#work-life balance questions during covid

[onlycosmere]

STORMLIGHT 5 UPDATE

Concept Art by Randy Vargas

Brandon Sanderson: Hello, all!  I know some of you may have been waiting for this.  It’s time for the first in a series of updates about your book!  I wanted to wait until I’d made good progress this month before I stopped to write one of these updates, and I do apologize for leaving you in the dark for so long.  I probably should have written one of these back in January, but it’s been an odd year for me, full of unpredictable timing issues. 

So, let’s get the obvious questions out of the way.  Do I have a title yet?  No.  Still thinking.  I’d like it to fit the format of KOWT or KOW, but I don’t like most of the options that have presented themselves.  It requires more thought.

When will the book come out?  I’m looking at fall 2024.  I have tried to be very forthcoming about this one—warning people for a while that 2023 might be too optimistic.  And, as I feared, I have been forced to let the date slide quite far into 2024 because of three issues.  The first is that I set myself up for a TON of revisions this year, and they’ve been taking more time than expected.  I still have two books to revise, though I’ve been spending all of August on Stormlight.  

However, that isn’t the primary reason I’ve ended up pushing back the book.  I’d planned for these revisions, and could have done those while working on Stormlight.  The second reason I pushed the book back is that I knew this book, of all the ones in the sequence, deserved a little extra time and attention.  It will likely be the longest of the series to date, and I have to be careful to juggle all the storylines properly.  I didn’t want to be rushed on it, and—though it may shock you—an 18-month production cycle wasn’t going to cut it. 

The third reason is one I haven’t been able to gauge as easily as the first two—something new to my life.  Lately, I’ve needed to dedicated more and more of my time to running a company.  I still reserve three days a week solely for writing, but that’s down from four days a week in previous years.  

The meetings take two general forms.  The first category is meetings with my team.  Things like reviewing the production of the secret projects and leatherbounds to make sure things look and feel right.  Others involve deep dives into concept art for characters and settings, so that when we create products like the upcoming Stormlight miniatures, they can fit with a canon version of the characters.  This is something I resisted for a while, feeling like it was all right if different artists interpreted the singers (for example) differently.  More and more, though, Isaac and I feel that we should have specific canon examples for continuity.  

Other meetings are editorial related, or publicity related.  Dragonsteel has kind of grown up the last few years, and I want to do it right.  That means being involved, as long as it doesn’t impact my time TOO much.  But all of that needs to be balanced with the numerous film and television meetings that have been happening lately.  Again, I want to do this right—which means being deeply involved in the projects that are moving forward.  (Announcements should be coming in the near future.)  That takes time.  So, the free time that I had during Covid to write secret projects is now being eaten up by a lot of these meetings.

I’m still finding the right balance, but this last month has seen a lot of good progress on Stormlight.  I’m sitting at 65,000 words right now as of this writing.  Roughly 16% if we assume a 400,000-word final book.  (Though this one will, as I said, likely be longer than that—so that 16% might be more like 15%.)

Unfortunately, progress is going to slow again as I have a couple of other deadlines due.  My goal right now is to do the last two revisions (Defiant and Secret Project Four) in rapid succession, in September and October, and be back to Stormlight in November.  

For a teaser, though, here is what I’m working on: I’m going to write this book in phases, straight from beginning to end, through several character groupings.  For example, the first sequence I’m writing is Szeth and Kaladin in Shinovar, including the Szeth flashbacks.  I plan to write all of their plot, from start to finish, before moving on to the next sequence of characters.

All of that 65k so far, except the prologue, has been on this plotline—and I’m loving how it’s shaping up.  I know the Szeth backstory has been a LONG time coming.  I hope it lives up to your expectations.  There are some interesting lore secrets here to reveal, and the climax is something I’ve been building to since book one—indeed, you’ll find death rattles from the first volume referencing the events here in this sequence.

I plotted this sequence at 100k.  It’s looking a lot more like 150k now that I’m neck deep in it.  The picture is related!

I know that four years is a long time to wait for a novel, and it’s been my goal in the past to keep that to 3 years.  My intention is that once this is done, we’ll have another longer-than-normal gap as I turn my attention to Mistborn Era Three (and hopefully the Elantris sequels) before diving back in to do the back five Stormlight books.  From there, I’m hoping to return to a 3-year gap between books until we push to the ending at book ten.  

A long journey, I know!  But you’ll almost certainly have television and film projects in the interim to keep you occupied alongside the other things I do.  And I continue to feel that Stormlight works best in ultra-long-form novels, rather than the (far more profitable) option my publisher would prefer of one shorter 100k Stormlight book every year.  The experience of the thick book full of interconnected plotlines and smaller interlude flourishes is part of what makes the artistic vision work for these volumes.    

As always, thank you for your patience.  My job is to make sure it’s all worth the wait, and I am striving each day to show respect for the trust you’ve put in me.  

Next update should come around the end of the year, where I’ll let you know how my November/December went.  With luck, I’ll have managed another 70k or so across the two months, and land us at around 130k, which MIGHT be the end of the first sequence.  

#the stormlight archive #stormlight 5 #cosmere #cosmere future #cfsbf #brandon sanderson #kowt #root #wob #arts arcanum #szeth son son vallano #kaladin stormblessed

[mushroompone]

Hello! I really love your writing and with all the hype going with the mlp infection/zombie I was wondering how do you approach writing horror/gore? I mostly like to write slice of life, romantic, fluffy stories, so whenever I try to write something darker, a zombie apocalypse for example, the violence feels juvenile and the horror falls flat. Your stuff is absolutely terrifying and amazing, so I'm just sitting here wondering how?? I know that's a broad question, but I would appreciate a peek into your thought process for writing horror. Thank you and have a good day!!

Oh my gosh you're so kind!! First off, thank you! I have really enjoyed writing horror for this community for many years now, and it's been sorry cool to see this massive interest during of of nowhere for MLP horror content!

Second, definitely a broad question, but I can offer some broad tips in response:

(1) Work with what scares you. Horror actually comes naturally to most of us, you just have to be willing to explore some of the darker corners of yourself. Consume horror as much as possible and try not to shy away from what scares you. Most importantly, though, understand why you find it scary. This leads to step 2...

(2) Drill down to the core fear. There's a lot of creatures and things that pop up in horror again and again: ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and certainly zombies. But to work with these effectively we have to understand why they scare us. The answer is different for everyone! Let's take zombies as an example: for me, zombies are scary because they are infectious. I find plagues and diseases to be really really scary, even pre-covid lol. For others, it's more about loss of control - becoming a zombie means becoming an animal, or something else inhuman. Dig until you find the why. Then...

(3) Give someone the worst day possible. Picking your protagonist is critical. The monster has to be difficult for them to face! So think about what will play well off your core fear. If you've found zombies as your monster and distilled that to loss of control .. well, Luna would be a great choice! She's all about loss of control. That's super scary and very real for her. If you're going in more of an infectious disease direction, Twilight would make more sense - she would make a very believable germaphobe, yet still be driven to help those around her and find a cure. If you do it right, all you have to do is...

(4) Sit back and let it happen. It helps to have a destination in mind (even if it's as simple as "happy ending" or "real downer"), but if you've set yourself up this way you've got a concept and you're ready to let it rip. Start writing. Be gross. Scare yourself. Look over your shoulder and wonder who might be watching you. If you get stuck, ask yourself this: how could this possibly get any worse? Then do that. With pizzazz.

The details of writing prose that is gooey, gory, and chilling come from reading. You'll start to get a feel for where to linger, where to hold back, where to describe, and what to leave up to your reader's imagination. The hardest part is the balancing act - keep some things obscured. Leave some mystery while making it clear what is scary and why. However, once your audience knows the precise size and shape of what they're dealing with, it becomes a lot less scary! My rule of thumb is that I never want my audience to be able to plan a way around the danger. They should never be able to devise their own means of escape - something should always be left uncertain or shrouded in darkness.

I hope this helps!! If you'd ever like someone to look at what you're working on, I love beta-reading pony horror :) actually, come to think of it, I love beta-reading all horror!

Again, thank you! Your an earned my heart ❤️ I love hearing that my sacred are still scaring!

#im in quite a few mlp discords that are very interested in mlp horror also #so if you ever wanted to join a community like that im happy to share! #but since i dont own those discords im not willing to just post willy-nilly #idk maybe i should make an evil horse discord... #mlp #mlp horror #mlp fim horror #mlp fic #mlp fim fic #mlp fim horror fic #mlp fim #my little pony

[andy-wm]

Interesting question...what happens when/if Jikook finally reveal themselves as a couple/married? What will those obsessed people do? (The ones who are obsessed with proving they are a couple although they don't give a damn about them?) Are they capable of moving on to something else? Because then the mystery is gone and their reason for trying so damn hard to prove Jikook is a couple is gone - then what? What do people with that kind of mindset do after?

Don't you ever wonder?

Just to be clear, are you asking if i think about the obsessed jikookers who seem to be in it for their own gratification?

Short answer:

No, i dont really think about them.

I have had a few encounters with people who seem to think about nothing else. Although I try to avoid the sassaeng-level obsessed people, truthfully i can also be a little single minded... I'm ND and have trouble with moderation.

(I spent an inordinate amount of time during covid, watching grainy fancams from 2015, to fill a void in my life and a gap in my understanding of how their relationship developed)

But i know that being wholy consumed by any one thing is a little unhealthy, so for my own mental well-being I try to have some balance.

However, now i AM thinking about them now, so back to your question 😁

Will people who don't reallly care about jikook move on, if they don't have anything prove/fight for?

If they are the type to always go looking for something to brawl over, then i guess they will move on. And good riddance. Jikook doesn't need supporters who are only there to stir up drama.

I think there are also those agressive and obsessed jkkrs and tkkrs who would continue to throw poop at each other even if jikook livestreamed their wedding and had Tae as their best man. Those people may not really care about JM and JK in particular but they will NEVER GIVE UP on PRINCIPLE.

Jikook doesn't need supporters like that either, imo.

But what about those of us who do care about them and their happiness?

Will people who are obsessed with proving the relationship and who do genuinely care also move on?

These are the jkkrs who want to bask in the glow of true love, but also like to fight a good fight.

Will they lose interest if they don't have the obsessive need to prove the naysayers wrong?

My guess is no, because the joy of watching jikook together is euphoric in itself. Their obvious adoration and the care and dedication give us reasons too smile.

But they might miss the good ol' days of slapping back at tkkrs or high-fiving their jkkr friends when they cut down a toxic solo with a well timed caustic response. (That is kinda gratifying, let's be honest.) They might miss the detective work and in depth analysis of every bit of footage.

So maybe also yes. They might need a new adventure. I'm not saying they will stop caring about jikook, but i think they may seek out a new cause to fight for. As a side interest 😉.

Then again, if jikook DID come out, all hell would break loose. Jikook crusaders (said fondly) would have new banners to gather under because fires would be burning on every front. Many of us - even the quiet ones on the sidelines - would probably be fighting for them.

In fact if they did come out, i think (hope) those of us who have been interested but not entirely invested (and definitely not obsessed with proving anything) would rise up too.

Jikook don't really need us now, but they will need us if it ever happens. And i hope that we - the reservists let's call ourselves - will be prepared to fight. Just like JK was when Yoongi whacked that shuttlecock at JM.

As for me, I would stand shoulder to shoulder with all and any supporters to defend them. And I truly hope all armys, but especially the Jimin and Jungkook biased armys, would rally behind them under a rainbow flag. Because tkkrs arent the real enemy imo. They are just sad, angry people with no idea what true love looks like.

The real enemies are the bigots who hold power, and the institutionalised homophobia that threatens their safety, career and happiness.

And because that last paragraph was a bit of a downer, here are some things to warm your heart...

#park jimin #jikook #kookmin #국민 #jeon jungguk #true love #homophobia #bigotry #fight the good fight

[richincolor]

Book Review: Julieta and the Romeos

Title: Julieta and The Romeos

Author: Maria E. Andreu

Genres:  Contemporary/Romance

Pages: 400

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Review Copy: ARC by publisher

Availability: Available now

Summary: Julieta isn't looking for her Romeo--but she is writing about love. When her summer writing teacher encourages the class to publish their work online, the last thing she's expecting is to get a notification that her rom-com has a mysterious new contributor, Happily Ever Drafter. Julieta knows that happily ever afters aren't real. (Case in point: her parents' imploding marriage.) But then again, could this be her very own meet-cute?

As things start to heat up in her fiction, Julieta can't help but notice three boys in her real life: her best friend's brother (aka her nemesis), the boy next door (well, to her abuela), and her oldest friend (who is suddenly looking . . . hot?). Could one of them be her mysterious collaborator? But even if Julieta finds her Romeo, she'll have to remember that life is full of plot twists. . . .

Review: I read Julieta and the Romeos the same time as I was reading a heavy tome for work and it was the perfect brain break. The story was engaging and fun, with a little mystery, and a whole lot of “will they/won’t they” thrown in. Maria Andreau wove a number of romantic tropes together that made me question which boy was really going to be endgame. I absolutely loved this aspect of the story because it made me be in the moment with Julieta as she tried to figure out which boy was Happily Ever Drafter and which one to really date. 

Julieta’s confusion, no indecision, about which boy she wanted to be with made her somewhat of an unreliable narrator but not in the annoying sense. It was because she was so convinced that one of the “suitors” was the mysterious Happily Ever Drafter that each interaction with her “Romeos” was experienced from that lens. Sometimes this made for hilarious interactions and sometimes I was just frustrated with her character, especially when it was revealed who the mysterious writer was. But then again, Julieta is a teenager and they are often unreliable narrators for their own stories. 

On the flip side of the story, Julieta was really using this mystery as a distraction from all the other drama in her life. Her parent’s restaurant survived COVID, but was on the brink of closing and she was taken up their stress. Julieta idolized her parents and their marriage, so to see both struggling really challenged her world view so to compensate she threw herself into the mystery of the writer and which “Romeo” it could be. I felt that for Julieta as sometimes when life is challenging, it’s the fun little quests that don’t mean much in the end that helps us get through. 

Lastly, this was the first book, for me, that really dealt with our lives during COVID and the after effects we are still experiencing. Julieta’s abuela doesn’t outright state that Julieta’s grandfather died of COVID, just regrets that her last words to him were something silly over the phone from a nurse holding the phone to him. That one line was a gut punch and really grounded the story in the here and now for me. Julieta references the “zoom year” many times and how her parents really struggled to keep their store open during the lockdown. The tone that Andreu used towards COVID was beautiful in that she acknowledged this trauma event that the world experienced and how our lives have been forever altered. 

Julieta and the Romeos was a perfect summer read that had a lot of heart, fun, and romance. It balanced a number of deeper issues skillfully while having a soft sense of whimsy at summer love.

#book review #weneeddiversebooks #summerreads

[dojae-huh]

Hi ,how are you doing? Hopefully you’re doing well 😊

so i have this question, what do you think about jaedo’s dynamic lately? Like were do u think they’re standing in their relationship right now and which role they’re in?

thanks for your time 🫶🏼

I'm doing OK, thank you.

An old married couple, as usual.

Jaehyun gives "sated" impression. He doesn't even react much to other neos touching Doyoung these last few months. And he is back to his more open self, the way he was in 2016. I like how he balances things nowadays. Like the way he thinks through his vlogs. He does enough fanservice but without expense to himself.

Doyoung is back to openly praising Jaehyun's looks and filming him on camera. Seems like he'll gradually stop nervously avoiding to touch Jaehyun on public. He makes quick progress recently. Seems like they are back to "openly" showing off their status of a couple like they did with same brand sneakers during EnNaNa in 2018.

There is noticeable change with all "ships". Taeyong, Jungwoo and even almost Johnny now can interact with both without invoking jealousy or avoidance. I'm sure it's not only the passage of time, but also everyone being at a better place mentally than they were during covid. Less accumulated tension from life problems, less redirected at each other agression.

"The ban" ended some time ago, however, we now are experiencing JaeDo showing even more degrees of freedom. I suspect SM 3.0 and/or new terms in renewed contracts, as well as success with Link gave them more security. Security in 127 and even JaeDo themselves surviving possible rumours/outing. For example, with SM making sub-labels for some artists to work on them individually can mean continuation of a career separetely from NCT and angered nctzens. Or maybe SM got a better law and PR departments and is going to take care of idols' images better.

In Ay-Yo MV commentary everyone was very tired and it looked like Jaehyun had allergy (he was breathing thorough his mouth the whole time). Thus it's even easier to see how instantly Doyoung reacted to Jaehyun's every word, and how Jaehyun was content with the sitting position and the view. Notice how Jaehyun consoled Doyoung about the water in his solo scene. Ever supportive boify.

#ask me away #I'll be your morning star #JHDY2023 #the road lit with limelight

[jerzwriter]

Hi!

#17 and #34

I don't know if the questions are for MC and this counts as cheating lol but I'm really curious about #36, for Ethan, Tobias & C/K!

Hey there, I am so sorry it took so long! I am finally catching up on asks! From this list.

17. What did they write on their resume that made Dr. Ramsey personally select them out of the pool of applications? Did they attach an essay? Did they have any remarkable accomplishments?

I think it was a combination of things. First, her grades and accomplishments were outstanding. She was clearly one of the top candidates based on that alone, but that alone would not have impressed him. But Kaycee/Casey also had also been involved with ground-breaking research in med school and remained committed to volunteering and providing healthcare to those who did not otherwise have access. He was flummoxed over how anyone could manage to do that much during med school. I imagine he was supposed to be part of an interview process but was unable to do so. I think the team of doctors that spoke with MC relayed positive results back to the board that made the decision and Ethan advocated strongly for her.

34. In case your character is in a relationship, what is their approach to managing a work/life balance, all while working 16-18+ hours a day?

And you wonder why they have friends/partners at work? lol at least it's possible to see them. Here's the thing, it's going to be challenging as a resident, for sure, even as a new attending who needs to prove themselves. But most attending physicians in the US work in the 40 to 60-hour range. Sure, some work more, but I don't think 16-18 hour days 5-6 days a week is in the long term for my MCs (or their LIs for that matter).

With Ethan/Kaycee, I think their own workaholic tendencies will be the real issue. When it's just the two of them, I can see them putting in tons of hours at work, but they see each other there all the time, and they're both doing what they love, so it doesn't seem like a sacrifice. Also, they make a rule early on that one day a week is all theirs - they're off together, and the day is spent together. But when Emma comes along, I think there will be a seismic shift in that. They will reassess and change the way things are done for sure. This is also one reason why they only want one child; they know more would not be wise for them.

With Tobias/Casey, I believe they are workaholics too, but not to the same degree. I view E/K as more live to work, whereas T/C aren't exactly work to live (especially since Tobias has the means to work very little if he chose to), but they definitely see that there is much more to life than work alone. They saw that as individuals, and once they were together, having time away from work was even more imperative. Their careers were still active/demanding, even after their first two girls were born. But after the third, they started a private practice. They were committed to making their family their priority and focal point from that point on.

36. If they're thrust into a zombie apocalypse, what is their go-to move as a medical professional? Preventing the disease by exercising people to quarantine themselves or isolating themselves and figuring out a cure? Prevention or cure?

I'm a little befuddled by this question because as medical professionals, there really is no isolating themselves during a crisis like this, as we all just witnessed with Covid. Physicians and other medical workers had to work, had to be exposed, often not even being able to be near their own families at the time. I have many friends in the medical field and, holy shit, the stories of what they endured.

I think all 4 would encourage people who could quarantine to do so, to try to prevent the situation from becoming more dire, but, they'd be forced to be out there and dealing with it, and I don't see any of the four saying they'd want a pass.

Thanks for the asks and again, thanks for your patience! :)

#my mc #kaycee macclennan #casey mactavish #tobias x casey #ethan x casey #mads questions #asks answered

[accidentalharrie]

Craig wrote about Harry and I’m paywalled and also scared. 😭

Oh, don't be scared! I think it's a very fair review - even if I have minor quibbles with it.

The last time Harry Styles released an album, the rollout did not go as planned. One morning, the British singer-songwriter and erstwhile One Direction member was a guest on The Howard Stern Show, where he answered questions about his love life and performed songs off his late-2019 sophomore album, Fine Line. The next, he was on an unplanned break in the States, where an explosion of COVID-19 infections forced businesses and venues to close. Styles wisely canceled a spring 2020 North American tour out of caution; that March, for the first time in a long while, the singer found himself taking inventory of relationships neglected during his tenure in the boy band, which released an album every year between 2011 and 2015 and spent many of the intervening months on the road. It seemed as though Styles would initially maintain a similar pace in his solo career as the spring 2017 release of his self-titled debut dovetailed with the summer rollout of Dunkirk, the Christopher Nolan film in which Harry starred as an Allied soldier in the 1940 Battle of France. COVID broke the cycle of recording, releasing, promoting, and touring; Harry put work on pause and hung out with friends, using the unexpected break in his schedule to be more present in the lives of the people he cares about most.

We’ve heard the next bit a bunch: The music Harry Styles made when he got back into a groove took a profound interest in rest and getting off the grid with loved ones. Stars are just like us: exhausted. New works from radio’s heavy hitters map out their quarantine wellness routines. Escapism is the core theme of Lorde’s Solar Power. Quiet time inspired Taylor Swift’s return to acoustic songs and rustic scenes over folklore and evermore. Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers is, among many things, a monument to the peace that logging off the apps can bring. Harry’s House, the third Styles album, follows suit. Its chief concerns are primarily physical, often carnal. Harry’s House is your quintessential spring release, a batch of bubbly, funk-inflected jams celebrating the bodily and emotional pleasures that new romance entails, an account of party nights and delicious eats and late-night heart-to-hearts. Five years into his solo career, the former boy-band star has settled into a precarious public life, sharing certain things while leaving the rest to the imagination. He’s left the door open to the idea that he’s sexually fluid while modeling gender-fluid fashions in concerts and magazine profiles; he’s also making cishet bros jealous while jet-setting with Olivia Wilde. (Performing 1D’s boyfriend pep talk “What Makes You Beautiful” and then backing Shania Twain on “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” at Coachella last month might have been the apex of Styles’s delicate balance of hetero romanticism and signified queerness, if it’s fair to call it that since he avoids labels.) Harry’s House offers a peek at the couple’s unique version of domesticity but doesn’t let us poke around past the foyer.

The record’s chief interests are food, drinks, sex, drugs, travel, and companionship. Opener “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” announces many of these themes in a curt first verse: “Green eyes, fried rice / I could cook an egg on you / Late night, game time / Coffee on the stove, yeah.” The late-album highlight “Keep Driving” feels like zipping through a friend’s camera roll and catching a glimpse of something you may not have intended to see: “Passports in footwells / Kiss her and don’t-tells.” The difficulties of a long-distance relationship are alluded to but not always elaborated on in any great depth. Deep in the lead single “As It Was,” Harry drops a line — “Leave America, two kids follow her” — that can’t be about anything other than dating Wilde, a New York native and mother of two. Elsewhere in the album, Styles keeps the sentiments broad and vague enough to be relatable to literally anyone pining for their significant other. The refrain from the effervescent “Daylight” — “If I was a bluebird / I would fly to you / You’d be the spoon / Dip you in honey so I could be sticking to you” — is just as effective when you’re waiting for someone across town to come home from work as when you’re missing someone who lives in another continent. Tumult stalks the margins of this life as “Keep Driving” cruises past riots in the States, and “As It Was” points to changes in the world it never names. Harry’s House is true to the experience of this decade in the ways it shores itself up from the troubles outside its door and focuses on improving the relationships inside. But the lyrics seem almost deliberately breezy and quaint, blowing by images they don’t expound on like scenery racing past your car during a road trip. Styles’s carefully cultivated coyness keeps us ever at arm’s length.

But it’s this slipperiness that makes Harry’s House a real treat for the ears. Something the album handles incredibly well is recalibrating the sound underneath the singer’s vocals and lyrics. His self-titled solo debut was a big pivot, a hearty embrace of folk and lad rock from a performer who’d always delivered those sounds with a hefty side of pop accessibility. Tracks such as the wounded “Ever Since New York” and the stately “Sign of the Times” repositioned Styles as a student of Mick Jagger and David Bowie, rock stars who stormed the pop charts and challenged conventional masculinity in the ’70s. Some of that classic-rock spirit carried over to Fine Line; “Golden” approximated Fleetwood Mac so neatly that it was no surprise to see Styles joining Stevie Nicks to sing the Tom Petty parts of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” at the 2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in which she was inducted as a solo artist. (Rock elders love Harry. He’s friends with Nicks and Mick Fleetwood. Jagger paid the singer a hilariously withering compliment this month, saying they’re friends, and he sees a lot of himself in Styles, but adding that he doesn’t think the younger star has nailed all the moves.) But Fine Line was just as interested in radio hits: Situating the poppy “Watermelon Sugar,” “Adore You,” and “Lights Up” early in the track list announced that this wasn’t just another straightforward rock album. Harry’s House strikes a new balance, keeping one foot firmly planted in the pop-rock tradition as the album explores modern sounds in alternative and indie pop, juggling radio fare and intriguing grooves.

The band in residence for Harry’s House is the same one from his first two projects. Multi-instrumentalists Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson are the primary players and producers. Their interplay gives depth to the songs while Styles skirts across the surface. Funk-pop jams such as “Sushi” and “Late Night Talking” serve up quirky sounds and arrangements while the singer lingers in his upper register, signifying a huge crush as much through lilting melodies and soaring falsettos as through any overt proclamations about his feelings. Confections such as “Daylight” and “Grapejuice” take after the saccharine songs Paul McCartney made during the Wings years. Harry’s House feels a bit like McCartney’s Back to the Egg, a wide-ranging collection of ideas that don’t necessarily work all the time but leave you impressed by the ways the players have challenged themselves. You also catch a whiff of guys like Benny Sings and Omar Apollo and Rex Orange County, singer-songwriters whose playfulness as musicians results in albums that skate between styles from one song to the next. Scan the credits to Harry’s House and you’ll spy Dev Hynes playing cello on the exquisite “Matilda,” John Mayer and Ben Harper pitching in guitar lines, and legendary bassist and sometime Mayer sideman Pino Palladino performing limber low end on “Daydreaming,” a flip of a Brothers Johnson song. The rest of Harry’s House goes to the ’80s pop recidivism expected from a big-deal pop star in the era when Justin Bieber and the Kid Laroi’s “Stay,” the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” and “Save Your Tears,” and Coldplay’s “Higher Power” circle the sounds of Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone” and A-ha’s “Take on Me.”

The mix of ’70s rock, ’80s New Wave, ’90s folk, and 21st-century bedroom pop feels inspired if imperfect. It seems as though Styles is still working out how to be himself, where his art needs to go, and how much to tell us about the life he leads outside it. Harry’s House gives us flashes of that world but also tries to make it as relatable as an album of songs about dropping everything to fly around the planet and hang out with TV and movie star Olivia Wilde could possibly be — though the way the lyrics achieve this is often to lean heavily into cliché: “It’s not the same as it was,” “’Cause baby, loving you’s the real thing,” “Baby, you were the love of my life, whoa,” “I can’t get you off my mind.” “Matilda” makes these lines feel slight, reminding us of the sensitive depth he’s capable of. The song — which offers a darker, more adult spin on the reassuring message of “What Makes You Beautiful” as Styles tells someone who’s been through a lot in the past that it’s fine to cut toxic people out of the picture — has a weight to it that Harry’s House is frustratingly uninterested in. (To be fair, though, “Matilda” fits neatly into the larger story: Home is wherever you make it and whomever you make it with.) When this album bucks cliché, it is delightfully wild. The drug references — “cocaine, side boob” — suggest there’s a lot we’re not being told, but they’re strewn about like everything else, a stream of images not unlike a savvy tastemaker’s Instagram account. We can use that, though. Every album doesn’t have to talk about coping mechanisms and therapy and mass death and political disorder. It’s warm out, and a rubbery bass line in a carefree bop has its place.

#everyone who does have free articles left please give craig a click #my beloved craigsj #harry's house reviews

[hobisexually]

Sooo I don’t know how you’re feeling right now and if you can relate but lately I feel like I’ve just been working allll the time and don’t have any time to think and pause? I’m 30 years old, single since forever I guess, and life just keeps on flowing without anything really happening apart from work. I get home, eat, watch some series or something, go to sleap and repeat? And I want to change things up but I just really don’t have the energy to??

hiya darling, ironically enough I didn’t answer this yet because… I didn’t have any time to think and pause dndnd

no, but, I understand you, I really do. I felt the same for a really long time and even though I really love my job, and I would probably still do it even if I was a millionaire, the repeat and the being so wiped out from giving everything at work was too much for me. especially with covid in between, the only thing I focussed on was work (because all social events were out of the question, and if they weren’t they were out of the question for me specifically because I was really very fucking terrified about getting covid so I cancelled almost everything). work was all I had so I gave it my everything and then realised I didn’t want to live life like this

the problem is, though, that we also have something to prove? especially when you’re young and just starting out (30 is still young and at the beginning of your career) so I gave myself some goals and some time and then started looking into ways I could do work a little easier. what I found was that I was much happier when I worked four days a week instead of five but I realise that’s not a possibility for everyone because we need the money, but maybe you can look into working 4x9? Or 36 hours instead of 40? because even only working Friday mornings rather than the whole Friday makes a difference for me

and I also made myself do at least one fun thing during the weekend or at night during the week. fun can mean anything that’s relaxing to you — sports, art, shopping, meeting up with friends, partying, or just going for a walk through nature. I know how hard it is to do anything when you’re this tired and when work and society demands this much of you but when the balance is skewed you need something that refreshes you. I’m not saying push through all your tiredness, definitely rest where you can, but there are different types of rest and sometimes going into nature, venting at a friend in person or exercising also is rest. mental rest, emotional rest, a rest from the burdens you carry…. it matters and also gives you more energy to do things in the long run

idk, the balance is hard and I tend to overdo it and then crash again because I gave too much, but when I did it just right I feel so much better about my life in general as well, it’s about finding out what works for you. and I also don’t know whether there’s anything you go through that makes your energy levels even lower so if you know there’s something chronic at play for you, of course take that into account or make the activities smaller, but life isn’t about work. we work to live, we don’t live to work, even if society and work try to tell you differently.

but this they don’t tell you about adulthood, right? and I’m sorry you’re in a slump, I was in it for two years as well and it felt horrible. and it’s still there sometimes, and sometimes there are weeks I cannot get out of bed outside of work at all and I just accept my fate — that is okay too as long as it doesn’t last too long, you know?

also. the being single thing fucking sucks and it gnaws at me every fucking day, I really get you and I don’t have much to say on that that you’re not already feeling or thinking, just know I understand and I deeply hate it too. that’s the one thing I’m still stuck on as well and I hate that everyone else seems to be able to date so easily 🥲

#messages

[dariamalek]

The Art of Balance: Narcissism vs. Self Esteem

I don’t know everything. 

I’ve dabbled in eight types of psychology in the lifespan of this blog; trying to find the answers to all the questions. How do we effectively teach students with special needs? How does childhood neglect effect long term relationships? What is the correlation between physical and mental wellness? 

If you have been an avid reader of this blog for a while, those titles may be very familiar. There was a peak in 2019, however, where people were extremely interested in my essays about relationship psychology. My theory was that it was during the peak of COVID, and with the rise of dating apps, people were starting to forget what it was like to be in the conscious world. 

I had no problem writing about relationship psychology until June 2021, where my own relationship of almost 3 years, collapsed. I began to doubt myself; how am I going to sit here and give advice to everyone else when I didn’t know how to save my own relationship? 

And that’s when the spiral began. 

I began to doubt myself. I was tired; I had put so much time and effort into my relationship that I forgot who I was. I had lost touch with all my friends; all the people who brought out the best in me and shared my passions. And roughly eight months into being single, I sang a note. Ten months into being single, I had pulled up my old texts and put pen to paper. A year into being single, I took my aggression out on a drum kit. 

I began to fall in love with myself again. Deep and dangerously in love with myself. 

My self confidence was at a peak. I dyed my hair black. I changed up my style. I wore high heels everywhere. I didn’t leave the house without doing my hair. I wore eyeliner. I never looked at my feet when I walked. I disregarded the men who approached me. And when I walked into a room, instead of looking at everyone else in it, my eye caught a mirror instead. 

And that’s when it hit me. I was frozen in place; standing in the middle of a bar on Queen Street. This is wrong. I had forgotten what it was like to give love to someone else because I was too busy focusing on loving myself.

Just like that, I was introduced me to the biggest lesson I could learn in my life: balance. 

I had always thought I had balance in my life. I meditated twice a day, I exercised five days a week. I didn’t drink every weekend, but had my glass of wine once in a while. I didn’t eat fast food. i worked extremely hard during the week and had my fun on the weekends. I spent equal time with my family and friends. 

But that was the problem: it was all about me. 

We all go through healing phases where we focus on ourselves, however it’s important that we don’t lose sight of what it means to be considerate of others. 

I found, date after date, that I just wasn’t able to focus on anyone other than myself because I had been so focused on myself it had turned into a habit. I didn’t know how to do anything else. It was almost as if I was jealous of others getting attention from myself. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? 

You’d be surprised. 

Have you ever heard that myth about the man who fell so in love with his reflection, that he literally couldn’t take his eyes of it, and eventually died in the same spot all while staring at his reflection? This is a lovely phenomenon called Narcissism. And yes, his name was “Narcissus.” 

According to Scott Kaufman of the Scientific American, most recent research suggests that “narcissism differs significantly from self-esteem in its development, origins, consequences, and outcomes (Kaufman, 2017).” 

“The prototypical grandiose narcissist is characterized by arrogance, superiority, vanity, entitlement, exploitativeness, exhibitionism, and the incessant need for acclaim from others,” Kaufman explains. “Those scoring high on measures of self-esteem, however, tend to feel satisfied with themselves but do not necessarily see themselves as superior to others.“ 

I remember doing all those things, claiming they were for me, but not once did I feel satisfied. 

And that’s when I said screw it, and bought a last minute plane ticket, and went to Italy. The story of my trip is highly documented on this blog however, when I got back, it was the first time I had began to type out words that meant something to me. 

I had realized that when I was writing before, I was forcing myself. I didn’t actually want to write, I just wrote because I had missed doing it. I finally felt like the roadblock between me and my art was finally gone. But the truth was, that roadblock was me. And when I sat back and read through each paragraph, I felt butterflies in my stomach. Not pride, but satisfaction. I was back. 

And there are times, like today, where I question my ability to love again. For example, when I get writer’s block, I question my love for writing, even though writing is something that comes natural to me. 

But I always remember: just because something comes natural, doesn’t mean it should be constant. 

You may love someone from the bottom of your heart, but there will be times where they hurt your feelings and you’re not able to look at them. But that doesn’t mean you don’t love them, it just means that you need to find a reason to fall back in love with something.

The same goes for yourself. 

#psychology #motivation #self love #motivational quotes #self esteem #mental health #mental wellness #brain food #writer #canadian writer

[mariacallous]

Somehow, campaigns always seem to end in Philadelphia for the Democrats. On the eve of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton staged a rally on Independence Mall with the Obamas, Bruce Springsteen, and Jon Bon Jovi; a hopeful line filled with pairs of mothers and daughters snaked through the cobblestoned streets of Society Hill. In 2020, Joe Biden held a socially distanced drive-in rally at F.D.R. Park in South Philly, which featured a performance by John Legend. This year, the celebrity wattage was turned down a bit—just a midterm, after all—and Biden and Barack Obama finished the campaign, this weekend, with a rally on Temple University’s campus. But, even if the city hasn’t changed, the Democratic mood in the final hours of these three elections has grown tenser. “This ain’t your father’s Republican Party—this is a different breed of cat,” Biden said in Philadelphia. Obama was even starker. “I understand that democracy might not seem like a top priority right now, especially when you’re worried about paying the bills,” he said. “But when true democracy goes away—we’ve seen throughout history, we’ve seen around the world—when true democracy goes away, people get hurt.”

Nearly two years into the Biden Administration, with reports that Donald Trump will launch a 2024 Presidential bid next week, the dark and pessimistic era in American politics has not broken yet. The midterm elections on Tuesday will be decided in quantitative terms: Democrats need to just about sweep the tossup seats in the House to keep control of it—which seems very unlikely, and probably need to win three of the four most closely contested Senate races (in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania) to retain a majority in the upper chamber. But, as the past six years have demonstrated, partisan politics is always evolving, developing new fixations and themes. At stake in Tuesday’s vote—and in any runoffs or fights over the legitimacy of those votes that follow—is not just the balance of power between now and the 2024 Presidential election but what the politics to come will be about.

Will the Democratic Retrenchment Work?

It’s hard to remember such a radical shift in political tone from one election to the next. In 2018 and 2020, Democratic politicians were offering expansive visions for how to overhaul the relationship between government and citizens; this year, the campaign rhetoric has tended to be much more guarded, the policies more incremental. Democrats don’t talk about imminent political transformation anymore, and they don’t really talk much, either, about the structural imbalances of American life—economic and racial inequality. Few candidates have been willing to campaign with President Biden, but the Party has adopted his ethos. Its candidates talk up the tangible investments they’ve made in the future, both through checks cut to Americans during the COVID crisis and through Biden’s infrastructure and recovery programs, and contrast their own commonsensical approach to politics with the radicalism of the Trump-era Republicans. If they sound a little tense, it is because they have taken a fundamentally defensive position.

Like so much with the Biden-era Democrats, this is born of pragmatism: they have the narrowest of majorities, and their fear of what will happen to politics should Republicans regain power is deep. One big question for the Democrats on Tuesday is whether this centrist retrenchment—in which they cast themselves as the practical establishment and the Republicans as the wild-eyed revolutionaries—will work if Trump is not on the ballot. Governor Tony Evers, of Wisconsin, and the incumbent senators Mark Kelly, of Arizona; Catherine Cortez Masto, of Nevada; and Raphael Warnock, of Georgia, have all, in different ways, followed the playbook. If they win, then the Party will likely become more clearly Bidenist for the next two years. If they lose, then it may no longer be clear what political plan the President has for his party, or whether he remains a good fit for it.

Can the Republicans Sweep the Sun Belt?

Speaking to the National Conservatism Conference in September, the right-wing billionaire mega-donor Peter Thiel sketched an image of the California that he and other Republicans saw. “It is just such an ugly picture,” Thiel said. “The homeless poop, people pooping all over the place—it’s the ridiculous rat-infested apartments that don’t work anymore, it’s the woke insanities—there’s so much that it feels like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s so easy, so ridiculous to denounce.” Thiel noted, “DeSantis in Florida is probably the best of the governors in terms of offering a real alternative to California.”

During Trump’s Presidential campaigns, MAGA conservatism had a Midwestern tone, in the former President’s denunciations of an “American carnage” that had afflicted postindustrial places. But the younger Republicans who have followed Trump would love a chance to contrast the booming economies of a conservative Sun Belt with the allegedly sclerotic politics and culture of the Democratic coasts—to argue that MAGA-ism isn’t just about the past but the future. The incumbent Republican governors Greg Abbott, of Texas; Ron DeSantis, of Florida; and Brian Kemp, of Georgia, look almost certain to win reëlection, and Kari Lake is the favorite to become the governor of Arizona; each is likely to be a major national figure in the years to come. (DeSantis, most prominent of all, has raised an astonishing hundred and seventy-seven million for his political war chest.) How big are their margins, how many Hispanic voters will back them, how many Republican senators and Congress members can they help sweep into office behind them? The outcomes of these races look mostly set, but the margin and manner will help determine what form conservatism takes in the next two years and who will lead it.

Have the Parties Permanently Changed?

U.S. politics has reorganized in two ways during the past decade. The first change has already played out: education polarization, in which more-educated voters move to the Democratic Party and less-educated ones to the Republicans. The second, related change is still embryonic: racial depolarization—the possibility that race might become a less powerful predictor of voting behavior, which in turn might open up some Hispanic, Black, and Asian votes for Republicans. Are these changes specific to the particular chaos of the past decade—of the generational wave that turned into right-wing populism here and in many other places—or will they become permanent?

The place to look for tidal changes in U.S. politics—those that have little to do with personality—is in the House of Representatives, whose members are low-profile enough that in elections they often become proxies for the general opinion of their parties. The indispensable House-elections analyst Dave Wasserman, of the Cook Political Report, has rated two hundred and twelve races as leaning toward the Republicans, a hundred and eighty-seven toward the Democrats, and thirty-six as tossups: Republicans would need to win just five of the tossups for a majority, and so the range of plausible outcomes is pretty broad. If Democrats are to keep the House close, they will need to hold their suburban seats: Representative Angie Craig’s district, in the south suburbs of Minneapolis; Representative Jahana Hayes’s district, in Connecticut’s Fairfield and Litchfield Counties and points farther north; Representative Katie Porter’s district, in Orange County, California; and Representative Abigail Spanberger’s, in the northern suburbs of Richmond, Virginia. If the movement of Hispanic voters toward the Republicans is truly gaining strength, the G.O.P. would expect to make gains in south Texas, where Representative Mayra Flores, a conservative Republican who won a seat long held by Democrats in a special election earlier this year, is up for reëlection, and where the longtime pro-life Democrat Representative Henry Cuellar is facing a challenge from a Republican, Cassy Garcia, in the Twenty-eighth Congressional District. In these places, you might catch a glimpse of the partisan change continuing to accelerate—or finding a new resting place.

How Does the Pennsylvania Story End?

No place has so embodied the turmoil of the past decade in American politics as Pennsylvania, which has been central to both the working-class defection to Trump’s Republicans and Scranton-born Biden’s success at stabilizing politics, at least for a time. In two statewide races this fall, for governor and for Senate, Pennsylvania has also encapsulated the 2022 election. Doug Mastriano, an election denier running for governor under the MAGA banner, looks likely to come up short against the moderate Democrat Josh Shapiro. But the other race, on which control of the Senate may hinge, is very close. The celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, handpicked by Trump, may defeat John Fetterman, the rough-hewn, progressive lieutenant governor of the state, who suffered a stroke during the campaign, from which he has only partly recovered. At every stage, Fetterman’s candidacy has had an outsized symbolic importance. In recent weeks, it has suggested how much depends upon a few Democratic candidates—their talent, their health, and their ability to defy the basic political atmosphere. In its final stage, on Tuesday, it carries the question of which party can lay claim to the political “heartland.”

What Will the Elections Mean for the Future of Trump?

Had I written a column like this before the 2020 Presidential election, I would have probably said that one thing at stake in the vote was whether the Trump era was finally over. But I can’t see any way that Tuesday’s election will put an end to Trumpism. There are simply so many Republicans who sound like him and defend him, and many of them are young and poised for victory. The MAGA movement is here to stay.

Quantitatively, it doesn’t look like this election will be a historic partisan disaster for the Democrats. They will probably lose control of at least one chamber of Congress, and maybe both, but we are talking about a handful of Senate seats changing hands. The dread that many liberals feel has as much to do with the realization that Trump’s movement has not just survived the first half of Biden’s term but continues to be the protagonist in American politics, the force against which others react. We ran this experiment—an expansive right-wing movement, a nervous center-left establishment, pressures against democratic norms—once already, and we did so in a good economy. We are about to run it again, in a bad one. ♦

[nandostateofmind]

Return of the Jedi

Xavier Catches Up….

Sometimes as a parent we take for granted the achievements of our children that once meant everything to us. The first words. The first steps. Learning to ride a bike. All the little moments that were milestones in their development that meant the world to us one minute became nothing as they got older and the commonplace feeling of the moment makes it mean less in the grand scheme your child’s life. There magic in those moments. We pretend that that’s not the magic of life the important shit, but it is it really really is.

I never made it a secret of my son’s anxiety issues. His difficulties with school. His performance anxiety. It has been a constant worry of mine if that would follow him into his teenage years. I want to make him tough enough to overcome and guide him enough to make him wise. I also don’t want to baby him to the point that he can’t be the man he should be, there is a balance I’m trying to achieve there.

As he has gotten older he has suddenly began wanting independence. Asking to walk the dog alone. No longer wanting assistance with homework. With regards to the homework I thought the worst of him thinking he is using independence as a means of being able to slack on his work. Using wanting to test himself as a means of getting out of having to answer the questions correctly. Then the magic happened. You see, my son has an IEP, an Individualized Education Plan, and he is in a dual education classroom. A dual education classroom is half special education and half regular education in the same classroom taught with two teachers in the room. He also gets therapy services, additional math time, and resource room/speech. Upon starting fourth grade he was about second grade level approaching third grade level.

Annually there is a review of his progress and an evaluation of where he is now in terms of his progress. Today I got to speak to his teachers with regards to his progress. They said that they love what a kind hearted young man he is and that he is funny and a good boy. Then they told me that they not feel he needs the school counseling any longer. He expressed to me the same and hasn’t mentioned being anxious to me in a long time. That was a beautiful thing. Then they said that they feel he has graduated out of the resource room. That during this school year he has been able to catch you and is at grade level across the board. It was glorious everything I prayed for in a simple meeting. My boy is okay. All the prayers all the hoping, and all that work we put in worked. My boy is okay. Im grateful, very very grateful.

There are many things that this could be attributed to. The maturity of him getting older, his mother and I working tirelessly to get him there, the confidence jiujitsu has given him, the relentless work his teachers put in day and night, covid and after. Whatever it was I don’t deserve how happy this made me. But, him, he deserves it all. My little Jedi is back.

#jedi #return of the jedi #master yoda #star wars #writersoftumblr #love #newyorican #puertorican #father #fatherhood #family #puertoricanwriters #boricua #newyorkcity #relationships #queens #brooklyn #school #education #jiujitsu #gracie bjj #Simba #yoda #luke skywalker #dark side of the force #poets on tumblr #puertoricanwriter #health #writers #writer

[gabbagepatch]

Gonna try to act like I'm normal for a sec and talk about my experience getting accommodations for my hearing loss this semester.

I've had severe tinnitus since January after a mild COVID infection. The accompanying symptoms are unilateral hearing loss, episodes of intense vertigo, degradation of my balance, and of course constant tinnitus. This illness is a bit of a chicken or the egg scenario, and these symptoms can vary heavily day-to-day.

As someone who used a wheelchair and cane for approximately two years from 2016-2018 I was already familiar to the rigmarole of getting accommodations from an educational institution. I've also had experience with chronic pain so I was more prepared than some others for a sudden illness that impacts my daily life.

Once I realized that the first-line treatment wasn't successful I got to work immediately with my college's disability office. I am not the bitch who's gonna wait to get the stuff I need. I care too much about my education to suffer needlessly when I know this illness isn't going away for a while.

I cannot stress this enough! Do not wait for it to get worse, you do not need to deny yourself accommodations because it isn't "as bad as it could be" yet! Worst case scenario is that you get accommodations and didn't need them as long as you thought.

I visited the website and was very disappointed that the resources were confusing and limited. It seemed to me that there was an unstated assumption that the person needing the forms was a new student, so the things I needed were buried in new student paperwork that didn't apply to me. It also was not easy to find their policies on applications submitted outside of enrollment, and I was applying mid-semester. I called the line for the disability office, but the number was either outdated or they were closed at 1pm on a Wednesday. I was very frustrated initially. This might just be me but I'm of the opinion that important resources like this should be easy to find regardless of circumstance and that the people you need to reach for questions should be available during normal hours, but whatevs.

I ended up emailing the head of the disability office informing her of a lack of phone response, a small blurb about my situation, and the questions I was looking for answers to. Despite my issues with the website she called me within the hour of my email. If this lovely woman could call me immediately after I sent an email why couldn't I reach someone over the phone? I thought that was weird, but she was super helpful nonetheless so I can't be too annoyed. She explained the process and it was actually pretty simple, but you'd never know it from their webpage.

For me, my college required my primary care provider to fill out a short form, one page front and back. It had simple questions about what abilities were affected and how severely; plus a simple consent portion authorizing my school to receive that medical information. I recommend filling this out before the appointment with your provider, because it saves time. I filled out the legal portion but didn't do the assessment ahead of time. It worked out because during this appointment my hearing turned out to be worse than I thought, so hearing impairment was rated "severe" and not "moderate" as I had assumed. Afterwards it was easy to scan and email to the disability office. My school's email system is secure so I was not worried about sending such things over email, but use your best judgement.

I had thoughts that I was "jumping the gun" a little, but was able to push that aside. It's basically impossible to avoid self-doubt as someone with a disability or illness. The world is full of inspiration porn and there will always be people who judge you for not trying hard enough. The idea that accommodations should be a last resort after tireless effort to "overcome" your disability is total bullshit, but you didn't need me to tell you that.

There was also a small worry that it would be read as manipulative or arrogant to request accommodations so soon after my illness began. I also had to push this aside. Many abled people expect accommodations to be requested meekly, and look down on those who are confident in their own limitations. Often being too sure of yourself and your needs is taken as a sign you're taking advantage of the institution. Once again, total bullshit. You don't owe anyone a performance of shame and apprehension.

Back to the process. Once she received the paperwork everything was basically out of my hands. My professors were notified of the accommodations I requested and I was able to begin implementing them smoothly during class. Of course my accommodations are not as involved as others may be. I requested to record my lectures and sit in areas best suited to my hearing, these are generally very easy for professors to accommodate. My balance issues are another matter, but I'm not in classes that require lifting or bending so it hasn't come up.

I have to say my experience with college if much better than public school so far. I think it's a lot easier for k-12 to get away with shitty behavior than college professors, but that's just my personal experience. I got a lot of grief for my past disability in school than now. The day before I was pulled out of public school the school nurse told me she "didn't have time for this" when I nearly passed out! I think the semi-professional setting/attitude of college encourages a more "HR friendly" response to stuff like this, but I've heard enough horror stories to know that no institution is immune to ableism.

Overall I'm pretty happy with my experience so far, and I feel like my college is doing a pretty good job in my case. I'm just happy that my education doesn't seem like it's going to be another stressor. I've got enough on my plate dealing with appointments, PT, and tests so I really appreciate that my college was responsive and understanding.

#life update #disabled #disability #physical disability #college #student #student life #hard of hearing #hearing loss #hearing impaired #accomodation #meniere's disease #SSHL

[goh0117]

Is social media useful in spreading information on COVID-19 in Malaysia?

In the tumultuous landscape of the 21st century, our lives have become increasingly intertwined with the digital fabric of social media. Beyond being mere platforms for personal expression, these digital realms have assumed a critical role in shaping public narratives, especially in the context of public health crises. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic thrust the world into uncharted territory, where the dissemination of accurate information became as crucial as implementing health measures. This post seeks to delve into the multifaceted relationship between social media and the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia, unravelling the intricate interplay between our social experiences, the affordances of these platforms, and the ways in which we navigate the infodemic.

The Evolution of Social Media in Public Health Campaigns

Public health, as defined by Winslow in 1920, is the "science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through organized efforts." Fast forward to the digital era, where social media has become a conduit for education, outreach, and tracking during global health crises, exemplified by the ALS Ice Water Bucket Challenge and the 2020 handwashing campaign by the NHS in the UK.

Malaysia, in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, witnessed the evolution of the MySejahtera app, transitioning from a mere tracking tool to a comprehensive disease management platform. However, this raises questions about data privacy and security, underscoring the delicate balance between public health vigilance and individual privacy concerns.

Unpacking Digital Health and Social Media's Impact

The rise of digital health from 2005 to 2013 coincided with the proliferation of social media platforms. Online health publics, a term encapsulating our propensity to consult Google for health-related issues, illuminate the profound impact of the internet on our health understanding. The influx of health information through various social channels, including WhatsApp messages, highlights a shift in how we access and share vital health-related insights.

Yet, a critical question emerges: Can we believe all that we encounter on these platforms? The authenticity of health information disseminated on social media remains a persistent concern, with 80% of American internet users seeking health information online, according to Fox (2011).

Social Media's New Dimensions in Health Communication

Social media introduces novel dimensions to health communication, encompassing both public health campaigns and personal experiences. Health and illness narratives are becoming increasingly public, blurring the lines between personal and communal well-being. Blogging illness, for instance, serves as a conduit for individuals to record experiences, connect with others, and navigate the complex terrain of illness management.

The Malaysian Landscape: Social Media and COVID-19

In Malaysia, the Ministry of Health's proactive approach to share raw data on GitHub is a commendable effort in combating misinformation. The use of social media platforms to disseminate information not only spreads awareness but also strengthens community ties, especially evident in the creation of Facebook groups, Instagram hashtags, and WhatsApp messages during lockdowns.

However, the darker side of social media in the context of mental health becomes apparent. Despite strides in recognizing the importance of mental health, stigmas persist, and social media can become a battleground for mental health issues, as evidenced by Instagram's #depression trend.

Case Study: Mental Health Activism on Tumblr

Platforms like Tumblr host vibrant communities engaged in mental health activism. Projects like To Write Love on Her Arm (#TWLOHA) and Project Semicolon utilize visual cultures to communicate messages, working both with and against social media's visual representations of mental illness and self-harm.

Overarching Benefits of Social Media in Public Health

A systematic review by Moorhead et al. (2014) outlines six overarching benefits of social media in public health:

Increased interactions with others

2. More available, shared, and tailored information

3. Increased accessibility and widening access to health information

4. Peer/social/emotional support

5. Public health surveillance

6. Potential to influence health policy

The Malaysian Scenario: Insights from Research

Rashid et al.'s study (2021) delves into the impact of social media on health knowledge and behavior regarding COVID-19 in Malaysia. The study emphasizes the role of social media in disseminating proper and timely information while acknowledging the need for proactive research and health policies.

Conclusion

As we navigate the intricate interplay between social media and COVID-19 in Malaysia, it is evident that these platforms are not merely channels for information dissemination but dynamic spaces shaping public health narratives. We must tread cautiously, recognizing the potential benefits while remaining vigilant against the pitfalls of misinformation. The role of social experiences in this digital landscape is pivotal, urging us to be discerning consumers, active participants, and advocates for a healthier digital discourse.

See you guys in the next one!

References: Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, viewed on 15 November 2023.

Fox, S. (2011). The Social Life of Health Information. Pew Research Centre, viewed on 15 November 2023. <https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2011/05/12/the-social-life-of-health-information-2011/>

Keiles, J. (2015). Depressiongrams: A Photo Essay. Medium, viewed on 15 November 2023. <https://medium.com/message/depressiongrams-7f22011d6113>

Moorhead, S. A., Hazlett, D. E., Harrison, L., Carroll, J. K., Irwin, A., Hoving, C. (2013). A New Dimension of Health Care: Systematic Review of the Uses, Benefits, and Limitations of Social Media for Health Communication. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15(4), e85. DOI: 10.2196/jmir.1933, viewed on 15 November 2023.

Rashid, A. A., Mohamad, I., Mohd Haris, A. F. (2021). The Role of Social Media in Making an Impact to Health Knowledge and Behaviour on COVID-19 in Malaysia. Malays J Med Sci, 28(3), 155-157. DOI: 10.21315/mjms2021.28.3.15, viewed on 15 November 2023.

Swinburne University. (n.d.). MDA20009 Digital Communities: Week 7 - Public Health Campaigns [Lecture slides], viewed on 15 November 2023.https://swinburnesarawak.instructure.com/courses/839/pages/week-7-lecture-slides?module_item_id=56243

Winslow, C.-E. A. (1920). The Untilled Fields of Public Health. Science, 51, 23-33, viewed on 15 November 2023. <https://doi.org/10.1126/science.51.1306.23>

#mda20009 #week 7

[burritoexpress]

Best Burrito & Taco Combo Deals in Roswell College Park New Mexico

Taco Platter with Burrito Combo Deals - Take Out & Delivery 

Need cheap Mexican food served by one of the best places to eat in Roswell, New Mexico near College Park? Burrito Express has two Roswell restaurants in different parts of the city ready to serve taco and burrito platters with combo deals.

Burrito places in Rio Rancho New Mexico

As rio Rancho community is growing.  So is the Burrito Express offers and deals.  We’ve always provide the best burritos and full plate new mexican for the Rio Rancho, New Mexico area.  Unlike many other burrito fast food places, we have a diverse mexican food menu.  Offering tacos, quesadillas & huevos rancheros mexican breakfast plates.  You can also try our popular cheese burger burrito.   

Try Our Burrito & Taco Platters & Combo Deals

Check out our menu and easily order food online. Burrito Express is a restaurant that delivers in multiple cities in New Mexico. Our branch at College Park, Roswell is near the military school of New Mexico. Are you in Roswell wondering, “Where can I get good cheap Mexican food near me?” doesn’t need to look any further. Our taco and burrito platters and our burrito and taco combo deals give you a bang for your buck. Visit Burrito places in Roswell New Mexico or other cities as well.

Taco Packs on the Go for Family

Taking care of a family is a difficult and rewarding job. Take more time off by skipping the cooking. Get your taco combos and packs to go as takeout food. Our downtown Roswell restaurant will make your life easier and keep your family happy and fed. We serve all kinds of Mexican dishes including burritos and more in Roswell, NM. Many of our customers say that our New Mexican burritos serve as the Best Burritos in  Rio Rancho New Mexico.

Burrito Platters for Home Office & Covid Life

While we shelter in place during the pandemic, Burrito Express has adapted to the challenges. Our Roswell restaurants operate under strict guidelines to guarantee high standards of sanitation and safety. Our cheap food delivery and affordable catering services allow you to enjoy our burrito packs and combos while you work from home. Take a break, order food online for curbside pickup or have our meal delivery service bring our Mexican burritos to your home office.

Burritos and Tacos Near New Mexico Military Institute

If you’re looking for the best places to eat in Roswell you’ll come across Burrito Express online, thanks to our rave reviews on websites. One of our Mexican restaurants in Roswell is near the New Mexico Military Institute. The closest branch is just on E. College Blvd. Start your day by getting the best breakfast in Roswell or head to our Roswell restaurant for lunch. You’ll spend less and get more with our taco plates and frequent taco deals.

Takeout New Mexican Food Along College Blvd

Looking for takeout food in College Park, Roswell, or near the New Mexico Military Institute on College Blvd? Are you looking for university restaurants Burrito places in Rio Rancho New Mexico, or the best burritos and tacos in Roswell? Whether you’re just passing through, or going out to quickly grab New Mexican food to bring home, we invite you to order food online from Burrito Express. Our takeout food can easily be ordered and we’ll serve it to you safely, cleanly, warm, and fresh. Best Burritos in Rio Rancho New Mexico

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

PEOPLE MAY ASK

What ingredients do your burritos normally have?

Our burritos have the best ingredients with fresh vegetables.  With your choice of beef, pork, chicken or ground beef.  You are able to get a combo of several meats topped off with red or green chili.

What makes our burrito better?

We cook all of our burritos with individual ingredients, while taking our time to properly season each food item, rather than over seasoning your meats with salt and spices.   while leaving your beans and rice bland.

Each component contains balanced flavoring to assure your food is flavored appropriately.  Every bit of your burrito will be seasoned .  Making the perfect mouth watering burrito. 

What do layered burritos have in it?

Burrito Express has a great combination of cheese, refried beans, with your meat of choice, sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream and green / red chili. 

Are your burritos affordable?

We have kept our prices affordable for all. During and after the pandemic, we continue to offer competitive prices.  Thanks to our loyal and repeat customers, we have been able to keep our prices affordable for the low and medium income families of New Mexico. Always Choose the Best Burritos in Roswell New Mexico.

Do you offer catering and group orders?

We offer fast and easy catering options.  Such as the group order Express Packs.  This allows you to buy 5 or more of the same items on our menu at once.  

Without catering you can plan a quick and easy event.  This allows you to feed friends, family, coworkers or business professionals quickly without lots of catering negotiations and catering proposals.

#food #bestburritos #mexicanfood

[dianagracesworld]

TLDR; Help me with advice on life after graduation and doing things to improve my resume (designing a personal website, encouragement, certification courses advice etc.)

Long rant ahead.

Hi guys,

So this is the first time I’m posting here and I’m looking for some advice from the community I’m most interactive with (you guys). This is a real life advice request from you guys so feel free so don’t feel obligated to help me out if you think you can’t for whatever reason.

After many years of struggling with university, I’m finally going to graduate after this summer. Yay! For reference, I’m a maths and economics major at a top university in Canada.

However, my grades are not so good overall because I felt an incredible pressure (and guilt from underperforming my expectations) during my first three years at university. Ultimately, I got severely depressed at the end of third year and got placed on academic suspension for a year at the end of the my ‘third’ year. Then, I came back after that year off and worked really hard but only performed about average in comparison to the rest of my cohort for the last two years (had to redo many courses from that failed third year 😅).

Now, I’m on the brink of graduating but I don’t have any relevant job experience in my field (finance) and no job experience since 2019 (before Covid). The market is cooling down for now and I’m not sure how the economy in North America/ Worldwide is going to be in the next few months.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t know how I will be able to find a job in my sector given all of this since jobs are so competitive. I’m eventually looking to get in the investment banking sector (get that 💰 lmao).

So my plan is that I’m going to beef up my resume by doing some certification courses such as the CFA, Bloomberg Market Concepts, Bloomberg ESG, possibly a course in Python (PECP) and some other courses on LinkedIn on Excel (particularly VBA in Excel). I’m also going to make a personal website using Wordpress where I will try to not shitpost as often (ahem 😳). Among all of these, the biggest challenges are the CFA (which has 3 levels and takes 3 years to fully complete) and the time management of it all. Even finishing Level 1 in the CFA should give me a slight edge compared to other starter people in the industry.

The timeline I’ve decided on is based until November (I have the funds to support myself until December). It’s going to be hard, but ultimately (if many things right) it should be worth it.

Here are the main questions I have-

When do I seriously start applying for jobs? (1st round a month ago went miserably)

Am I possibly taking on too much?

If I finish all of this in record time (6 months), am I going to be competitive for these kinds of jobs?

Is all this work worth it? (Don’t give me politically correct advice/ No b.s.)

How do I get some relevant industry job/work experience asap?

Can someone advice me on how to build a personal website (design aspects)? How much personality to show? How do I make myself come across as a well balanced person with interests which are strategically aligned with finance a little bit? Do I include other interests such as literature and stuff? I’m obviously going to include all my research papers on it as well so should I include research papers I’ve done in courses other than maths and economics?

Sorry for the extra long rant. Any advice or support will be helpful at this point. Frankly speaking, I know this is a lot to ask from strangers on the internet but at least I’m not asking on Reddit 😅😂.

#lifestyle advice #work stuff #career #career advancement #career advice #help lol #finance #financial advice #personal goals #life after college #advice #find a job #feeling lost #finance industry #glow up #get that schmoney #get that bag #web design #personal website #wordpress #excelskills #python #investment #networking

[bookmytalent]

The Current Trend of Leaving Jobs in the IT Industry

The events that took place in the recent past; corona and its aftermaths have revamped the global economy’s scenario. This can clearly be seen in the Indian market as well.

According to a recent study conducted by TeamLease, an HR solutions firm, as many as 22 lakh Indian IT professionals are likely to quit their jobs by 2025. According to this report, the Indian IT sector has grown dramatically over the last decade. With a 15.5 percent increase, it has reached $227 billion, creating an additional 5.5 lakh jobs in FY22 alone.

Then the question that arises here is, why attrition rate in the IT industry is increasing year-on-year? Let’s dig deep into it and search for the reasons.

Employment Generation in the IT Sector?

In the 21st century, Information technology is ruling the world, with India being considered a knowledge powerhouse. IT-based services have become crucial for the survival of any organization. It not only contributes to increased productivity but also to factors such as efficient growth and ease of doing business. 

Due to the quick adoption of digitalization, there are now many job opportunities for IT specialists skilled in both established and emerging technologies. Blockchain, cloud computing, analytics, artificial intelligence, and other cutting-edge technologies stand out from the competition. 

In the last two decades, India’s IT industry has grown exponentially, changing global perceptions of India’s knowledge and skills. In fact, India has long been at the forefront of IT and outsourcing services. The Gartner research has also predicted that India will spend more than $100 billion on IT this year.

It wouldn’t be overstating things to say that India’s IT sector grew at an exponential rate, creating millions of jobs that are ever-increasing. It is even believed that with the increase in salary, a candidate’s productivity and job satisfaction will also increase.

But the attrition trend is showing a different picture. According to TeamLease Digital’s prediction, the IT sector experienced a double-digit attrition rate of 23-25% in 2021. This rate is in fact increasing with every coming year; 49% in FY22 and 50-55% in FY23.

The Great Resignation, India

Starting in the USA in 2020, the Great Resignation has also entered the Indian market. IT candidates are seen to be voluntarily resigning from their workplace in mass. 

During the lockdown, people found it easier to leave their jobs due to the expanding opportunities for skill development, remote work, and freelancing. They realized how simple it is to start over in a place where they can control their work style and find work-life balance. 

Now candidates are more focused on their personal growth and mental peace. They want flexibility, professional development, and employee value proposition and are readily quitting their well-cushioned jobs the mid-way.

People have realized the importance of happiness for their success both at work and at home, and they are willing to tell their employers how they feel. 

Reasons for Talent Exodus

The trend of great resignation was first seen when the covid-19 wreaked havoc worldwide. Lack of job opportunities, layoffs, and reduced salaries forced people to look for alternative income opportunities. This led to the realization that it is better to work where people are in charge of their own situation. 

A Broader Range of Educational and Skill-Development Opportunities:

Employees can now choose from a variety of e-learning options to help them learn, grow, and adapt to new ways of working. Approximately 14% of the workforce in 2019 was upskilled, rising to 38% by 2020, according to the Udemy Business 2021 Workplace Learning Trends Report.

Employees are becoming more interested in online education platforms. It allows them to learn new skills and get jobs at a better place which is ultimately fueling the attrition trend.  

Lack of Quality Management:

Another factor of employee disengagement is the lack of leadership or management. Employees expect their employers to feel empathetic with their unique challenges. Candidates at the workplace are overworked and exhausted and feel that their employers don’t care about their work-life balance. 

In pooling the best talents, organizational culture plays a vital role. Employees are concerned about the future if the organization is unable to communicate about the short- and long-term future in clear words.

The shift in Paradigm:

This sudden upheaval in people’s lifestyles awakened their desire to go after their passion. People are looking for work as a key source of personal growth and self-actualization. Now they don’t prefer working for money but for their happiness and satisfaction. As a result, they prefer resigning from a place where they don’t get these two things, rather than suffering. 

Strategies to Resolve Talent Exodus

When it comes to channeling the work, trends tell us to look beyond the traditional notions of space and time. The time has come to abandon preconceived notions about work in the same place at the same time. IT employees now want to work stress-free and on their own terms. They are more inclined to work with companies that offer flexible work arrangements. 

To retain their best employees, business leaders and organizations have to fundamentally rethink their business operating model. Let’s take a look at some strategies for dealing with the IT industry’s high talent exodus.

Decentralize Your Workforce:

Organizations are required to put people at the center of strategy-making. Before making plans, they first need to evaluate the needs of their team. 

Organizations must plan to facilitate what employees actually intend to do – how are employees performing and what do they expect from the organization? Who plans to work from home? Who wants to return to the office? What amount of time do they prefer to devote to office work if they are planning to return?

Meanwhile, organizations must plan their investment in office space to bridge the physical and digital worlds and meet the specific needs of each team and role. 

Promote Diversity:

Untapped female talent pools and gender inequalities are preventing women from accessing the opportunities they deserve in many workplaces. In 2021, India dropped 28 places on the WEF Gender Gap Index, placing 140th out of 156 countries. Labor participation dropped from 24.8% to 22.3%, and women held only 14.6% of senior and managerial positions, with only 8.9% of firms employing women as top executives. 

Younger talents prefer a workplace that demonstrates a truly inclusive culture. And if the companies will not start proactively addressing gender inequality issues, they are going to lose some really great talents.

By increasing flexibility, opening up more work-from-home positions, eliminating bias from job descriptions, and developing leadership skills and re-skilling programs for female employees, employers can take advantage of diversity and create a minefield of human capital.

Rebuild Social Capital:

In any workplace, expanding networks is crucial and requires more work to establish. Sales, productivity, creativity, and innovation are all integral components of successful business outcomes that depend on social capital. This requires to follow certain steps:

● To build more networks, the organization must reframe team building.

● Encourage groups to consider various viewpoints and share knowledge among themselves.

● In order to foster social capital at work, leaders must reward and encourage managers.

A high-performing team and organization depend on the development of a culture of kindness, humor, and collaboration.

Optimize Learning:

To retain talented individuals in the company, creating a career path is yet another critical point. This makes them feel invested in their workplace.

Every employee eventually seeks out a fresh challenge and an opportunity to go beyond their comfort zones. Acquiring knowledge enables them to maintain a keen interest in and active participation in the work they do within their organizations.

Improve Employee Experience:

In general, the term “employee experience” refers to “feel factors,” or how employees feel both during and after their experience. Enhancing the employee experience can increase employee engagement and support a company’s culture. Regardless of money, employees require empathy, enrichment, and efficient experiences. 

To speed up the hiring process, organizations must refocus on workforce planning and build a pipeline of talent. Recognize the importance of employees, increase the visibility of their career paths in the workforce plan, and send a clear message to the workforce that the company values its employees. 

Conclusion

For IT organizations, whether they are thriving startups or sizable corporations, the massive exodus of talent has emerged as one of their top concerns. The same is true of India. 

Every organization’s strategic plans must include objectives for the advancement of its personnel. A fundamental shift in the employment value proposition results in stronger employer-employee bonds, a sense of ownership that is strong, and work that is driven by purpose.

Organizations need to adapt to the changes like flexible work arrangements where employees prefer remote jobs, freelancing, part-time, etc. In order to do this, you would need to get in touch with a company that will help you hire reliable candidates.

And for this, no other company can beat BookMyTalent. It not only helps you hire trusted and quality global talents but also at affordable pricing. We also take care of security compliances while proving detailed candidate profiles. 

Join our hands and start hiring the best talent for your business.