#I've got some powerful intuition but I doubt myself for no reason

[decadentdeviation]

Maybe I should put this picture of my positive pregnancy test in my secure folder before I go see my entire family, huh

[its-moopoint]

This is 2023. Nothing will change is shipperville.

Anonymous asked:

Do you think cait had any idea what her marriage would do to outlander?? Or with Sam reputation?

denise-alwaysuselove answered:

I must preface my response by saying that I don’t believe Cait is married to anyone other than Sam. The public “marriage” is nothing more than a publicity stunt to bring the focus to the narrative. It’s not so much about Cait’s “marriage” as it is about “proving” that Sam and Cait are not together. 

That said, I doubt Cait realized that the bigwigs would hijack it for Outlander promo. Their co-opting of the fake engagement and wedding for their own nefarious purposes should tell anyone with a brain that they are part of this nonsense. Executives at that level have no reason to get involved in a narrative unless it serves them.

I think Cait’s upset that her stunts didn’t stay in the background as she had planned contributed to her lashing out on twitter and to her blocking sprees. I believe she was blindsided by her bosses, leaving her feeling backed into a corner whenever she was questioned.

I don’t think the “marriage” has hurt Sam’s reputation. Those of us here on Tumblr study everything with a magnifying glass. Casual fans don’t see what we see, and for the most part they accept what they are shown without question. However, based on the number of new followers the past few months, it appears that some of the new OL viewers have noticed the same thing shippers noticed years ago. Some things are hard to hide if you have the eyes to see.

What the bigwigs at LG/Sony/Starz didn’t take into account is that shippers have very long memories and a mega-warehouse full of receipts. We’re also smart, and many of us are intuitive. 

I know what I’ve seen all these years, and I know what Sam and Cait openly showed us before Albrecht brought the hammer down on January 8, 2016. They can bring in all the ridiculously fake girlfriends they want for Sam, and all the fake ceremonies they want for Cait, but I know better.

My blog is about love. I honor the love I’ve seen between Sam and Cait both before and after the denial. Why am I so steadfast? It’s really about trust: I can choose to trust myself and my own inner knowing, or I can believe the illusion that others are desperate to sell. For me and my house, I trust love.

importantcowboyfestival

I'm brand new shipper just since covid19 and I'm no fool!!! I'm on board with you.

happilyscentedsoul

You guys are definitely not alone. I know what I've seen and observed on my own with a little digging, and what I've seen here with this "group" so far only confirms what my gut has been telling me. Glad to find I'm not the only one who believes in "standing back and observing" when one encounters a brick wall. Sam and Cait both (but especially Sam) have been sharing little nuggets all along. Of course, the nuggets com in spurts, but that is to be expected, due to what they must do to try and satisfy everyone, especially bosses. I strongly feel more will be coming and it is just a matter of patience. I think they are honestly doing the best they can at the mo.

lindah1919

July 9 is when Sam’s contract is supposedly up. Hopefully he’s hired high powered attorneys.

briarbushies

WOW everything you have said is 100% right some who don't know don't really want to know but we've known since OL began and no narrative will change our minds as we've seen them fall in love and have their family even though hidden but we can always read between the lines but seeing all the fake GF they've thrown at Sam they have never been a match like Sam & Caitriona who's love just oozes from their bodies and souls!!

pizbernina-79

It’s a good thing to let the newbies see all facts which the engaged shippers have sampled since the beginning of the love story of S/C. You all have done a great job and you always trust your feelings! Love you all for that! 😍

Denise dear, stop lying to your followers, newbies and pretend this is about beliefs and trust. It's not anymore, it's about facts. Public marriage ain't an article in People anymore, public Tait marriage is all her people going to Bruton, St Mary's church being booked for T McG and then a marriage certificate with both C and T named legally registered at GRO. Certificate of which several people got several different copies. So public marriage what? Married to S when and where?? Ibiza??

LOL you are so pathetic carrying tales VS actual data.

[crazycatsiren]

Hello Mother of Cats! I hope you are doing well. This fellow ND and disabled witch is hoping to get some insight about coping with burnout that affects your craft.

2022 was probably the worst year of my life, especially for physical and mental health reasons. Things are starting to get better, though I'm still very fatigued, fragile, and high-strung a lot of the time. The one thing that's been taking especially long to recover is my spirituality. I don't feel capable or powerful at all, I'm plagued with self-doubt, and I feel more lost and disoriented than I did when I first started almost 10 years ago (holy shit, that number is just sinking in...wow). My intuition just feels gone.

I know healing from spiritual burnout isn't something I can force, but I'm hoping it's something I can foster. Have you ever been in particularly rough patches with your disabilities/chronic conditions that deeply impacted your capacity for spiritual practice? Was there anything specific you did—in conjunction with actual medical/psych treatment, obviously—that helped you recover? Spells, exercises, routines; practices to ease into working with the atrophied muscles of the soul?

I think, most of all, I just need to hear that it won't be this bad forever. That healing is possible. Because that's very hard to believe right now.

Sorry for the long ask. I hope you have a wonderful day. <3

Oh dear, this brings back memories.

Near the end of 2020 was when I got sick. And the last 2 years kind of swam by in a blur. Like, what the hell happened. Where did I go. It was 2 years of my life, and it felt as if I wasn't the one who was living it.

I think the last 2 years really tried and tested me all the way down to the core. I'd thought I'd paid all my dues in the first 30 decades of my life. Golly was I an idiot to think that. As my chronic illnesses progressed, and more and more of my previous life became lost to me, it felt as if parts of myself were being chipped away one piece at a time. And I'd thought I'd come to terms with being disabled. Whom was I fooling.

Then near the end of 2022, with some push from my husband, I put my feet down and decided I wasn't going to lose hope after all. I began working with an occupational therapist in a long COVID rehabilitation program, then I checked myself into therapy again. I put myself into a wellness routine, and I kept up with it cussing the whole time. I've never been a fan of the hanged man tarot card, but I allowed it to be my inspiration (you can read about it here). I'm determined to find myself again in 2023. The universe can watch me.

I've been taking it easy and gentle with myself spiritually. I don't love having to take extended time off from my spiritual practices, but I've learned that my health has to come first, because without my health, there's nothing. Sometimes, you just have to step away for a while. Spirituality is not something that can be forced. When you need a break, you need a break. Trust that it'll always be there for you, and when you return to it, you'll feel better and ready again. We spoonies, our recharging needs are different. We need more rests and recuperations from just about everything, and that's ok.

From my personal experiences, healing is very possible. It won't be easy, it won't be comfortable, and you might even feel worse for a while, but it gets better.

[toast-the-unknowing]

Hi there, toast. Cutting to the chase: you're one of my favorite writers — not just one of my favorite fanfic writers. your short stories for the raven cycle are some of the funniest, tightest, emotionally devastating, well-crafted works of fiction i've encountered in awhile — better than a lot """"real-world, published"""" stuff. I kind of want to know more about how you got to this point. I think you've mentioned a background in screenwriting? But I don't think that's your day job? 1/?

2/? Really, I'm asking because you seem to have found a way to write regularly — to develop your chops and publish your art in a way that seems emotionally satisfying for you. to an outsider like myself, you seem to have struck a balance between living a life that pays the bills, and artmaking in a way that feeds your soul. you might not feel that way, i don't know. i'm someone who studied writing in college and am now wondering if and how i can still water that seed....

3/? when the reality is i also need to make money to live. i guess i'm curious about your life model right now, and if you're happy with the way you're currently fulfilling yourself creatively. do you want to be a """""published writer""""" someday? is your job one that is also creatively fulfilling, or is it more to pay the bills so that you can do your own creative projects in your free time?

4/4 I know my question isn't very clear, and I'm not sure it's even one question. the point is, i admire you, and you seem to be in a habit of writing creatively, even though i think you have an unrelated day job, and that balance seems mysterious and desirable to me.

Thank you for your kind words, Anon! I have attempted to write something helpful, but it got very long, so I am putting it behind a cut:

Keeping your art alive when you have to work an unrelated job is not easy. Struggling with it does not mean that you're failing, or that it can't be done, or that you won't get better at it down the road. It's also not the sort of thing where you hit equilibrium and it's all smooth sailing from there. I have gotten better at fitting my writing into my life, and I've figured out strategies and coping mechanisms and how to be better at just making myself do it even if I feel "blocked," but there are still stretches of time where it's harder to manage. Those periods don't last forever, and if it sometimes gets worse, it also sometimes gets better.

I suspect you know all of this, Anon, because you sound like a reasonable person and because you balanced writing and schoolwork, which can itself be tricky. I say it anyway because this is exactly the kind of subject where mean little thoughts like to sneak into your head and make you doubt yourself, and I think we could all use a reminder.

There are many writers who will say that you have to write every single day. Often they will say that you have to write at the same time every single day, or that you need to wake up early to write before work. These writers depress and demotivate me, because I don't actually have a writing "habit" in that there's no schedule or daily goal or set of standards involved. Some days I write a lot and some days I don't write at all. Shaming myself about that fact has never been helpful.

What has been helpful: an increased understanding of my writing process. Realizing I don't have to outline? Helpful! Realizing that generating ideas and fleshing out scenes and shaping the arc of a story and making it pretty are all different skills and some days one comes easier than the others? Helpful! Realizing that I tend to have an "a-hah" moment that tells me what the story is about, after which it's easier to write the story? Helpful! Realizing that if I can't think of an adjective or a line of dialogue or a joke, I can just put an asterisk and come back to it later, instead of halting the entire writing process until I come up with it? Helpful!

I don't know if any of these particular things would be helpful to you, because your writing process probably works differently than mine. Somebody out there absolutely does need to outline before they can write, or so I assume from the fact that it is mandated in virtually every book on writing I have ever read. You studied writing in school, so it's possible that you already have a great understanding of your process; it's also possible you have internalized a lot of other people's ideas of what you're writing should look like. Most of what I know about how I write was learned in the last few years, not in school.

It is also possible that you have a good understanding of what your process looks like when that gets to be the thing that takes up the majority of your time. In which case, you probably need to consider your life and your schedule as it is now. I know, for example, that I don't get much writing done of weekend days where I stay in bed late, even though I still end up with more free time than I'd have on a weekday, so if I want to write on a weekend I need to get up. Are there any times of day, or the days of the week, or the places where it is easier to write? What factors make it harder to write? Can you minimize those factors? When you can't, because you livelihood depends on them, can you acknowledge them as a fact of life and forgive yourself for being affected by them?

It's unpleasant but undeniable that working impacts writing. We aren't able to spend the time we'd like to on writing. We don't have the energy and focus that we had in school, when our writing was our main responsibility. Now our primary responsibility is making enough money to survive, and if that makes us sad to think about, well, it's only going to make us sadder if on top of that we try to hold ourselves to the amount of writing we'd do if that weren't true.

It isn’t strictly a numbers game where more time = more writing, which I think can be reassuring for those of us who don’t get as much time as we’d like for writing. I was unemployed or working part-time for the entirety of 2016 and I did not do more writing in 2016 than I am now. I had more time, but I was much more of a mess, as a person, and I wasn't as dedicated to writing. In a counter-intuitive way, I think it can help to have creative outlets besides writing. It does take time away from something that you already don’t get as much time as you want to do, but it means that you have a place to be creative even when the words aren't coming, a place with less pressure and lower stakes. I've done improv pretty casually for the last couple of years, and aside from the fact that I think improv in particular can be extremely helpful for writers, it means that when I've been unhappy with my writing, I could show up to improv and do a silly voice or shuffle around in a crabwalk and know that I had created something.

These are some things that have helped me write while also working: Improv. Mindfulness about writing. Mindfulness about life in general. Prioritizing my writing (guys, I watch so much less television than I used to). Therapy and medication, to be honest. Remembering why I am excited about the projects that I’m working on. Giving myself freedom to start new stories while also encouraging myself to finish old ones. Having an audience to share things with, because it is hard to write without knowing that anyone will ever read what you are pouring so much of yourself into.

It has taken me a few days to answer this, Anon, because I wanted to give a considered response, and also just because adult life! so busy! I keep coming back to the questions of whether I am emotionally satisfied with the writing I am doing, and whether I have a good balance between my writing and my work. Because I really think that I am creatively satisfied right now, and if I am mostly aware of that most of the time, I don't know that I'd really phrased it like that to myself before. If I had then I had forgotten it. And it's a powerful and wonderful thing to be able to say that to myself.

I have a degree in screenwriting, but I have never made a career of it and am not pursuing one now. The dream used to be writing for television. Before that the dream was to be a traditionally published author. Now...I don't know what the dream is. I would like to do original work again some day. I have a novel in my head that is very important to me, whose characters helped me get through some hard times, and I want to give that novel the life that it deserves. I would like to do something with my screenwriting degree at some point, although it will likely never make me money. Sometimes it feels like failure that I don't have a new dream, and that I gave up on the old ones. But for the most part, for now, I'm very happy writing fanfiction. I've written a lot of stories, particularly in the last few years, that I am very proud of.

But I don't actually have a good balance between art and work, inasmuch as my art makes me happy and my work...doesn't. I have a low-level office job in a field that I'm not passionate about or well-suited for. I don't get out of my job a lot of the things that I do get out of writing -- challenge, investment, a chance to be creative, self-direction, fulfillment, purpose. I have never worked a job where I got any of those things, and it is starting to wear me down.

To be fair: "my job pays me a decent wage and gives me great health insurance but it isn't satisfying" is a privileged thing to complain about, and I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that some people handle these situations just fine, that some people don’t mind a job that demands a minimum of energy and time since that leaves them more to put into their art. You may be one of these people! I am discovering that I am not. Getting no sense of accomplishment from my job contributes negatively to my overall mental and emotional health, which is sucky all on its own, but has the additional effect of impacting my writing.

It's a tricky problem, though. I don't, at present, want to make a living off of writing (and such a career would be precarious), but my current resume and skill set doesn't qualify me for much of anything besides the work I'm already doing (thanks, screenwriting degree). Any attempt to find a job that's more fulfilling would likely involve a big investment of time, money, and/or effort in some kind of school and training, and then...I'd be in a job that demanded more from me, and even if it made me happier than my current job does, how much would that leave me to put into my writing?

I don't know if any of this has been helpful to you. It is perhaps not a clear answer to a question that felt clear when I read it but that my mind muddled up along the way. You may find that once you hit a balance between writing and working, you don't mind the day job grind in the same way I do. You may decide that you do want to pursue writing as a career. You may still be figuring out the employment situation at all and my woes may be worse than irrelevant.

But the timing of this ask is funny; I am soon going to apply to an educational program that would prepare me for a new career in a totally different field, and the thought of how this will impact my writing has very much been on my mind. In the past when I've thought about doing anything like this, that question has kept me from going forward: won't that be less of your time, less of your energy, less of you for your writing? I think this is a real concern with a basis in truth: if I get into this program I am going to have a lot less time and energy for anything outside of it, and I will need to again adjust my expectations of what my writing can look like in my circumstances. But I think that this question is also fear and perfectionism talking, using my writing as a weapon against me, and I'm tired of it.

Balance is a funny thing. I'm actually terrible at basically anything that requires balance: biking, rollerskating, gymnastics, ice skating, you name it. I don't see how anyone pulls it off. You can lean too far one way only to fall over the other way when you try to even out. You can take a turn and suddenly the road is uphill or downhill or bumpy, and whatever you were doing before to stay upright isn't cutting it. You can be going along just fine and then, for absolutely no reason, you're wobbling all over the place. But you can also do a hell of a lot of wobbling without ever falling down.

I think it's just about...paying attention to what's happening around you. Paying attention to what you're feeling and what you want. Not getting fooled by something you're supposed to want if you don't actually want it. Figuring out the things that you need, and the things that would make your life better, and the things that you'd like, and prioritize those accordingly.

I sure hope that's how it works, at least, because that's all I've got. I might royally fuck up my life in the next couple of months, but if I do, I'll adjust and keep going. It can't be any worse than fucking ice skating.

Best of luck, Anon.

[optimisticcapricorn]

Hello! E, Capricorn, here, a song I've listened to a lot lately is Faces by MyKey. I don't have a very specific question, but I've been feeling lost and would appreciate some guidance, especially on how to deal with my very jumbled feelings towards someone who I honestly hardly even know, but whose attention I've been craving for some reason. I think I need to let go and focus on my actual relationships, but I haven't been strong enough so far. Thank you for your time! ♡

Hello E!💛 Ooh, a fellow Capricorn!♑️✨😁 Ahh, his voice is amazing- thank you for sharing!✨

I pulled the Page of Pentacles, 7 of Pentacles, The High Priestess, and 10 of Wands!✨ I’m getting a lot of messages as I listen to this song and connect with you more, this is going to be a pretty long reading!💛

Firstly, thank you for sharing what you’ve been going through- it can be hard and difficult to disclose- especially with a stranger!💛

Deeply intuitively and with guidance from the 10 of Wands, I feel as though you are holding onto some past hurts- whether this be from romantic or platonic of familial relationships, I feel something is clinging to you and affects your perceptions of love and connections with others- someone or some situation was not healthy and it causes you to know have significant doubts in yourself- the 10 of Wands is a heavy burden to bear and I feel it so deeply! How can you release this energy? Do you think writing a letter may help? You wouldn’t have to actually give it to the person/people but it may help to get the rumination out of your head!💛 Whoever this may be and you may have cut ties but you can still get your feelings, anger, frustration, sadness, and confusion out in this way!💛 You are very strong and resilient but this heaviness is looming... even though you are feeling lost and confused, there is a gentle and hopeful energy coming from you!💛

I feel the need to encourage you to analyze why this attraction may be so strong- what does this person add to your life? What do you see in them? How is this connection different from your other relationships? What do you see in them that you may not see in yourself? This is normal and happens a lot actually!💛Sometimes, it seems like attraction to a person but it’s actually attraction to a trait or perceived strength - a list would help here! For example, if I really admire someone’s confidence- how can I build this up more in myself instead of coming from a place of lack and seeing them as a way to fill a hole I may have? I feel you admire this person and the attraction may be based more on what you wish you had rather than wanting to be with them... I hope this makes sense!💛 The High Priestess clarifies that yes!! What you want is within you but self-compassion and working on yourself are needed to reach whatever you have been searching for!✨

The Page of Pentacles has been showing up for so many today and for a very beautiful and important reason- trust in yourself and your intuition and yourself!!! You have picked up on the need to let go- follow this and be gentle but honest and assertive with yourself on why you feel so connected to this person and connection! With the 7 of Pentacles, this is a very encouraging energy of change for the better happening and patience being a virtue! How can you make more time for your own self-care and reconnecting with loved ones? Water your gardens and reconnect with yourself on whatever way this may mean- art, journaling, music, etc! This is a heavy energy but it is also one that I feel you have the power to 100% come out of- it is not a final place just a hiccup, you’re going to find your way and get there!💛💛💛

So, this song actually has a time mark of 4:44 on YouTube and I feel this definitely isn’t a coincidence- I have deep connections to music so I had to look more into what this advice is from spirit!!✨💛 Yes!!!! 4:44 signifies following your intuition but also let’s you know that you are in a space of divine protection! You are loved and supported and not alone! ✨✨✨ Believe you have the power to release anything that may be keeping you down! Thank you for letting me read for you and sharing again!💛 Sending you sooo much love and good energy E, I know you got this and will be more than fine!💛💛💛💛💛