#How to Manage Stress at Work

[valtoybob]

Burnout-Proof Leadership: Transforming Stress into Sustainable Success

In today’s fast-paced world, where the pressure to achieve often comes at the expense of our well-being, mastering the art of burnout-proof leadership has never been more critical. In this episode, Victoria Mensch shares how to explore how leaders can thrive amidst constant change.

In today’s fast-paced world, where the pressure to achieve often comes at the expense of our well-being, mastering the art of burnout-proof leadership has never been more critical. On the latest episode of Mirror Talk: Soulful Conversations, we had the privilege of welcoming Victoria Mensch—a visionary leader, psychologist, and the dynamic CEO of the Silicon Valley Executive Academy—to explore…

[shadowednavi]

it's been awhile since I've worked on this project! I've had this verse finished for months but didn't want to post it on its own, and instead wait until the whole thing is strung together to show the final result all at once. But I'm tired of holding onto it, so here is one section of my deltarune animation! My art tag has other clips if anyone is interested in seeing more~

(song: "The Hymn of Axciom" by Vienna Teng)

[tzarrz]

to all people who said PART 1 made them laugh - i lov u 💗 this is for u

[cosmicaces]

hi, not only have my hours been cut, but i missed some work due to having the flu and management did not put in my pto like i had requested them to. now i am EXTREMELY strapped for cash. my commissions are open but if anyone has anything to spare, any donations are super appreciated ;-;

[doublel27]

Pond Naravit didn’t spend the better part of four years collecting his dance line friends like Thanos going after Infinity Stones to form Project JASP.ER for people on the internet to pretend like none of the artists at GMMTV have any control over their lives and careers.

[moeblob]

Honestly? Good anime imo! I really enjoyed Aileen. I enjoyed Claude. I enjoyed Isaac and Keith and Rachel and Almond and Ribbon. I enjoyed Belzebuth and the flock of ducks (Walt/Kyle/Auguste) and Jasper.

[cent-scratchnsniff]

it was just going to be a few warmup doodles but then she infected the rest of the page like the ever eternal and spreading spores. hod!!! hod. hod :)

[unopenablebox]

ugh this is so pathetic and embarrassing but. it might be helpful to me if people would tag horror movie content with 'horror' or 'horror movie' or 'horror film' or something. because unfortunately seeing a still image of a horror movie monster or body horror scene, or a gif of the guy from saw swinging a bloody hand down to implicitly cut off his offscreen leg or whatever even though onscreen he's just swinging his arm, or even just an overly zippy horror movie poster or overly descriptive sentence about the content of a horror movie, does in fact often cause me to get so stressed out and compulsively miserable that i cry

[ETA: sufficiently non-explicit/non-tone-preserving joke content, like the Thursday the 12th meme that has a picture of jason in the store, is fine. my line is weird and hard to articulate but "does this preserve the tone of the horror movie or is it ridiculous/an obvious joke" is a reasonable way to delineate things i might benefit from tagging vs things that won't bother me.

also like. i made it sound very bad but it's not actually such a huge deal for things that aren't "this is literally a gif of a horror movie" so if you would like to make the question you ask yourself "is this literally a gif of a horror movie" you will already be solving most of my problems]

[louroth]

Hello hello everybody! It is time for another months progress, and I am so excited to share with you, all the things I have gotten my grimy little gremlin hands on. First off, what we are all here for; writing. I have been on fire, to be honest! Last month I churned through the last of the first batch of erotica stories (there's 6 (!!!) of them on my patreon already) and set them up for publishing along with two more unseen ones- I'm still going over the logistics of where to publish for the best revenue (I know this sounds boring, but I have to make an income somehow, and hopefully find another audience as a smut writer on other platforms 💀 I love writing it so why not!), and I am making headway, learning the ins and outs of self publishing. On patreon, there are also two Q&A's that are written in a bit more fictional manner, in character: a more fun way than just writing answers straight up and down. I have enjoyed those so much! There's a bunch of other stuff I haven't even mentioned- honestly, I have to say, I'm really proud of my output on Patreon even though I have been really anxious about writing full time. It's going great! I have to thank my new friends and support-network on discord; you make this all worth it. I cannot express how fun it is to shoot the shit with you in vc, gaming together, or seeing your shenanigans in gen or your in depth theories (thanks for the brainworms!) or memes or staring longingly at the fanfic channel or drooling over your art (ouro related or not) or... Gah. You are just amazing people, and I will waste no opportunity in saying so. Thank you forever and ever and ever an-

When it comes to OUROBOROS, I am happy to announce that the next chapter is damn near done! I was halted because of the discovery that dashingdon is no longer supported by it's creator, and have been working on the twine version ever since, earlier than I expected- it's tough work, but I am so excited to make this an actual game made entirely by myself, and not submitting to a company that quite frankly leaves a bitter aftertaste. It is taking long to make because I want to make it mobile compatible from the start, which there isn't a lot of resources for. But I'm doing my best! The plan is that I will be posting the next chapter for Patreons in the coming month, and then treat you to a full twine release here on tumblr. I haven't made any rewrites when porting the twine build, but I would like to do that too... so we will see; this plan is not set in stone. I will just have to see how it evolves over the next month. Yes, beta-readers is still on the schedule, just holding off a little while while I wrap my head around this new coding landscape.

Other than that, I have been working on the set aesthetic for ouro, which has been really hard, a lot harder than I expected. You all know I am no wizard when it comes to graphic design, but I want to at least develop a set palette and imagery and portraits that is cohesive to the story. The work is ongoing, and I don't have much to say about it- even though it is taking a lot of my brain power. I'm hoping I can come to some kind of set and in depth conclusion that I am happy with before the twine release, because I want the game to feel like a treat to open up and play; a world to get lost in.

That's it! If you want to see weekly and more in depth dev-logs, you know where to go. I hope you have an amazing day or night, and we will see each other soon. xx

[naamahdarling]

Augh

[canonicallyanxious]

i'm stupid so i absolutely did not put together Conrad Schintz as "conscience" until i saw someone in the tag point this out but now that it's in my dumb brain i can't stop thinking about it. Alex's choice to portray Conrad as this softspoken never speaks up but still has to do Something boy who is kind and thoughtful to a fault. pitch perfect character choices!!! but also this tiny quiet boy somehow being pegged by the heads of the city as the BIGGEST DISTRACTION to the big guy's goals and ambitions!! and then his choice of the important article to pay attention to being the culmination of Elias' months and months of research - specifically for the goal of, as Conrad put it, getting it before the "big wigs" could get to it. WHAT is Elias Hodge DOING for Gobstopper Industries??????

[ducktracy]

i've been in a very "nostalgic for SpongeBob" mood lately and that's warranted a lot of reflecting on Baby Me being a Sponge fanatic and thinking of what she'd think of now. and i have to say that one of my favorite parts of doing what i do--and also the most stupidly niche--is that one of my first online hyperfixations i recall having was SpongeBob production music. i remember animating magical girl transformations in Flipnote to SPONGEBOB MUSIC. i remember feeling so smart researching all the songs and getting to hear them without any dialogue on top. very gratifying to 11 year old me. i was and am still very fixated on production music, and so i always get very excited when seeing uploads of these songs and spotting a screenshot of a scene i worked on among them. one of my favorite aspects of watching episodes premiere is seeing what music they added on top of scenes i touched. it's just neat how many facets my thankfulness for Doing What I'm Doing gets to reach. i'm never not thinking of how grateful i am to be doing what i'm doing

[flowerakatsuka]

either i've gotta watch the ososan movie or play fields of mistria tonight, i need a freaking distraction rn.

[puppppppppy]

ive made myself more wet and pathetic

[mleprae]

may i have some more details about physical illness baldwin could suffer? exhaustion, unconsciousness, etc. since your post about sarmenti's irrational anger at his illness inspired me quite a lot, and more detail is better here!! he's so stalwart and strong in soul, i want to contrast the worst of his ailment against his unshakeable spirit

I had to write this on a google docs because there was just SO much text that doing it on a tumblr ask lowkey annoyed me. Sorry for any weird formatting issues or missing words!

I ended up writing this bible because I only realized later that you asked for general symptoms, and not ENL ones. Oh, well, I Italicized all the symptoms that are present in both leprosy and ENL, and just in case, I bolded and italicized the symptoms in ENL only.

Here’s the original thing I wrote!

If you are talking about that one post, I was talking about ENL / Type 2 lepra reaction specifically. My biggest mistake was never talking about leprosy reactions too much in-depth here, and it's partially because we don't know much about them! D: Despite being one of the most serious complications, we haven't explored why it exactly happens. (I know I say 'we don't know' alot about leprosy, but it's just because it's really really really hard to study it)

Leprosy reactions are some brief moments that the disease may develop new symptoms or become temporarily worse, we don't know what starts this, just that it's a type of hypersensitivity. (Which is what we call any blown-out-of-proportion immune reactions, allergies and autoimmune diseases are also hypersensitivities) These episodes are usually short (few days) but the longer and serious ones can last a month or two.

If I were to cite every single symptom during this episode + leprosy in general I'd be here forever, there's just so so sooo many!! But since you asked for the worst of the worst, here's the more severe + common ones. (I obviously cannot testify for myself that those are the worst symptoms because well, I probably will never catch leprosy, I'm quoting the ones where have been described as most life-threatening and the ones that are more inconvenient than others.)

The ADHD version: Amyloidosis (high amyloid count) - CKD (Chronic kidney disease)- Heart issues which may lead to heart failure - Fluid buildup in the limbs (especially the legs) Muscle issues- Muscle pain - Muscle weakness, trouble swallowing and chewing (Although it gets worse in ENL)

Bone issues- Severe bone pain, mostly on the longer bones like the tibia. Hip is also common but it’s more characteristic of any disease than leprosy-specific. (There are a lot of bone symptoms of general leprosy, but I don’t think any of them cause pain.)

Skin & nerves

-Painful nodules pop up throughout the entire skin, pressing on them is extremely painful. They may become pustules or necrotize. (Characteristic of ENL) - Nerve pain, usually worse at night time. Others - Overall malaise - Low to high fever, though if we are talking about ENL, it’s probably more to a high fever. High fever can make you delirious and confused. - Stuffy nose, trouble breathing. Something that haunts me is that dying suffocated to your own mucus/snot is not an uncommon death.- Headaches

The hyper fixated autistic version, in which I just yap about some specific details and add my jester x leper headcanons in the end. (just a complement to the ADHD version)

Full body pain We know that ENL is a type of hypersensitivity, which means that any tissue that has the leprosy bacteria in it becomes inflamed. If you’re having ENL, it probably means leprosy has you by the throat at this point, because it does not happen to any other leprosy types in which the bacteria population is small.

So muscles, nerves, eyes, bones, lymph nodes, skin, everything is invaded by millions of cells sending a shitload of chemical warfare. Inflammation is a destructive reaction, it helps you, but it is destructive in nature; Your immune system is not here to protect you, it’s here to destroy invading pathogens and it will do so by any means necessary. (Even killing you!) Not to mention, the body was already severely impaired before the invasion, a lot of people die during their ENL episodes because it just gets that bad, and if they recover, the damage is too severe to be healed.

All of this is extremely overwhelming to the body and to the person, everything gets swollen, pressing on those nerves that are already firing pain signals. I cannot state how excruciatingly painful all of this is. By the day, it can be something from low to mild pain but it becomes worse as the night falls, as it's usual with nerve pain.

So on top of all the pain, you have some muscle weakness. You can’t move or walk properly but laying down is also painful, trying to sleep becomes a challenge, it’s been noted that despite everything, most can only sleep very lightly. (When they can) A little trivia is that thalidomide, a drug originally used to help people sleep, can actually help in managing ENL. It was discovered when a doctor prescribed it to one of his leprosy patients to help him sleep during those episodes, and they discovered his condition improved afterwards, which is pretty neat!

Involving organs and whatnot

Amyloidosis might be like, 99% the reason why leprosy complications are fatal. Most of them will target the internal organs, like the kidneys, heart and the liver. It’s a little misfolded protein usually associated with long-term/chronic infections… and Alzheimer’s.

The protein causes fluid buildup in the limbs but also it can block important arteries to the heart, causing heart failure. (2nd leading cause of death, after suicide) But for the most time, it causes arrhythmia, which as someone who has a type of arrhythmia, it sucks, it does, alot. It hurts like hell, it makes you dizzy, it feels like your heart grows 4x in size and is trying to claw out of you via your throat. And I have the easy type!

Before I go on about anything else, I wanna go about diet, I already answered here about the complications of weight loss and leprosy and the reason behind it. (I do recommend reading it before this part) Amyloidosis causes CKD (chronic kidney failure), filtering the blood is pretty important… A failing kidney means increased blood pressure due to the fluid buildup.

If they don’t have any sort of knowledge on how nutrition works in the Darkest dungeon medical world, it could make things even worse. Salty foods and pork are the worst offenders, salt will increase your blood pressure by disrupting the osmotic balance, pork has too many fat/lipids, which stimulates the adipose tissue (the one responsible for storing fat), which in turns pisses the immune system EVEN more than it already is. (And this is why you’re advised to not eat pork after a tattoo) So that’s 3 strikes to the heart and 2 to poking the nuclear-tempered cells with a short stick.

As a complement to the original post, I forgot to mention why not only Baldwin isn’t eating properly but that he would probably be losing weight faster than he should. This is one of the more ‘gross�� symptoms you can’t lionize in fiction, but something that stuck to me alot was how the urine goes from liquid to a red, foamy thick paste. The kidney is also responsible for taking proteins instead of letting them go to waste, a dysfunctional one will just start discarding proteins, ESSENTIAL proteins, making the urine foamy or thick depending on which proteins are being discarded. (Red being from blood, which is another topic) Even if he was eating properly, his body can’t help but discard the food he needs. There's a wildfire in the distance of people fighting if intestinal leprosy is a thing and that can cause constipation. I’ll leave it up to you, most people do not believe it though.

My overall fandom Thots(™) In a selfish way, I think it’s fair that Sarmenti would be irrationally upset at it, considering everything, Baldwin would probably need to have some around-the-clock care as it happens IRL with ENL reactions (patients are supervised by nurses until the reaction is over and they can go home). I don’t think Sarmenti is caring for him directly though, it would be much much worse if he did; because he would need to help him eat, sleep, move around, change his wraps and clean him if needed. It makes more sense to me that Paracelsus is doing it, and Sarmenti is just there to visit or do some small things if he can, and even then, there’s not much she can do. While some leprosy antibiotics can be made by harvesting and refining things found in nature, even crudely, the ones that are used to manage ENL need high-tec labs and industrial wide scale production for it, there’s not many things to help it either, we didn’t even knew Thalidomide helped leprosy until like…1960? It’s not even recommended.

All that can be done is just wait until the reaction takes its course and doesn’t take his life with it, you can do some pain management to help him sleep better, but other than that? In this situation? I think they can only just make him as comfortable as possible and wait. In Baldwin’s POV, he’s in severe pain and discomfort, stuck in a room warm as possible as to not stir nerve pain. Confused/Delirious from fever and exhausted from lack of sleep, it’s normal for people in these states to just get up and… leave? Because they don’t know what’s going on or where they are, if he can still walk of course. Sarmenti depends on Baldwi emotionally, but it’s almost never the other way around, so this sudden change in routine is pretty upsetting for both of them. I think Baldwin needing him or “avoiding” him are two interesting takes, in one hand, he’s in pain and confused and Sarmenti is the only one who he recognizes to give him comfort but on the other hand, I’d understand why he wouldn’t want him to see him that way, he’s in a pretty bad shape...Well, up to you!

[orphyd]

Just paid outta pocket for my summer semester...maybe selling 🐈 is a lucrative business opportunity-