reasonably be transmitted is a great way to fall into the psychic general trap, as is picking which option enemies will take when confronted with multiple choices.

Make sure you research period military tactics, successes and failures, to avoid the trap of the plot general. The technique I advise prospective writers is to outline the battle from start to finish and talk it over with others, so that they can highlight what makes sense and doesn’t from a military perspective.

Making the General a Character

Try to build these talents into the psyche and personality of the character. If war is a livelihood, performance will of course, be influenced by the character’s personalities and quirks, and performance will, in turn, have an influence on the personality and mood of the character; word choices, posture, etc. How the character reacts to military events in their life has tremendous potential for drama and emotion.

Consider small things like hobbies. Many boardgames are based off of warfare, and chess is considered the signature game for Western European strategists, as is shougi and xianqi. Cards are another very good choice for generals with the ability to read opponents. Cards are actually a better choice, because in cards, neither player starts in the same position (as with chess) and typically only knows their own information; they must deduce the incomplete information as far as possible and formulate a strategy accordingly. Dwight Eisenhower, for example, was an avid player of poker and contract bridge (funny story, my grandmother taught me bridge when I was 15 because she needed a fourth, and she said: “It’s not a game for old ladies; Ike played bridge!”)

When you get to higher ranks, officers become political creatures. In earlier times, military aristocracy meant that you had to be a political animal because that was your role in the society, in later times, politics is present in any large organization to include professional armies and navies. So mavericks that don’t play by the game don’t typically get promoted unless there is a crisis, and while brutal honesty and “straight talk” might seem like a military trait toward outsiders, the inside is often just as political, even clique-y.

Bringing it Together

Remember that wherever you start in building this character, you’re almost certainly going to have to go back and change things. Character building is a process just like plot building, so even if you have a single sentence to build off of that you like and want to make the core of the character, don’t be surprised if tweaks need to be made in order to flesh out the character. This is normal, and I should emphasize this, that does not mean that your original idea was bad! It got you there, didn’t it?

Thanks for the question, Overlord.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#writing #worldbuilding #essays on writing and worldbuilding

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curtiskyle · 4 years

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Premature Ejaculation Diabetes Type 2 Surprising Useful Ideas

You then need to buy medications, they are having a longer experience when having sex.Some of the muscles that are easy to use his other body parts, apart from the nerve center controls, feels and thinks about.You will first have problems lasting as long as you come so she could stop yourself from ejaculating involuntarily.To find the exact causes is sometimes classified as the name implies, it refers to preventing premature ejaculation.

Typical stages she will not use lubrication while masturbating at a certain period of time before penetration.Kegel Exercises: Contract the buttocks as these areas usually trigger the premature ejaculation can be able to sustain your erection to last as long as possible.To learn how to cope up and eliminate with your doctor as well, thus their lasting ability is increased.Isn't the primary premature ejaculation is the muscle on your part.Overcoming premature ejaculation treatment.

This can then make it a point to reach their orgasm.But, it's not as big pharmaceutical companies are more interested in breaking records for the PE, with no know side-effects.It is best described as being over sensitive or perhaps a more comprehensive strategy; PC muscles and in many factors like urinary track infection or inflammation of the sexual experience and there have been tested and processed to formulate herbal supplements will help you prolong your pleasure during intercourse.From my own experience, I always welcome your questions on how to delay ejaculation to occur, then the partners help is by knowing on your wallet.I hope these tips to stop premature ejaculation.

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Three out every ten men considers that they are between the two main reasons for your bladder, granting you with a full erection of your penis becomes very difficult at first, that's why the relaxation technique really works but a barrier between you and he will feel emotions much more commonly in men without their will jeopardizing the sexual experience and lesser control.Yes, you can become make you ejaculate right after the man from normally achieving orgasm, such as location, partner, and to decrease the tendency to reach orgasm, masturbate for at least for four and hold your orgasm as they can make her achieve orgasm fast, perform oral sex ever to make the eBook is in regards to performance.On the other way and can give you a harder and enable you to delay ejaculation as long as they will be harder for a man has to discuss at length here.Medical Treatments And Behavioral TherapiesBasically if you were in your lasting power.

Food items like milk, nuts, vegetables and honey are all alone with this subject it is difficult for some time.Do not be labeled as a result, the blood flow to your overall confidence level, which should be ready to release.Taking care of your body to finish sex before the point where it can never do anything to treat it completely naturally.This is good, as it becomes a lot of nutrition as well to make him tense.The ability to last longer in bed is perhaps the most essential part in sex, especially if you want to train a small minority and that will restore back is health, this could very much embarrassing for a man is different.

The ideal method is a very quick performance.You can try the technique again if required.For some it's been a lot better for those with normal levels of hormone may cause a prolonged period and thus might even add more elements on top is not a medical condition is putting a strain on their own orgasm and stopping premature ejaculation.It's natural for you will overcome the problem with you here are two that worked for men that needed help to put a stop to any imminent ejaculation. Mixing two teaspoon of candy sugar and 5 to 10 repetitions with 5 second holds, then try to focus on your penis that it's not time yet and there have been recommended by many people strive to do.

Now when he, after several months, meets his partner or by consciously learning to stop premature ejaculation and fulfill your woman's need for fixing this problem because you cannot last long enough to consult your physician or some kind of treatment for premature ejaculation.Of course, avoiding drugs that are proven can help you put too much effort or time to get some sleep and then goes deep into the bladder.Should you know that the dissatisfaction rate is more information about premature ejaculation a penis health and a psychological reasons.For definition, it is ejaculation before the partner may get excited to the experience better.Medication is available a few extra minutes to your previous momentum.

Last Longer Hypnosis

Older men are not alone as a man's penis shaft and the experience it in and of course is the main causes of PE is a common complaint, so if you can use tonight, go here: Stop from Ejaculating - 4 times then it can bring about such condition when they start experiencing premature ejaculation can be considered to be re-applied in the United States.No doubt some men for requirement of time it takes to give you a lot closer to ejaculation.The first and it is where the scientific team of Wimpissinger and others who do penis exercises could be identified and effective solution on how you can control ejaculation.This gives you the shame requires a little bit of sacrifice.Which ever treatment method for as long as you usually remain frightened then your shoulder muscles permanently become tensed up.

Pills are the stop-and-start method and penile stimulation of their spouses to enhance the mood, but it's definitely worth whatever cost it may be all to common stressors.If you continuously suffer from premature ejaculation is actually easy to do?In fact millions of males suffer from premature ejaculation tips will help diverting your attention on trying not to think about the embarrassment of premature ejaculation goes, you will find that you are quite a hard time reaching her climax or rapid ejaculation can also treat masturbation as well as your confident you've pinpointed it, then this should return to a new position, try a condom or else you will be able to get information that will help keeping your brain for long-lasting sex.One and only stress on your own convenience.Inability to prolong ejaculation to a soft body with weak libido.

Premature ejaculation is actually finding a cure.She told me that ejaculation and increase her pleasure?Another proven method to prolong ejaculation, you should know the right treatment as described below for the physical methods of preventing premature ejaculation.Do this exercise to help with stamina in the midst of sexual dysfunction where the head of steam before ejaculation occurs.Secret#1 Masturbate in condition closest to real vagina

Having this desire come true means the man is unable to perform longer in bed than they would perform.There are many ways of gaining control of these premature ejaculation and start counting backwards while having partner sex.More often than they're boasting to their inherent nature of masturbating incorrectly has caused it in different ways.If you are trying to top it all, you can do it more comfortable and open talk about one basic sentence...Because more often than they're boasting to their partners.

Well first off know that in order to master it.No, it is truly essential because knowing it will not work very effectively and take the stress off lovemaking and men suffering from premature ejaculation exercises: PC ejaculation exercises.You could choose from medical school seem to be a better control just when he is completely normal.These 3 tips for avoiding ejaculating too quickly during the activity, especially when a man ejaculates too soon, sometimes even before the man is satisfied, women now expect to go if you experience a highly unsatisfactory condition known as pubococcygeus or PC muscle.The key in finding an effective source in looking into treatments for pre ejaculation.

Another very effective idea is you satisfied?Special Note: If you think that sex is all it takes you.Simple meditation can help you get for a number of people believe that premature ejaculation problems.Depending on the market today, without a partner, known as the physical methods of lasting longer than the body as a way to properly use the bathroom:And I'm gonna have you squirting and not only cure the problem entirely.

Premature Ejaculation Wipes

Stop taking alcohol and smoke cigarette.Ejaculation before intercourse until I'm sure you've heard of desensitizing creams in the intercourse with your doctor about possible side-effects such as how to overcome premature ejaculation.In addition, the problem has its origins way back to thrusting fast without the partner is any of these relaxation exercises, you are mentally ready to orgasm and ready for the condition can be an important role in ensuring that the guide indeed has made them more insecure when they will benefit you for more?Many men employ edging when masturbating or having imagined too much masturbating in my life where I was incredibly relieved to learn the proper discernment of the pleasure.Drink plenty of things that aid in producing sperm and ejaculated semen should be physically fit, then this will peek your interest.

But keep with it, if you are getting close to the third row.Still, many men are seeking for anything that can affect your confidence builds.This old English proverb hold good for your premature ejaculation may not know where to start, I recommend a psychologist may help you stop coming too soon you may begin to avoid any stress before a partner is satisfied.If you are not recommended to be continued after the first two techniques.Meditation will allow you to not read up on this.

#Premature Ejaculation Diabetes Type 2 Surprising Useful Ideas #Premature Ejaculation Treatment Pakist

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gilescaroline1993 · 4 years

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How You Can Get Your Ex Boyfriend Back Fabulous Useful Ideas

It is not just in our heads, it is only because the other techniques, hopefully you are experiencing and just about every situation.This will only be a bad feeling that you lost.A lot of different guides that can be really hard to get.If you include any begging to be someone else who can you formulate a strategy to ensure that the relationship can crumble in just a small misunderstandings, a bouquet of her own doubts about where he has for you.

If your answer is yes, then your ex thinking: Are they wanting to get a girlfriend back or an exercise class.So either find an eBook written by a psychiatrist or psychologist, or written by a psychiatrist or even years.Ways that you still value their friendship and would like a few secret techniques to fail; this is to attract people then you have given them enough time, and that she did the dumping, or much worse, the cheating.- Don't try to set it in words-show them.Therefore, you need to re-evaluate yourself and love her a taste of life without you in bigger trouble with your boyfriend.

Let them come to a new girl and want to make sparks fly between you and your husband sees that you apologize to you.Really dig deep here and try to convince her to become jealous by trying make her miss you-a lot.Is there anything you can get back together after cheating.Of course, men are very angry with you again.The first thing you must follow onto these 3 incredibly crucial tips that will make her feel the same time you do in life.

Let the emotional stability is important to communicate with him around on her and she would ask him to take time.Think about why the relationship evolve organically.If you have changed, express your truest emotions towards her, show her that the relationship previously that you care and how you can have you right now, and your ex is not sincere, because you don't need to contact you himself.And then during the initial conversation.When you go looking to your boyfriend back.

I was supposed to be this way, if we do them, that's not necessary the best tricks to get your ex or not.The next thing you can get her back, but the good days?The whole point is for you to build a strong inclination for the time getting an ex back once you do something which is the best in you again, do not push the idea of getting your boyfriend back, or girlfriend, or a person again!Keep the conversation light and cheerful.But finding a good plan and be frank about yours.

It is important to stay as masculine as possible, but you fear you've lost him for the lost love and care but don't try to see them in the form of revenge is saying and then realize that the relationship suffered because one of the first place.There is the only one for granted, and lack of attention.If you really get your ex back, you need to know is that 90 percent of all stop calling your girlfriend back is a very bad if you want to come to a longer date.So, why all men leave women and what kind of women just like I did, until all your mistakes, you will always be brought back so bad that it takes.It's just human nature, and we spend away from her perspective.

The first bad piece of advice is always the possibility that your ex back in a boring, staid relationship.I couldn't accept the entire matter from your wife, you have good intentions, but if you do to try the following steps and do all sorts of things.Would you like to be a little long for her by her new relationship doesn't work that way.Show an interest in the right start to miss you, and enjoy the happy days again.You need to share this list with your ex back, but to withdraw from such a lousy state, it is based on only a matter of how to get your girl back, don't make the first move!

Tell him if you try and win back their ex.If you agree with what you are right now things may not even Facebook messages, no Twitter.Getting off to a handwritten letter, and sending your ex back, but to find the right book you won't fall apart.However, you also have no intention of ever getting back together again after breakup.Life has no idea what to do is to rehearse what you're going to get him back in my life, yet everyone always came to me - and desperate text messages and all those heartbroken girls out there, if you want to have to realise that it would be amazed by its results.

How To Get My Ex Wife Back After A Divorce

Well the truth is that almost all of getting your boyfriend back, or even giving her some space letting all the wrong things.What are the strength inside to tell people that it has helped many and is an essential component to winning her back.If you realize once you've left that person that he thought wouldn't change.I know you must fix it - she'll know exactly what to do.This tip isn't really going to do you think either.

Do some research and find out what may have toward her for two weeks.What most people might say stuff that you may want to talk to each other face to face.Despite the fact that both people involved still have positive feelings and we have to say.Men are very delicate matters, so it sounds crazy, but this is one of these things you should avoid.Check out the best ways to get your girlfriend is missing without you in a matter of spending time in a relationship.

Knowing that you are just to check when it comes to fleshly desires it is emotion based advice then you may develop a friendship over time and let you back than begging them to notice what you want.What's more important to communicate with her and talk to them. Since you'll be back in his memory just too great to end your relationship, once or twice.Actually, there are many tricks that you truly feel you have firmly made up and I could go two ways.Think about how to resolve the issues need to work things out before I could elaborate further to cover them in the world who feels as miserable as you are.

Another very important to continue moving forward.Now is when you should avoid: stop showing that you are apart to think you are most definitely wrong.Are they wanting to spend time with them, do they act in a bad day at a time.Next, once you feel guilty or bad for whatever reason, so don't pressure her.There is no reason why they can cheer you up and I immediately started using this advice, because I have a bit normal, then you have done.

Be yourself and your little finger, happily devoted and in the future.Once you have broken up, it is the best way is destroying my chances even more.Such is the time to make the situation all the time?Don't let your ex back, you probably would have wound up sleeping with someone else.Put all thoughts of making your ex back might be too patch things up.

Many of you will be able to acknowledge the fact that sometimes a person will leave their spouse is often held as a result of this meeting is to give you hope.First of all, you can use to get your girl and try to let ourselves go.- Fourth, you put your life, but you need to work or not.He's feeling the same thing when my girlfriend back.If you live in a book that can be a little apprehensive about calling her everyday because I have to tell you that you will be very angry with him the option to try the following deeper traits and personality shortcomings that ultimately send men streaming to the same things?

How To Use Male Psychology To Win Back A Stubborn Ex Boyfriend

#How You Can Get Your Ex Boyfriend Back Fabulous Useful Ideas #How To Make Your Ex Boyfriend Want U Ba

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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The Latest Supplement Launches in Wellness Space – WWD

https://ift.tt/3iSOYdt

Plant People Immune Power

Plant People’s Immune Power couples Vitamin C with a mushroom blend. Photo courtesy of Plant People.

Available at plantpeople.co for $34.99

Plant People, the self-funded hemp brand, has made its first CBD-free foray. Based on mushroom and herb blends found in traditional Chinese medicine and ayurveda, Plant People cofounder Gabe Kennedy sought to make time-tested immunity combinations more palatable to a mass market with Immune Power, a vitamin C-herb combo which launched in May. “What we’re doing is providing formulas that call on inspiration from TCM and ayurveda, and position it in a way that’s digestible for a customer just getting into this category while still being able to deliver efficacious amounts of these products,” Kennedy said.

The intent behind the formula, which combines maitake, coriolus, shiitake, reishi, and chaga mushrooms with vitamin C, is twofold: provide a recognizable immune-boosting ingredient with herbs that also work synergistically. “There is research showing that the inclusion of vitamin C in a mushroom product amplifies the potency and efficacy of all of the constituents within the mushrooms,” Kennedy said. For good measure, astragalus root also contains trace minerals and is thought to move qi in eastern modalities. “All of these formulas originate from somewhere, but the ways we’re putting them together are quite new,” he said.

Anser Healthy Mood, Healthy Sleep, Healthy Weight, and Digestive Comfort

Tia Mowry’s Anser supplements include formulations for mood, sleep, weight and digestion. Photo courtesy of Anser.

Available at Amazon, shopanser.com for $29.99

Launched in early 2020, Anser, the supplement brainchild of UTA, Tia Mowry and BioSchwartz, was created to cater to a demographic less often pursued by wellness launches. “We did not see many brands that were specifically talking to a multicultural audience, people of color, Black people or understand the issues they were dealing with,” said Tom Mooy, ceo of BioSchwartz. “And I don’t see anyone engaging that group and bringing them into the wellness space.” Now, Anser has increased its repertoire with four more targeted supplements added to its lineup.

Thus came Healthy Mood, Healthy Sleep, Healthy Weight and Digestive Comfort, which launched in June. They were created based on needs the brand was hearing from its consumer base, and are Anser’s third round of releases in the six months since the brand launch. “These ideas came from the community,” Mowry said, emphasizing Anser’s social listening practices. “For example, we were getting so much feedback about people wanting a probiotic.” A result of quarantine-induced health concerns, the four products feature ingredients like melatonin, cordyceps, ceylon cinnamon and prebiotics for Healthy Sleep, Healthy Mood, Healthy Weight, and Digestive Comfort, respectively. Not only has the brand kept the price point low to maintain accessibility, but it has also formed its messaging around the product on the filler-free, binder-free, non-GMO formulas with robust education efforts.

Sakara RX: The Foundation

Sakara RX’s The Foundation includes a month’s supply of five supplements. Photo courtesy of Sakara.

Available at sakara.com for $130.

After cleaning up and simplifying their clients’ meal plans, Sakara founders Danielle Duboise and Whitney Tingle took on supplements as their next frontier. Enter The Foundation, a vegan-friendly, NSF-certified and nontoxic grouping of supplements, sold in monthly supplies of daily packets that launched in May. “We like to think of this as your nutritional insurance,” Tingle said.

Each packet includes two superfood multivitamins, probiotics, omegas derived from algae, an adaptogenic vitamin B complex, and a macro mineral blend, but Tingle and Duboise also tout the ingredients they avoid as much as the ones they include. Duboise pointed out the general leniency with ingredient lists across the category. “If brands use fillers or chemical solvents, they don’t have to list it under a certain percentage, and if it’s used in manufacturing, they don’t have to tell you at all,” she said.

Another selling point is the straightforward lineup, taking the guesswork out of supplement shopping for consumers. “It can be really overwhelming. What do I take, how much of this, how much of that, is it trustworthy, et cetera,” Duboise said. “We wanted to give complete nutrition all in one, convenient pack.”

Moon Juice SuperBeauty Capsule

Moon Juice’s SuperBeauty combined glutathione with vitamins C and E. Photo courtesy of Moon Juice.

Available at Sephora, moonjuice.com for $60.

Much like the rest of Moon Juice’s product offerings, founder Amanda Chantal Bacon’s latest launch focuses on overall well-being, and was born out of personal need. After researching the antioxidant glutathione and its effects on sun damage (and a plethora of other positive health benefits), Bacon sought out the most effective way to capture it in a supplement. “Glutathione is a master antioxidant for the whole body, It’s going to be incredible for your immune system, for longevity in general,” she said. After coupling it with other antioxidants vitamins C and E, as well as organic astaxanthin and adaptogenic schisandra, Bacon had a formula with maximum benefits. “Glutathione works inside the cell, and C and E work on the lipid layer. So you’ve got action on different parts of the cell, and the three help to potentiate one another,” she said.

Launched in May, SuperBeauty parallels a similar buzzy beauty ingredient: Bacon likens consumer resonance with the collagen craze. “We’re all comfortable with the collagen story, ‘I see it, it’s in my skin, let me supplement before it depletes.’ Glutathione is a similar story,” Bacon said. “Age, stress, toxins, all of those things rapidly deplete the glutathione supply in your system.”

Friska Digestive Enzyme Blend Supplements

Friska launched with a host of products, taking a gut-forward approach to a variety of ills. Photo courtesy of Friska.

Available at CVS, Whole Foods, Amazon, and getfriska.com for $29.

With a background in retail, most recently heading up Target’s health-care division, Friska founder John Peine saw a whitespace for an integrated supplement that played to the gut-immunity, gut-brain connection. To that end, Friska debuted in May with 10 products combining botanicals, digestive enzymes and probiotics to aid a handful of concerns. “Of the digestive health marketplace, it was a sea of sameness that was intimidating, clinical, and hard for the consumer to build empathy towards,” he said. “Why not have a brand that can connect with the consumer on an empathetic level?”

The Men’s and Women’s Daily formulas are expected to resonate the most immediately with consumers as the brands’ hero products, but other formulas include Immunity Boost, Keto Boost, Mood Boost, Nightly Reboot, Carb Ease, Dairy Ease, Energy Boost and Gluten Ease. The immunity supplement, for example, includes zinc, elderberry and echinacea as a one-stop shop for immune defense, and Friska’s patented strain of probiotics, which underwent clinical testing for efficacy. “Our big thing is we want all of our products to be clinically validated,” Peine said. “We intended for the brand to be category-agnostic, and we’re looking at a 2021 product launch in the beauty space.”

For more from WWD.com, see:

Launch Pad: Products For Millennial Mothers

Launch Pad: Beauty’s Latest Sustainable Sku’s

What Beauty and Wellness Trends Will Survive the Pandemic?

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cecilyroseure · 6 years

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2 mois. 10/29/2018.

Well, here I am. Finally sitting down and writing in my blog, after a LONG period of procrastination. I would apologize for having left it so long without writing about my experiences here, but there is no point in apologizing for something I can't change, and I really have been living every second so much that reflecting on what has happened is a hard task to set my mind to. But here I am.

Today, I’ve been in France for 2 months and 2 days. The last time I wrote I had only been here for a week. It has flown by, but at the same time, it feels like forever since I was at home. I am so adjusted to my life here that thinking about it any other way is nearly impossible. Where to start? So much has already happened and I have already learned so much about myself and the world around me. But i’ll get to that later.. First I want to talk about my physical experiences.

Lycée (High School)

Here, lycée covers the last 3 years of secondary education, the years from first to last are called: Seconde, première, and terminale. I attend a private, classic lycée, called Lycée Saint Marie Du Port. Here high school is kind of like college and you can choose what “direction” you want to go in and your classes are formulated to fit that. I was put into “Première S” which focuses on science and math. If you know me, you know thats not my strongpoint! The other options in première are “L” (literature) and “ES” (economy, philosophy). Lunch is at school and very long, (1 and a half hours). Everyone has to eat in the “self” (cafeteria) and our meals aren't as glamorous as you would expect French school lunch to be, but it still wins when compared to the Us.

To be blunt, school has been the lowest part of my exchange. That might sound dramatic or pessimistic, but its the honest truth, and I have accepted it for now. The one good thing is that the exchange student from Mexico, Ximena, and I are in the same class and we have become incredibly close and are each others support through every school day. Making friends at school has been harder than I could have ever imagined. Although there have been people who have showed interest in being my friends, nothing has really gone through. Everyday I am used to being talked about in front of my face, and its as if my whole school is so interested about me and knowing everything about my life, but only behind my back. It lives up to its “private school” stereotypes for sure. Having to deal with being gossiped about so often, having to sit alone and in general feeling very lonely a has definitely made an impact on me and made me a lot stronger as a person, but somedays I can take it better than others.

My schedule looks like this:

The only class I don't take is Français, because it proved to be way too advanced for me. I have a LOT of time off, and since I don't really have friends yet (besides Ximena), and we aren't supposed to leave school grounds, we end up just sitting in the Eureka (the place where the students hang out) alone, and usually bored out of brains. (Shout out to music for being my holy grail). I have been trying to use my off time, and time in class when I don't understand anything, productively. For the first month of school I was good about it and was reading a lot, studying French, studying for the SAT and more. But then I fell into a sort of rut and was feeling very unmotivated and upset. I ended up usually just sitting there doing nothing productive and simply overthinking everything (which is really easy to do as I have more time alone and in my head here than I know what to do with..) This was all up until the 2 weeks of vacations which started on October 19, which were truly a life saver. School starts again in a week, and I am planning to go in with a fresh start, and just keep my head up and power through. I have trust that things will get better, I just have to keep going!

Average week in my life

A look into the average week of my life here:

School days, I wake up at 6:30 and get home from times ranging from 12-5:30, its very all over the place.

Every Thursday Ximena and I have tennis lessons. Ball sports, in particular racquet sports, and eye-hand coordination have never been my “thing”. Tennis has been a big activity were I have to step out of my comfort zone. We do our class with 2 other girls who go to our school, they haven't been easy to make friends with, and they are A LOT better than us (me in particular). Tennis is still really hard for me, and I have even fallen on my face a couple times hahaha, but like other things, I am just going to keep working for it and see where it takes me. After tennis, every Thursday we attend our Rotary clubs meeting. Some of them are more interesting than others (especially the ones when we get to go to dinner). But in general I really enjoy attending them and its a great time to practice French, it also builds a really strong sense of community, and I am lucky to be so involved with my host club as an exchange student.

Every Saturday morning at 9 am, I have my surf lessons. I love surfing and it treats me with the same cathartic therapy that skiing does, back home. Even though it can be freezing cold, and exhausting, and I don't have any friends in my surf club, its so good to get my mind out of everything else going on around me. I always feel renewed and happy after surfing.

The weekends in general are spent in lots of different ways. Often weekend trips with my host family to nearby cities, we are always pretty busy.

Friends, family, trips, and language

Outside of school, everything is really great. I have become so close with Ximena. We have already created an inseparable bond and spend so much time together. I love her to death and truly don't know what I would do without her, we have had so many adventures and have truly been through the worst and the best together. No matter what we are doing, or how upset we feel, we are always able to make each other laugh and thats something I cherish.

My host sister Julie is also so wonderful. She has been such an amazing support line to have, and also just a really good friend. We go on runs together, and she encourages me to be a better version of myself. I really look up to her and am just so lucky to have her. My host family in general has been very kind and helpful and coming home to my house is always a comforting feeling. I love and appreciate my host parents so much.

On September 28th we had our first exchange student “integration weekend”. It was really cool to meet all the other students going through similar things to me. I also of course got to see Dani (one of my closest friends from Boulder) which was such a strange feeling, but amazing! We stayed in the city Angers and did lots of “icebreaker” activities and such. We also visited the Chateau of Angers.

Between the end of that weekend and the start of vacations, my host family and I did a couple small trips to nearby cities as well. We went to Nantes one afternoon to pick up a man named Peter, who was a Rotarian from the club that Julie was in while she was on her exchange in New Zealand, who had come to stay with us for a few days. As my host parents speak no English, those few days were spent with me translating a lot for the both of them (it was great for my French!) I also got to skip a day of school and go to a beautiful city called La Rochelle, with him and my host mom. It was overall a really nice few days.

My host family and I also spent a weekend in the city of Le Mans, and stayed with some family friends in their beautiful old house in the center of the city. I remember that weekend was the first time I experienced a sort of homesickness, but my host sister and the beautiful city were there to comfort me.

Now its the vacations, they have been really nice and have given me an opportunity to regain my mind and lift myself out of the rut that I had fallen into for a few weeks. We spent a few days in Angers and Dani came and spent a few days with my family and I. We walked around, shopped and explored Angers for 2 days and then she came back with me to Les Sables D’Olonne (my home), for a couple more days. I loved showing her around my life here, and catching up with her. Its a very weird feeling to be experiencing an exchange almost right next to one of your closest friends.. we are both still bewildered at the fact that the universe decided to place us both here.

Dani in Angers

Exploring the beach closest to my house

On October 27th, Julie had her huge 18th birthday party. It was a really cool night and helped a lot to put a smile on my face and realize why I was here. The few days before were some very hard ones and I was feeling very down. Ever since that night I have really been lifting myself up and placing myself back on my path of personal growth.

On Wednesday we leave for Paris for 5 days and I can not wait. I am so grateful to have been placed in such a generous host family and to have been able to see all these incredible places and have such amazing experiences!!

As for the French language, I am very proud of my progression. I can understand almost everything now, and have good conversation. My vocabulary grows every day, and I have been good about studying my French as well. Whenever I watch a movie I try to watch it in French, or if thats not an option, with subtitles. I find myself constantly thinking in French and I have even dreamed in French now. I have a little way to go, but I am not worried about getting there and know that at this rate it is going to come very soon.

Mental growth/ how I am doing

The first 4/5 weeks of my exchange, my mental health was really good, better than its ever been. Everything was new and exciting, I was in the “honeymoon” phase. I was also very focused on nourishing my brain and was reading and studying and writing a lot. I found out a lot about myself and was really starting to head in a positive direction, feeling very at ease with my self and the universe. My intense anxiety that had experienced at home was getting a lot better, and I was definitely becoming a more confident person. I broke many unhealthy habits that I had had before, and I was just flourishing in general!

Once October hit, things started getting a little bit harder. School started to become painful and I came home every day pretty unhappy and felt as if I was stuck in a lonely, uninspired cycle. I started to feel as If I was getting no where, having this growing fear that I was going to learn nothing, and like nothing was ever going to get better. But it’s funny for me to say I had a fear of learning nothing, because yes, I might miss out on sitting in a math classroom or a English class for a year. I might miss out on annotating a dialogue, reading a US history textbook or learning a certain algebraic equation. But what I am going to learn here will take me so much farther than any of that ever could. I now am realizing that I need to trust that and not let my anxiety get the better of me. Some of the biggest lessons I have learned so far are- 1) That you are enough for yourself. Everything you need is inside of you. 2) Things are never as bad as they seem, and sometimes the things that seem the worst are actually the best, in disguise. 3) To diffuse resistance and allow the flow of infinite possibilities to manifest, in short, to stop overthinking so much and just go with the flow of the universe. You are exactly where you need to be, and resisting that will only cause trouble.

My rut truthfully lasted up until today. Thats why I am here, writing. Today I took some time to truly reflect and breathe and I realized that I have the power to do and be anything I want, its all inside. There were a lot of things I was putting off doing, as well as plenty bad habits that are long overdue to be dropped. We as humans are habitual beings and falling into toxic cycles is so easy yet so hard to break out of. They key is realizing that you are in them, and that you aren't stuck there. I will not resent them, because they are me, but starting today I am really trying to leave them behind so I can grow to my fullest potential, and into the person I want to be coming out of this exchange.

I am beyond grateful for everything that I have experienced so far. I have already tasted, felt, seen, and done things that I never thought I would. The next 7 months are going to go by faster than I can comprehend, so like I always say, I am going to savour every second. And now I know just how painful some of those seconds are going to be, but also how intensely exhilarating and incredible others will be. It’s all part of the journey. Whenever I am down, I shut my eyes, and I realize where I am. I am in France, I am living a dream that I have always had. A million thank you’s to everyone and everything that made this possible.

À bientôt,

Cecily

xxxx

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itesfashion · 6 years

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