#also my friend randomly brought my avocados | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cassafra5 · 6 years ago

Text

Where Have I Been?

I’ve been a bit nervous to post this.

Two month or so ago, I teased at a possible announcement and something I was very excited to share with you all. I had been given the opportunity to work on a temp-to-perm basis for a comic start-up headed by Marvel alumni. I applied on a whim to be a freelance Storyboard Artist, but I was instead offered the chance of working in a full-time Editorial and Admin position with a few hours dedicated to storyboarding and participating in creative meetings each week. As someone who's always wanted to get into creative work, this was a really huge deal for me and I was excited to learn and be able to have projects to add to my portfolio.

Now, part of the reason I held off was because I wanted to make sure it was solid before I made the announcement. It was a dream come true and it seemed too good to be true ... and it was.

Read below if you'd like to hear about how I unwittingly signed up to take care of a herd of entitled neckbeards and had to work on preventing them from literally walking into glass instead of actually storyboarding as advertised.

TL;DR of my experience:

2018 unfortunately was a pretty rough year. The good news is that I managed to push for a mutual termination of contract and should be a lot more active very soon now that I’m not as emotionally drained by an incredibly toxic environment.

Credit to @kirain for looking through this and helping to edit it when I just rage-typed all of this together lol;

I walked away from my interviews in tears after being told that my work really had potential. I told them I had been a comic fan since I was a kid and this was something I was excited about. I grew up with family trying to dissuade me from doing art and I had friends/partners who really weren't interested in my work. I am by no means a professional, so I threw up whatever I could be proud of and applied to the role on a whim. So as you can imagine, having real professionals say I had potential was something amazing to me.

My first day, they sat me at a desk with a tablet and computer and I was super excited to start learning and was immediately approached with a Sexual Harassment plaque and told to mount it. Weird but alright. It was a start-up and I already assumed we’d all be helping out with small jobs around the office. I helped them fix their scanner and they suggested I move it to my desk. I was a bit confused but did so. I asked if they wanted me to set their computers up for it but they waved their hands at me and said we could do it later.

This would eventually result in me scanning every single document for every person in the office, and also measuring the office for furniture that they would randomly decide not to get. When I had a day off, I came back to piles of documents they refused to scan themselves since "that was my job". I got chastised since they wanted them in a hurry and it should have been done sooner ... i.e., the day I was off.

Alright.

I also ended up doing the following duties:

Calling the IRS every single day because the Controller was too uppity about something that was in the mail and somehow thought they could track it...DURING THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN. I was required to do this and told it was part of my job.

Calling Instacart at the behest of their Legal Counsel, a man who bitched on the phone for 2 hours because he didnt want to go downstairs to drop off a faulty computer part, and having to tell them that their avocados were too soft and their almond milk had too many ingredients. I was required to do this and told it was part of my job.

I had to ask for multiple vendors to provide quotes and COI and do site visits to our office for things that they, on a whim, would decide they wouldn’t want....resulting in multiple vendors getting angry at me.

I had to get what “everyone wanted for Christmas” for their luncheon...they expected me to get cakes same day from a fancy bakery, as well as LOBSTER (one of them said this was apparently a Christmas tradition of theirs?) Mind you, they repeatedly spoke about budgeting since they were working on investment money and the owner repeatedly would mention how “every day we weren’t producing was a day we died a little more.” I guess that death would have been from gout.

I had to take on dealing with all building requests. Fine ...until they started to tell me I should be reaching out to building management about the "radiation coming out of the cable box". They said it was shooting at a person given their angle and, because I'm *that person*, I mentioned it'd probably be more of a radius vs a direct shot. They started talking about it causing a mushroom cloud over the office. I laughed. Apparently it wasn’t a joke :/ They also complained about the fan making noises and being able to hear people partying and singing songs ... during the holidays ... when people normally do that sort of thing.

I also had to deal with things such as their electrical work and assistance with general interior work in the office...for some reason

They put me in charge of the Party Committee for a Housewarming Party where I was the only one actually making arrangements. This would be fine but the office was sublet and, due to their clumsiness in handling their electrical work before I got there, part of the office has no electricity and there was also a fallen over power beam in the middle of the office...but I guess that can be an accent piece.

I literally had to rename their files. Rather than renaming documents themselves, they would email me to rename them and reupload them because they couldn’t be bothered to change them themselves.

I made the mistake of telling them I had worked with DocuSign in a previous job. What resulted was them forcing me to teach it to them...but then they would argue with me about why it couldn’t mail merge or allow them to revise their documents. A Docusign rep mentioned they could just do their work outside of Docusign and import it since the whole point is to maintain the integrity of the document but they just kind of blamed me for not knowing enough about something I had only briefly used in another completely different setting.

I was literally approached by the person who should have been leading me in storyboarding and told that I needed to look into “distraction graphics” for the office because he was concerned that the two head people (WHO WORKED AT MARVEL) kept bashing their heads on the glass and he was afraid they’d go through the glass eventually. My literal reaction:

Yeah...he didn’t laugh. It was apparently serious and I had to have some very awkward talks with some window vendors. Do you know it apparently costs more than $3.5k to cover glass that you could probably avoid if you just looked up from your phones when you walked?

Frustrating, but whatever ... it wasn't a big deal and so long as I got to do some creative work, I was willing to tolerate it.

I asked the person in charge of art and asked when we'd be able to work on creative and was told that my role was mainly in admin and to "leave the storyboarding to the storyboarders".

I guess I just imagined every single mention of that during the interview process.

I was taken aback but he assured me it was fine since I could work in production and work on other items, like cutting comics up for Webtoons. This wasn't what I wanted, but fine ... maybe I could get something out of this regardless and learn, even if I was just cutting up and processing other peoples' work. By the way, they ended up not even letting me do that.

And here’s where I get to the owner of this establishment...

I got called in to meet with him and told I would be given a special project. He wanted me to suggest a few themes that would be used for a promo project the company was working on. Okay ... this could be good. I started thinking of all my favorite genres and comics and wrote out a decent list. I asked him if it there was a limit and he said there was no limit, so I made a comprehensive list.

He brought me back in a week later and ripped my report apart.

First, he didn't want Marvel and DC included, but then he got upset when they weren't.

Star Wars and Serenity weren't Scifi, according to him; they were "Space Opera". So that had to be done. They were set in space but apparently that wasn't scientific. Alright.

Spongebob and Ducktales were irrelevant, but apparently The Simpsons was super relevant.

He smiled at me and told me I needed to redo it because I obviously didn't know what I was doing. Okay ... sure. Then he kept changing his mind. We started this before the holidays and I worked on making a very sortable report in case there were anymore last minute changes.

Me and another co-worker who were avid comic book readers spent a lot of time looking at sales numbers and articles to compile what we should focus on; however, for one reason or another, the owner would dismiss everything we brought up since he "hadn't heard of it". Deathstroke apparently never existed. Teen Titans also ... totally not relevant. Although he said he was open to ideas, he'd bash every single suggestion, answer every question by asking us why we'd ask such "stupid questions", and he literally asked us to bring in articles and statistics just so he could completely dismiss them. He was completely un-open to hearing anyone else's opinions and already had a dead-set idea of what his audience wanted ... despite having told us he hated comics and that "normal people [like him] don't read comic books". He knew what these idiots wanted, and it was just a matter of making us redoing the report over and over until we happened on the right combo HE wanted. I.e., pretty much the top comics he last saw at the dawn of the early 2000's.

I literally had taken pics of a few bestseller displays I’d seen in stores (Newsbury Comics, Barnes and Nobles etc) but he literally said that that didn’t mean they would sell. What does Best Selling even mean then?

But it's cool to just completely dismiss your customer base and act like you know better, right?

I ended up having to work until 10:00pm one night in order to make all necessary changes and print covers for him to review. What started as a simple list of themes became a report that had over 600 rows in Excel. Even then, 80-90% of it ended up not being used. I was so exhausted at this point and burnt out. I loved comics ... but having to rip them apart by category, put them back together, eliminate whole categories because he didn't want them, and then having to remake them after he changed his mind was agonizing.

I had another meeting with him and he smiled at me and simply said, "Aww I thought this would be a fun project for you, since you're a fangirl after all"

He was taunting me. This was a game to him. Of course, I should have expected this from someone who literally made a cheat sheet so "idiot comic book fans" would get his jokes. I'm not joking. It actually exists and I'm sure it's something Marvel would rather not even remember.

A couple more weeks passed and, at this point, a majority of the office depended on me to get people's food choices for their snacks, following up with building maintenance, and I barely had any creative projects whatsoever. I did get to create the party invitation the main art guy refused to make but he pushed me to make in Canva, because he thought Canva was the end all and be all to graphic design and that it should be used for all presentations for our LinkedIn. Pretty much everything Canva (something used mostly by Instagram and Twitter users) probably wasn't meant to be used on.

Keep in mind that this person was in charge of creative and was also in charge of gate-keeping me from doing the one thing I was tolerating everything for. I had literally repeatedly asked about the storyboarding during the interview process and even though they had changed the duties, they always confirmed that storyboarding would be a part of it.

Last week, I asked the main art guy again about my job description and about how he had mentioned storyboarding being off the table entirely. He immediately got defensive and reminded me that I was an admin. I mentioned I still had the job descriptions and emails mentioning me having a hand in creative, and he accused me of talking back and said that he could tell from how I looked that I thought he was an idiot.

He also accused me of not being enthusiastic about his projects. I was confused since I was actively asking for projects and had literally been trying to find some way to take on creative assignments. He got even angrier and said I wasn't telling him how much fun I was having and how excited his work was making me.

What?

It suddenly dawned on me that every talk I'd had with this guy about how excited I was to learn from him/to work on the team gave him some sort of weird satisfaction. I mentioned that I didn't think I should have been sending him emails about that, and he asked, "Why not? You shouldn't assume I don't want them. I want you to tell me my stuff is fun and how excited you are about them!" I was ... very uncomfortable. This grown man. This grown ass man wanted me to fawn over his work and send him emails about how excited I was about his work. About HIM. What a narcissist.

He made enough commotion that the owner brought us in. He sat us down and said something about him being a bit familiar with this sort of thing, having gone to marriage counselling himself. I was already uncomfortable and that really didn’t help.

What ended up happening was they berated me in his office and told me I was "too honest", and I was told that I didn't know my place. I was told that at the very top were the two Marvel alumni, then underneath there was everyone else and I was right at the very bottom of everything and I should know my place.

These were the two people who had told me I had potential and who had made me so happy just a couple months prior. I was frozen in place as they grinned at me and told me that obviously there was some misunderstanding on my part. They then told to run along while they thought about what they could throw at me to make me happy. The guy who yelled at me was not chastised or told his behavior was wrong in any way, shape or form. I got dragged into a staff meeting afterwards, where the owner proudly told all of us, "This is the best company you can work for, where you can work with people you like." And in the same breath, he told everyone not to fuck up or otherwise it would be "resume time".

I felt broken the rest of the day, where I heard them blatantly laughing and insulting the creators they were going to work with. One creator was commented on as being able to "...work as a writer but you shouldn't look at her stuff unless you want your eyes to bleed.” They said worse stuff too and laughed like a bunch of entitled douchebags on DeviantArt trying to get kicks off of stuff they thought were cringey. It was insane. These were supposed to be professionals in the field. It made me uncomfortable to think what they said about my own work when they told me I had "potential". Some of these were small time Tumblr creators like me who probably thought this would be their big break too...

I thought about putting in my two days, the amount that was specified in my contract, and worried about what they'd try to do in the time I had left. I was miserable and scared and nervous.

On Friday, the owner approached me and asked me for my portfolio while smiling to himself. I was skeptical and asked why, and he firmly said, "Because I want to see it." I sent it and prepared for the worst.

He brought me in for a two minute "friendly" chat in the conference room, and once we sat down, he mused over his computer and said it was "coming back to him” I did art.

He remembered now. It had been so forgettable, after all. Aww, maybe there was something there.

With a smile, he told me I "shouldn't take it personally", and that only one artist so far had been able to get along with him and work with what they wanted. They'd thrown out 8 artists after they just simply "didn't work". They admitted that they had promised me storyboarding, but no one was working to their intended vision. That they hadn't really figured out a place for me in the company, but maybe going out on a business trip would help him clear his head and he could find something I could do. "I guess we've been letting you down a bit, haven’t we?"

I felt like at this point he wanted me to act desperate and happy for the possibility of a chance and buy into it and take his offering with gratitude...

...but I was done with his shit.

I told him that I had started at his company a few months ago and that if they hadn't figured out where I was supposed to be in all that time, then maybe it wasn't a good fit. He was quiet and didn't seem prepared for it. "Well ... what do you think we should do about it then?"

"If it's alright with you, I would like to terminate this contract immediately." I said it through gritted teeth. I'm not a confrontational person, but after everything that had happened, I was worried I'd lose it. I could feel myself shaking, but I just couldn't deal with it anymore. "I didn't appreciate being told I was at the bottom of the food chain and I really didn't appreciate you allowing me to be treated this way. Frankly, after that, it's taken every bit of motivation out of me and I'd like to end this. Now." I was trying to be professional and control myself, but I was quietly seething with every word. I told him I had saved all my job descriptions and had the contract if he wanted to review it, and I knew that what they had been telling me was bullshit.

He was really quiet and his eyes were wide open. I really think he expected me to be grateful and happy and willing to do more and more for the company just for that little chance. He mumbled something about not prolonging my suffering and told me to just assist in transitioning over my duties and typing things up.

Once I did, I asked if I was free to go and he said I was and I left. It was so much of a relief not to have to come back to that office.

So this is what happened with something I thought would have been a great in to an industry I was excited about. I got used up (and not even for the skills I actually have under my belt) and kept around as an emotional punching bag, and for the dumbest things imaginable and essentially just assisted them with setting up their office after they'd sublet it.

On the plus side, I feel like it was a big deal that I could actually stand up for myself, even if it happened to be to someone like that. Even though I'm not a professional and even though some people would consider me insignificant, I feel like there's never a reason to make any person feel insignificant and like they're the lowest of the low. I hated how they spoke about other creators and I hated how they spoke to me, and there isn't any reason anyone should have to deal with people who are just bent on being condescending.

Ironically, around this time, Steven Universe released an amazing episode and the ending theme kind of hit home with me. I loved its message and I think that ep. kind of helped me in a way.

2019's off to an interesting start, I guess ... but I guess I can be proud that I'm stronger despite it. I am passionate about my art and do want to be able to work professionally but there’s no reason to ever tolerate disrespect and dishonesty in a company.

In the words of Raul Julia/Gomez Addams:

Hopefully, one day, I’ll get my break but this definitely wasn’t it.

If any of you guys are in NYC and happen to come across a mildly shady startup toted to be headed by Marvel alumni, maybe just be a bit careful. I normally don’t post about stuff like this and honestly tend to get quiet when things happen because I have trouble opening up about personal issues but maybe it can help someone or at the very least be an interesting read.

#personal #job stories #comics

154 notes · View notes

abyss-mal-blog1 · 6 years ago

Text

current mind-space//word vomit

it’s amazing how much can change in a few days, but it hasn’t been a week since my finals ended and i already felt so different. i have been doing f45 everyday this week (if not then some kind of workout, but i’ve really been into that recently). i am feeling so much better now without deadlines, sometimes i don’t know if i function better under pressure or not. i guess not, but then it’s amazing how much i can do and achieve under pressure. i need the right amount of pressure, and this semester it has been a little difficult for me to get around that.

last friday was kinda my last day of finals, i just had an essay to submit, and i am disappointed in myself and my work ethic because i submitted it at 9pm, went to my cousin’s (disappointing) party, and then professor emailed me to say that she cannot read Pages format (seriously smh @ my tardiness!!!), only got back at 1am that night and sent my mediocre essay. i am a little sad about it because i know that is not my 100%. idk why but college so far has just been a series of 80% effort. this paper was an interesting one, on airbnb, on the sharing economy, it’s a performance studies paper where i analyze the hospitality platform in terms of host-user relationship, parasitism and (attempted) to talk about free online labor. it is a little too late now but i kinda want to work on it again and like, submit for feedback. maybe ill ask taylor.

last saturday was kinda meh, i agreed to go to a *social* kinda event at a bar/club at chelsea, held for Asian-ivy-alumni-people that yanlin invited me too. it was at up&up and honestly a little...i didn’t enjoy it at all. the music sucked, the people were either too dorky or gross or old or weird, and the whole time i just kept saying to myself, “never again”. they said it was open bar but they only served absolut, which was shit. and then my friend’s two friends were...i feel sorry that this was their first clubbing experience. at the beginning my reaction was look at all these ivy alumni! get hitched with one of them for ~da connectsx~ (and nothing else) but no kidding i was actually interested in talking to them just to get to know what people who graduated from ivies are up to, and what are they doing at such events...and are they actually enjoying themselves because it was really kinda gross. met my friend’s friend who seemed like a really smart engineer (he asked for my number the next day lol), and a german dude at the bar who didn’t want to get me a drink. all i needed that night was a drink.....(i’m glad i didn’t drink tho because recently drinking has made me feel all kinds of bad) we had ramen after at ramen-ya (most probably the worst ramen and charsiew i’ve had but what can we do at 3am and my friend wanted noodle and soup...)

on sunday i KNow i should have left my house earlier to workout but i didn’t. i was angry at myself that i didn’t. instead, i stayed at home and emotion-ate. i must have eaten more green bean soup than my stomach would have liked. what else...avocado? i remember..two bananas? god. this was the day i felt like i was n’s boyfriend because i had to do what she wanted to do. i know i had agreed on going, but at that point i really wanted to go thrifting or something. i mean when i got to central park it was fine and things were good but the whole day just felt like i was kinda pulled into doing something that wasn’t my first choice of plans, not that i didn’t enjoy myself lying under the sun at the park. it just felt like i was accompanying someone. i was half an hour late to meet her as well, and half heartedly got a burrito-wrap at newsbar. if you think about it it is really kinda funny, we’re just buying food and taking the subway to this grass patch 50 blocks away. we didn’t walk much, we literally only stayed at a little grassy slope overlooking the baseball pitch. anyway we went to a dance class after (the class was an hour long but i felt like n had asked me about when and what time we should book the classes for more than an hour by text so i just got really sick of it) i rushed home and got dinner with my uncle who’s in town for my cousin’s graduation. i was surprised that he chose the same japanese restaurant again, after dissing it half a year ago we ate here. the omakase was crazy and it cost 230 per person. (for the most expensive set) it was also kinda dumb because you aren’t allowed to order a different omakase set from anyone else - everyone on the table has to order the same - because of “timing”. i wonder if this is how it is in japanese omakase etiquette, but in any case it really earned them a hefty amount because my uncle decided to get 230 for all of us. qiyang didn’t like and said qiqi had bad taste, hahaha. the food wasn’t bad, i mean it’s japanese fusion, but the prices were way too steep for the taste. anyway enough about the food, during the dinner i think we talked about many things though. i kinda wanted to talk to my uncle individually because i think he is the only one who knows about ah gong, but he was sick, and i could tell he was exhausted. my aunt got a little impatient because i didn’t arrange plans to take their furniture and they were going to throw all of them away and it was actually the first time i’ve seen her get so worked up - but at the same time trying to control her emotions - because she was talking to me. i could tell she was annoyed though but i tried not to take it personally, and arranged it tomorrow.

arranging the moving stuff was kinda last minute, i was walking to the library for work one day and i saw a truck that said MakeSpace. i assumed it was a kind of moving company and so i looked them up. they seemed to be pretty okay in terms of their services and so i decided to try them out. confirmation and setting up an appointment went pretty smoothly, except for the part where the guy i think his name was joseph, asked me to give my credit card details over the phone. idk why i did that! i stopped though, and asked him why, to which he replied he wanted to key in with the coupon code. this service has so much gimmicks within the first 2-3 minutes on the phone he was already telling me about how the first pick up is free, and that he will deduct 100$ off the first month...when people give you discounts too easily it just feels like a ploy and a thing they give to everyone, it’s not anything special and it’s probably calculated inside whatever we have to pay. anyway, i was just thinking it would be cheaper (assuming the maximum that i would have to pay is ~$500, as i confirmed with them on the phone yesterday), it’d still be cheaper than starting an apartment lease now and going through the trouble of finding two subletters.

well. idk, it’s also easy to have things all moved in, i have to find a place to store my perishables!

moving is so much work, and storing things. this reminds me of my paper on airbnb and about the digital nomad lifestyle. it is interesting though, that this is what it has become. but the homogenized aesthetic is something i really cannot stand, in airbnb, in coffeeshops around the world..i am sure you know what i’m talking about. a new york times writer did something about this - he termed it “Airspace” - and apparently it originated from Brooklyn. I guess that’s where the art/avant-garde stuff started. well. keep a look out im gonna write a blogpost about that

moving on

nat came to sleepover on sunday night and a few days after because the school kicks you out of the dorms you pay so much for right after your final ends. i forgot if we did something fun but i probably just fell asleep.

on monday i think i went to f45 and did cardio at Dumbo with Gi. he seems like a pretty nice trainer, the first time i went it was him and another girl Bertha (i think my first f45 was last tuesday) and i felt like i had two personal trainers with me - Gi was cheering me on and Bertha was doing it with me. it felt like such a good workout, one of the best ive had in a while. then work, where i arranged the movers stuff. i also realized i bought the wrong date for my flight ticket as my friends and had to buy one more...............

tuesday was the same f45 in the morning, and the bobst after. didn’t really get much work done at bobst. oh i also viewed a 3BR flex at 160. hella expensive and small, and dates didn’t work out anyway. also the broker who brought us to view the apartment was a very nice tall french man and his name was jean-francois which i couldn’t pronounce and asked nat but still called him jean as in jeen instead of john. this is why i have to learn french. you’re embarrassing. i also went to the itp/ima spring show with shubham which was super cool. there were many cool ideas, and i just wonder if i could create something like that. i didn’t get to see all of the exhibits which i regret, but i remember a few notable projects. one was an installation made with keyboards that randomly clicks, but when you hold your phone up it’ll stop. it’s made using 3d gestures. there’s also one at a gallery for surveillance, this team had a thing they call facebox, and it’s literally a box, that when you open it has a webcam that would capture your face, find you on facebook, and print out an invoice/receipt on how much you have earned for this giant tech company. what else...an AR project that when you scan a food, it shows you where the food comes from. nat said that she would love it if menus have something they could scan and then have pictures appear in ~holographic~ format, or maybe in the nearer future something on your phone that shows you a picture of the picture of the food. but isn’t it a surprise tho? sometimes the fun’s in the surprise, you read the description, you know what are the foods you’ll eat, leaving room to imagine or be surprised by how the chef puts it together! anyway, went for dinner with nat and jenny - got vegan shwarma (definitely wasn’t worth $14) and went to get crepes with will after.

wednesday we were gonna go to the dmv but we weren’t prepared. nat also needed to get her passport and she was lazy. wow the number of times i mentioned her, it feels like she’s my boyfriend at this point. talked to famz, sister, and beatrix. am currently considering if i should even go to beijing or just go straight home. fuck. went to bobst for work but no one was there i was just really sleepy. viewed an apartment at 55 morton (it’s a nice quiet residential street that seems to be tucked away from the loud cars and bars and people) then i went to f45 again-varsity!!! cardio!!!, walked across brooklyn bridge (a little regret although i wanted to walk, but my bag was heavy and there were too many tourists to brisk walk)

also the reason for this is that after my soba/miso/salad/shrimp dinner last night i was just watching a bunch of netflix shows and it was probably the caffeine from puerto rican roasting company - the barista made me a chai cappuccino with almond milk (3 SHOTS!!!)

me and nat couldn’t sleep, i really think i slept for an hour. i watched so many different shows, yoko and john’s documentary, while we were young, anthony bourdain, i was seriously flipping through all the shows and alternating between amazonprme and youtube and netflix and i even tried watching peaceful cuisine and making the brightness lower and had the sleep mode on and wow i just couldn’t sleep

so yeah the birth of this word vomit

i am going to create more things

1 note · View note

nightcoremoon · 4 years ago

Text

there was a chinese girl who started going to my high school. nobody called her by her real name because while it was only two syllables it was still made of phonemes that the dumbass braindead white kids that composed our whole student body (and a lot of the staff) didn't want to learn so they called her a nickname that was basically the first two letter and the last letter together. idk the reason but a year later she started going by her cantonese name rather than her mandarin(?). we weren't like super close friends but we had similar manga taste and she saw I was reading death note one day and she was like hey I like death note and I was like yeah me too and we had a short lil convo, I had death note and vampire knight box sets and so I would loan her the volumes, I'd take one to school and trade it to her for the last one then the next day I'd bring the next one. she would read chinese scans online in computer based classes, so I think maybe she borrowed mine because it might be difficult to find the chinese scans of DN and VK but I don't know for sure. so we had at least a cordial peer/peer relationship and acquaintanceship if not really a close friendship. but I never called her by her name- I never really called most people by their name, usually just said "hey" or something and I think it's because I had name dysphoria even before I knew I was trans and I just didn't like referring to people as their names because then it suggested they do the same to me and brain was like PLEASE GOD NO! but still, I just never really called her by name. and some days just randomly I'll think back to the parts of high school I remember, this being one of them, and I think, should I have called her by her name in high school, would that have brought her even some small happiness, of being recognized by your actual name? or was it just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ not a big deal, was it just whatever, and am I just way overthinking this? probably. could be either. I can't do anything about what I did then right now. or ever but what I can do is this.

if you can pronounce fucking tchaikovsky and michaelangelo and dostoyevski, then you can pronounce uzoamaka and quvenzhane and any number of the other "non-white" names that white peiple struggle so hard with even though it's really fuckin easy to just pronounce words right. uzo aduba said it first and she's right. in fact I'll add onto it. sodium laureth sulfate, carboxylic acid, amodimethicone, hexylene glycol, niacinamide, pyridoxine hydrochloride, hexyl cinnamal, saccharum officinarum, amyl cinnamal, linalool, hydroxypropyltrimonium, prunus amygdalus dulcis oil, persea gratissima, phenoxyethanol, leuconostoc, camellia sinensis, tocopherol, helianthus annuus (no I am not making any of these up), rosmarinus officinalis, and sodium hydroxide are all of the ingredients in garnier fructis avocado olive almond shampoo. every single one of these words is fucking easy to pronounce if you've heard it once before, unless you're either a) stupid or b) have some sort of disorder that interferes with linguistic skills or reading or auditory processing such as dyslexia, adhd, autism, poor eyesight, or something like that (so I'm not calling you stupid if you're dyslexic and can't read, I don't want any brainless 14 year old mouth breathing discourse gremlins getting on my ass for saying something they misconstrued as problematic, like shut up and get a hobby). if you can read fine, your brain can process letters fine, and your mouth can say the sounds your brain makes fine, then there is no reason why you can't pronounce any of those words.

and if you can pronounce weird latin-named chemicals, YOU CAN FUCKING PRONOUNCE TWO-SYLLABLE CHINESE NAMES.

not even bothering to touch on the racism aspect of this topic (mainly because it's not my place as a white person but also because I don't wanna write another paragraph), this irritates me as a LINGUIST. when you refuse to learn to pronounce the name of someone from another culture, you don't respect language, you don't respect basic communication skills, you don't respect people of color, and you're just a stupid self-centered fucking asshole.

0 notes

whole30problems · 7 years ago

Text

Day 4: 1/4/18

Today was the snowpocalypse or bomb cyclone or whatever it’s called. Most of my coworkers stayed home but there were 5 of us in the office. Here is the story of my journey through the cyclone.

Breakfast

I was supposed to make some fancy breakfast (I can’t even remember which one) but was in a rush because I wanted to get in early to get ahead of the worst of the snow. I’ve definitely learned (and hopefully will remember this next week) that I almost never have the time, energy, or willpower to cook something complicated in the morning before work. I love getting up early and having lots of free time in the morning, but prefer to spend that time being productive (and wasting half an hour poaching eggs or whatever is not something I’d define as productive).

So, instead of my fancy breakfast, I had... go on. Guess. Guess what I ate.

Suck on that, world. You keep coming to my food blog and I keep showing you identical pictures of hardboiled eggs. WELCOME TO MY BLOG.

Lunch

I had the rest of my mega-leftovers from lunch yesterday (still asparagus and beef over cauliflower). It was still super good! I’ve definitely, most certainly ruled that the fish sauce is probably not rotten. I think I’d be dead by now.

We have a new coworker in the office who just started yesterday, and besides heroically showing up in the snowpocalypse she also brought us a thing of mini cupcakes. Which was SUCH a sweet and classy move, but also... you know... we’re enemies now because she made me look at mini cupcakes.

I will say, I don’t usually crave sweet things, but being that close to mini cupcakes (I inspected them very closely, of course) really made me want a mini cupcake. For a second I thought about it. Like, one mini cupcake, it’s a snow day, what’s the big deal. But NO! I stayed strong. I snacked on one of these barely compliant Larabars instead:

Let’s talk more about these barely compliant ingredients, because Erik and I were just discussing this. So there are ingredients - like fruit - which are technically allowed as an ingredient on the Whole30. For example, you are totally allowed to cook something with a couple tablespoons of apple juice, whereas a couple tablespoons of honey would be totally illegal. But you’re discouraged (not disallowed, just discouraged) from drinking a cup of apple juice every day. The reasoning is that the point of the Whole30 is to wean you off of bad habits, and if you’re using things like a daily cup of fruit juice to get your daily sugar craving (fruit has a lot of sugar in it, in case you didn’t know) then you’re really not kicking that craving and you’re just going to go straight back to mini cupcakes (for example) on February 1st.

This actually came up the other day on one of our many grocery shopping trips, because Erik wanted to get orange juice and I said no. In retaliation, he made me put back the apple cider I had in the cart, which was fair enough. (I can’t remember why I thought it was ok to have heated up apple cider as a treat last year... definitely seems not cool.)

But anyway it came up again today because Erik made his patented date balls last night (if you recall, he lived on them throughout our 1st Whole30 because it was the only sweet snack he was allowed to have). Here they are:

They’re made of dates, coconut, almonds maybe... I forget what else. But he made a new recipe this time, one that has cacao in it (I think it was this one). Cacao is one of those ingredients which is technically allowed (it’s really just a spice, like cinnamon or something, and all of those are ok), but which is problematic because lots of people use it to recreate chocolatey flavors during their Whole30.

This concept - not attempting to recreate your favorite indulgences - is pretty much what defines the Whole30. I did look up a thread about the official verdict on cacao (it’s very long and very boring, and right here if you want to read it) and it just backed up my decision not to eat Erik’s concoction, because I would be using it as a substitute. I’ve been craving chocolate all day since since those cupcakes, and the very fact that I’m not giving in - even if it would be to a lesser, technically compliant substitute - will be so much more valuable than the temporary taste of a chocolate-like substance. (I explained all this to Erik, who shrugged and said, “I’m ok with my habits.”)

Dinner

Erik made dinner because his negativity has been annoying me over the past couple days and he’s trying to make up for it by giving me a break in the kitchen. (It’s working.) Speaking of husbands and Whole30s, I will redact names to protect the anonymity of the innocent, but one of my friends was live texting me her husband’s attempt at putting together a Whole30 dinner. He did the same exact thing Erik did the other night - tried to help her out by going grocery shopping but brought home an ingredient with sugar in it. WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, YA KNOW?

Erik made ginger-scallion pesto chicken, which turned out really well despite me buying totally the wrong kind of chicken (and my friend’s husband made these chicken avocado burgers, which also look worth trying).

For a side, I didn’t really plan ahead, but I also simultaneously planned ahead TOO much, because we were able to choose between cauliflower rice, zoodles, or potatoes. I randomly chose potatoes and Erik made these shockingly delicious crispy smashed potatoes. They only have salt & pepper on them but something about the way they’re prepared makes them so tasty. (That blog is my favorite for recipes by the way, right after Nom Nom Paleo.)

Current status

The bomb cyclone did seem to be resembling a hurricane on my way home from work; it was literally blowing me around on the street. I survived though. This time. See you in hell, bomb cyclone.

Erik continues to teeter on the verge of death because he’s not eating enough in between meals, but I (probably frustratingly for him) continue to feel amazing. I had that one headache on day two and other than that it’s really been smooth sailing so far. I’m waiting for it to get tough and crash down on me, but I really think that maintaining so many of the habits throughout this past year has made this easier, both physically and mentally. I’ve had a ton of energy at work (even yesterday, with no sleep), my skin looks better than it has in months (makes sense), and I’m barely thinking about food in between meals.

I know I’ll get sick of the cooking part of it, but dare I say this is... mostly pleasant this time around? :O

#whole30 #blog

0 notes

adrianmariemclaughlin-blog · 7 years ago

Text

7.18

A week after all the traumatizing stuff from Barcelona and I am doing AWESOME! Who knew I could survive without a phone, let alone in a FOREIGN COUNTRY! I’m proud of myself for doing this and I know my mom is probably reading these words cracking up. Hi mom. You’re right, I can live without a phone and I LOVE it! I feel like it’s giving me such a better experience here actually. I probably wouldn’t be able to do it in any other country, but since Prague is so safe and the transportation is AWESOME I’m surviving just fine. I got myself this awesome camera last week in a tiny, cute little vintage camera store I found around the corner from my work. It takes Lomography photos which kind of look like polaroids but normal size. I’ll have to go and take it developed and stuff but that’s cool with me because I think my pictures will be more special that way. The only thing I’m missing is music, but in place of this I am going to make a point to go see more live music around here! Last night, for instance, we went to my favorite bar in the world to see a jazz band. And it was such a magical experience LOL :) I love how the Czech people dance. They don’t have a care in the world and dance like literally no one is watching them. (Picture tall, lengthy skinny people swinging their arms around wildly to no beat and stepping on your toes and jumping all over the place.) Their energy is totally contagious. It’s like this everywhere you go actually.

I’ve been focusing a lot on my classes and work this week. My teacher let me present later since I missed my flight and accidentally cried in front of him (I don’t do this on purpose but it totally seems to work every time) and I got an A!!! Not bad for being an emotional wreck. Works been going better than ever. I just love the interns so so so much. We all can’t stop talking about how much we’re going to miss each other once this ends in a couple weeks. I had the best time ever with them last week- I actually got in somewhat of a fight with my boss and stood up to him for getting mad at us about not being there when his juicer was delivered to the office (long story, he apologized though and my other czech boss sent me a message going way to go adrienne! because she still can't spell or pronounce my name). So anyways all of interns were like well... let’s go get a drink! So we found this awesome beer garden on top of this hill and then we decided to go on a beer garden quest! We went to all the huge hills here and got a beer at every place. And we just had the best conversations. I love hearing their perspectives on things. I think that’s a huge perk to being on this study abroad program. All my life I have lived in the suburbs and then gone to a college where everyone else is from the suburbs. I don’t get a lot of interactions with people from other parts of the country and we talk about everything from politics, to relationships, to just joking about the most random things in the world. Legit everytime we’re all together all we do is laugh. It’s the kind of laughing where your mouth physically hurts but you still can’t stop. The best kind.

I got to do a story this week on alchemy that is coming out in the next issue! I worked really hard on this one and I think it’s gonna be great so I can’t wait for you guys to read about it. :) I’ve realized my boss weirdly really enjoys confiding in me in things that are super personal and I shouldn’t know but I’ve gotten used to it. He vents to me about the business and asks me for my advice a lot on how to handle the interns and stuff. I just nod my head and try not to get involved. But today he told me I am one of the most hardworking interns he’s ever had and he is so proud of me and that my work has been amazing. Which is actually super awesome coming from him because he’s really picky and used to be a professor in copywriting! I just found this out recently, and I also realized that if I ask him for help he has some really good advice... like today he told me to always read my work out-loud when its finished and if it doesn’t sound like something Morgan Freeman can smoothly read, that I need to make it more concise. He used to be a millionaire and has done so many interesting things in his life and I enjoy listening to his stories for the most part but it is definitely an interesting work environment. That’s for sure.

Other new things? I’ve lost seven pounds since I’ve gotten here. I think all the walking and eating healthy (not having pasta 3 times a day like back in champaign) has been going well for me. I wake up in the morning and eat my new favorite that my Czech boss showed me (a slice of baked bread with butter, honey, and raspberries) and then I bring a salad to lunch (I have a huge obsession for chopped salads with avocados and chickpeas! SOOOO yummy!!) and then for dinner I have chicken or something. AND I DYED MY HAIR BROWN! Idk if I like it or not yet. We will see.

I’ve also started this really awesome creative project. I brought a travel journal here and I made the theme “Things I learned in Prague”. On each page, I scribble something important I learned, a quote I like, something my friends say, or a memory I have. I put a little doodle on each of the pages, too. I even have my friends here write in it so I have something to remember them by. I’ve been bringing that and my new camera with me everywhere so I can just whip them out when I get a little moment of inspiration. This is another bonus to not having a phone. I feel my creativity has totally peaked here. Every single thing interests me it’s so funny. I figured that after a few weeks here I’d stop getting that weird, tingly, happy feeling when I see something beautiful... but it hasn’t stopped. That’s what I love about Prague. It is seriously the best place in the entire world and I hope you all get a chance to come and see it for yourself. I want to save up enough money to come back in a year or two!

I also am still loving my painting class. I legit never thought I could draw anything but stick figures and it’s so cool seeing a painting come to life. I love using the paint too, the mixing process is beautiful because there’s endless possibilities of colors. And my teacher is so insightful, even if he is kind of a crack head. I know my parents are probably reading this and in their head they’re like ADRIAN! Don’t say that. But mom, dad, he is. It’s so funny. He reminds me of my boss at Features that used to start barking randomly instead of using words. He is a genius though, I’ll give him that.

I’m going to write another post in a bit about my trip this weekend to South Bohemia but I have to head over to the phone store to cancel my phone plan and hopefully file for a new phone so I can be greeted by one when I get back to the States.

0 notes

whole30problems · 8 years ago

Text

Day 19: 1/19/17

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but in addition to my insane energy throughout the day (I am wide awake from 6 am to 10 pm, no crashes during the day) I also fall asleep the instant I get in bed. That has never been a thing for me. I’ve spent my whole life coming up with various tricks to distract my mind dramatically enough and for long enough that it can shut up and let me sleep. I can’t tell you how nice a perk this is.

I’m also amazed at the fact that - now that I’m eating pretty healthy and not really doing anything directly detrimental to my body - I can tell exactly why something bad happens. I got a cold and knew it was due to stress. My cheeks broke out for a second and I knew it was because I started using a daily exfoliator that was too harsh for my skin. (It cleared up immediately when I stopped using it.) I’m used to feeling tired, and having occasionally dull skin, and getting randomly angry or exhausted very suddenly, and having no idea why any of it is happening. It’s very weird to feel like I have such precise control over my body.

I’m very curious to see what happens when I start reintroducing stuff. I’m just assuming most of this is due to the lack of sugar because that seems to be the thing everyone agrees is evil.

Breakfast

I had the Maya Special, sausage + scrambled eggs with stuff on them. Today for the stuff I had salsa!

I really love this breakfast because it’s easy, it tastes good, and it genuinely keeps me full til lunch. Before this diet I was always starving by 11 am (ask anyone I have ever worked with; I have always been the first one to start talking about lunch), and now I can easily make it to 1 pm without even thinking about food. It’s crazy. (I’ve also always thought I was hypoglycemic, but nope. My body is pretty good at regulating everything when I’m feeding it real food!)

Lunch

I brought leftover spaghetti squash with pesto, tomatoes, and chicken. (Erik was kind enough to grill me up a chicken breast because he’s better at it than I am. We bought a meat thermometer when we started this thing and now he can cook any meat perfectly. It’s very handy.)

I brought a couple clementines with me but forgot to eat them because I wasn’t hungry all day. Leanne and I have been talking a lot about fruit and trying to figure out how much is the “right” amount to eat. I just never really crave it (or anything sweet), except occasionally after dinner. But I’ve been limiting myself to like one fruit snack a day without trying. No idea if that’s a good thing or if I’m supposed to be eating more. One thing the Whole 30 isn’t great at is teaching me about the food pyramid (or whatever they call it now that bread is bad). I’m so focused on eating stuff that’s allowed that I don’t think at all about portions or side dishes or anything.

Dinner

OMG, A MIRACLE HAPPENED. Our pal Duncan texted us the other day and told us he wanted to have us over for a Whole 30 dinner. I don’t know why. (I thought maybe he’d sit us down and tell us he was dying or moving away, but it turns out he’s just nice.)

It was very romantic; he even put out candles and let us bring our dog. You’d think bringing a dog to someone’s house for dinner would be rude, but don’t worry - we put a bowtie on him.

Duncan made slow cooker pot roast, a nice tomato/carrot/avocado salad, and two kinds of mashed potatoes (!). He made us taste both mashed potato options before he would tell us what was in them, which made me nervous it was a prank of some kind. (That would explain why he offered to cook us dinner, after all.) But it turned out one was made with coconut milk, which I would not think I would like but it was really delicious.

He even thought of dessert, which was frozen blueberries and grapes. Erik ate too many grapes and only stopped when he started feeling sick. He’s great at dieting. We also played a card game, because when you’re not drinking, there is literally nothing else to do. (This is Erik’s favorite game Skipbo, which is an objectively terrible game but which makes him so happy that no one can resist playing it with him.)

If you’re thinking about making frozen fruit, the grapes were more flavorful than the blueberries. (I also, as you probably already know, have grown fond of frozen peaches.)

Duncan also, like the prince that he is, sent me home with a tupperware full of leftovers. So technically he spared me from making TWO meals. May you all be so lucky to have a friend like Duncan in your lives when you are suffering through a self-imposed month of torture.

#whole 30 #paleo #blog

0 notes