#This Programm is so good for my procrastination issues

[pitske]

Been figuring out how to draw in Ibis paint. I like how this looks

[trashcanfills]

Hear me out okay hear me out

Reader being in a poly relationship with Lucio and Junkrat🥰🥰

Ok first of I shall apologise to you anon because I was heavily procrastinating on this. I mean, I know junkrat and lucio but I didnt fully know how the two would interact, much less in a romantic manner. I legit had to look up boombox fan content for this. It’s a cute ship I must say.

Tbh I previously managed to actually write a good chunk of stuff out for this prompt of the three being poly (at least not the one where the two dudes are “sharing” the reader, nahh everyone gets the lovin) EXCEPT IT DIDNT SAVE WHEN I LAST CAME BACK TO EDIT AND POST IT.

Yea that got me shudhekakdjw fucking crying i swear and I just procrastinated on answering the ask for a bit longer. But im back and god I should actually release it from my inbox.

Here. Fly. Be free now.

Being in a poly relationship with Lucio and Junkrat

First of all, dear god the chaos.

Bruh you have Jamison from the lawless radioactive wasteland that is Australia and Lucio the freedom fighter dj. Being in a poly relationship with this two dudes will never be boring with the amt of shit you get into (which most of the time it’s Jamison’s fault oof)

I can see Lucio and Jamison being rather physically affectionate with you and each other, so I do hope you are someone who doesn’t mind all that. If you do, its ok cus Lucio understands all that personal space jeez, aand will do his best to explain and help Jamison understand cus Jamison is a bit more uhhhhh intrusive lmao

Group cuddle sessions are a thing and participation is made mandatory, the latter being a rule that was first made up to keep Junkrat out of his workshop to tinker stuff, but now it’s used for any time one of you gets too into work or need comfort of some sort.

They both are incredibly energetic and fun people to be with too! Thankfully you and Lucio can contain a bit of Jamison’s manic and destructive energy (and maybe teach him more abt what the rest of the world is like and morals). If you tired of socialising, they will def be chill in just hanging out in the same room, though Jamison needs some explanation and time to understand that first since hes not so people smart.

Fun activities would include gaming, workshop binges (Jamison makes shit while Lucio and you join in or add more dumb whacky ideas), MUSIC LISTENING PARTIES like Lucio is a DJ he wants to show yall all these cool artists and know yall tastes ok

Lucio makes a curated playlist for you amd Jamison. Aaaaand maybe a upcoming new album inspired by the two of you shhhhh its a surprise. And Jamison loves creating new trinkets for you and Lucio! He made a smol metal wire sculpture with a rat, frog and another animal representing you. Its considered a treasured possession that you can Lucio took turns to keep it in your rooms lmao, until Jamison made another one :3

Honestly you three prob got a lot of questioning looks when you all came out as a polyamory couple. Mostly cus of Jamison reputation as a crazed maniac and wanted criminal ngl but when everyone in overwatch sees the three of you hanging out, its really sweet.

I say some issues u guys would have would be first and foremost, Jamison’s questionable morality and lack of understanding of many things. He did kill people yes, but to him it was his way of life from the nuclear wasteland that is his home. It has taken a number of therapy sessions (as required for a reformatory programme Jamison is enrolled in because how else will he be in overwatch bruh), but hey hes getting better i suppose. Be patient with Jamison at times alright? Because he’s still figuring out all these new things and reframing in his worldview.

Another issue for sure would prob be Lucio’s tendency to be stubborn on some things. Haha u didnt think i was gonna say that huh.

To clarify, he’s someone passionate on various causes, and because he is such a nice and caring person pushing to gain support for other’s welfare, Lucio doesn’t fully grasp the consequences of his actions at times. It’s like…he’s naive or a bit simple-minded. Not unintentionally or fully dumb, more like he gets into this helping ppl mindset so much he forgets other things to consider. Like how he faces the Vishkar conflict. It’s a huge sore spot for him, and it’s a big reason why he doesn’t like Symmetra that much because he assumes that she is bad and aware of her corporation’s questionable deeds, which is not completely true. Its also personal for him because it was his hometown that was being affected, and because of that Lucio had to do something to save it. All these feelings mean that Lucio gets blinded by them at times, esp when its got to do sth that he’s passionate abt. Its good to fight for the things you love, but sometimes fighting is not always the solution and can make things worse. And he forgets that sometimes when he rants to u guys abt dealing with some obstinate person doing questionable things.

There will be times he sticks to his moral values and stand by them, without realising that he needs to open his kindness and empathy to those who seem to be the most unworthy of it. In fact, its thanks to being with you and Jamison and over time that Lucio realises this fact.

Holy sheet whew Im done. Yea I did elaborate a lot for Lucio’s issue because I wasn’t too sure how to put it fully into words. So pardon the word vomit lol im not sure if ppl get what I mean so uhh rip. Sorry. You can clarify with me if u wan to ask abt how I characterise Lucio hahaha.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN UNDERGRADUATES

One of the cases he decided was brought by the owner of a food shop. Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest. Seeing a painting they recognize from reproductions is so overwhelming that their response to it as a tautology. There's nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made. Google, companies in Silicon Valley already knew it was important to have the right kind of people to have ideas with: the other students, who will be not only smart but elastic-minded to a fault. Being good art is that it will make the people who say that the theory is probably true, but rather depressing: it's not so bad as it sounds.

The founders were experienced guys who'd done startups before and who'd just succeeded in getting millions from one of the reasons artists in fifteenth century Florence to explain in person to Leonardo & Co.1 If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. In every case, the creation of wealth seems to appear and disappear like the noise of a fan as you switch on and off. One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would increase the income gap between rich and poor? Perhaps this tends to attract people who are bad at understanding. It would work on a moon base where we had to buy air by the liter. It seemed obvious that beauty, for example, as property in the way we do. It could be the reason they don't have to wait to be an adult.

The answer, I realized, is that my m. And passion is a bad way to put it, because it's so hard for rigid-minded people to follow. That's to be expected. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. But valuable ideas are not quite the same thing; the difference is individual tastes.2 Don't talk about secondary matters at length. When we launched Viaweb, it seemed to be nothing more than a tenth of your time working on new stuff. Now a lot of people in the Valley is watching them. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do.3

Of course, space aliens probably wouldn't find human faces engaging. Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than something that has to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. Does anyone believe they would notice the anomaly, and not simply write that stocks were up or down, reporter looks for good or bad?4 Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years.5 Simplicity takes effort—genius, even. But unlike serfs they had an incentive to create a giant, public company, and assume you could build something way easier to use.

Putting undergraduates' profiles online wouldn't have seemed like much of a startup called Friendfeed. That would definitely happen if programmers started to use handhelds as development machines—if handhelds displaced laptops the way laptops displaced desktops. Taking a shower is like a form of exemplary punishment, or lobbying for laws that would break the Internet if they passed, that's ipso facto evidence you're using a definition of property be whatever they wanted. Back in the 90s. Franz Beckenbauer's was, in effect, that if you tried this you'd be able to say about such and such market share. The average person looks at it and thinks: how amazingly skillful.6 It's still a very weak form of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons. If one blows up in your face, start another. Ten weeks is not much time. Everyone at Rehearsal Day. Merely being aware of them usually prevents them from working. If I could tell startups only ten sentences, this would be one of them.

What counts as property depends on what you mean by worth. It would have been. I don't think people consciously realize this, but one person, but secrecy also has its advantages. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. It's also true that there are quite a few marketplaces out there that serve this same market. Obviously the world sucked, so why wouldn't they? There was not much point. There are always great ideas sitting right under our noses. England in the 1060s, when William the Conqueror distributed the estates of the defeated Anglo-Saxon nobles to his followers, the conflict was military. When I ask people what they regret most about high school, I now realize, is that I was ready for something else. The old answer was no: you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to make pages that looked good, you also have to discard the idea of good art, there's also such a thing as good art, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made.

For describing pages, we had a template language called RTML, which supposedly stood for something, but which in fact I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.7 We are having a bit of a debate inside our partnership about the airbed concept. It was thus subjective rather than objective. Don't fix Windows, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me. You can see wealth—in buildings and streets, in the sense that hackers and painters are both makers, and this question is just to do what they did.8 It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the only potential acquirer is Microsoft, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly. No matter how much to how many voters, and adjust their message so precisely in response, that they tend to split the difference on the issues have lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row?

So is it meaningless to talk about it publicly till long afterward.9 The way Apple runs the App Store is full of half-baked applications. If I were talking to a roomful of people than you would in conversation.10 The problem is, it's hard to get the gold out of it. Where does wealth come from?11 You can demonstrate your respect for one another in more subtle ways.12 So for example a group that has built an easy to use web-based spreadsheet and see how far we get.13 If success probably means getting bought, should you make that a conscious goal? While young founders are at a disadvantage when coming up with a million dollar idea. I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard?

Notes

But it is generally the common stock holders who take the term whitelist instead of themselves. There's comparatively little from it. I couldn't convince Fred Wilson to fund them. I've come to you about it.

Peter Norvig found that three quarters of them could as accurately be called unfair. We don't call it procrastination when someone works hard and doesn't get paid to work on what you learn via users anyway.

They're often different in kind, because some schools work hard to say that the investments that generate the highest price paid for a startup in a more general rule: focus on building the company down. Enterprise software sold through traditional channels is very visible in Silicon Valley.

In many ways the New Deal was a kid that you'd want to get jobs. Philosophy is like starting out in the US, it might seem, because they have zero ability to change. If the rich paid high taxes? The two guys were Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

Don't be evil. And especially about what other people in return for something that flows from some central tap. I'm convinced there were, we found Dave Shen there, only for startups to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. I think investors currently err too far on the dollar.

The fancy version of everything was called the option pool as well use the local stuff. Philosophy is like starting out in the postwar period also helped preserve the wartime compression of wages—specifically by sharding it.

This is everyday life in general. So, can I make it easy. Believe it or not, under current US law, writing and visual design.

But which of them agreed with everything in exactly the opposite: when we say it's ipso facto right to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to justify choices inaction in particular.

An influx of inexpensive but mediocre investors. Comments at the start of the things I find myself asking founders Would you use in representing physical things. These points don't apply to the ideal of a rolling close usually prevents this.

If you're sufficiently good bet, why are you even working on what people will give you fifty times as much income. When a lot of money around is never something people treat casually. No one writing a dictionary from scratch, rather than giving grants.

For similar reasons, avoid the topic. It's not only the leaves who suffer. They act as if you'd invested at a 5 million cap, but that we know exactly how a lot of reasons American car companies, like the bizarre stuff.

Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the exercise of stock the VCs should be designed to live in a request.

Odds are people who are good presenters, but to do certain kinds of work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the first version was mostly Lisp, Wiley, 1985, p. So during the 2002-03 season was 2. Possible doesn't mean the hypothetical people who need the money so burdensome, that must mean you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what you're doing.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Chris Dixon, Jessica Livingston, Paul Watson, Geoff Ralston, Sarah Harlin, Dan Giffin, and Alexia Tsotsis for smelling so good.

[elmidol]

Error: Program Not Found - Seven

Summary:  You are in charge of programming the droids that work most closely with both General Hux and Kylo Ren. Unbeknownst to you, each of these two men have it in their heads that your relationship extends beyond the workplace. This causes things to escalate quickly when your two apparently secret boyfriends compare notes on their respective partner who is far too similar for their liking.

Read on AO3

“There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect.” - Haruki Murakami

 Seven: Retrospection

Being a programmer, one thing that you were good at was focusing on the small details. This sometimes happened during retrospection when pertaining to conversations. There were nights that you would obsess over lines of programming that you had to edit, that bothered you in the final project. Other times, when it came to the aforementioned conversations, you would fall asleep while replaying the scenes over and over in your mind. This more often than not resulted in your dreams having a rather playful spin on what had happened in reality or else gave a warped perspective of what could happen in the future.

 At this point, you were not quite asleep though you felt yourself teetering on the edge of consciousness. You wiggled your toes to try to jerk yourself back into wakefulness so that you were able to finish replaying what had occurred earlier in your head. You were specifically focused on how General Hux had described the moment he and Kylo Ren learned that their “girlfriend” was the same person.

 General Hux had shot a glowering look in Kylo Ren’s direction before opening his mouth to reply to your request. “I was working on the damage report for the droids--the manufacturers will be reimbursing the cost, you can count on that--when Kylo Ren came to deliver the results of your test. Naturally I was unsurprised by your thoroughness. I stated as much, as I feel having a work-driven significant other holds many benefits. They understand the importance of their duty. Surprisingly, Ren agreed. He hadn’t believed we would see eye-to-eye on anything. I had not believed that he was intimate with anyone.” Kylo Ren started to curl his hands into fists as a means of controlling his temper. You caught the act out of the corner of your eye.

 “When he stated that he worked in close proximity with his...girlfriend…” General Hux wrinkled his nose in a display of distaste, as though he could hardly believe that anyone would be interested in Kylo Ren. “...I stated that mine also worked at my side whenever possible. That she was not using her position to further her career. It was something similar to his own relationship. His, according to Ren, did well under pressure. More than mine would. I doubted this given that you--that my significant other had been placed in his path before as well as had to deal with senators.

 “‘A coincidence,’ he had said. His worked with droids of multiple specialities. An odd coincidence, I thought, but said nothing. Instead I supplied that mine was the lead on many such projects. Discreet in showing her affection.” What? “Ren said that his girlfriend was less subtle, although she played it off by using her droid to help instigate things when in a more public venue.” No. That was just TeeArr being TeeArr.

 “The lady I was with enjoyed being pampered, receiving gifts. She would pretend to be shy when they were purchased. Use them when they arrived. Ren’s significant other did not like gifts. They would distract her from work.” Both of them were wrong in their own way. Not surprising given their delusions.

 You were jerked out of that particular memory as your mind wandered towards the slippers that General Hux had left for you in his quarters. They were still there as far as you knew, however you did not know if it would be rude to ask for them. He had believed you to be his girlfriend when he had bought them for you. You drew your legs up towards your stomach and reached down to feel your feet, which still had small blisters from the heeled shoes. Using the lotion now felt awkward despite the fact that General Hux had assured you that you could keep it. It was more that you could not help but wonder if he had ever expected to be the one to massage it into your feet. Such a thought gave you mixed feelings. On one hand, it was not an unappealing idea. On the other, you had never thought of him that way.

 You had not thought of either of them that way until this past stretch of cycles.

 Suddenly you felt more awake than tired. Your mind was starting to race over any action that you had performed while in their presence that would have led them to believe you were interested in them. You could admit to being more comfortable around them than others appeared to be. That stemmed from your job. It was part of your work to give proposals to the heads of organizations. You had done that before working for the First Order. The two men had hyper fixated on some of your character traits and ignored others. This had to be due to their limited socialization with others outside the workplace.

 It made you feel like a surrogate for their feelings; romanced by proximity. You pinched the bridge of your nose as a pulsing began behind your eye. It was quickly becoming a pounding, the first sign of an oncoming headache due to stress.

 “I pointed out that this could be indicative that the lady he was with did not want any physical tokens of affection that could be seen by others. It might well be detachment and their relationship was a matter of convenience.” Kylo Ren bristled at those words. You tried your best to not react, well aware that this had to have been the turning point in their conversation. Sure enough, things devolved rapidly into comparisons designed to shame the other.

 Maker above, you needed sleep. There were numerous projects for you to work on and going into a new day with little to no sleep would be idiotic. While you were not opposed to using sleeping aids, you would rather not due to the grogginess that persisted through the majority of the next cycle. In many ways that was just as bad as no sleep. You pressed three fingers on either side of your temple and started to slowly massage the areas. You then applied some pressure near the bridge of your nose then stroked outwards along the underneath of your eyes, hoping to ease any pressure that might be sinus related. Focusing on this instead of what had happened earlier was helping your mind to quiet.

 In time, it must have worked to help lull you to sleep being that the next thing you knew TeeArr was prodding you with one of his fingers rouse you from your slumber. You waved a hand in the air to dismiss the droid. TeeArr knew you too well, however, and so insisted that you sit up before he left the bedside. It was with a groan that you complied. The droid was too persistent for you to not. Glowering, you thought of how much of TeeArr’s obstinance could work well in the anti-procrastination droids. General Hux would not find such fault with your protocol droid after that!

 General Hux.

 The name elicited a groan as what had happened the previous day came rolling forward like a tidal wave. It was much too early to deal with that particular headache. You readied yourself for the day. It had been agreed that you would not work on the training droids. A second programmer was being brought it; this was standard procedure, although you were more sensitive to it after having been tested. Captain Phasma had you working with a different series of droids for her stormtroopers during reconnaissance missions. Human error could occur no matter how well trained they were. These droids had to be basic. Easy for a stormtrooper to destroy if the situation called for it, but tough enough that the enemy could not damage them so easily. What this meant was proper shields and cloaking. Limited intelligence as well. Much like a typical probe droid. Captain Phasma wanted this droid to be less conspicuous than those. Smaller, you thought. Compact, possibly something that could be hidden in a small pack that a stormtrooper could carry. Lightweight.

 Already you had managed to again distract yourself from matters pertaining to General Hux and Kylo Ren. TeeArr walked at your side in the direction of the mess hall. His current silence did not alarm you. He was often more at ease in the days following a cleaning. This was not an uncommon occurrence with droids and you had often reasoned that the same could be said for people of many species. What was striking you as odd in regards to TeeArr’s behavior was that normally while on the way to a project assigned by Captain Phasma, his metallic footfalls would be louder. TeeArr was making a visible effort to be less conspicuous, which you noticed each time you glanced his way.

 “Do you know something that I don’t?” you teased. The droid’s servos twitched, a rather humanoid gesture that stemmed more from its ability to observe and learn than any programming you had done. It struck you just why you felt so fondly for this droid; he was something like a child to you, your child. That Kylo Ren had chosen to strike off a limb instead of destroying it outright did have a greater meaning. He had managed to restrain himself in some capacity. A show of affection--a rather strange one that you did not know how to feel about. You sucked your lips into your mouth then allowed them to pop back into place. TeeArr had yet to answer your question. “TeeArr…” There was a warning growl that issued from you at the very end of the droid’s designation.

 TeeArr set his optics on your face. “You are my Maker.” Cue you narrowing your eyes in equal amounts suspicion and confusion. “Should someone woo you, what does that make them to me?” This droid was most definitely like your child. The muscles in your arms jumped, your limbs beginning to shift towards TeeArr before you caught yourself. Offering TeeArr a hug of comfort in this public setting would draw more attention than what was already falling upon you. One of the stormtrooper pairs that were patrolling this sector had walked past, their helmets trained on you longer than was necessary. It was easier to convince yourself that this was because of your current company instead of whatever gossip had managed to spread.

 “No one is wooing me, TeeArr. Don’t you worry about that.”

 “Suppose they did,” he countered without missing a beat. You, having turned to resume walking, felt yourself faltering in your steps. The problem that you had with this conversation was not only that it was taking place in a public venue. It was that you had not considered entering a relationship any time soon. The workload on your plate was immense. If you absolutely wanted to, sure, you could balance a relationship and a career. You hadn’t wanted to though. Didn’t, you thought with a scowl. You hated that realization was dawning that a part of you would not mind it.

 With a barked out order for TeeArr to follow after you, you began to march on. Your heavy footsteps startled some of the officers, who stiffened and either hurried to get out of your way or else looked then relaxed as they saw it was you instead of someone else. Instead of Kylo Ren. You felt a scream bubbling up in your throat. Others had compared your work ethics to General Hux. That had been something you viewed as praise. Now, should anyone say as much, you would hate that they had spoken to you at all. Just the same as you disliked the similarities you had with Kylo Ren. The impact each of these had was not dissimilar to a sucker punch to the gut. You did not want to think about them.

 It was with a great sense of relief that you sank down into the chair at the work desk that had been prepared for your arrival. The surface of the desk was littered with three separate datapads as well as two comm units, one holoprojector, and a thermos filled with hot tea. You knew that it was tarine tea by the smell of it. It was difficult to keep from staring at it. Your face was arranged in a visible battle of perplexity and wonderment. The tea might have been forgotten by another, that was not unheard of. Captain Phasma could have ordered it to be delivered as she was aware of what the assignment entailed--a full shift, for a start. It might be something from General Hux. that was the possibility that made your stomach roil. You felt then heard it churning and set a hand overtop it.

 TeeArr wrapped his metallic phalanges around the thermos and lifted it to inspect the container. “I do not believe it is poisoned.” That made you smile. You felt the tug at the corners of your lips. Tension eased from your shoulders, which sank a fraction from their previously rigid posture. TeeArr extended his arm towards you; it was the one that had been replaced after Kylo Ren had severed the old one. You stared at the shiny metal limb while using both of your hands to cup the sides of the thermos and bring it down onto the desk directly in front of you. “You should drink it.”

 The frustration that you had felt with the droid for reminding you of the situation you were in with Kylo Ren and General Hux dissipated. You felt it slowly melt away, flowing off of you and disappearing until you were left with the sense of peace that only solitude and your beloved droid could provide. You were grateful that it was the latter. With the anger gone, you recognized that you did not want to be alone. The fact that you had misread so much human behavior exhibited by General Hux and Kylo Ren had left you feeling less human. You could understand your droid better than you could them. Your droid. Your child that you had built. You extended one hand in offering. TeeArr studied your palm, lifted his servos, and poked the center of your hand with one of its digits.

 He had not taken your hand as you had intended, but somehow that was better. That he could misunderstand human behavior just as much as you did made you know that you were not some anomaly. It was inexperience.

 You withdrew your hand simultaneous to lifting up the thermos of tarine tea to your mouth and taking a sip. It was not too hot and did not burn your tongue. Its bitterness hit hard, which helped you to wake up more. TeeArr slid one of the datapads closer to you when you moved to reach for it. This particular device held many of the requisites that Captain Phasma had outlined since she had last spoken to you. She did not want the droid to have a self-destruct feature because that risked a malfunction or the droid erroneously calculating that self-destructing would be beneficial. Another sip of tea and you were scrolling through her other notes. They were brief, exact. Much like how she talked to others, which was not often from what you had observed.

 The door to the room slid open. You were tilting back the thermos and allowing more of the liquid to slide smoothly into your mouth. Jerking your hand away, you instead splashed the tarine tea onto the front of your shirt. “Sir!” You scowled when you looked down at the wetness.

 General Hux strode over to the desk. He picked up one of the comm units then held his hand out for the thermos. You felt yourself blushing as you relinquished your hold on his drink. His eyes were locked with yours. General Hux set the rim of the thermos at his mouth without blocking his lips. You watched his tongue skim the surface that your mouth had been on when you had drank. The heat in your face grew, as did the pounding of your heart. That tongue traced his lips next. And then it was gone, back in his mouth, which you could not stop staring at.

 “Good day,” he said before uttering your name and leaving. You did not even have the chance to respond. That likely saved you from stuttering and further embarrassment.

 After the door slid closed behind the redhead, TeeArr looked directly at you. “What he did with his tongue, I saw in one of the holovids that--”

 You held up a hand. “Stop!” Kriff, you had thought it would be impossible to feel so hot, to feel like you were on fire. The thought of what else that tongue could do had already existed. TeeArr’s words only made it worse. You pressed your thighs together. Bounced both of your feet then regretted it, the friction of your thighs rubbing together sending a jolt of pleasure through your body. Straight to your cunt, which clenched. “You are not allowed to hand me a thermos ever again.”

 “Is that an order?”

 “Yes!” The pleasant mood that you had been in was wrecked once more. Except that you were not angry. You were aroused. You were frustrated. You were thinking of both General Hux and Kylo Ren in ways that you should not have been, in ways that they had thought of you.

[semi-anonyme]

June 23, 2020

12:27am

Oof, should I post this?

I’m basically taking the next 10 days off from practicing piano + working on my projects to really, really work on writing out my daily affirmations, limiting beliefs, beliefs that I want to strengthen, and developing a system for learning how to manage my emotional swings and negative thinking, finding healthy alternatives for old coping mechanisms, and creating a resource that I can always refer back to keep me grounded.

I was going to wait “until it was finished” but I know that’s something I tend to do when I’m procrastinating.

As corny (and controversial) as many people find him to be, I think Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins is a pretty fucking great resource for creating systems for changing your life and have gone through it at various times to improve aspects of my life. I always refer back to it when I’ve slid back into old habits. As I get older, I actually want to develop a system that I can use for the rest of my life rather than for temporary fixes like i used to.

I am dead tired so my words aren’t making sense. But anyway, right in the beginning of the book he talks about raising your standards -- there are things in your life that you continually return to because they provide a sense of relief that you don’t think you could ever get from anywhere else. The issue is that we try to do everything while keeping those things in our lives but it hits a point where we realize we gotta get rid of them if we actually want to change.

I wrote this out and it’s subject to change, I also left a couple of bullets out because they’re too personal, but here are the ones I’m willing to share though some may change (especially the bullet points)

RAISING MY STANDARDS / WHAT I WILL NO LONGER SETTLE FOR

I will no longer self-sabotage

--Drinking

----“because it’s the weekend”

----“because I deserve it”

----“because I want to loosen up”

----“because I want to try and be the type of person who can do 2 drinks”

----“because that beer will be so damn good while hanging on the patio”

--Eat sweets

----“because this will go so good with coffee”

----“because I’m just so addicted and I need some sugar right now”

----“because I feel awkward saying no to these desserts someone made”

I will no longer mindlessly browse the internet

--reddit, for example, while giving me many topics to discuss with shallow knowledge of, has ultimately kept me from gaining deep knowledge which is what I actually value

I will no longer question the things I want to do

--In the end, I want to pursue what I want to pursue, and there’s no point expending precious energy wondering if it’s the right thing to pursue

--“but will I even have time for a relationship?”

--“but who is this all for?”

--“who’s going to date a 31 year old who wants to make music and spends so much time in these hobbies?”

--“wouldn’t my life be easier if I just focused on my career?”

I will no longer be afraid to really own the endeavors I'm pursuing in my life

--This goes both for when my projects are going well but especially when things are not going well

--Just own this shit: I am going to build a social media site and become a digital nomad freelance programmer. I am learning how to make music so I can write and produce my own

I will no longer feel weird about not drinking at social events

--“I noticed that I started to rely on alcohol in order to give myself permission to be social”

--My rule: vacations, special occasions, and dates (good line: if you wanna drink with me you have to go on a date with me)

--I noticed that every time I went out I was taking a step backward and it would take so much more effort to get going again; I want to be able to go out and not feel like I’m taking a step backward just so i can be social

I will no longer feel bad about where I am in my life

--Any delays I’ve experienced have taught me valuable lessons, and it is with these lessons that I have developed strong convictions about my work and am able add a personal touch to everything I create

I will no longer think that I must have my entire life figured out before I allow myself to have fun

--I can go out and talk about my frustrations and setbacks, not hide because of them

I doubt I’ll write my affirmations here because they’re pretty personal, but I did want to lay those ones out because obviously if my friends talk to me they’re going to want to know where I’m coming from

[loelapaloela]

So...

I had my last therapy session today.

That means that after 6.5 years, four different treatments, 5 therapists, 2.5 (super shitty) years of medication with even more disastrous withdrawals, and one successful (recently started) medication round I am 'done'. And then I am only counting my most recent run, not the things I did before turning 18. It feels like I am graduating from a really, really hard and intense elective programme most people get to avoid without any of the celebration that comes with a graduation. Although I don’t feel like I want a lot of recognition and congratulations for finally being ‘normal’, I still want to mark it somehow because I am still bordering on disbelief.

I am not much of a social media person and this is wicked personal, but I just wanted to put it somewhere. Sometimes the only thing that kept me somewhat upright was telling myself that this day was possible. Even when I did not really believe it, I fantasised and dreamed of this day. It was a lot more dramatic and poetic in those fantasies, but the idea was still that things would be better. That one day I was going to wake up and I was going to feel okay. That I’d look around my living room and I’d actually live in it, that I’d be able to enjoy a quiet moment, and that I would just be able to breathe.

This is a postcard from Postsecret that really hit home for me a long time ago and I have some things to say about it.

Life is easier for other people. Really. I know everyone struggles and people rarely breeze through life but oh my god is it easier. It’s been four weeks since my medication started working, which was the last puzzle piece I needed for my ‘recovery’ (god I’m scared to use that word), and I am so overwhelmed with how much lighter I feel. And I get so much more done. Basically the first week I was just high on this feeling because I was baffled with how much I could fit in a day and how good it felt.

^ me the entire time

No seriously, I cannot stress enough how much nicer it is when basic shit like brushing your teeth, getting out of the house, or choosing what to eat doesn’t take up all your energy supply. Also, PSA, if you feel like it takes too much energy to do things like groceries, you might want to do something about that because that’s not normal (WHO KNEW).

By the way, on things being normal: you might have a lot of friends that have mental health issues, for reasons, but normal means compared to the whole population. Don’t let your bubble fool you into thinking things are normal or just part of the deal. They’re not. You deserve better.

On to the next part: decisions! Holy shit I am so much better at making them! I went shopping and I actually had opinions and I just got the things I liked! I am still amazed when I can sit somewhere and doubt for a bit and just decide what I want to do and not anxiously scroll through whatever internet medium for distraction (once again, PSA, consistently not being able to focus on things you enjoy is not normal). 

Which brings me to this: my concentration. I am able to just perform tasks without having a YouTube video or podcast or anything to distract me. I can do one thing at a time and finish it. I get so much more work done. What I used to call procrastination, really just turned out to be depression. I still delay doing tasks I don’t like, of course, and I definitely am not crazy productive, but it’s never self-sabotaging or destructive. 

I am so much more capable of engaging with the world. I have the energy to talk to people, to respond to messages and hold a conversation. Some flakiness is just part of life, but sometimes flakiness is just depression. 

And yes, I laugh more. I am excited about little things. I have joy. But those changes have not been the biggest for me. In the past years I have been able to experience joy, it was just hard to come by and it wouldn’t stick around, but I would never say I haven’t been happy. I was just very profoundly unhappy, too.

People would often think that my goal was to be happy all the time. They’d remind me that no one is always happy and I shouldn’t have unrealistic standards. Honestly, that’s just another way of trying to say that I should deny my senses telling me that what I am experiencing is not okay. I understand that I might come across as chasing constant happiness and to be honest sometimes I did just want that (who can blame me?), but the opposite of depression has never been happiness. 

It’s being able to feel normal emotions without shutting down or being overwhelmed. It’s being able to think ‘oh shit that was awkward’ and not ruminate endlessly. It’s being able to be confronted with some really fucked up thinking patterns (oh hello personality problems!) and cope. This is why I don’t say medication ‘cured’ me in the end. The medication gave me the space to reap the benefits from what I have painstakingly been sowing for the past 6.5 years. I had to learn those things, I had to address those patterns, and I had to go through it in order to be able to get here. 

Most of the time I really never thought I’d be here. I had no way of envisioning where I was going because I had been depressed for so long that I had no idea what it would be like if it were gone. It scared me, because at least I knew what rock bottom looked like and where I was. 

I did not climb up out of this in one beautiful straight line, I did not enjoy it, I did not know I was close until I was out of it, and I never felt strong or brave. It was hard. And I am sad that this happened to me. So while I am happy it’s likely over, I do not feel like I can triumphantly run over some finish line and celebrate. I feel like I need to process this experience, I need to figure out who I am without this cloud hanging over me, and I need to let my eyes adjust to this brightness. I am a little intimidated by life, because it’s so much. I also think I might enjoy life, because it’s so full.

What I mean to say is: I think I am going to be okay. And you can be, too. 

[ib-suffering]

Update

Hi to anyone who still follows this blog!

I graduated from high school over a year ago and honestly forgot to update this blog at the time (Whoops). But I was going back through my tumblr blogs (my main and the few side blogs I have) and decides to jump back on this one for a brief moment to discuss my IB results and my life since high school.

So, let's get everyone's first question out of the way: I passed! I received my diploma, and few things are as satisfying as the first time I held the paper proof of my diploma. It was confirmation that all my hard work paid off and that thing's getting framed asap lol.

But let's backtrack. Exams. My senior year I tested in: History HL, Chinese AB, Philosophy HL, and English HL (Lang A). And since I'm pretty sure I didn't ever discuss my junior year exams, I'll talk briefly about them here: Math SL and Biology SL.

So let's begin with Math and Bio. I received a 5 in both. I was nervous for my math exam since test prep in class was not going well for me. I kept getting 3s on cumulative exams, which was difficult to see in the weeks leading up to the exam. For those of you who may not know (I didn't before my first exam), there is a short reading period when the exam starts where you cannot write anything. Just read. And I remember flipping through the exam booklet and finding that I had a good idea on how to go about solving most of the problems. For the problems I wasn't sure about, I at least had an idea on how to start them. Math is one of those exams where showing your work can get you partial points, and I highly recommend attempting each and every problem. Two points can make the difference between a 4 and a 5, which increases your chance of getting that diploma overall. Biology, however, was a breeze for me, if I'm honest. I am actually continuing my education as a bio major, since it was something that I pick up on quickly. I still spent a lot of time studying, though, since the human biology portion was not something I was as familiar with as my school combines the AP and IB bio students (due to there being very few of us IB kids) and the IBO places much emphasis on anatomy than AP does. For those who find biology a daunting class, I highly recommend teaching the concepts to a friend/classmate. Have your notes with you and reference them as need be. If you feel confident discussing the ideas, then you can explain the ideas on paper. While this won't help on the multiple choice as much, this will help you sweep up those points in the written sections.

Moving on to my senior year exams. I received 4s in Chinese and History, a 5 in English, and a 6 in Philosophy. I took Chinese as an Ab Initio course because I didn't take a language my first year of high school. My teacher had done her best to get me up to speed, but nothing was more sobering than opening up that exam booklet and finding that I didn't understand much on that first page (and reading is definitely my best skill in the language). And I still had 4 minutes and 30 seconds left of the reading period. So how did I manage that 4, you may ask? Well, page 2 wasn't nearly as terrifying. I did recognize some of the characters on the first page, so I used what I had to infer what the questions were asking. Before the exam, I spent my studying time to practice characters, which helped when writing my essay as it had brought to mind some characters I had nearly forgotten about (though, to my horror, I found that I had repeatedly wrote a character wrong in my essay, but not terribly so, so I hope it wasn't a huge issues lol).

History was interesting. I was honestly shocked to see that I had only gotten a 4, since I received a 6 or 7 on every exam in class. But, I'll chalk that up to either my teacher having been a gracious grader or the prompts not being in my favour. (Not to mention that one of the days was the same day we tested in English, so writing was miserable after 6-7 hours- I swear I have carpal tunnel or something due to it since I still have mysterious wrist pain to this day from activities that never bothered me before like bowling). I wish I had some advice for how to get through history, but I'm not quite sure what I should have done differently to prepare.

Alright, English. I have to say, I am most proud of my IOC (though, I hear they're altering that aspect of the curriculum). We had rehearsed examples often in class, and I was lucky enough to have gotten a passage from the reading I loved the most and unpacked well. However, what benefitted myself, and my class overall, was that my teacher had selected books that were enjoyable to read and had clear themes to exploit in my essays. Thorough discussions in class allowed us to add to our notes, and soon my books were covered in writing in the margins. So, my best advice of this class is to turn it into book club. Get together with your friends, share your thoughts, and add on to other's. It may give you the idea you need to connect them together and write about in your exam.

Finally, philosophy. I actually had the same teacher for philosophy as I had for English. First things first, don't do what I did and finish your independent reading less than a half an hour before the exam. Though it was fresh in my mind, I probably shouldn't have procrastinated as much as I did. I read the prescribed chapters from Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. 10/10 would recommend. I am a huge fan of existentialism (shout out to Albert Camus), so I found the concepts easy to navigate. If you're not a fan of existentialism, don't pick this book, by all means. For the rest of the exam, I highly recommend making a chart of philosophers and what they theorized. Use anybody and everybody's ideas as evidence or counterarguments in your essays. Having a good idea of how these philosophers used their claims helps you immensely. I would also recommend that when you practice philosophical writing, you create a chart with the elements (implications, relevance, critiques, etc.) you need with bullet points of your claims. Do this with your IA. I also did this with my EE since that was also a philosophy paper, but more about that in another post. Make this ideas as transparent as you can make them. You will thank yourself for it.

Alright, I know I implied that I'd discuss everything in this post, but it turned out to be much longer than I expected. So, I'll make separate posts about EE, CAS, IAs (if that comes up), getting my results, and how it compares to college life (and what the hell is going on with that now). Thanks for reading this far and don't be afraid to reach out to me for advice, as always. Just because I've graduated, that doesn't mean that I stopped supporting IB students and the struggle of going through it. My habits as a student in the programme still affect me as a college student and give me much to reflect on now. I will try to be more active from now on so as to give you all someone to go to with your questions!

[taiwantales]

Oops...

 Yes, I know, I never posted an update. I’m sorry. I procrastinated because I was stressed and then I was stressed because I was procrastinating and I just... never made a new blog post. I’m sorry, really.

I’ll be home in ten days, and a lot has happened since I’ve arrived in Taichung. My parents and I first spent a few days in the city, simply exploring. One of the last few days that my parents were here, we went to the school, the Chaoyang University of Technology. We decided I wouldn’t be residing at the school dorm after all, since the school is quite far away from the city center and there’s an evening curfew. And the room I was supposed to be in wasn’t exactly great either. And that’s an understatement…

After a school tour, we met up with Jelleke. She was last year’s exchange student from the UCLL, and she decided to pursue a Master’s degree in Taiwan. She showed us the dorm she was staying at, which was definitely an upgrade from the CYUT dorm. I got a room there right away. It’s clean, new and I have my own space (and my own shower and toilet)! It was a great dorm, I’m glad I chose to live there.

Now, the next two weeks were... frustrating, to say the least. The international programme that they had for exchange students last year doesn’t exist anymore, so I had to find courses I could take. A lot of courses were either only available in Chinese or the teachers told me it would be too simple for me. The teaching assistant from the Department of Applied English tried to help me as much as she could, but it wasn’t easy to find suitable courses for me. Luckily, the assistant was also able to arrange a trainee period, which I had insisted on, at a nearby high school. It took a very long time, but we got there eventually. I also joined a ‘beginners’ course in Chinese, but the classes were a continuation of the previous semester, so you can guess how that course went… 

The first two months in Taichung were tough. I was frustrated because of the issues at school and I felt lonely because I only had one person I could really talk to. Because of Taichung’s huge size, I couldn’t just ‘hop into town for a bit’, so I also felt very isolated. I went to my classes and I tried to see a bit of the city, hoping this would get me out of this forlorn rut.

After those two months, my parents stopped by again, as they were on their way back home from Australia and New Zealand. They stayed for a week, which allowed me to have a much-needed holiday. We visited the Guguan Hot Springs, Sun Moon Lake and Tainan. The hot springs were a great way to de-stress, Sun Moon Lake was beautiful (though we still don’t understand why you’re not allowed to swim in it) and Tainan is a gorgeous city. If you’re ever in Taiwan, I’d definitely recommend visiting these places!

When my parents left again, I was feeling a lot better. The past few weeks, I’ve felt more at ease, even though the workload has been getting heavier. TThe course content of most of my classes wasn’t new to me, but the assignments were no easy feat. We had to make videos, write papers and present scientific articles. I even had to write a research paper proposal, which I had never done before. My classmates were lovely people, but because I didn’t have the same class group for every course, I only had limited contact with them. My trainee period was a lot of fun, though I can’t really call my lessons ‘lessons’. I had to present Belgium to high school pupils, but most importantly, they wanted me to engage in conversation with the students, to motivate them to speak English. The students were shy and adorable, but also friendly and happy to meet me.  The teachers from the high school were nice as well, they were very helpful and they tried to make me feel as welcome as possible, so I hope to stay in touch with them. I also met a few of Jelleke’s friends, so we hung out with them a few times.

The Taiwanese people are exceptionally friendly, though some of them can’t help but stare, as some have never seen non-Taiwanese people before. They’re very family-centered: the way they dote on their young children is adorable. They’ll also try to help you as much as possible and I’ve never seen a culture so adept at taking selfies. Honestly, I’m not mocking them; it’s really quite impressive.

The city centre of Taichung is very modern, with tons of high-rise buildings. There are a few beautiful parks, department stores and a many small shops and stalls. There are also a lot of markets, and especially the night markets are very famous. You can get just about any food imaginable there! The high-rise buildings are alternated with smaller houses and lots of little alleyways. The ‘outside’ districts of the city have less high-rise buildings, and are surrounded by beautiful nature. Wufeng, the district where I live, is right near the mountainside, which gives incredible views. That is, if you can see it through the smog...

The things I will miss most about Taiwan are -you guessed it- the food and drinks. The food here is amazing. Next to my dorm there’s a small, family-run baozi (steamed bun) shop and two 7-Eleven′s within a two-minute walking distance. You might be surprised that I’m singing praises about a convenience store, but listen: the 7-Eleven′s in Asia are incredible. Their tea eggs are unparalleled and their onigiri (rice balls) are amazing. 'Chinese fondue’ is somewhat known in Belgium, but it’s no match for the original version, the ‘hot pot’. I still have to try the renowned soup dumplings, but I’ll be going to Din Tai Fung, the most well known soup dumpling restaurant, on Monday! I’ve also been drinking a lot of iced green tea. It’s usually unsweetened and it’s so refreshing in this hot and humid climate. And of course I drank THE bubble tea: iced sweet milk tea with chewy tapioca pearls at the bottom. There are teashops strewn around Taichung and the rest of Taiwan, and a drink will cost you about 20 to 85 NT$, which is incredibly cheap for such a delicious treat (about 0,60 tot €2,50). I’m not looking forward to having to drive half an hour to get one in Maastricht for at least half the price, but I guess it’s better than not having bubble tea at all? As for someone who has always claimed to like all kinds of food, I’m sad to announce that my streak has ended. Taiwan has claimed victory in the form of... stinky tofu. It’s... It’s just not good, okay? I’m sorry, I tried! Three times! Three times I’ve put that stuff into my mouth and three times I’ve had to admit defeat. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.

Right, I know there aren’t any photos attached to this post, but the Tumblr mobile app isn’t the greatest at uploading photos. I will be transferring them to my computer later this evening and I’ll make a few blog posts to share them.

Again, my apologies for the wait, and I can’t wait to see you all again!

Margaux

Edit: I almost forgot to mention my finals! I finished my finals this week, though finals week is actually next week at CYUT. I was allowed to do mine early so that I could graduate on the same day as my classmates in Belgium. I will still miss the graduation ceremony, but I’m sending my parents as representatives ;) I’ll get my grades on Monday, and my adjusted Belgian grades on Tuesday!

[psychohelmet]

Life update and stuffs. Ended up being really long.

So recently I made the decision to take a gap year/ intermission from university. I felt like I was miserable and I couldn’t function anymore. There were so many things wrong with me but I kept going until 2-3 weeks ago, when I just couldn’t handle school and my mind and decided that I really needed a break from everything.

The thought of taking a gap year popped up in my head time and again but I always felt somewhat guilty if I decided to take one. I felt guilty mainly cause my parents were paying for my education and I just wanted to make them proud. I always felt like I was letting them down one way or another and if I had decided to take a gap year, that I would just add onto the long list of why I was a disappointment. They always said I had so much potential but I just kept failing, screwing up and squandering opportunities away. I just kept these feelings inside of me, sucked it up to my best of my abilities and tried to continue life and school as per usual. 

That lead to many other issues tho. Being in art school is obviously a tough interesting experience but overall just stressful and tough. You’re constantly surrounded by people who are talented, that you feel like they’ve figured out what works for them and that are extremely passionate. I initially was hesitant about entering art school cause I had lost my passion thanks to a previous art teacher of mine. I thought why not give it a go? Maybe being surrounded by passionate people who jolt my passion and motivation to do art. Sadly that didn’t happen. I ended up being way more lost and miserable. Ok which student hasn’t felt lost and miserable before? But I just felt like whatever I did wasn’t working out and I was just churning out things to satisfy deadlines and criteria. I just didn’t like what I did and felt that I was slowly driving myself into a corner. I used to be passionated about drawing and illustrations but ever since my previous art teacher happened, I just stopped all together. In art school, I felt like oh I can’t paint, I can’t draw, so what do I do now? I ended up doing a lot of experiment stuff, which was fun, but I felt like I was really narrowing down what I could do and it drove me mad. I felt so dead and unwilling to do work that I would ignore work for a straight month and then panic and rush when I had critique or deadlines were closing in thanks to my procrastination. I may have had an inferiority complex and I couldn’t bring myself to ask any of my classmates no matter how open and chill everyone seemed to be. 

My grades weren’t helping my mental health either. My school has a very weird grading system. Overall we have a gpa, however we never know what our gpa is. Our grades would be out of a 100 with 40 being the passing grade which sounds pretty good and normal. But the thing is that it’s rather rare of anyone to score above 80 unless it was for theory or history. So constantly hitting 50s and 60s made me feel like I sucked and that probably everyone else was doing way better and it just made me even more demoralised. Having parents who were used to the normal grading system sucked cause they would never understand why I was achieving these grades and kept saying do better next time, you have to graduate with at least 2nd upper class honours. 

Nobody seemed interested in my works compared to my classmates and my mediocre grades were hurting me and the pressure of not being a disappointment to my parents just put me in a really bad state. Not to mention my lack of a social life made me more miserable cause everyone seemed to never have the time for me and never bothered thinking about me. I had nobody to lean on. I had nobody to talk to. Everyone was too busy and I felt like I would be bothering them, both friends and family.  There was just a lot of things happening and I just felt empty. I was living an extremely unfulfilling life. There were so many times I just try to disconnect from everything which lead to my parents nagging more at me cause they’d just assume I was being lazy. 

This was supposed to be my graduating year. I did think of taking a gap year before the school semester officially started but I felt like I might as well just suck it up and get through the year. Also cause I didn’t want to bring my parents any stress and disappointment again. The pressure of wanting to do well just overcame me. I felt suffocated. I was just filled with so much anxiety and stress that I couldn’t do anything. There was this back and forth argument going in my head that I should just do it or that I should just quit. Eventually after talking to some friends, I decided I really needed a break. 

Telling my parents that I wanted to take an intermission mid semester wasn’t going to be easy especially cause fees are expensive, I’m not the one paying for them and that there would be no refunds. Persuading my parents was going to be another headache cause, from my pov, they never took me seriously or bothered to understand me. I just let me be and assumed things. I know they do things with good intentions but sometimes it just frustrates me so much and their words can hurt so much. So I wrote them a letter about my situation and that I wanted to take a break and sigh when I handed them that letter, at first, they didn’t take it seriously until I sternly told them both to read it. That lead to probably one of the worse 2 weeks of my life in 2017. They said they would support me no matter what my decision ended up being but I could see it that they just couldn’t let me take the break I needed. They wanted me to talk to professionals like the sch counsellor (imo doesn’t help at all from past experiences), my programme leader and my uncle who’s an art teacher. It really did feel like they were hoping these professionals would tell me otherwise and change my mind. My dad was obviously worrying about sch fees and the fact that he would have to fork out even more money. I can’t blame him but idk money over your own daughter’s mental health? And you said you’d try to support me? It just rubbed off the wrong way. During those 2 weeks, my parents never brought the taboo topic up irl and only texted me about the matter which made me feel like they truly didn’t care. It was a really sucky feeling. It hurts me even more cause my mum did work in a mental health institute for a few years but she couldn’t help or say anything comforting to me. 

So I did as I was told and talked to the necessary people just to please them because I desperately wanted out. A few people were willing to help me if I made the decision to continue school this year. My sis, who’s also an art teacher, offered me help by thinking for me like being my brain and I just needed to execute the works. My uncle offered to buy me the necessary materials I needed to pull off my practice and was also willing to help me. Even with people willingly wanting to help me, I couldn’t bring myself to continue school. I felt bad ngl. I just felt like I was continuously being selfish and letting everyone down but I just couldn’t do it anymore. I talked to my parents again and they finally allowed me to take the gap year I needed and well now I’m here. I just kinda sucks that they took forever to let me be and try to understand me. 

It’s not the first time, I’ve caved in to anxiety, pressure and stress. The last time that happened, I flunked my graduating national exams. I might have passed nearly everything but I got shit grades. I barely had any universities I qualified for. Honestly, I hated how my parents continuously compared me to my sis who keeps achieving in life. I mean I’m happy for her but it sucks. You really feel like a defective child especially if you have dyslexia and adhd like I do. 

This ended up super long but I guess it was necessary. I’m just glad my folks allowed me to do this and that they’re trying to understand and support me. I left out a lot of ugly details but you get what I’m trying to say (even tho this is already longer than an essay). I guess sometimes you got to take things into your own hands and not allow yourself to suffer for others. Stop doing things to please people, just do it for yourself. If you need a break and need help, do it before it gets worse. I still feel like crap honestly but I feel so so relived.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

POST-ORIENTED

It helps if you use a Web-based application anywhere. Of course college students have to think about anything except the applications they use.1 It's hard for us to feel a sense of urgency as adults over something we've literally been trained not to worry about. If you seem really good we'll accept you anyway. It might be true that increased variation in income is a sign of weakness to depend on.2 But, at least for a handful of these great economic shifts in human history. Fortunately there's a better way to get money, of course. Apple's next products should be. That's what compilers are for. Let's start by talking about the five sources of startup funding. Another concept we need to introduce now is valuation.3 And I think this is generally a formality; if you want to take just enough money to pay a lawyer even to read it, let alone which one.

I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea. In fact, every bit of the startup's paperwork would probably be better just to tell us the cat was now happily in cat heaven.4 Any startup founder can tell you the most revenue the soonest. Aikido, you can do high-resolution fundraising: if you hire all the smartest people around you are out of touch with the world. There are examples of this algorithm being applied to actual emails in an appendix at the end. I bet a lot of money on a freelance graphic designer. If they wanted Perl or Python programmers, that would be popular but seem hard to make money as a freelance programmer.

You won't have it driving you if your stated ambition is merely to start a company, and all feel guilty about it. Find something that's missing in your own life, and supply that need—no matter how specific to you it seems. My E-Commerce Web Site, that's spam. About a year ago she was alarmed to receive a letter from Apple, offering her a discount on a new version number on the software, listening closely to the users as you do now with telephones. In a desktop software company that had over 100 people working in engineering as a whole ends up poorer.5 The kids obligingly grow up considering themselves as Ys. What you can do more for users. Be aware, though, this is not how to find a cofounder, what should you do? The houses are made using the same construction techniques and contain much the same objects. To do good work, you need to start looking for your next round?

Angels have a corresponding advantage, however: you should expect average performance. If that were all, they'd be very annoying. Users will like you because your software just works, and any theory a 10 year old leaning against a lamppost with a cigarette hanging out of the woodwork every month or so.6 I've now realized it. Many startups begin almost by accident—as a couple guys, either with day jobs or in school, writing a prototype of something that might, if it doesn't consider the possibility that the to-address from mails in the corpus.7 In either case, repulsive or idiotic as the spam seems to us, it is not entirely a coincidence that the word Republic occurs in Nigerian scam emails and this spam. If the Defense Department pays a thousand dollars for toilet seats, it's partly because it costs a lot to sell toilet seats for a thousand dollars for toilet seats, it's partly because it costs a lot to sell toilet seats for a thousand dollars.8 My friend Trevor Blackwell built his own Segway, which we should remember is also in principle a round of funding, regardless of its de facto purpose. You should hope that it stays that way. At Viaweb we had external forces in plenty to keep us in line.

Foreword to Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. There are several reasons why, but one is that people will assume, correctly or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over.9 But they have to do an angel round before going to VCs. So one way to find angel investors is through personal introductions. If you're doing really badly, meaning the company is still just an idea. It wasn't worth doing better.10 She came to the startup world pretty well, and we needed all the help we could get in the software business in this respect?11 Lexical closures, introduced by Lisp in the mid 2000s. Here's a partial solution: when a VC offers you a term sheet, ask how many of their last 10 term sheets turned into deals. If you use this method, you'll get roughly the same answer I just gave.

Google pushed this idea further than anyone had before.12 They may if they are the actual registrar for it. Afterward I wondered, what am I even measuring?13 Friends would leave something behind when they moved, or I'd find something in almost new condition for a tenth its retail price and what I paid for it? In existing open-source projects you don't have an idea. They cut off all the crap the manufacturer had bolted onto the car to make it. The serious hacker will also want to learn how to operate hers.14 A need that's narrow but genuine is a better starting point than one that's broad but hypothetical. There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of implementing features is plan them. But why do we conceal death from kids?15

Notes

Some VCs will try to become merely stubborn.

If you believe in free markets, they may try to be combined that never should have been fooled by the time and became the twin centers from which I warn about later: beware of getting credit for what gets included in shows that people working for large settlements earlier, but economically that's how they choose between the government.

Few can have escaped alive, or the presumably larger one who shouldn't? Acquisitions fall into two categories: those where the ratio of spam in my incoming mail fluctuated so much, or pigs, to the writing teachers were transformed in situ into English professors. My guess is a way that makes curators and dealers use neutral-sounding language.

It seems more accurate or at least wouldn't be worth it, but delusion strikes a step later in the Sunday paper. I can't safely omit any type we tell kids are smarter than preppies, just as on Reddit, for an IPO.

Maybe it would be easier to take action, go running. Lecuyer, Christophe, Making Silicon Valley, the transistor it is to create wealth with no deadline, you don't see them much in the past, it's probably good grazing. After lunch we went to school.

The variation in productivity is the post-money valuations of funding. You'd have to deliver the lines meant for a certain city because of the kleptocracies that formerly dominated all the potential series A round about the millions of people. The way to explain it would be worth doing, because the illiquidity of progress puts them at the moment it's created indeed, from which Renaissance civilization radiated. In part because Steve Jobs did for Apple when he came back as CEO.

Ii.

According to the principle that you have to give it back. I wouldn't want the valuation of an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to need to play games with kids' credulity. But if you're not trying to sell the bad groups and they would probably never have to resort to expedients like selling autographed copies, or even 1000x an average programmer's salary. The CRM114 Discriminator.

Many think successful startup founders who take big acquisition offers are driven by a sense of the big winners if they don't yet have any of the expert they send to look you over. 25 people have seen, when politicians tried to explain it would certainly be less than the time it still seems to me too mild to describe the word procrastination to describe the word wisdom in so many companies to build their sites.

It is a meaningful idea for human audiences.

Some founders listen more than others, no matter how large. And you can play it safe by excluding VC firms.

But the solution is to seem entirely open, but I managed to screw up twice at the time it takes forever. If anyone wants. That's why there's a continuum here.

Japanese cities are ugly too, and the average startup. Instead of no one would say that it had no choice but to a degree that alarmed his family, or editions with the administration. Starting a company doesn't have users. Ten years later.

A YC partner wrote: One year at Startup School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who wanted to start or join startups. When I talk about it. Till then they had that we should be specialists in startups.

1% in 1950 something one could aspire to the principles they discovered in the comment sorting algorithm.

Thanks to Travis Deyle, Chad Fowler, Jessica Livingston, Albert Wenger, Ben Horowitz, and Trevor Blackwell for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[lattetae]

get to know me [pt. 21345789] tag 

RULES: you must answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people

tagged by the following sweeties : @puppytae @blumiin @kookmiinie @taeonie

i’ll tag [optional as usual] : @lovekyg @winktaes @donghunny ok i quit i don’t wanna bother 20 people lol but here are some new mutuals so hi!! obvs you don’t have to do this but i just wanted to show recognition! 

THE LAST:

1. drink: coffee

2. phone call: my mum

3. text message: ‘hows it hangin’ @ my friend

4. song you listened to: smooth operator - g.soul (he also just came out with a new hit n it was really good but like…idk i didnt hear as much of his nice voice as i thought i would?? maybe his style is changing since he left jyp idk)

5. time you cried: yesterday

6. dated someone twice: no

7. kissed someone and regretted it: no

8. been cheated on: no

9. lost someone special: all previous pets :’(((  

10. been depressed: i was depressed throughout high school and i think im better now thanks to leaving the shitty 12-16 education system. looking back on how i acted back then is like looking at a different person. but sometimes…i think we just pretend to be happy right?

11. gotten drunk and thrown up: im teetotal, although my sister constantly reminds me that i won’t stay like this for long. 

LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS:

12-14: fawn, mustard, light green

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

15. made new friends: do tumblr buds count? if so - yes. :))) 

16. fallen out of love: no

17. laughed until you cried: yes! 

18. found out someone was talking about you: no 

19. met someone who changed you: people do change us but i don’t meet many lol i need to get out more? 

20. found out who your friends are: i guess i always knew….maybe i need more

21. kissed someone on your facebook list: fb is still breathing???

GENERAL:

22. how many of your facebook friends do you know in real life: n/a

23. do you have any pets: two cheeky little fancy mice and one mischievous red cavapoo

24. do you want to change your name: i think everyone hates their name when they’re young, i always yearned for my name to be something different - ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’. but given the compliments that i get on my name now, i think i have grown to like it :)))

25. what did you do for your last birthday: i went to a chinese restaurant with my parents and my older brother. we had a huge vegetarian banquet (ahhh i hate wasting food so i tried to eat fucking loads lmao). 

26. what time did you wake up: 9.45am

27. what were you doing at midnight last night: watching a girl and three sweetheart - i loved it at first but you know when the storyline just slows its pace in the middle jfdskgfhg i’m like just get together already!!!!!

28. name something you can’t wait for: i need to make a phone call to sort a work placement out n the worry is at the back of my mind 24/7 so i can’t fucking wait until i have made that damn phone call. i’m procrastinating; i hate phoning :((

29. when was the last time you saw your mom: like 1hr ago? she was watching the great british menu lol she loves her cooking programmes (in contrast to me). i think she secretly dreams of working in the catering industry again.

30. what is one thing you wish you could change in your life: i wish that i had more confidence, i think that is the main thing that prevents me from achieving so much more. i doubt myself and i can’t do basic tasks with ease (such as making phone calls or even trying to get a weekend job). in that way, i think i’m such a failure lol. 

31. what are you listening right now:  E66S 卵 - I know where I’m going

32. have you ever talked to a person named Tom: yes (i appreciate the randomness) 

33. something that is getting on your nerves: my own thoughts afhkdsfh just stfu

34. most visited website: youtube

35. mole/s: arms n like a couple on my leggos

36. mark/s: tuan? lol nah i dont have any marks

37. childhood dream: i used to want to be a detective blessss

38. hair color: brown 

39. long or short hair: short

40. do you have a crush on someone: no

41. what do you like about yourself: i make decisions with my heart not my head. a lot of people would call that a weakness. not me lol

42. piercings: three. 2 on one lobe and 1 on the other. i rarely wear rings though bc i can’t fucking get my ball closure rings shut!!:((( i gave up long ago damn i forgot they even existed

43. bloodtype: my parents are both O so i’m guessing that i am an O too…or something went wrong lol 

44. nickname: saff, saffy

45. relationship status: single n ready to– stay single forever

46. zodiac: gemini

47. pronouns: she/her

48. favorite TV Show: six feet under is so good omg like i can rewatch that shit ughhhhhh i can’t recommend enough its just so realistic n deals with issues like death and relationships and internalised homophobia and depression and nymphomania and growing up and growing old. it. is. a. good. one. 

49. tattoos: i want some

50. right or left hand: right hand

51. surgery: i had a partial nail avulsion a couple years ago and it was a wild experience (which involved looots of waiting) but the nhs did me proud in the end :)) the doctor asked me what my fave band was (p!atd) and so he played a playlist of mvs on his little computer screen and all the nurses were reacting to it. 

52. piercing: same

53. sport: what is a sport lol no thx

55. vacation: japan

56. pair of trainers: i don’t own any trainers fkhdjg

MORE GENERAL:

57. eating: avocado skins are next to me - need more clues?

58. drinking: on my way to make another coffee

59. i’m about to: make a coffee

61. waiting for: my life to begin

62. want: to go grocery shopping soon

63. get married: i often romanticise marriage but i know that it has caused my mum to be trapped in her current one so yeah, that’s gonna be a no from me dawg

64. career: veterinary nurse – pls pray that i get all my grades bc im very worried at the moment :(((( 

WHICH IS BETTER?:

65. hugs or kisses: hugs bc they are rare and usually make me cry

66. lips or eyes: ?? both??

67. shorter or taller: taller

68. older or younger: someone with an old soul, but not necessarily old in age

70. nice arms or nice stomach: arms? idc

71. sensitive or loud: both at the same time

72. hook up or relationship: soulmate :’)

73. troublemaker or hesitant: troublemaker

HAVE YOU EVER:

74. kissed a stranger: im sure that i have kissed a strange dog..or rather it invaded my mouth with its tongue ajfhsdkfj does that count

75. drank hard liquor: no

76. lost glasses/contact lenses: who tf loses glasses - no

77. turned someone down: no

78. sex in the first date: no

79. broken someones heart: no

80. had your heart broken: im 17 ffs no lmao 

81. been arrested: no but i got detained in urban outfitters for stealing a ring when i was in high school hahahah. the security guard ran after me and my then friend and dragged us behind into some room and took mugshots on his phone. he then raided our bags… damn he was awful but luckily my friends mum came to pick us up or he said he would take us to the police. then we were banned from the shopping mall for a year and banned from all urban outfitters for 3 years! i havent been in since lmfao

82. cried when someone died: i had to go to a funeral for someone that i didn’t know and i ended up crying because of the atmosphere you know? also of course i have cried at all my previous pets deaths. 

83. fallen for a friend: no

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

84. yourself: i like to think so but no i don’t aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa i hate myself for doubting myself so much

85. miracles: no

86. love at first sight: no

87. santa claus: of course ;)

88. kiss in the first date: is that even a belief?? i think that it is fine.

89. angels: eg. kim taehyung

OTHER:

90. current best friends name: ginny

91. eyecolor: brown

92. favorite movie: one of my faves is the man from nowhere. it is a korean thriller and a must-watch. one of my favourite english movies is jarhead, because apart from the fact that i love jake g, i also love the theme so much. i think it makes for some really interesting conversation. 

[tommyoboe]

YEAR 3 - WEEK 31.

So, post recital life. It’s interesting!

I feel like I’m entering a new stage in my weird, wonderful and weird again existence: one of acceptance and motivation, perhaps what one may refer to as phase three.

Phase one (discounting the first like eighteen years of my life) I was a bumbling happy chap acknowledging my doing well in music and embracing the various changes that were taking place in my life, namely the start of conservatoire here in Birmingham. First year was, although tough at points, a very happy time in life where I tried different things and made new friends and got right into everything going on.

Phase two: the comedown. For much of second year I coasted along at a steady pace, not worrying about anything for a while and just gradually getting better as a musician and basically having an easy time. But by the last term things weren’t heading towards the sunset vision I had in mind, with my feelings about myself and my playing plummeting somewhat.

Much of this has continued into the third year, despite the first term being the best I’ve had in the whole three years. Last term and Easter were, as I’ve mentioned before the saddest times of my entire life, but recently I feel a switch has been triggered, and after some adjustments I’m accepting life now for what it is and am beginning to actually make way for what I want to do. It’s nice and exciting and new, like breathing fresh air again (not that Birmingham is ideal for that), and as if a door has been opened to this new world where things aren’t as impossible as they are in my mind.

With this new world I see visions that were fantasy like potentially coming true, and at this point I jump up and down in the street like a little kid jumping up and down in their little yellow boots in a little puddle.

I don’t feel an urgency as such to get things done but I just find myself doing things these days with not much fluster (suppose I can get rid of ‘procrastination’ from my Instagram profile), which is also very satisfying.

And no, the world will not end if I don’t do three hours of practice everyday (spoiler: I don’t).

In between watching more noteworthy recitals, doing a trio photo shoot and basically deciding my fourth year recital programme already (oh, there are going to be some bangers in there), this week saw the start of the 2018 Conservatoire Folk Ensemble tour, taking us around the country to perform to small and large audiences and spread the message as to what we’re about here in Birmingham.

What are we about? Well, besides lots of drinking (sharing wine returned on the first coach journey back and it was glorious), I believe we are about high energy and commitment to what we do. If we lived in a world where everyone had that same level of commitment to what they do then this would be a pretty great place. Saying that the five hour folk rehearsal on Tuesday left me feeling perhaps slightly less committed than when I began, and a workshop to some students that went on for what felt like five hours may just have done the same (I was also fucking starving).

However, just in the space of those few hours between the workshop and our first gig in Hereford my mood lit up and by the end of the gig the whole audience was dancing as we were (’dancing’ is a very loose description as far as I’m concerned). An electric atmosphere it was (not literally: the power went in the middle of one song but made for an interesting effect), one I have missed and loved having back again to boost me and bring joy to others.

Classic FM even gave us a cheeky Instagram mention during our Worcester gig on Saturday, which was super sweet! Now speaking objectively, as there are 66 of us in the band, tightness is not always our strong point, and I worry about that, but listening to the recorded clip the sound was truly infectious and powerful! Almost as excited about that as I was with the chip shop chips provided at Leek on Thursday.

So now as we rapidly head into June, the search for a new place for the next academic year has been on. In my mind I, as well as my fellow new ‘roomies’ had been doing well to find properties and organise viewings. We were all pumped for our first viewing on Friday and as we entered the complex things looked promising. That was until we entered the flat itself. It was a cute little place, with some lovely little furnishings, but then we quickly realised: it was a one bedroom flat and there are three of us, and we gathered that the sofa that looked a bit like a bed was not the extra bed we were looking for. Oh, that was embarrassing, and despite a much more successful viewing on Saturday, that embarrassment (although it wasn’t just my fault) still has me cringing now. I mean, I did say it: I hadn’t had any major fuck ups in a while. The smiling that day was oh so fake; the frustration and throwing things at the wall once home was…well, not.

The week ended on a slightly less promising note: as I went to make a cup of tea in the kitchen last night, from behind the bin all the way to the back of the fridge, a quick scurrying.

Yes folks, we have a mouse. A FUCKING MOUSE.

This time I really don’t think it’s our fault in the house as we keep things pretty reasonable and have a brewery next to us which could be part of the issue, but FUCK did that bastard scare the shit out of me. I sat in my room shaking like a leaf afterwards knowing I had to go down there again to pick up my washing from the machine.

Hopefully next year I won’t have to be reduced to a quivering wreck over unwanted guests. That would be nice.

Light relief came knowing I had enjoyed some delightful Spanish tapas with Cameron earlier that evening, as a celebration for us both finishing for the year (his degree in his case) after his wonderful recital on Thursday that I have to say left me a bit emosh. Very proud of that boy.

So things are good; things are moving forward, and providing there’s not another sight of that blasted rodent, or any other rodents for that matter (take that as you will), I reckon I’ll be pretty happy.

Think I may need another shower; all this is making me feel gross. Night!

T

[abbeyjackson]

What its like to be a new developer

Originally written while working remotely at a large mobile app agency with several offices around the United States. Published January 21, 2016 on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-its-like-new-developer-abbey-jackson/

When moving my articles onto this new site I have not edited them except to fix broken links or incorrect information. I like to preserve the original mood, bad grammar and all!

So, here I am 10pm on a Wednesday night just sitting down to work. No, I didn't procrastinate and no, I don't work overnight, and no I don't even usually work this late. That's a lot of don'ts isn't it?

Here's some do's for you: I do work remote and keep regular daytime hours. In fact, I do start work every day at 7:30am. I do work for a great company and I do get some flexibility in my schedule. I do have monthly dentist appointments that basically take over my life for a day because I do have braces to resolve a jaw issue and today was one of those days.

Here are some am's for you: I am very lucky to be only 6 months into a career and work for such a great company. I am even luckier to be only 3.5 months into employment here and be afforded the luxury of not having to take a day off for these tedious dentist appointments and instead make up the hours at other times during the week. I am a new developer and I am so happy in my new career that I actually ask for work this late even though no one expects me to be working.

Being a new developer is hard and depending on the kind of person you are and if this career really is the right one for you, you might experience things differently than I do, tailored uniquely to you. Some people are simply great at developing. It comes naturally to them, they don't get worked up when they get stuck, they find it easy to learn, they absorb new feature announcements and trends, they find new tasks simple to figure out, and docs are an annoying but necessary part of their job. That's not me.

If I get stuck I get overwhelmed and forget everything I know, this is followed by either breaking down completely and needing someone else to essentially guide me through the problem or solve it themselves, or else panicking for 5 hours on a task that should take one. These things happen less and less with each day that passes but I'm sure there will still be critical moments a year from now. My bootcamp was hard, I get focussed on the details which means it's hard for me to learn overall concepts. I was a graduated programmer working for 2.5 months before I finally started feeling like I was "getting it". I feel like I am always behind. I often read about features that I think are new only to discover they've been around a year or more. When I am confronted with a task implementing a feature I have never done before I feel lost, confused, stupid, overpaid...and did I mention stupid?

I am a new developer who has to work for it. I'm not saying I'm no good, far from it. With only 6 weeks under my belt of learning I made an app that a government organization is considering adopting. I won best app for that one at my school and a month later my team won best project at a hackathon too. I know that I am good at what I do, when I'm doing it. The problem is most of the time I still need a bit of direction from the lead developers at my company or the great devs on Slack in order to get to the do stage unless it is something I have done before. As a developer, most days you are learning something new. In fact, a quick search on Google will pull up dozens of conversations on this very topic. I like this one where the commenter says he spent 85-90% of his time Googling stuff in the beginning and only 10-15% of his time actually coding. Another person in the same thread says if it's something new some days could have 0% of their time spent on coding.

This is a pretty harsh reality for a Type-A personality like myself that is used to being good at things. Like a typical Type-A I know what I'm good at and don't "waste" time on the things I'm not good at...but that itself is another article lol

When faced with something new I often freeze for a bit before I wake-the-F-up and come back to life. After that things progress smoothly but before it is torturous. I don't feel good. I've had panic attacks. Yep, full on can't breathe panic attacks. I attribute a lot of this to my first job where the "senior" dev told the CTO I was "too junior" and he didn't want to work with any juniors because they slowed him down. That's a quote. So I've got an inferiority complex that I'm working through. Most days I spend at least 10% of the day thinking I'm not good enough and even though my thoughts might emanate from this poor first job experience, I am not the only new dev that feels like this.

Unlike that dev that can learn what they need from docs I have to work hard for my learning. Docs confuse me, I admit it. I have to get more creative when finding resources if I want to learn something and I practice reading docs almost every day. You read that right, I practice reading docs. I know I should be able to find the method I need and understand it's implementation and know what to do just by looking at docs (most of the time) but I don't. Finally after 6 months I can usually find the method and often I can also understand what it does, but when it comes to using it in my own code more often than not I'm still lost.

I spend a lot of time reading and for every article I read I right click and open 3 more in new tabs to read after. Every single day I have to look words up. Today it was IDE. Once I read the definition of course I know what that is but the acronym itself? I had to look it up. I don't have this inherent knowledge that some devs seem to have.

Knowing all this, which dev do you think has more job satisfaction? Myself or that dev that follows along and just gets it?

I'm willing to wager it's me.

I love my work. I right click and open those links in new tabs because I'm curious. I don’t mind doing my work at 10pm on a day where I've literally been on the move 14 hours not because I have to, but because I want to. Because I love developing and don’t want to miss out. Plus I want to show my team how much I appreciate all the help and guidance they give me. I pose questions to rooms full of developers that have nothing to do with active project work because I find my craft intriguing -- I don't want to miss any opportunities to learn and the best learning comes from hearing opposing views from experienced and inexperienced people alike. And I spend an hour writing an article like this one because I am super passionate about being a developer. In fact, I have twice now shared my story with call centre reps so enthusiastically that they have spent an extra 10 min on the phone with me asking questions about how they too can become a developer.

The life of a new developer is rife with frustrations. There are long nights. There are days, whole weeks even, where one feels unworthy of their job. This is a career that is strongly in the grasps of imposter's syndrome. That’s the reality of it but there are other days where you kick ass, feel on top of the world and unstoppable. Every day is a challenge, it's never boring and you never stop learning.

I love it.

[liamwatsonstudio3-blog]

Reflective Blog as a Programmer

As a Programmer this TRI (12weeks) i feel i have further developed my understanding of certain areas of code, mainly in c#. One of the things i was tasked with that was difficult was shader programming, its not just a whole different language but its structures so differently, i had a basic understanding of some of the keywords but in all it was pretty difficult, i dunno maybe shared programming is hard in general. The biggest eye opener this trimester was when i had to help my genius little brother (who is a good programmer), he was coding in python on his raspberry pi and i dont think (like me) he has touched python before, for some reason due to my programming knowledge i was able to look at it and work it out pretty quickly getting the raspberry PI to provide some feedback via LED’s to us, i was proud because for the first time as a programmer i was able to look at a coding language that i have never seen before and get the “jist” of it.

I being honest with myself believe i am not a strong programmer but i am a fast one(programmer), one thing i have noticed with my coding is that i NEVER get bugs and work at a decently fast rate, i can code out and prototype stuff really fast with no bugs, i want to say “ohhhh there was this bug” but it doesn’t happen, i think i just have a great attention to detail or i fix stuff as i go so it never leads to big annoying bugs.

working at a fast rate has gotten me into trouble a fair amount this trimester as my hours logged are lower than others, i seem to be able to sit down and crunch out a decent amount of work in a small period of time rather than sit and procrastinate and take ages to get a simple piece of work out.

in terms of reflections there are a few areas of improvements i need to work on and i will talk about them below.

Depth - I am starting to realise that i am more of a prototype programmer focusing on getting systems in quickly and identifying how those systems talk together then improving as i go rather than planning stuff out on paper i like to delve in and start coding

Area / Career - I am slowly learning what i want to do as a programmer, i am having a lot of fun programming systems such as generation, combat, resources, base building for others to use, i am not sure exactly what it is but i have a lot of fun listening to and creating a system that makes others work easier.

Knowledge - My knowledge of coding is getting better, i am starting to understand more and more, as i code more i learn quicker and i have been looking at resources for learning(memory retention based on repeating work - this helps a lot), I have been experimenting with object orientated programming by looking at inheritance and even implementing a basic prototype base building system that uses inheritance, so all in all my coding is coming along

I find myself using more switch statements and loops rather than mass if() statements, previously i have had issues really understanding coding tools that really allow me to speed up what i am doing but i am getting faster and faster using less code each day.

In terms of coding standards for a programmer i have always consistently commented on code, there are a lot of examples this trimester with solo / team code that is always consistently commented and articulated, this makes it clear to anyone reading exactly what the code is doing

Motivation as a programmer - My motivation towards the start was good, i quickly got a few LO’s out of the way but then started to lose motivation during the 3 - 7th week getting poor attendance and falling behind in the group work, towards week 7/8 i picked back up the work rate and completed most of my LO’s i also then started sending consistent messages and keeping open communication with my studio team asking for jobs and completing jobs on a consistent basis

Team Project as a programmer - the majority of my work was the 13page TDD which outlines the structure of how the app is going to work, guidelines for coding / commenting practices. i defiantly could have contributed more to the team if i had done work earlier on in the project.

Reflection

I am still moving forward as a programmer in terms of what i knew last tri i feel like i can program some more complex systems, next tri i need to look more into enums / structure, some of the code i am seeing is like spaghetti but it works and i am not sure if there is code is more on industry standards or if my code is tidier.

Next trimester / Tri break i will be looking at industry code and seeing if there is any trends in how they do there code.

[viktorbezic]

Creativity > Productivity

It’s hard as hell to keep up creative habits daily, especially if you have other demands on your time. Usually, I’ll have slices of time. 30 minutes in the morning. Maybe 15 minutes during lunch. To write, to draw, to mess around in photoshop, to write down new ideas and for any creative work that I could be doing to stay sharp. Not having time isn’t the key issue. For me, it’s about capitalizing on the time that I have. The small chunks of time I do have get wasted by not being ready to work. Instead, the time is spent thinking about what to do. Then I beat myself up over the fact I couldn’t capitalize on the chunks of time I did have. I love reading, so it’s a default behavior I’m trying to avoid. I want to make sure I produce more than I consume. Or at least get closer to balancing both modes. Learning and then applying what I’ve learned. Reading and then ultimately doing something with it. Versus reading and forgetting any lesson learned after a couple of months. Or the following week. 

A few things I’ve realized:

You need times of doing nothing to create the space for creative work.

Rarely do I find myself idle during the week. Like most people I find it tricky, especially if your day job involves a ton of task switching, juggling multiple meetings and deliverables at once. It’s very hard to calm your brain down to get it to a place where you’re able to create anything. You’re constantly trying to check things off of your list. I'm fried from racing to cross off every item on my to-do list. This is when productivity backfires. Yes, I did a ton of tasks, but most were analytical, with a heavy focus on problem-solving under time constraints. Being in problem-solving mode shuts down my creative brain.

An anecdote that helped me I found in David Lynch’s book, Catching the Big Fish, where he references an insight he got from his buddy’s dad, the artist Bushnell Keeler. “If you want to get one hour of good painting in, you need to have four hours of uninterrupted time.” (1) What Lynch was getting at was having the time to think, to explore and to get your materials together, before you can make a painting. It may not seem very productive on the surface but is required. What appears to be procrastination is warm up and preparation. 

There is something to be said for enjoying the work that you do.

For the designer/developer Paul Jarvis, spending the time to learn time-saving tricks to have more time to read about more time-saving tricks is a hamster wheel that ultimately leads to misery. He argues that if the productivity doesn’t make us exponentially happier, then there’s no need to work our ass off to work our asses off even more unless there’s a bigger goal (2). For me, that goal is to spend more time with my partner, friends, family and for creating art. When I’m not creating for the sake of creating, I feel like shit. I don’t know why. I just do. Similar to Jarvis I do believe that actively enjoying the work you do instead of trying to blaze through it is important. Spending 4 hours to write a blog post versus 20 minutes, or spending a couple of days to sit with a programming problem versus a couple of hours.

Periods of slowness help the mind.

Carl Honore’s, In Praise of Slowness, describes the benefits of slowing down in multiple facets of life, from food to driving. Honore makes the following point when it comes to the mind: 

"Keeping the mind active makes poor use of our most precious natural resource. The brain can work wonders in high gear. But it will do so much more if given a chance to slow down from time to time. Shifting the mind into lower gear can bring better health, inner calm, enhanced concentration and the ability to think more creatively.” (3) 

I can’t live in high gear.  I need to for most of the work week, though I can feel my ideas getting shittier as a result. It becomes harder to think of new art to create or things to write. Honore, also references some studies that identify two forms of thought: Fast Thinking and Slow Thinking. Fast Thinking is the left brain, more logical and linear, while slow thinking is more right-brained, intuitive and creative. Slow thinking involves relaxation which means not facing time pressures that lead to tunnel vision. One study asked participants to encrypt simple phrases into basic code. During certain intervals, the researcher asked, “Can you do it a little bit faster?” Their performance worsened when prompted to speed up. (4) 

In their piece “Wrestling With A Future of Two-Speed Time” The Future Laboratory identifies mindlessness as a future trend that will optimize personal and professional productivity. The need to escape the here and now to look at past mistakes and think about the future. They also see companies of the future devising time that will actively encourage employees to “waste time.” To wander and daydream to tap into dormant innovative talents. Kenneth Goldsmith, a poet, and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania teaches a course called “Wasting Time on the Internet” that gives students 3 hours a week to sit silently with their devices where they can be aimless, drift and multi-task (5). I do however still believe in single tasking and deep work. There should be a balance.

How I Try to Maximize Creative Time.

In the absence of having the appropriate slow periods to get creative work done I do the following things to help bridge the gap: 

I stay with one project across small periods time increments until I complete the work. It could be a written piece or a digital college. That way it makes it easier for me to pick up where I left off. Switching between different projects in those small periods of time makes it hard to move any one of them forward. I spend most of the time trying to figure out where I last left it. 

For written pieces, I never close on a thought when I wrap up. I leave it open, so I can hit the ground running next time I pick up the work. Being able to complete an idea when I start writing again and finish the next line lets me build the momentum to keep going. I think I learned this from Stephen King. I can’t remember. I should probably write notes from his “On Writing” book. 

For a visual piece. I try to assemble all the assets for a digital collage. Or I at least create a mood board I can reference. If it’s a drawing, I select a reference image ahead of time and won’t start a new drawing until I finish the one I'm already working on. 

If it’s a project with a lot of steps and moving parts I get dorky. I use a Trello board. Trello is a digital version of the analog user story-board system used in agile development. Where programmers/developers write out the tasks that need to be done in discrete steps and place them on the board in swim lanes based on their level of doneness. I create story cards for items and add checklists to them. That way I don’t need to think about the next step. I just go Trello and look at the latest story card for my next step. It works for me. I think for most people a checklist in a notebook with next steps will do. 

Remember speed sometimes kills. In this case, it kills creative ideas. This piece is a reminder for me to not only create pockets of time where I can wander but to use the pockets I do have to be more creative. 

References

1. Lynch, David. Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. NY, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2016. 11. Print. 

2. Honore, Carl. In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed. Harper-Collins. Kindle Edition, 2004. 120. 

3. Ibid. 

4. Paul Jarvis. "Sunday Dispatches - What's the Point of Productivity?" 9 Apr. 2017. E-mail. 

5. The Future Laboratory, UBS and Ben Saunders. "Unlimited Powered by." Wrestling With A Future Of Two-speed Time UNLIMITED, 17 Mar. 2017. Web. 21 May 2017.

[feisty-sandwich-blog]

Trove Fishing Bot

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