#and jobs that give them a good sense of self-fulfillment after graduating college through hard work and genius levels of intelligence

[ahuwhenua]

not really sure why the new spiderman game of all things is making me sad but it is

[lemonpeter]

🧡Day 1: Inc*st🧡

Really starting off strong huh lol anyway, this is very background heavy (I don’t know what happened but now I’m obsessed) and I hope y’all enjoy 🧡

Warnings: inc*st, nff, father/son (but they don’t know), Peter is 18 and an intern at SI, brief substance ab*se mention (and impaired s*x, not between starker)

***

Tony never wanted kids. The thought of someone depending on him in such a way made him feel sick. So he always did all that he could to ensure nothing would happen.

There was always room for accident, though.

***

Tony never wanted kids. The thought of someone depending on him in such a way made him feel sick. So he always did all that he could to ensure nothing would happen.

He never had sex without multiple levels of protection. And he was famous enough that people rarely tried to argue against it. Sleeping with him at all fulfilled what they wanted.

So things were perfectly fine. He never had an issue, he was always completely safe with his partners.

Except for this one night.

He was in a self-destructive episode, in the downward spiral before he hit rock bottom. Mixed every possible substance that shouldn’t have been mixed, impairing him until he wasn’t sure which way was up.

And he had a woman spiraling right along with him.

Her name was…Mary. Mary something. She was a scientist in some field, but he didn’t catch anything else. Or he just didn’t remember it. It didn’t matter anyways, they were both just wanting to ignore what was around them. What their lives had served them.

And maybe he forgot to ask if she was on birth control when he sloppily kissed over her neck.

Maybe he fumbled with the condom to the point where she whispered, “We’ll be fine,” and he believed her.

How it happened didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it did.

Tony didn’t even know.

He didn’t ask for her number the next morning, he just hid out in the bathroom, emptying his stomach of its entire contents while he waited for her to leave.

She was gone by the time he could see straight.

Thank god.

He never heard from her again.

Mary Parker and her husband died six years later and he never knew.

He didn’t know that they had a son. Or she did, at least. There was no way for him to know that the son had been passed along to his aunt and uncle when no other relative was found.

He never knew that Mary Parker had a son. And that her husband wasn’t the one who got her pregnant.

She never crossed his mind again after she left him.

***

Enter Peter.

Tony had new interns come in every year, typically college students that needed the credits, but sometimes someone special would come along.

Peter was a high school senior, but he was one of the smartest people that Tony had ever come across.

Tony had a job lined up for him as soon as he graduated if he wanted it. Not that he’d told him that yet.

He swore that he wasn’t a stalker. He had to prove to Pepper that he wasn’t giving too much attention to one intern over another, and for him that meant that he needed to stay away from Peter personally.

No matter how tempting it was. There had to be a family history of such genius, right? That kind of brains didn’t just occur at random.

But he didn’t look into him at all. He wouldn’t even let himself google search his name.

Oh, but he wanted to. He wanted to know everything there was to know about Peter Parker.

Although maybe he could just do it the old fashioned way. Minimal favoritism involved.

He spent months working with Peter. They became friends. Close friends.

It got to the point where Tony couldn’t help the smile he had when he looked into those warm brown eyes.

He felt it happen, it was official. Peter Parker had his heart.

It didn’t matter how wrong it was, he couldn’t help it. The young man had completely gotten hold of him.

And he hoped that it was mutual.

***

“Peter, can you stay back for a second?” Tony was still standing at the lab table, eyes scanning over the coding that they’d put in place during the session.

Like that was actually what was on his mind.

The young man looked up with wide eyes. Very deer-in-headlights. But it was so cute on him.

“Y-yeah! I actually needed to tell you something, so yes, I can definitely do that.”

Peter sounded a bit nervous which made Tony pause. Maybe his confession could wait a while. Maybe forever. Whatever was on Peter’s mind was infinitely more important to him.

“Okay, you first. I can follow up.” Tony tucked his hands into his pockets, leaning back against the table.

His cheeks burned. “No- no, you can go first. Don’t worry.”

The older man let out a breath. “Peter, you say what you need to. I can wait.”

Peter looked at him, face flushed. He hadn’t really meant to blurt out that he had something to say. He’d thought about it, sure. But he didn’t know-

His brain couldn’t keep up with his body and suddenly he was leaning up, pressing his lips to Tony’s.

The older man froze. It wasn’t what he’d expected at all. But then he relaxed into it, kissing back.

Who knew that they both had the same confession?

But it wasn’t supposed to be happening.

Tony pulled away once he finally got control of his senses again, raking a hand through his hair. “Pete, I’m supposed to be the adult here. I can’t be a good role model if I’m….”

When was he ever a good role model?

“Let me start again. I’m an adult. Kid, I’m old. Old enough to be your dad. And you’re…how old?”

“I turned eighteen in august,” he supplied helpfully.

At least it was legal.

“Eighteen. That’s a thirty year age difference.” Jesus, he was creepy. Falling for an eighteen year old. He couldn’t even buy alcohol for himself.

Peter blinked up at him. “So? I like you, Mr. Stark. I don’t care how old you are.”

Tony sighed softly. “You’re gonna be the death of me. And it’s Tony. If this is what’s happening, call me Tony.”

Even though it had been his plan to confess his feelings anyway, the guilt was still eating at him. He had fallen for a teenager who was just barely legal.

“What is happening, Mr.- Tony?”

Tony leaned in for another kiss, sighing softly. “What do you want to happen, kid?”

“Oh. Well, um, not to be blunt, but- I just- I mean- I really want you.”

He was cute. Innocent. But Tony could tell that what he meant was a bit less innocent.

“Are you sure? You realize this is a bad idea on...a lot of levels, right?”

Peter huffed softly, looking up at him with a stubborn expression. “I don’t care. We can be sneaky.”

Tony snorted. ‘Sneaky’ wasn’t really how he’d describe it, but he had to remind himself that his terms were a lot different than Peter’s. Different generations and all that.

He was horrible.

“Okay, kid. We can take this upstairs-” where there was no one to walk in on them. “-and talk about what exactly you’re thinking.”

“How about we don’t talk about it and we just...do?” Peter gave him a shy, devious smile.

“Uh huh. We’ll see.”

Tony grabbed his wrist gently, glancing in the hallway to make sure that no one was coming before he dragged him to the elevator.

Before he could get another word out, Peter’s lips were on his again. And this time there was more heat behind it.

He kissed back, eyes slipping shut just as the elevator doors did. Their lips pushed together insistently and he felt Peter’s tongue clumsily swiping over his lip.

He suppressed a laugh and parted his lips, allowing Peter to lead.

It was all so curious and clumsy that he wondered just how many times Peter had ever kissed anyone. If any. But that was a question for later.

The elevator dinged softly when they reached the penthouse and only then did they pull away from each other.

Tony led Peter out, instantly heading for his bedroom. Bad idea or no, he’d imagined such a scenario so many times. He didn’t want to waste any time.

“Tony?” Peter spoke up, eyes on the bed. “I know this is really straightforward, but I’m glad you, like, don’t hate me. I’ve thought about this...a lot.”

“You and me both,” the older man murmured. “Something I feel like we should cover before anything else...how far are you wanting to go?”

Peter chewed his lip. “Not to rush things, but I really really want to go all the way.”

“Well, not to rush things, but I want that too.” Tony gave him a small grin. “Do you have a preference?”

“Hmm?”

The confused look that he got made him feel guilty again. Just how much had Peter ever done with anyone else?

“Top or bottom, honey. Receiving or giving, pitching or catching, whatever you want to say. What do you want to do?”

Peter blushed, deciding to distract from the question at hand by pulling his shirt off.

It worked. Tony’s attention was instantly elsewhere, his eyes focused on his trim waist but hard muscle.

“Jesus, kid. That’s...wow.” If he wasn’t hard before, he was definitely getting there from seeing just what his innocent little intern was hiding under loose clothing.

“Like it?” The young man grinned to himself, one hand sensually sliding from the v of his hips up to his chest.

Perfect abs. Round, firm pecs. Jesus, Tony was entranced.

But he remembered what he’d asked. “Peter, top or bottom. What’s your preference?”

“I- I don’t...know.”

There it was.

Tony looked at him, tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip quickly. “You’re a virgin.” It wasn’t a question. He knew it for sure. It wasn’t surprising.

Peter got defensive. “I’ve done some stuff.”

“Uh huh. What ‘stuff’?”

He refused to look at Tony, his eyes on his hands as he played with the button on his jeans. “I’ve given oral. Guys and girls. And I’ve gotten, like, a couple handjobs and blowjobs.”

Tony closed his eyes. “I shouldn’t be your first. This- Peter, this is such a bad idea. You should be with someone your own age.”

Peter made an indignant sound, popping the button on his jeans and unzipping them out of protest. “I don’t want someone my own age. I want you.”

He said it with such finality.

Tony stepped closer to the bed, his hands cupping Peter’s face gently. “You promise me you won’t regret this?”

“There’s nothing that could make me regret this.” Peter unbuckled Tony’s belt, slowly pulling it out of the loops before dropping it to the floor.

Tony nodded slowly, not fighting when Peter pushed his slacks down. It was really happening.

“Holy shit-” Peter’s eyes were wide. His eyes were fixed on the way that Tony’s dick was straining at the front of his tight boxers. There was a nervous look in his eyes.

“Good or bad?” Tony teased a little.

“Good. Good, oh man.” Peter reached down and squeezed himself hard. “So big….”

That was nice to hear. “You think so? Do you think you could take it, sweetheart?”

Peter’s fingers ghosted over the length slowly, making it twitch in its confines. “I...I want to try.”

Tony nodded. “We’ll make it fit. Let’s finish getting you undressed.” He pulled his own shirt off and tossed it to the floor before getting onto the bed next to Peter.

He finished pulling the young man’s zipper down and helped him shimmy out of his jeans. Peter’s thighs were gorgeous, Tony was nearly drooling over them. But he couldn’t get distracted.

“May I?” He met the young man’s eyes, his fingers slipping into the waistband of his boxers.

Peter nodded, breathing hard as he laid back more.

Tony slowly pulled the piece of clothing down, biting his lip when he watched Peter’s cock drop against his hip once it was no longer covered. “So hard for me, honey. Look at that.”

The younger man blushed darker. “I’ve wanted this for a long time, Tony….”

“God, me too. Me too, kid.” He pushed his own boxers off, unable to keep himself from wrapping one hand around himself and stroking slowly.

Peter watched him with wide eyes. “Okay. I want you inside me. Now.” He kicked his boxers away, grinning a little.

Tony laughed softly at his eagerness. “We have to get you ready first. Hold on, let me show you….”

Turns out that Peter was incredibly responsive to everything and by the time he was open enough for further activities Tony had already worked him through an orgasm.

If Peter was that responsive to just his fingers, he couldn’t wait to get his cock in him. And the young man was still raring to go.

Tony grabbed a condom - habit, it wasn’t like they were preventing anything - but Peter stopped him.

“Why can't we just do it…without?” He asked shyly.

“I mean…we can. But you’ll have to clean up and that can be annoying.”

“I want…I want to feel you. Is that okay?” Peter hid his face in his hands, embarrassed by the admission.

Tony nodded, biting back a smile. “Yeah. That’s okay.” He set the foil square down on the nightstand before moving back to the young man.

He got between his legs, hands sliding over the strong thighs he was met with. “You’re absolutely gorgeous, kid. I hope you know that.”

Peter smiled up at him, spreading his legs further. “Thank you, Tony….” He leaned back more, laying his head down. “Now hurry up,” he joked.

Grabbing the lube and slicking himself up, the older man shook his head. “Impatient,” Tony chided, laughing softly. But he was already moving to position his cock at the man’s hole, the tip brushing over him.

They both moaned softly, laughing a little at how in sync they were.

“Fuck me, Tony…please?”

The older man nodded, slowly pushing past the tight muscle with a groan. Even though he’d prepped him, Peter was still tight. Just perfectly so.

Peter was tightly gripping the sheets, popping a couple threads even, with the first movements.

It seemed like his effort was in vain, but he really wanted to try to last.

Tony bottomed out, hips pressed flush against Peter’s ass.

The younger man was whining low in his throat at the feeling. His cock twitched between them. He knew that if he was touched at all before he could calm down a little, everything would be over way before he wanted it to be.

“Need me to stay still?” Tony asked. He could tell that Peter was struggling.

He nodded quickly, squeezing his eyes shut. “Yes. Fuck.”

“Okay, honey. Don’t worry, we can take this at whatever pace you want.”

Peter nodded, trying to get a hold on how he was feeling.

It took him a couple minutes, but eventually he signaled Tony that he was okay. And he could start moving.

So he started slow, but Tony started thrusting when he was given the okay.

Peter moaned, mouth falling open around his noises.

He tightened around Tony’s cock, squeezing down with every movement. Then he cried out when a particularly deep thrust hit something that made him see stars.

“What was that?” Peter gasped, hips rocking up wildly.

Tony groaned, laughing a little through it. “I’m going to, fuck, I’m going to assume that was your prostate. Feels good, doesn’t it? I should have showed that to you when I was fingering you.”

“Do it again!”

The older man snorted, aiming for the same spot again as he picked up his pace. He held one of Peter’s legs, lifting it just enough so that he could get at a deeper angle. “I can try.”

From the increasingly louder noises he received, he assumed he succeeded.

He was so lost in the feeling of Peter that he missed how close to the edge his partner was getting. All that registered was how incredible (borderline painful) it felt when the younger man squeezed around him like that.

Then Peter was crying out louder and thrusting up as he spilled onto his stomach.

Tony swore under his breath. “God, Peter.” He watched him, subconsciously speeding up as he chased his own high.

“Tony!” Peter moaned, eyes squeezed shut as he rode out his high. It was the best orgasm he’d ever experienced, alone or otherwise.

But he slowly opened his eyes, wanting to watch Tony cum.

“I’m close too,” the older man moaned, speeding up again.

Peter moaned louder, feeling himself being pushed up the bed with the quicker pace. “Cum, Tony, please, want you to fill me up.”

He wasn’t so sure about dirty talk, but it could only be but so bad because Tony went still moments later. Peter felt the cock inside him pulse briefly before there was a smooth warmth spreading.

The thing itself felt odd, but thinking about what was happening almost made him cum again.

Actually-

His hand flew to his own dick and he quickly jerked himself off before he was cumming for a third time. It wasn’t nearly as good as the other two, but it was still incredible. Especially thinking about how good Tony still felt inside of him.

He opened his eyes when he heard Tony chuckling. “What?”

“You’re insatiable. And I’m amazed that you can just go again that fast.” The older man closed his eyes again, catching his breath.

He was almost in shock that it had actually happened. He had sex with Peter. After thinking about it for months, dreaming about it, it happened.

He slowly pulled out, laying next to the young man. He knew they were both messes, covered in sweat and cum and lube, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was to hold Peter close before they had to go back to real life.

Tony gently wrapped his arms around him, just gathering him close while he pressed a kiss to the man’s temple.

He found out quickly that Peter’s dazed, relaxed post-sex state would only last for so long.

It was only minutes before the man was talking, whispering about anything and everything. And Tony happily listened.

He hummed softly, holding the younger man close to his chest. One hand gently carded through Peter’s soft curls as they talked quietly.

“My mom met you one time,” Peter murmured. “Before I was born. But she would never tell me about it. Just told me that it happened.”

Tony snorted softly. “Yeah, well, about when would that have been? I had a reputation for a reason.” But the confession started pulling at a memory. It couldn’t quite come to light, though.

“Ew.” The young man grinned at him. “But I guess you’re right. I don’t know, she was kinda weird about a lot of stuff. Not just that.”

“What do you mean?”

Peter sighed softly and Tony frowned. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked. But Peter started answering anyway.

“I don’t know who my actual dad is. She never told me. I vaguely remember her telling me that Richard was the only dad I needed, but nothing else.”

“You would have been so young,” Tony whispered. “Maybe she just figured it could be a conversation for another time.”

“But she wouldn’t tell anyone else. My aunt and uncle knew that Richard wasn’t actually my dad, but they were never told who was. And I guess it just…died with her.”

The older man nodded. “You could always do a paternity test, right?” Why was guilt pooling in his stomach?

Peter shrugged. “That’s assuming that my dad has done one too that we could match. And sometimes….” He trailed off.

“Sometimes what?” Tony kissed him gently, trying to soothe him.

“Sometimes I’m not sure that I want to know,” he confessed.

It made sense. But something was still trying to pull at Tony’s memory. Forming an idea slowly.

Although he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know the answers.

But he couldn’t just leave a question unasked. No matter how dark the potential answer.

“Peter…when did you say that your mom met me?”

The young man snuggled into him more, shaking his head. “I didn’t. I think it was…the year before I was born or so. Why? Do you remember?”

Tony tried to mentally do the numbers. He’d spent most of that year in a fog, but that had been the theme of that era in his life. But maybe…

“Are you okay?”

The older man closed his eyes, frowning as he tried to remember.

Parker. Had he been with a Parker? He couldn’t remember the occasion at all.

Maybe that was for the best.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m okay, was just trying to see if I remembered her. I’m sorry.”

Peter leaned up to kiss him gently, shaking his head. “Don’t be sorry. It’s not a big deal, really. Sometimes I just wonder about that stuff.”

Tony tried to assure himself that it wasn’t a big deal.

Maybe it was best to not have all the answers.

He had what he wanted. That was all that mattered.

[ofmargos]

chicago’s very own margo rosas has been spotted on madison avenue driving a mercedes-AMG G65 , welcome ! your resemblance to camila mendes is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your twenty-third birthday bash  . your chance of surviving new york is uncertain because you’re distrusting , but being passionate might help you . i think being a scorpio explains that . 3 things that would paint  a  better picture of you would be lipstick stained kisses on mirrors , doing vocal warm-ups five minutes before top of show , popping bottles of bubbly to celebrate buying a new pair of shoes . ( my biological dad paid off my mom to keep my relation to him a secret ) & ( cis-female + she / her  ) +  (  lia , 20 , she / her , cst )

whAT is up my dudes ! i’m lia & i lowkey missed wealthy & writing for my bbygirl margo so i’m rlly excited to be here !!!! if you know her from before i’m sorry lmao i’ve tweaked her background a bit but everything else is p much the same ig ?? she’s fun , she’s a dumbitch , & she’s here to make things harder than they need to be probs . but if you wanna know more , i wrote a novel below so plz enjoy that . if you wanna plot then LIKE THIS & i’ll slide in your im’s.or if you prefer discord hmu @  𝐛𝐛𝐧𝐨$𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥#1904. i look forward to writing with y’all ! <3

S T A T S ↴

-- * FULL NAME : margaret lucia rosas -- NICKNAME(S) : margo ( preferred name , started introducing herself to people as “margo” back in like the 7th or 8th grade ??? who’s margaret ? we don’t know her ) , mar , mars -- * AGE : twenty-three -- * D.O.B : october 31 -- * ZODIAC : scorpio -- * GENDER : cis-female --* ORIENTATION : heterosexual heteroromantic -- * HEIGHT : 5′2″ -- * NATIONALITY : american -- * BIRTHPLACE : chicago , illinois -- * OCCUPATION : broadway performer -- * TRAITS : passionate , creative , dramatic , distrusting , outgoing , ambitious , fun-loving , loyal , daring , sarcastic , stubborn , overconfident , impulsive , hard-working , petty , secretive lowkey

B I O G R A P H Y ↴

( TW : BRIEF MENTIONS OF ABORTION, ALCOHOLISM, AND DRUG USE )

   first things first , i’m just going to say it-- margo was an accident . and her story begins with her mother , stassia , who was born and raised on the wrong side of the tracks in chicago , illinois . although she was born into poverty , she had big aspirations for herself and wanted a better lifestyle . her ambition and work ethic were unmatched , and that’s how she managed to get into columbia university ( thank you scholariship $$ ). stassia was in the middle of struggling through her college years when she met her future baby daddy . he was older , going through grad school , and the sole heir to a billion-dollar company . the sparks between them flew instantly despite their differences and they messed around for the better part of a year before the unexpected happened . stassia found herself taking a pregnancy test in the bathroom in between finals ( #justcollegethings , amirite ) and swore she was going to pass out when she noticed the double lines . and let’s just say that her baby daddy did NOT take the news well . a lot of horrible things were said that day . too many hurt feelings for the relationship ( that apparently was never that serious to homeboy ) to carry on . ( TRIGGER WARNING !!! ) so he cut all ties with stassia-- but not before giving her a crazy proposition : get an abortion and never talk to him again OR keep the baby but tell absolutely no one it’s his and never talk to him again . they both seemed like shitty options to stassia , who was actually tragically in love w him , but when he even offered to PAY HER a hefty sum ( i’m talking millions of dollars ) to keep the secret .. well-- it seemed like a blessing in disguise . she’d finally have the funds to live the life she always wanted . even if there was now a baby she didn’t plan for in the mix . so she took the hush money , had the baby in secret , and ran off to completely reinvented herself . ( TRIGGER WARNING END )

    although margo’s mother was born into poverty , margo certainly was not . by the time she was born , margo’s mom was ramping up to graduate college and join the high society in the heart of chicago . she got a good job , a lavish place to live , and never told margo about her past . margo grew up completely disconnected from her mother’s side of the family and had no idea of the lies she was being fed over the years . early on in margo’s childhood , her mother met a man through work who she would later go on to marry . that man is the only dad that margo has ever known . he and his daughter were a welcomed addition to their little family , making margo’s home life feel complete in some way . she was provided a good life with the dual income adding to the millions her mother kept . the life her mother always wished she had growing up . in a way , everything she did was for margo . she never wanted her babygirl to struggle like she had to .

   as she got older , margo went to all the best schools but only made average grades . she was never too concerned with academics and instead focused on her poppin’ social life and extracurriculars . during her middle school days , she developed an affinity for the performing arts . when everyone had to pick an elective , margo found herself in the theatre class and absolutely loving it . and she was good too . she had excellent stage presence and took every role she got in school productions in stride -- literally the best tree number 3 you’ve ever seen in your life . as she moved on to high school , she rose in the ranks of the theatre department until she was pretty much landing every single lead by the time she was an upperclassmen . acting was her passion , and she figured why not turn being dramatic and talking a lot ( her two most notable personality traits ) into a career . to really hone the craft , she trained herself to be a triple threat : actor , singer , and dancer ( sutton foster , eat your heart out ) . honestly truly had rachel berry in early seasons of glee vibes-- she knew she was the best around and wouldn’t stand to let anyone take the spotlight from her . her peers hated to love her talents because she acted like such a bitch to them offstage / out of character . not that margo really cared for what others thought of her anyway . self absorbed as ever , she told herself she didn’t need friends and generally pushed away any one that dared try to get close to her-- save for her sister . though somehow , someway she managed to get sucked into a small group of friends that would change her for the better ( s/o to ky and gio , sorry they had to put up w bitchy hs margo , rip )

   after graduating somewhere in the middle of her class , margo followed in her mother’s footsteps and went to columbia university . she was really only able to get in because she was a legacy and her parents made a considerable donation to the school , but we don’t talk about it . and to say that margo’s college years were transformative feels like an understatement . on one hand , they were some of the best years of her life : she got a true taste of independence , met some of her best friends ( s/o oliver and claudia ), and felt fulfilled to be in the city she had romanticized for so long-- new york baby ! but it was also a very low point for her . back in her high school years , she felt like a very big fish in a teeny tiny pond . she was hot shit , the top dog in her department , and all her hard work and effort to remain leading lady had paid off . however , at columbia she was just one in hundreds of talented people . some with more or less talent , or more or less connections , but they deserved a shot at fame just as much as she did . margo felt like she was fighting for her chance in the spotlight every single day and it was both parts exhausting and humbling for her . she had a amy march mentality “i want to be great, or nothing” and considered throwing in the towel . temporarily thrown off by the pressure to be successful , she took a small tumble from grace . ( TRIGGER WARNING !!! ) turning towards alcohol was her coping mechanism of choice . losing herself in the party scene and surrounding herself with other people that prioritized getting drunk or high over going to class and getting good grades had an obvious effect on her academic performance . ( END TRIGGER WARNING ) she almost lost her place in the BFA Theatre Program during her junior year due being on academic probation . it took a little bit of intervention on her close friends and family part to get margo clean and pull herself together . but by her senior year , she got back on track to graduate on time and participated in various shows at local theaters to build her resume . after almost losing everything she had ever worked for , a fire was lit under margo that had her determined to push herself hard than ever before and make a name for herself in the theatre world . 

   after she graduated from columbia she moved to new york permanently so that she could fully submerge herself in her work . not long after graduating , she was lucky enough to book several gigs including her big breakout role as lydia in beetlejuice the musical ! it really skyrocketed her into broadway stardom which is cool . a life long dream that once seemed unobtainable was suddenly a reality and she couldn’t have been more elated . with her sudden ( and well deserved ) success , she got a lot of media attention . soon she was getting verified on twitter , instagram , gaining a whole bunch of followers , and getting asked to be on talkshows and stuff to promote the show . honestly , truly a dream ! but her new-found fame gained the attention of another group of people .. her mom’s long lost family . one of her aunt’s ( that she previously didn’t know existed ) reached out to her through social media . and at first , margo honestly couldn’t believe that she had family that her mom never told her about . but after some thought it sort of made sense . in hindsight , her mom had always been evasive whenever margo asked about the other’s childhood or her side of the family .

   when margo told her mom about her aunt reaching out and how she wanted to meet her , her mom shut it down quick . stassia told her there were a lot of reasons that she didn’t talk to that side of the family and that was that-- PERIODT . but margo was #rebellious and went to meet with her aunt anyway . and that’s how she found out about her brazilian roots and her big ol’ loving and supportive extended family . that whole experience made margo reconsider what other things her mom was keeping from her . and boy oh boy was that a rabbit hole she shouldn’t have gone down . when margo started to demand her mother tell her the truth , it caused their relationship to grow tense . stassia eventually cracked and told her about her bio-dad and all the things she went through for margo . with the truth finally being exposed to her , margo started seeing things in a new light . like her whole life is kinda a lie and why didn’t her father want her ? where was he ? does he know who she is ? why did he never try to contact her ? has she ever walked past him in the streets and never knew ? it was all too much for her to think about so she just kinda ... shut it all out . she acted like nothing was different , even if her “ what if ” thoughts keep her up most nights . 

   if you just ignore the abandonment issues , insecurities , and her inability to handle emotions and focus solely on her success in material terms : margo’s doing really well ! she’s been living in new york full time for two (2) years now . she’s one of broadway’s most popular rising stars . having completed her run as the original lydia deetz on broadway , she’s moved on to take on the mantel of janis in mean girls on broadway . she’s learning , growing , and thriving . just trying to have a good time all the time with her friends and live the dream , baby !

P E R S O N A L I T Y  &  F U N  F A C T S ↴

margo is super fun-loving and down to clown 

will try anything once and it’s gotten her in trouble more times than she can count

also cannot stand to be bored , so she’s always looking for the next big adventure 

although she can be really ridiculous sometimes , she’s very serious when it comes to her work . she’s super hard-working and doesn’t let anything or anyone stand in the way of achieving her dreams : even herself

margo’s a very sociable girl and will talk to anyone and everyone . she’s the type that will hold a conversation for 2hrs with a stranger at a party and then when you ask her “who was that” she’s like “i don’t remember their name but i do know their entire life story so that’s cool”

has a way of making people feel like they know her really well when really she’s only letting them see 1/8th of her

keeps her personal life private normally unless you’re super good friends w her

i wouldn’t recommend pissing her off , bc she is petty as a mf and will lit rally never forget how one’s wronged her . this causes her to start fights sometimes . she’ll just bring up old shit out of no where and , since she’s nosy af , she makes everything her business and confronts people on their bs

she’s a whole liar bc she claims she’s a “retired party girl” but really party girl margo has never stopped , will never stop , can never be stopped

studied theatre in college but minored in mass communications just in case she needed a backup job

is v bad at being an adult !!!! like ... can’t cook , often forgets about her responsibilities until the last minute or needs to be reminded like 20 times , stills calls her parents to be like “how do u use a washing machine plz help” , y’know the drill . yet somehow she manages to act as a mom friend to the people that are closest to her ??? v much a “do as i say not as i do” type of hypocrite lol

she has a tiktok and posts dumb shit on there all the time w her friends and like vlogs her backstage experiences in the theater and does the stupid dances and all that stuff hehe

is learning portuguese after meeting the brazilian side of her family

self-proclaimed dancing queen and it’s not because she learned ballet , jazz , and tap whole dabbling in other styles but because when she’s drunk you will in fact catch her dancing on tables !!!!!

i cannot stress enough how bad she is at dealing with her own feelings . like ... instead of dealing with them head on she just ... shuts down . runs away . will ghost on someone she really likes just bc she’d rather leave first than get left and i hate her for it

have i mentioned how big her ego is ???? pHEW . she rides a v fine line between self confident and OVER confident . but tbh it’s just a cover up for how much she rlly hates herself , there i said it

loyalty is EVERYTHING to margo . if you got her back , she’s got your back . but if you screw her over or mess with anyone she loves then she’ll likely try to make your life a living hell IM SORRY

undiagnosed insomniac . nights she spends alone in her own bed are the hardest for her because it’s when all the bad scary thoughts creep up on her and no matter how much she wants to shut them out and just close her eyes and fall to sleep , she can’t . so she’ll often roam the city looking for a distraction or hit up her friends and bother them for some spare company

she’s doesn’t like to be alone ( not like in a romantic relationship sense -- she actually likes being single bc she’s afraid of letting ppl get close enough to hurt her ). hence why she’s always had a roommate even after she moved out of her parent’s house . if she’s not attached to her roommate / best friend kylie’s hip then she’s definitely hitting up her sister or her other friends to see if they want to hang out , even if hanging out is laying around doing nothing or running errands together . margo wants to tag along just for the company

notoriously known for coming up with terrible ideas or following through with other people’s terrible ideas without question bc #YOLO

she’s her pr agents worse nightmare simply bc she has no filter and will not change herself or what she posts just bc she has a big audience ( follow margo on social media and you’re gonna see the good , the bad , and the ugly she does not give a FUCK )

always has good intentions ! her execution / way of showing those intentions is just poor !

she is a rich girl that could not survive not being rich and doesn’t even realize how spoiled she is . spends money like it’s nothing

a mob boss ( this is a joke but also kinda not a joke )

WANTED CONNECTION PAGES HERE 

[iseleylaura]

3, 7, and 13 (if you’re okay with it) from the ask game?

you’ve chosen two of my favourite numbers 👀👀 (not for the ask game specifically, just numbers in general lol)

let’s see — I’ll take my time answering these since I have nothing better to do atm!

3🌼Are there any fictional characters you relate to/identify with?

Why of course; this is primarily a fanart blog after all ;)

Marinette Dupain-Cheng (Miraculous Ladybug): Marinette gets SUPER socially awkward, especially around people she finds attractive or is crushing on. If I see an attractive person in public, it’s all over. I guarantee I will make the interaction the most awkward thing. ALSO she is a seamstress! I love sewing, especially cosplay costumes

Sherlock Holmes (BBC Sherlock): Poor bean is just socially and emotionally repressed to the point where he thinks everyone just hates him so he acts aloof as a façade of self-confidence (uhh haha me??). This is how I’ve been like my whole life irl (Internet-me is v different from actual-me). He’s not the best with empathy, and he uses logical reasoning 99% of the time — which is what I innately do too. Both he and I have had to learn how to be compassionate through the very few people we’ve trusted enough to get close. Selfish and unyielding; can’t be bothered to pretend to be interested in something. HATES small talk. Will be rude if necessary. Needy and clingy af from those they want attention from. We also have a hard time recognizing social cues and get very absorbed in our work when we’re passionate about something. Deep down, we’re both just touch-starved biology nerds.

Sophie Hatter (Howl’s Moving Castle): she sees herself as plain/vanilla, which is something that I��ve been told I am irl multiple times and subsequently, believe too. Basically I’m waiting for my Howl to show up and be like ‘nah bby ily.’ She also gets petty aggressive when things aren’t clean and is definitely a ‘if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself’ kind of person, which — same. She doesn’t suffer fools lightly, and neither do I. BUT she secretly loves to dote on the people she loves, even if they are high maintenance

707 aka Luciel aka Seven aka Saeyoung Choi (Mystic Messenger): Is literally just vibing and memeing all day bro. He has an eccentric sense of humor, which isn’t quite ‘lol rawr xD’ but LIKE it’s the contemporary version of it that only the people of tumblr.com can truly comprehend. He is definitely a geek/weeb and introverted af, but can be loud and outgoing when he wants to be (me me me me). Doesn’t give a FUCK about gender — let’s horde all the styles, fem today, masc tomorrow. I wish he were real, because we’d get along so well. Honestly — he’s my fictional soulmate, and I can’t complain about it, because at least he exists in one form, real or not. :’))

Haruhi Fujioka (Ouran High School Host Club): Is perpetually unimpressed by the caveats of corny rich people. Is easily won over by the promise of good food. Literally so self conscious of her own behaviour in situations that she cannot tell if someone is flirting with her or being genuinely pleasant. Like Sophie, she doesn’t suffer fools lightly — which again, I do not either lmfao. EASILY EMBARRASSED. BOTH LIVING IN A PERPETUAL STATE OF MORTIFICATION. We’re both also academically inclined/rational thinkers, though Haruhi is probably most certainly going to be more financially successful as a lawyer than I’ll ever be making my crafts :))))

Merlin (BBC Merlin): Moody introvert, good with hands, falls in love with the sunshine extrovert type (oh, me?). Ends up doing the entire group project, is never rewarded individually for it. Feels constantly overwhelmed with the burden of existing and feels like no one will ever truly understand or know their true motives/feelings. Has a lot of secrets/thoughts they’d never voice aloud for fear of rejection (or being #cancelled). Feels really lonely a lot of the time, but has friends that enjoy his company. LOVES animals; considers animals easier to get along with than humans — hard agree. Also, dragons — aspec represent.

7🌼Describe your aesthetic in emojis.

✨🌿👒🐇🦔🍄🌞🍓♥️

13🌼What is your home situation like?

It’s stable, and has always been relatively. I know I am very privileged in that way, especially with my parents always having been together. I have siblings. I live in a house. I have a degree. I have resources that allow me to pursue my hobbies. We’ve always been middle class people.

However, the recession from 2008 ish basically signaled the downfall of the industry that both my parents worked for. Since then, my mom has only worked on yearly basis, and it’s never guaranteed if she’ll be hired again after each year. My dad, after a decade long period of laying off people, is somehow one of the surviving staff members at his work, and will likely finally get laid off by the end of the year bc of the pandemic (and the inevitable death of the industry, as mentioned above).

For me personally, I’ve been unimployed since last August. Mainly, this is bc I was in college until last December when I graduated. Since the new year, I’ve literally just been at home doing personal projects since I can’t get a job since I graduated literally when the pandemic started.

Also, I realized that I don’t want a job related to what I majored in (lmfao so cliche). I honestly feel very lost as to how to progress with my life because while I have specific things I want to do and become and accomplish, I feel like the odds of them ever happening is very slim. I know in my heart that I need to do something creatively fulfilling, but it’s really hard to make any sort of living with your art or Etsy or YouTube channel or whatever.

So basically I’ve declared 2020 a dud year; and I’m desperately hoping that I can find a job/career/sense of purpose in 2021 :’))))

Sorry for the long response, but I enjoyed thinking these things through for all of the internet to see yay.

thank you for your asks!💞

[parniarazi]

realignment + growth

I haven’t wrote here or in general much lately, as school and worked have picked up and kept me busy, even with doing it all from home! Pandemic aside, the world is moving quickly and it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Especially when big moments happen (like RBG passing), it can feel overwhelming and like nothing we can do matters. What helps me when I feel in over my head is just purging it all with a deep self-reflection that helps anchor me down to what I’m doing towards on a daily basis and how that’s working for me in the big picture. Going back through this blog, I briefly looked over what I wrote at the turn of the year, as 2020 was beginning. Even though things have felt very different and stagnant this year, I realized I’ve actually grown so much and come so far even in this short time!

A year ago right now, I was going through one of the most difficult times of my life, as major shifts were happening in all areas of my life. I had breezed through most of my undergrad, always feeling like school came rather easily to me and academia was an area I wanted to pursue because of this. I didn’t know what to do after graduation, reconciling between wanting to find a “good paying” job with my degree/interests, and wanting to do something that aligns with what I’m passionate about and can bring me a deeper sense of fulfillment. Since I was doing well in school and professors encouraged me when I told them I wanted to go to grad school‚ I figured pursing my PhD and becoming a professor was the way to go. I idolized my professors and loved my campus, so it wasn’t hard to envision myself doing this...at least until I actually started my grad program in political science. Last fall, I was failing and withdrew from a class for the first time, was concerned about having to pay back my scholarship for the semester, and had no idea what I would do if I left my program. I was desperately searching for a way out because I knew I could not thrive (or even survive) in the environment of my grad department— it was revealing some ugly realities and turned out be the opposite of everything I wanted in a career!

Fortunately, being on campus, I was able to talk to other people and departments and eventually found my home in the Communications grad program. I had a cross-listed class, and the Comm students were friendly and inviting, so I began talking to them and found out more about their program. They still seemed to have a soul unlike my own peers— so that was already a good sign! I definitely wanted to keep my soul and work in a field that would respect and pay me for my work. Keep in mind, while all this school/career crisis of wondering what I should do with my life was happening, it was also my first few months being moved out my parents house and living with my boyfriend for the first time. I was missing my family constantly, and adjusting to my new home/life while struggling with horrible anxiety that weighed me down like bricks on my chest. 

It got to be too much sometimes— especially because on top of that, my income was tied to my school because I had just started as a graduate assistant in an office on campus. This was also my first real “job,” outside of what I considered to be my “fun college job” teaching swim lessons. Not only did school suck at this time for me, but I also hated this job and the people in my office. It worsened my anxiety, and I ended up going to the school clinic and getting a formal diagnosis (and medication) for anxiety for the first time in my life, even though I’ve dealt with it for as long as I can remember. This was a big step and turning point, because I refused to compromise my mental health and wellbeing for anything. A career that comes at such a cost is not for me— having balance and self-care are far too important to me. 

While all of this was happening, I kept pushing my political science advisors to help me and connected with the Communications department about getting into their program instead. I had to advocate for myself harder than ever and push other people to help me, but in the end it was worth it! I finished the semester with the 2 courses I kept, managed to keep getting paid even though my position required full-time enrollment, and I ended up getting accepted into the Comm program by transferring instead of having to wait until the next fall to reapply. With my anxiety, and just being a more a shy/introverted person who was so scared I’d hardly ever speak up in class, I had to find my voice, create my own boundaries, and talk to adults I felt really uncomfortable talking to at first. Big lesson: you have to advocate and speak up for yourself until people see and hear you! It is always worth it, regardless of if you get what you want or not.

I started off the spring in my new program and settled in so much better from the start! I also kept my campus job I hated, but was searching desperately for internships and opportunities to get some actual Comm experience under my belt, as I was entering a new field I had zero experience in. I applied for everything I could and I got a little side gig working as a part-time student organizer for an intersectional feminist non-profit based out of Austin. I was super stoked to just get to do something I’m passionate about and get paid for it, even it was small. Little did I know, this would lead me to big things! Even with the pandemic hitting in the spring, I managed to finish my courses with A’s, work from home with my campus job (no more depressing office vibes!), and apply for dozens of internships. I ended up getting two remote internships over the summer that paid me— one with the same non-profit I was working with as a Digital Intern and another similar position with a different non-profit. I was finally gaining some of the experience and skills I really needed to start a career in this field. Even though the non-profit route was not what I had in mind, I loved my internships and the teams I worked with, and it was so rewarding. 

It wasn’t easy working long hours from my laptop on my dining table, but it did have its own perks. No bras or dress pants or waking up early to get ready and drive in traffic— it’s a hell yes from your fave introvert! Another pandemic-inspired moment was finally getting a dog! Even through this seems irrelevant it actually was really in perfect alignment with what I wanted and timing. I’ve wanted a dog for as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved animals and with my anxiety it was something I hoped would help at least a little bit. My parents never wanted us to have a dog and I grew up with them telling me it was a huge responsibility so even after I moved out I hesitated and wanted to give myself time to adjust and make money before taking on that responsibility. This summer, I started pushing my boyfriend to look into fostering programs to help me adjust to having a dog at home, and we did but had no luck. One day, I saw a friend posting about a lost dog they found who needed a home. She was cute and I wanted to go see her just to scope it out, and of course the universe brought the most perfect little dog into my life at the most perfect time!

I was just finishing up my internship and had a few weeks of down time before the semester started, so it was the perfect time to adjust to having my new dog, Sage, around. Since then, we’ve bonded so much and I love just having another little creature around the house! She really does bring warmth and light into my life. She pushes me to get outside more even when I feel shitty, she makes me have a more consistent routine, and just helps alleviate my stress while connecting me with my inner child and inner caretaker at the same time. During the latter half of this quarantine, my boyfriend and I also had our share of struggles and fights we had to work through. Like anything worth having, it took effort to work through some rough patches, but at the end of the day I believe in the power of love and its ability to persevere and heal, even in the most difficult times. Not to mention, having our little Sage around even helped us through it! This taught me to trust that the right things will happen in the right timing, and the right people will make an effort to stick it out with you. 

I was incredible lucky and blessed that several things I was manifesting and working hard towards happened in perfect alignment. First, I got a scholarship from my grad school that allowed me go back full-time and only have to pay half of my tuition (big plus since I was paying this myself). Secondly, one of the ladies I had worked with during my Digital internship found another position and was leaving the non-profit I had worked with, and she recommended me for a part-time version of her position. They extended me this offer shortly before my semester started for school. I planned to keep my campus job, since it was staying remote too, and I wanted to stack up some savings after the COVID-life lessons I’d been learning. I knew it was going to be a challenge to maintain the personal/self-care balance I need in life with my now full-time class load and 2 part-time jobs. However, I felt so fortunate to have these opportunities while so many people across the country are struggling to keep normalcy going or even stay afloat during this time. Especially not being able to travel, go out much, or do other things, I figured what better time than now to just buckle down to work hard and make major moves towards what I want. 

The universe is blessing me with this alignment and opportunity right now— it’s giving me everything I worked for in this past year. Especially with my new job at the non-profit, the team is incredibly kind but also puts serious support behind their staff. They’re paying me pretty well, but also want to transition me to a full-time staff member at their Austin office after I graduate! They’re mentoring me and teaching me so much, plus I’m getting to know a network of professionals who work in organizing, advocacy, and other important work that directly helps people! Like I literally could not have asked for anything better and more me! Life lesson: It’s worth struggling for a bit and diving into the unknown as long as you feel like it’s the right thing to do for you. 

My parents had wanted me to stay in the PhD program. I knew in my gut and heart that it wasn’t going to work for me though, so I split the second I could. I trusted myself, advocated for myself, and worked through the scary uncertainties about if I would ever find a job I liked and that paid me well. I knew changing career paths would give me a chance to open myself up to new things that align better with who I am and what I desire in life and work. Here I am a year later, and I wouldn’t have gotten any of these amazing opportunities if I hadn’t trusted myself and worked hard to forge my path. Although this year turned out to be nothing like what any of us had planned, I’m so privileged and lucky that it turned out to be a year of incredible milestones and growth for me nonetheless! 

Today, with this new moon energy and the powerful seasonal shift of fall on the verge of unfolding, I felt the need to make these reflections as a reminder to myself that hard work pays off. Doing what’s right pays off. Doing work that matters really fucking pays off. Fall is a special season that allows us to harvest the seeds we’ve sown all year. It’s cheesy, but I’m a sucker for being in tune with nature and the seasons, trusting each season will bring its own negatives and positives that foster growth or death in the right places, restoring a greater balance in the ways that we need. 

With each season, I am growing into a stronger, wiser, more beautiful version of myself. I am deeply grateful for everything, both the good and bad in my life, because every detail is a puzzle piece that allows for the big picture of my path and place in the world to unfold. I’ve also been fostering patience and maturity, as I navigate this pandemic world and knowing (unlike many other people my age) that as much as I miss the “normal world” too, it’s not worth risking my own health or the health of anyone else to have “fun.” I can reinvent the ways in which I bring joy and fun into my life, while staying safe and trusting that those moments and activities will make their way back in my life eventually as things get better. It’s all temporary. 

I am unshakable in my roots and focused on what is important. My vibe is so strong and beautiful, it’s no surprise that I’m not for everyone! Of course, there are areas like friendships and my social life that I’ve put on the back burner for now, but I know as I’m working on myself and just being authentic in putting myself out there, the right people will make their way into my life at the right time! Growing up is strange anytime but especially in this moment, and in some ways I’ve grown apart from who I thought I was, but I also feel more connected to myself than ever. I am healing each day with the light and love in my life— I don’t need anyone’s approval and have nothing to prove to anyone but myself! 

My value and my place in the world doesn’t require anyone’s approval and is not tied to down to any single thing. It comes through in the love I give and receive, it comes through in the way my soul feels when I wake up, it comes through in the literal beauty I get to experience in the world. I went through a negative slump in the late summer and my anxiety was majorly triggered these past several weeks as I re-adjusted to full-time school and my work. This new moon has brought great clarity, a sense of deeper renewal, and turning a new leaf as I return home to myself. To my positive outlook and perseverance that has brought me to this point. Life is nothing without the little moments of joy and love— again, just let me corny and say that aligning back to being present and enjoying those little things is really all that matters. 

My past self would be so proud of me and where I am today. I worked for and earned every beautiful moment that comes my way, and I intend on giving that back to others. Every ray of light that enters me, every penny of abundance I receive, I intend on reflecting right back, because nothing is meant to just be absorbed. It’s nothing unless it’s reflected back into the world in meaningful ways, whether those are tangible or not. I trust that I am making my mark by simply being me and being that reflection. This is how history changes course, and patterns are broken with new ones created. I’ll end with a few manifestations and mantras for this fall-winter season we’re entering!

M A N I F E S T A T I O N S

☽ The people will win, because our power truly is greater than that of those in power. We all deserve better, and so many people are putting in tireless work to make that better world a reality. Thing may not be perfect, now or ever, but making progress and supporting those who need it the most is always a win and it is coming our way because there is a shift happening that the world will have to keep up with.

☽ I will reconnect with my more creative side, allowing my potential to shine through even more. Whether it’s for work or for my own hobbies, I will continue finding outlets for myself to create things that feel authentic and important to who I am, but to also fill in gaps where I feel like others need it. 

☽ I will stay rooted and grounded in my spiritual practices, even when they’re the easiest things to give up when life gets busy, that just means they’re even more necessary to stay connected with! I will make time for journaling, playing, meditating, yoga, cooking, and other activities that bring me in tune with my natural state as a human. 

☽ I will connect and find community. Through being my most authentic self and working through my scars, my negative patterns, and my own blocks, I will find a sense of community with others and find people on my same wavelength who I can connect with. No expectations in mind or idealized version of friendship in mind, just pure desire to connect with others and mutually contribute to each others’ lives in positive ways

☽ Love will persevere and heal as its meant to, in both my relationship and family. Everything will be okay and work out just fine, if not better, than I expect. Pavel and I will be okay and keep growing together, and my family will be okay in staying healthy and strong through this time as something better arises for my dad’s work situation. 

M A N T R A S

☽ I am focused on what matters right now.

☽ I am strong, powerful, and capable of doing what I set my mind to. 

☽ I have a kind and beautiful energy that anyone would be lucky to have.

☽ I can find presence and joy in the little moments.

☽ I can find patience and trust that everything will happen as its meant to. 

[clevercatchphrase]

2019 year in review

So… The 2010’s are almost over. Huh. What a decade it’s been. Hard to comprehend how much has changed in 10 years. I can barely believe that I was in high school at the beginning of this decade, and now I’m a college graduate with 2 degrees who’s been working at the same job for the last 3 years. But trying to summarize the past 10 years in a single post is a good way to give myself an existential crisis, so let’s not do that! Instead, let’s just focus on 2019 because there has been more than enough shit that’s happened to me in this year to talk about.

PART 1 OF 2: 2019 AND 2020 GOALS AND RESOLUTIONS

Huh, looking back through my archives, I apparently didn’t make a tumblr post about my goals this year. I definitely had some, though. Lemme list ‘em off real quick, and then we’ll go through them point by point.

1)      Pay off all my student loans 2)      Finish some song comics 3)      Make art for my Redbubble account 4)      Finish the first rough draft/script of a game I wanted to make 5)      Practice ASL 6)      Sew some stuffed animals 7)      Finish some fan fictions 8)      Work on Ghost Switch 9)      AMVs 10)   Do some original writing 11)   Make illustrations for my fan fictions

Okay, first off, the student loans. I was actually SO CLOSE to successfully completing this one bUT THEN MY CAR HAD TO BE A WHINEY PISS BABY AND HAVE ITS ALTERNATOR DIE ON ME WHILE I WAS ON THE HIGHWAY AND THEN A BLOW OUT THREE WEEKS LATER.

GOD, if I had to summarize this year in two words, for me it would be “Car troubles”. I swear I spent more on auto repair in the first third of this year than I ever have just freakin’ OWNING a car. All four of my tires had to be replaced, my alternator failed and my car literally just SHUT OFF while I was driving, and I was barely able to coast into a gas station. Both my front breaks and rear breaks were worn down the metal and I only learned this when my car was barely able to stop after I had to slam the petal down full force!  I went in for an oil change, and they found some problems and then I didn’t get my car back for three days! I don’t even like owning a car! I hate driving! I hate my country’s refusal to provide universal, free public transportation! I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS!

Oh-kay… number 2. Finish some song comics. I didn’t finish any. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t work on them. I have made tiny progress, but that’s certainly better than no progress. One of these song comics I hope to be realizes is going to be a collab with one of my friends. It’ll be a long-time coming as it’s pretty low priority for the both of us, but if anyone else out there was disappointed with KH3’s ending, we’re gonna have ya’ covered… With SONG!

3. Make some redbubble art. I actually did this one! Not in the way I expected, but I added (technically) 3 new designs to my redbubble in the middle of the year. If you like butterflies and dragons, I got some product for you~!

Number 4, finish a script for a game I want to make. I… thought about this. I thought about this a lot, but I never put pen to paper, so… oops. It almost happened! I debated making this my main writing project for NaNoWriMo this year, but ended up having more inspiration for another story. Maybe next year? (god, I hope not. I don’t want to wait a full year just to write something)

Number 5, practice ASL. I just straight up didn’t do this and I only have myself to blame. Still keepin’ up that Danish Duolingo streak, though. 4 years going strong and not a day missed yet.

Number 6, sew some stuffed animals. Again, another one I just straight up didn’t do, but I have an excuse of trying to save money while my car crashed and burned in every other sense except literal this year. Hopefully 2020 will be different. I’ll definitely be able to pay off this last loan within the first half of 2020, and then I can start saving for whatever I want to buy.

Finish some fan fictions was number 7, and I did this! Well, I only finished, 1, but it was a story I’ve been working on for over 3 years, and it came out to over 200 THOUSAND words long, which is the longest thing I’ve ever written, and I’m quite proud of myself. Now that the big story is out of the way, and I’ve gotten into a good rhythm of working on Ghost Switch, maybe I can squeeze in some short writing sessions more frequently. (either that, or just wait for my car to break down again and then go on a writing spree in a pepboys. The lord and the fan fic discord know that’s solely why I finished my other fic this year)

Speaking of Ghost Switch, working on it was a goal this year too, and I did that! I kept it up all year and took a vacation in November and it was wonderful. While the major plot points have been in place since before I started drawing, I still need to script each arc beyond Snowdin, but hey, by the time we get there, it’ll be 2022 so I got time. (Note, don’t do this, kids. Script your stories and comics thoroughly before publishing. The road I’m on is paved with misery and pain and it will only end in tears unless I change lanes soon)

Number 9, amvs. Do people make AMVs anymore? Idk… the last one I made was... Jesus, 5 years ago? (it was a gravity falls/fall out boy crossover, if you were curious) I’ve been wanting to do 2 more for just as long, but in order for me to do that, I’d have to spend time re-watching the shows to find the footage, and then actually edit them together, and I just don’t…. feel like it. Maybe someday, but not any day soon.

10; do some original writing. I did this! For nanowrimo! I wrote the first draft of some original fiction I’ve been planning for a year or two now and it completely sucks! But it’s on paper now and I’m happy. Will I revise and edit it? Sure, but not for a while. I want to let it sit and forget about it and look at it with new eyes months from now so I can be sure I can make it better when time comes to rewrite.

11, make illustrations for my fan fics. Now that You Monster is done, I want to go back and add pictures to it. I didn’t do any this year, but I did keep a list of scenes I wanted to draw, so I have plenty of ideas to do as warm up sketches next year~ I kinda want to stream them~

So, that was 11 goals, and I successfully fulfilled 4 of them! That’s! Not a very good ratio… QmQ So, goals for 2020. Some I’m gonna keep from this year, some I’m gonna drop and some I’m gonna add. In short I would like to,

1)      Finish paying off that last student loan 2)      Put more stuff on my redbubble 3)      Illustrate my own fan fics 4)      Sew at least one stuffed animal 5)      Make an enamel pin 6)      Read one new book a month 7)      Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic 8)      Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make 9)      Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch 10)   Boost my patreon

Most of these I think are pretty self-explanitory, but I’ll go into detail just a bit because I’m on a roll and typing my thoughts helps me feel less alone in the middle of the night when you’re super tired and you know you should probably go to sleep, but the toddler in you is throwing a tantrum and doesn’t wanna go to sleep just yet, but you can’t fight the progression of time either way.

Number 1- I should be able to reach this goal by the end of March. End of June at the absolute latest. Once that goal is met, my secret new year’s resolution will be unlocked as well!

Number 2- I want to put more art of my OCs on redbubble. These OCs are tied to the game I want to make. There’s already some art of them up there, but I want at least one piece for each character.

Number 3- Mostly for You Monster. Embrace the cardinal rule of fan fic and apply it to fan art. If you want to read about see art about certain ideas, scenarios, or what-ifs, you gotta make it yourself.

Number 4- I have 3 potential ideas to sew. One is definitely leagues easier than the other two and will probably be chosen if/when I have the time and materials.

Number 5- This year I got really, REALLY into the idea of making enamel pins. Unfortunately it’s a pretty big investment (like, $350 to make 100 pins you  might not even sell). If this happens, it’ll probably be towards the end of the year, and if I get enough interest. I’m currently torn between making an original enamel pin and one based off Undertale. We’ll just have to see where this goes.

Number 6- Back in 2018 when I paid off one of my many student loans, I rewarded myself by spending over 200 dollars in used books. All these books had a theme; they were focused on dragons because I have a problem. I have not yet read a single one of these books I have bought, and I would like to fix that. I have, like, 20 unread dragon books, and even if I only read 12 out of 20, I would consider that an amazing accomplishment and money well spent.

Number 7- I currently have about 8 different WIPs I could work on. (well, I don’t know if I can even call them wips. More like, a general idea and a title written down.) I want to build good writing habits, and if I can write just 200 words a day, hell, even 200 words a week and just one of my 8 stories done, I would consider this goal met.

Number 8- I’m torn between making my game in unity or ren’py. I know jack shit about both. Ren’py is more user friendly, but unity will allow me more customization. (Lol, can you guess what kind of game I want to make yet?)

Number  9- I really just want the full story to be done and written incase anything goes horribly terribly wrong in my life and I find myself unable to continue making ghost switch in comic form. Then at least I can finish the story by other means, you know?

Number 10- It always surprises me every month when I get that patreon email saying I got paid. Sure, I don’t even make double digits on it, but it still awes me enough to know that people out there like my work enough to throw me a tip. I can’t thank my patrons enough for supporting me and I hope to one day be in such a good place I can update my comic/song comics/writing frequently enough without need for goals or milestones. But until that magical day arrives, money is always a great incentive for anything, I suppose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 ALRIGHT. PART 2 OF 2: SHIT THAT HAPPENED TO ME IN 2019

Cheesus crust what a year. This year started off great! Back in late January Kingdom Hearts 3 FINALLY released, and let me tell you a little story. Back in the summer of 2006 I was a 13 year old middle schooler with no way of making money other than by doing house hold chores at a rate of 25 cents a task. A few weeks ago, I had a sleep over at a friend’s house and they let me play this weird game called “Kingdom Hearts” and god, I was instantly hooked on it. That summer, I did over 800 chores, enough to earn myself 200$ and buy myself a playstation 2 (just in time for the ps3 to come out, gg me) The only games I had for the ps2 were KH1, 2, Re:CoM and Okami, and I beat them all… except Okami. Miffed that the PS3 wouldn’t allow for backwards compatibility, little 13-year-old me made a promise. I looked myself in the mirror and said “I will not buy the next playstation console until KH3 comes out, AND BOY that was probably a good choice for me to make with my level of gaming. I’m even less of a casual gamer than the average casual gamer, but I have been waiting 13 years for this piece of closure, and I even told my friends and family that “the day Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out is the day I will buy a playstation 4”. My dad apparently thought this was the funniest shit, because he literally took the day off from work that Friday to drive me on base to get the game and console (he thought it would be less crowded than a regular walmart, I suppose). I paid $400 on a ps4 pro while he bought me the game. Again, I have an impecible sense of timing seeing as the PS5 is now right on the horrizion, but just like before, I’m not buying a new console until the next KH game is released. See you in 2045, sony~. While I was at the gamestop on base, I also picked up Okami HD and The Last Guardian. For all of February and even early March, I took my time playing through KH3. And…! It was the best disappointment I’ve ever played. After a month away from gaming, I started The Last Guardian and finished it in a couple weeks. I love trico and would die for him, but trying to get 100% completion on that game is udder insanity. Okami, HD, however… again after a month break after finishing TLG, I started replaying Okami. I think I had only managed to get about halfway through the game before I just… stopped playing it on my ps2 version. I am currently SO CLOSE to getting a 100% on the ps4 version. In fact, I’ve beaten the game. I only (techinically) need 2 more trophies to be done; 1st, escape the water dragon without being eaten, 2nd, I need to beat that dumb stupid race with Kai, in order to get the last bead on my rosary, as well as the top dog trophy. I hate her so much. I hate this race so much. It’s awful and bad.

Flash forward to December! Earlier this month I was at Barnes and Noble, buying myself a planner for 2020. I exit the store and notice that there’s a gamestop across the street. For shits and giggles I go inside to look at their game selection, and I find KH 1.5 and 2.5. Now, my PS2 died a few years back (it just won’t read my discs anymore, I don’t know why) and I haven’t been able to replay any of my other kingdom hearts games since. If you had seen me the day I finished kingdom hearts 3, after the ending credits rolled, you would have heard me say “Man…. I wish I could play kingdom hearts 2 again”. AND NOW I CAN, ALONG WITH BBS which I had never even played yet, but knew the story of. I’ve restarted playing kh1, and I was so happy to hear that familiar music when I booted the game up for the first time. While at the game stop, I also picked up Rime and Tearaway, two games that had looked interesting to me. At the time of writing, I’ve finished Rime and am 25% done with tearaway. Rime was…. An interesting experience. I learned about it through Jacksepticeye’s channel a couple years back and thought the art style was enticing. For a super casual gamer like me, I found the puzzles just the right level of challenging and exploring was a blast! The music gave me VERY strong Princes Mononoke vibes, but the overall story left something to be desired. Overall I had fun, and enjoyed completing this game to 100%. Now for tearaway. Can I just say this game is super fucking adorable? I know the original was on the ps vita and the gameplay there was arguably more diverse and imaginative, but this game is just so fucking cute I don’t care?? ALSO, this game’s sound track is ABSOLUTELY incredible and I’ve only heard the first fourth of it! Listen to The Orchards, Pig Riding, and Gibbet Hill Pilgrimage for a taste of their wonderful beats and fantastic use of string and woodwinds! God, I’m so excited to get some more games in 2020. I’m proud to say I currently own more ps4 games than I ever did with my ps2 (and now the majority AREN’T Kingdom Hearts titles!), and I’m still hoping to play Journey, The Witness, and Abzu before everything becomes ps5.

What else happened to me this year. Oh, I went to a doctor for, like, the first time in seven years. I also had my blood drawn for the first time ever, and the nurse said the most disturbing thing to me while she did it. Now, whenever I get shots, I refuse to look. I did that here. So she thought it would be appropriate to say to me “Can you feel your blood leaving your body?” Lady… You can clearly see I am uncomfortable with what is happening here. Why, of all the things you could say, did you choose to say that. Unfortunately, while my doctor is nice, she keeps wanting to run tests on me, that I just cannot afford with my current salary, and my monthly insurance is about to go up to 200$ a month, so I’ve cancelled my next appointment with them, and don’t plan to go back until it’s absolutely necessary. Capitalism is fun, guys. Preventative healthcare is for wusses.

I started going to a chiropractor on a monthly basis. Story time- I don’t know when it started, but sometime late last November I began to notice that I had a headache that just... wasn’t... going away? And each day it was starting to get a little worse. It made it hard for me to find a comfortable position to sleep, it made it hard for me to be in bright areas or move fast. So I said to myself “Okay, if this headache persist through the month of december, then something is proooobably wrong and I should go see someone about it. And hoo-boy were thing wrong with me. By the time this January rolled around, I couldn’t even stay on my feet for more than a few hours without it physically hurting to just BREATHE. So I started going to this chain called The Joint (A+ name, I know). THey aksed me “How are you doing?” I said “I’m in pain” and they said “We can help fix that!”. I’ve only been to a chiropractor once before in my life a few years back after my freshmen year of college because I began to notice my hips weren’t able to support me? LIke, I would lie on my back, and I couldn’t push my hips up when my feet were flat on the floor. I also couldn’t climb anything steep, because my legs just couldn’t push me up if my knee had to bend more than 90 degrees when I lifted my leg up. (Turned out both my hips were apparently out of place). This time only one of my hips were out of place (which they fixed. they said one of my legs was an inch “longer” than the other because I had been leaning all my weight on one leg when I stand). But two of my ribs were apparently “Stuck” which was why it was hurting for me to just breathe, and one of my shoulders was missaligned too, causing one of my trap muscles to constantly be streched, which was pulling on my skull, and causing the headache. Anyway, after they popped all my bones back into place, I still felt terrible, but by god, that night was the first time in weeks I was able to sleep without a migrane. A chiropractor can’t magically heal your arthritis, or fibro, but I definately think they have merit to keeping your posture good and helping your body with things like circulation. 10 outa 10, would recomend. It’s all the fun of getting your neck snapped without the dying!

Earlier this month I got together with two of my friends and we baked Christmas cookies. It was a lot of fun, as well as a great learning experience. A member of my family has a gluten allergy, so we used rice flour for most of the cookies. We learned this is a bad idea! The cookies will just fall apart! A few member’s in one of the friend’s family have nut allergies. Other friend and I knew this and were careful to avoid cookie recipes with nuts, bUT THEN COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT ALMOND MILK AND ALMOND EXTRACT COUNT AS NUT. IN FACT, ALMOND EXTRACT IS PURE CONCENTRATED NUT JUICE AND WE FELT SO BAD FOR ALMOST ACCIDENTALLY POISONING THE FAMILY.

Earlier this year me and these same friends took a field trip to Hobby Lobby and just dicked around the store for a couple of hours. It was super fun, 11 outa 10, would recommend, a great date idea for your artsy S.O.

Back in May I went to a wedding for the first time in my life. (well, not true, but the first one I could remember) we left at 5am, drove 5 hours to get there, hung out at a zoo and spent the night in a la quinta before the wedding day. I slept on the bathroom floor because my mom was snoring too loud in the main room and keeping me awake, and the rest of the day was just spent me trying to keep myself together because I was pissed off and tired.

Other than all of that, nothing really major happened to me this year. I guess one more thing I’ve tried to do this year is started the process of breaking certain internet addictions so I can use my free time for more personal projects. Seriously, I found myself watching way too much youtube and following blogs that didn’t even make me happy. I had a personal intervention with myself where I sat down and asked myself, “why do you watch these videos and youtubers? Why do you follow these blogs? Do you really enjoy their content? Do you really care? If you stopped watching/following them, would you even notice?” After critically thinking it over, I’ve found myself unfollowing several channels and blogs and suddenly I feel so much happier. I thought I would miss it, but I realized I didn’t really care if I saw their content or not. I wasn’t missing much. And now I feel like I have more time to draw, read and write. If you think you spend too much time consuming and not enough time creating, I suggest you try and de-clutter your internet habits as well. It’s done wonders to un-fuck my headspace.

And… well, that about sums up my year. How are your holidays going? Anything fun, exciting, dramatic happen to you this year? I hope your new year is warm and safe! Good night, everybody!

[angiewang19]

contemplating about careers

At the start of spring semester, I decided to not do 3-2, and I switched to a new academic advisor, my first semester math professor. During my first meeting with Prof. Aksoy, she asked, “What do you want to do after you graduate?” 

I was stunned that she dared to ask this weighty question to a college freshman. I came from a high school that espoused “Do what you love in the moment!” and “You don’t need to plan for or think about the future; everything will fall in place when it needs to!” Most of my classmates had no idea what they wanted to do in college (let alone life), and most seniors went to college as undecided majors. 

However, when I’d get home from high school every day, my parents relentlessly pushed me to make decisions as soon as I was ready. Planning for the future would give me luxuries -- more time, more opportunities, and therefore, possibly more money, happiness, and clout. While I was quick to fall back on, “almost all of my classmates have no idea what they want to do!” they knew, as first-generation immigrants, that being undecided was a privilege. To put off any form of planning is an acknowledgement that you can afford to buy time, opportunities, happiness, and clout. It is an acknowledgement that you have options that you can tap into whenever it’s convenient for you. 

All of this went through my head as I tried to provide a coherent answer to Prof. Aksoy: “I’m thinking about going into consulting or finance. I think it might be nice to work in the industry for a few years to understand the purpose of my education, and then I’ll go to grad school. But... I don’t really know.” 

My last sentence was my only genuine thought in this jumble of words -- I really had no idea. 

She gave me a slightly disappointed look: “You need to do some soul searching. Look at your parents -- are they happy? Would you be happy doing what they do every day? You need to do something that makes you feel fulfilled.” 

Before our conversation, fulfilled was a word I never gave a second thought to. Through our conversation, I realized I wanted to go into those fields because it seemed like everyone at CMC was/is fighting to get these opportunities. I think about the Goldman Sachs information session, where they didn’t talk about what exactly they did (maybe their day-to-day is actually mundane or they just assume that everyone already knows?), but they spent a great deal of effort talking about what it’s like to live in New York City as a first-year analyst and the fact that “everyone at Goldman is just so smart.” The fact that jobs and internships in these fields are so highly sought after at CMC made these roles seem glamorous in my eyes. More importantly, I saw them as prestigious destinations, and chasing prestige is addicting. 

I found a question about consulting/finance on Quora: 

Q: Why do so many students in the Ivy League and other elite universities go into investment banking and management consulting? 

A (from a student at Wharton): A slightly majority of my classmates (and myself included) go into finance and consulting. This speaks to how we’re all insecure and value the safety of a high paying and prestigious job.

Most people (especially “students in the Ivy League and other elite universities”) aren’t idiots, so I’m sure there are decent reasons to go into either of these fields. But I realized that wanting to go into consulting/finance because “everyone else is doing it” or “it pays well” are not good enough reasons for me. Over the past few months, I realized that consulting is not a great fit for me (thank you CCG), but I still haven’t closed the door on finance. However, I don’t feel strongly about a possible career in finance (in a positive or negative light), since I haven’t done my homework on what exactly the people do. In my opinion, understanding the responsibilities of the day-to-day and the consequences of my actions at work are the first steps to figuring out whether this career will feel good in the long run. 

“Feeling good in the long run” is a nebulous phrase. In the process of trying to find more concrete understanding, I thought about the distinction between fulfillment and meaningfulness, words that are often used synonymously. I believe there’s a difference -- fulfillment is when an individual feels personally satisfied, while doing something meaningful has consequences beyond the individual doing the action (think: meaningful = full of meaning). 

They’re connected, as often doing something meaningful gives you a sense of fulfillment -- volunteering for a cause you believe in, Bryan Stevenson’s work at Equal Justice Initiative, Jon Favreau writing speeches for Obama. As Favreau mentions in his commencement address, the day-to-day grind of a fulfilling job might not be pretty, but the work can still make you feel empowered and inspired. 

To make my point about the distinction between the two words, I believe there are jobs that are meaningful but not necessarily fulfilling -- maybe serving our country via the military. According to Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Obama remarked that the audiences he spoke to at military bases were always diverse coalitions, but as you climb higher up the chain of command, it became all white men. So while serving your country is meaningful work, I can imagine feeling cynical and disheartened if you were trying to work your way up, and you were anyone but a white male. Finally, there are jobs which I believe are fulfilling but not necessarily meaningful. Unfortunately, the first ones that come to mind are consulting and investment banking, which aren’t typically considered the most “moral” professions. For many people in the field, it’s immensely satisfying to close a deal or engage in the daily grind of solving client’s problems and being well-compensated for those efforts. But I’d argue that managing rich people’s money or consulting for Coca-Cola is self-serving and actually perpetuates inequality -- you help the rich get richer in the former and in the latter, you’re complicit in a Rust Belt child’s set of teeth completely rotting before they reach adulthood because soda is cheaper than water or other healthier alternatives. 

This is my perspective based on a limited (sheltered + privileged) worldview. It’s important to look at any opportunity from the question of fulfillment and meaningfulness, but why you make choices, especially professional choices, is more nuanced than that. Favreau says he’s been better off looking for opportunities which enable him to do something, not to be something. As immigrants, my parents tucked away many of their genuine interests in order to make a living in the very expensive Bay Area. For them, the search for meaningfulness and/or fulfillment was put on the back burner, which serves as a reminder that evaluating for meaningfulness/fulfillment/happiness is a luxury. Michelle Obama’s parents told her to make money first, and then do what makes her happy. Worded differently, money buys you any kind of freedom you’d like (hence economists say that the best gift is always cash), which buys you a sense of fulfillment or meaningfulness or whatever combination of the two you’d like. 

As a starry-eyed, ambitious, and naive college student like me, I’ve kept Andrew Lee's advice in mind: “Money isn't the most important thing, but money goes where value is being created - for me, this was a really hard pill to swallow coming out of college, but you'll notice people at the top of their field tend to be able to move to other fields and have come from other fields. Why? Well, it turns out a lot of them started in places where they were surrounded by the best resources - sometimes that is money, sometimes that is people, sometimes, that is technology (or some other resource that helps you shape reality). Early in your career, people tell you to pursue your passion, but it's really the intersection of passion, economic engine, and what the market will bear. As a result, people who go to money first, find it then easier to go out of it than the other way around. It's not that you won't learn anything elsewhere, but you learn with more resources, and it turns out most people go to where resources are.”

So... I feel like this post has taken a windy path, where I ramble a ton. Scrolling up, I notice that I start with my conversation with my academic advisor, and I go to the differences between meaningfulness and fulfillment. Ultimately, I make a pit stop to the role that money plays in all of our choices (the elephant in the room, in my humble opinion). Our individual core values shape our choices and outcomes, and we can condition ourselves to feel certain ways, for better or for worse. As of right now, I think working in academia or education checks my boxes, but others won’t agree (and ha! I don’t know if I have what it takes to go into academia). Andrew Lee argues that “right now the private sector is pretty damn good at being able to achieve some powerful social ends,” and as a venture capitalist, he can fund underrepresented founders and amplify their voices in society. You have people who are marketing sustainable products (hi Lauren), and you have people like my parents who work tirelessly every day so that we can have a better life in America. There’s not one way to get there -- wherever you believe "there” is. 

[varun-krishnan]

A Perfectly Crafted Society

        What was the last song you listened to or movie you watched? Did your mind predict the rhythm of the entire song from just the first few notes? Did you expect the ending of the movie before it was over? More importantly, were you satisfied when the beat continued, or the hero triumphed? How would you have felt if the chorus suddenly changed mid-tune or the protagonist ended up dying a disgraceful death? Would you turn off the radio in disgust or walked out the theater feeling your money was wasted? Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher and composer, would argue the vast majority would experience those feelings of exasperation. Why? Because our society has conditioned us to expect and enjoy the predictability that is pervasive in so much of our lives. Adorno spent his life characterizing the unseen gears that rotate our society, and by analyzing his life and works, we can see if those gears are still in motion today.    

        From a very young age, Theodor Adorno had an intimate relationship with music. His mother was a talented singer, and Adorno himself learned to play Beethoven pieces at only twelve years old. Known for his philosophical contributions, Adorno was also a passionate composer and musical scholar all his life, and simultaneously taught philosophy and music in the years leading up to his death. When he was thirty-one, he was exiled from the increasingly Nazi Germany due to his Jewish heritage, and so began Adorno’s relocation to America and his first touch by the clammy hands of western culture. Perhaps one of his most illustrative encounters was when he was offered to help conduct a research project into the rising impact of radio music. Adorno thought the information the project gathered was being used as a vehicle to philosophically explore the shifting landscape of America, but instead, was greeted with the fact that it was to see if listeners could be targeted with specific stations based on their likes and dislikes. Adorno was shocked and disgusted by the culture that attempted to so blatantly quantify and predict its member’s behaviors. And yet, this incident, he began to notice, was just one finger of a gloomy fog that hung over the entire country. He noticed that “culture today is infecting everything with sameness,” and gave the name to the body propagating such uniformity as “the culture industry.” He loathed the nationalist regime of his home country and anxiously discerned many parallels between fascist Germany and capitalist America. Adorno saw an industry that sought to promote conformity and distractions as a means to control its consumers and to hide its true motives under the guise of an intricate reward and punishment system. But what might be the most worrying is that the culture that Adorno perceived more than 50 years ago might still be among us.

        When we look at our car, or phone, or clothes, or house we feel connected to these objects since we feel we chose the models that are unique to us. Just look at the pockets of society that have erupted who are fiercely attached to their Ferrari or claw at anyone who claims a Samsung is better than an iPhone(it is). But actually how different are these products from each other? Adorno argues that the sameness that permeates the mass-marketed commodities of our world is hiding under the very guise of these different products. He says that “the mechanically differentiated products are ultimately all the same. That the difference between the models of Chrysler and General Motors is fundamentally illusory is known by any child, who is fascinated by that very difference.” And you just have to take a look at the Greek life on this campus to confirm this statement. Each frat claims its own distinctive sets of features, and the continuous competition of frats seems to indicate that ideological opposites exist among them. And yet, like the difference between one phone and another, only the surface is different while the internals remain the same. Adorno also notices this in “hit songs, stars, and soap operas,” observing how they “conform to types recurring cyclically as rigid invariants.” Furthermore, he extends this to say “Films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimize the trash they intentionally produce.” This is profoundly prophetic as we have reached a point where we will mentally ingest whatever we see on the screen even if it is plainly a cash grab or marketing ploy. Nowadays, movies will use product placement in scenes even if it shatters the viewer’s sense of illusion. Artists will shamelessly create a piece specifically for the advertising of a company’s products, and people won’t even blink an eye. As Adorno writes, those in power no longer “take much trouble to conceal the structure” of the culture industry because we have become so accustomed to the continuous similarities of media formulated for profit. A profit that is well guarded by an elaborate honor system.

        Adorno recognized a subtle but powerful reward and punishment system that helps sustain the culture industry even today. For example, it is highly unlikely that if you’re reading this paper, you are not in, or have not gone to, college. Our society sells college with the vigor of any good salesman, claiming it will lead to future financial freedom and stability. And they’re right...but only because it was designed that way. As Adorno writes, gaining specialist knowledge, like what college and graduate school give you, “is a feature of the irrationally systematic nature of this society that it reproduces, passably, only the lives of its loyal members.” Essentially this means that it’s a mechanism of rewarding those who play by the rules our culture has laid out. But what about someone who deviates from this path? Well, they’ll lose access to money and will be unable to find a job, and most importantly they’ll be seen as “an outsider,” and an outsider, per the culture industry, is “the gravest  guilt.” This is especially true now, where we are taught from a very young age to avoid the unemployed and uneducated, to ignore them in the secret hope they’ll disappear. It’s incredibly telling how hard it is for people to make eye contact with the homeless, or how often people disregard the opinions of the uneducated. Even those who fail to fulfill less critical societal obligations like marriage or kids are subtly ostracized in our world. Adorno even realizes that in movies people who don’t check of these societal boxes are “at best, an eccentric, an object of maliciously indulgent humor; but mostly he is a villain and is identified as such.” In this way, the culture industry can continue to self-propagate itself by elevating those who align themselves with its values and crush those who don’t.

        One of Adorno’s most poignant understandings was the dangerous relationship between our culture and entertainment. As Adorno puts it, “the culture industry remains the entertainment business. Its control of consumers is mediated by entertainment.” Like a child fascinated with the bright colors of a lollipop, we are fascinated with the dazzling lights of the entertainment that constantly surround us. It is a mechanism those in charge use to ensure that we are looking the other way, that we are always “putting things out of mind, forgetting suffering, even when it is on display.” The birth of the cell phone has only accelerated this agenda as now you are never without an object to distract you from reality. I have noticed that the instant anyone becomes uncomfortable they will pull out their phone lest they have to confront their unpleasant situation. Or how about the millions who come home after work and watch television to prevent themselves from thinking about the endless treadmill their life has become as a result of our culture? Adorno took this one step further and added that entertainment “is sought by those who want to escape the mechanized labor process so that they can cope with it again.” In colleges across the country, this couldn’t be further from the truth, where people party and get wasted to at least be able to walk lifelessly through their classes. But it’s not simply the “escape from bad reality,” instead, it’s an escape from “the last thought of resisting that reality.” And this is an important distinction. Because finding a way to cope with the undoubtedly depressing aspects of life is critical and necessary. But preventing yourself from reflecting how to actively resist and help change that reality is how those in power seek to keep us passive and compliant. We don’t use entertainment just to cope with reality, we use it to ignore reality, and hence, we continue to keep ourselves under the foot of the culture industry.

        The culture industry has one more knife to sharpen the shackles that keep us bound and obedient: chance. Adorno studied the role of chance in society and wrote that “it serves as an alibi, giving the impression that the web of transactions and measures into which life has been transformed still leaves room for spontaneous, immediate relationships between human beings.” He argues that chance is used by those in control to give an appearance that life is not as rigid as the culture industry has made it. If you turn to the present, this can be seen in the form of game shows, cruize prizes, lotteries and many more events that help showcase how luck meets the everyday. When you see a contestant win a couple of thousand dollars or someone in your state winning the lottery, you can’t help but feel that the extraordinary can happen to the ordinary, and maybe that ordinary could be you. And yet it won’t be you, and the culture industry knows that. As Adorno writes “it is so minimal for each individual that it is best to write it off at once and rejoice in the good fortune of someone else, who might just as well be oneself but never is.” In our society, people are delighted when someone just like them spins a wheel and becomes a millionaire, even though their own monotonous life has not changed in any way. I can’t tell you how many of my friends invest in bitcoin just to hope for a chance to make it big, to break the chains that tether them to the tedium of going to class or getting a job. And yet they won’t make it but the longer they think they will, the longer they’ll stay on the relentlessly chugging train of the culture industry.

        Theodor Adorno had to deal with a manipulative and fascist Germany that exiled him from his home country. And yet, when coming to America, instead of finding a window overlooking an individualistic society, he found a mirror that reflected the culture of his previous home, a culture that was now concealed by the booming voice of capitalism. Adorno recognized the uniformity that arose in a country driven by mass-marketed products and media. He observed the rewards to those who remained compliant and the punishing of those who didn’t. And what especially worried him was the use of entertainment and chance to control the members of the proclaimed culture industry. But what’s worse is that by exploring his writings it is now apparent that this culture industry has only grown larger in our time. From cellphones to pop stars, and game shows to frats, our society is the living embodiment of Adorno’s concerns. And unless you drag yourself to shore the tides of the culture industry will pull you in until all that surrounds you is a perfectly colored ocean of sameness.

[greenspank34]

On the Topic of Nietzsche’s Veil of Illusion

Perhaps this essay would be suited better if it was titled “A Brief Commentary on Nietzsche Through Personal Reflection.” It’s hard not to make these arguments without personal reflections, Nietzsche’s subject matter seems to have a propensity for introspection. When we learn Math or History we tend to place the information into a little corner of our brains, only pulling it out when we must once again build upon it. Nietzsche (and perhaps all of philosophy in general) seems to become more than just words on paper. It’s a full throttled journey in which the more we learn the more it seeps into our skin, into our bones and eventually into our souls. At that point, the point it has reached our souls, one can no longer protect his everyday life from the criticizing lens of Nietzsche.

It seeps so deep into my soul that I overflow onto others. Often, I stand up on my bed and preach to the crowd gathered around me “Everything's a lie! God is dead! Get angry! Break free!” Three morbidly obese cats look up at me with a puzzled look on their faces. After a moment, one licks a paw, the other two stretch out and prepare for another hard day of napping. Is this how Zarathustra felt? Perhaps.

The veil of illusion I…we place on our lives is so obvious, it’s right in front of us but we refuse to see it for what it is. It’s this lie that we as individuals and as a culture produce to keep our lives interesting, to give life a meaning that we can derive self fulfillment from. The veil of illusion sticks in my mind with close association to video games. Once I loved them, but now they bore me. Video games had a reverse greco-silenean transformation on me! But how?

You see, I once loved the thought of adventure and the sense of accomplishment that came with video games. It was enthralling, so much so that I would rather play them than sleep. The more I wanted to play them, the better I wanted to get at them. At one point, I saw through the illusion, it became so streamlined that the fun was lost. I realized that every video game was the same formula: collect this, kill this to gain experience, run here and click this button. Yet it was veiled with these storylines that convinced you it was so much more than that! Every time I try to join into the next big thing I can’t help but immediately see the formula that I am following: the flesh and flashing lights were stripped away, all I saw were bones.

Seeing these bones are enough to make video games boring, but what about the bones of life? When the illusion is stripped away from life, we often find ourselves lost, confused, and in some cases depressed. Some have termed this an “existential crisis.” We lose the ability to see the meaning in all little events and actions that filled our day. Why does getting good grades matter? Why does getting a good job matter? Why does making money matter? Ask why enough times and you’ll find that at a certain point you may not be able to come up with an answer. All of your values, your life structure has been built upon a foundation that you really can’t explain. All of a sudden the values you once held become baseless, disappearing like dust in the wind.

There is a class of video games, however, that still manage to pull me in. Games with a competitive edge seem to make me feel a sense of glory when played successfully. It’s with glory that we are able to trick ourselves into doing really dangerous or undesirable things. Religion and art feed off of glory like piranhas. How else could you convince someone to let you cut their heart out of their chest while it still beats? For the glory of God of course!

Religion has provided us with the foundations for our commonly held morals and traditions. These weren’t necessarily a bad thing to have in the time period of their respective origins. The toxic portion comes from the strategies employed to grow a following. People were convinced that there is life after earth, a life filled with love and happiness, a paradise in every sense of the word. It is truly sad because this illusion, this lie, has pulled in so many people to dedicate varying portions of their lives to abide by these values and even help in spreading the message. People want to believe these values are the “right” values so badly that they are willing to turn their backs on loved ones for disobeying them, they will run into a battle to conquer those who disagree with them.

Famous paintings more often than not have the ability to fuel us with adrenaline and the desire to be so much more than we are. Art acts as the medium in which the illusion takes hold of our lives. Nietzsche will often point to paintings and plays as the propelling force, however it seems as though music has a higher impact on human values of modern day. Modern song fills us with enough misdirections that we find ways to become happy. Love songs convince us that we just need to find that one person in order to be happy. Artists often make sing along songs that fill the listener with a sense of euphoria, that they live the best life and all others are jealous. Within the combination of art and religion, we are handed a divine cocktail that makes us believe our suffering will eventually be justified, that there is hope and we must push on through this life.

In the Plato’s “Republic” Socrates banished the poets. He believes they preach a message that gives false hope. Poets know no more than anyone else, yet they are able to convince everyone that their wisdom can provide something missing from our lives. It’s false hope, an illusion. After making this point, Socrates does something interesting: he admits he does not want to banish them from his city, he invites someone to make an argument for them to stay. I’m sure that there are many ways to interpret this and maybe mine is incorrect, either way there is no denying that it is a very interesting moment. My interpretation is that art provides an escape so powerful, so entrenching, that it has worked its way into the subconscious of the most powerful thinker in history. His subconscious doesn’t want to lose the service poets provide.

So often people spend time looking for the meaning of life. Had they read Nietzsche, they would understand that he believes there is no inherent meaning, no one goal or rule that all humans should strive towards. Rather, we layer these meanings over everyday life in the forms of our values.

The bottom line is that we want to be fooled. Life without illusions and escapes is dull and boring. By stripping away all of this, we find ourselves with nothing to look forward to. According to the themes of Nietzsche, there is nothing interesting about the smell of air or graduating college had we not been trained to love the smell of earth after a rainfall or value education. Of course, these trainings come from the veils of illusion, through the revaluation of values. But if given the the opportunity, would you give up the joy you find in fresh air or your college degree if it meant living a life without false beliefs?

[aurelliocheek]

Leveraging Player Motivation Models to Increase App Engagement – Part 1

Paula Neves is a Product Manager at Square Enix and describes herself as a gamer turned psychologist turned marketer working in mobile free-to-play games. Prior to joining Square Enix based in Montreal, Paula was the Chief Mobile Officer at Gazeus Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she headed up user acquisition and product management. Paula is a proud member of the UA Society and a frequent speaker at industry events and conferences, where she eagerly shares her knowledge and experience from her 10+ years in the mobile app marketing industry.

Learn more about Paula from her Mobile Hero profile.

As an undergraduate in Psychology, a graduate in Marketing and a professional in the gaming industry, I’ve always tried to combine what I learned in college with what I do at work. Psychology and marketing go hand in hand, especially when it comes to designing games, and even more so when they’re Free-to-play. 

In Free-to-play games, most systems and mechanics are built on the principles of behavioral psychology and we hear a lot about theories like risk aversion, reciprocity, endowment, and the like. But when it comes to planning your next game, for a long time I felt that our industry was missing a good game design framework that is built on science and psychology. That was until six years ago when I first heard of Scott Rigby and his work at Immersyve, and the guys at Quantic Foundry. I started going down the rabbit hole, coming across several interesting player motivation models that all have a recognizable psychology framework as a foundation, like the work done by Jason Vandenberghe and his Domains of Play and Ethan Levy and his Tower of Want. 

This is the first part of a three-part blog series intended to explain what motivates players into picking up a game and continuing to play it. It’s a combination of psychology models transposed into gaming and its characteristics. This blog hopes to educate product managers, marketers and game designers on player psychology and how we can all leverage it to make a game that more people will play. Thankfully, this work is already being done by the people I mentioned earlier, so my intention here is to put it all together so that the knowledge is accessible to others.

Self Determination Theory and Long-term Satisfaction

The Self Determination Theory (SDT) is a psychological theory of human motivation that addresses three basic psychological needs including:

Competence: the need to experience mastery, growth and learning, and to feel successful and effective.

Autonomy: the need to feel that you’re in control of your choices and in harmony with your decision. In games, it translates to choice, customization and agency.

Relatedness: the need to be cared for and to care for, to be connected with others, knowing that you belong and matter.

According to the theory, these needs are innate, universal to everyone, and if met, will lead to self-motivation and growth. The theory also makes a clear distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations: The former being caused by external factors, such as being paid to do your job or being made to feel guilty about not doing something. When said guilt — an external factor — motivates you to do something, that behavior is not self-determined. Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is when one feels inwardly motivated to achieve something in order to satisfy things like autonomy and competence.

For quite some time extrinsic motivation was judged as bad and intrinsic as good, but it isn’t so black and white. It’s almost impossible to have something — like a game — that will only motivate players intrinsically. As a game designer you must try to kindle more intrinsic than extrinsic motivations, but some extrinsic motivations, like giving rewards for completing actions, are unavoidable and not always bad. If you have an external goal that you identify with, you’ll feel motivated to complete tasks in order to fulfill said goal. That’s a good type of extrinsic motivation.

Self Determination Theory and Video Games

Scott Rigby and the people of Immersyve used SDT as a foundation for their own model: The Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS). The team studied over 7,500 players and their motivations to continue a game for a prolonged period of time and found that PENS had a strong correlation with what compelled players to not only play a game for months and years on end but to identify as a [insert game name] player. I’m a DOTA player.

The basic needs as described by SDT can translate into gaming as such:

Competence

A game is easy to learn, but difficult to master. First Person Shooters and skill-based games like Super Meat Boy are big on competence need satisfaction.Rigby proposed that in order to satisfy competence, game designers should try to create the optimal level of challenge for the player. He refined this idea through Polish psychologist Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “Flow” –– a psychological state where one is completely immersed in a task. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined “Flow” as:

“…the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

According to Csikszentmihalyi, Flow happens when challenges are appropriately matched to one’s ability. If the task at hand is too simple, people will get bored and not experience Flow. If it’s too challenging, people will get anxious, frustrated, and similarly won’t reach the state of Flow.

Making adjustments to Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow, Rigby believed focusing only on the optimal challenge wasn’t enough. Game designers should concentrate on creating a balanced mastery curve (or difficulty curve) for their games. The curve should be so that challenges presented are slowly more conquerable — because the player is getting better at the game — and provide gamers the possibility to express their mastery. While the optimal challenge was an important element, if the player doesn’t get a chance to progress and convey their mastery in action, then their competence need won’t be satisfied.

In line with player progression, whenever one expresses this mastery, they should receive clear and immediate feedback on their accomplishment. This dictates the importance of over the top animation and feedback design in the user experience.

Autonomy

A game that satisfies players’ needs for autonomy gives them choices, customization and agency. Role-playing games (RPGs) and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) are usually great at satisfying the autonomy need by maximizing the player’s opportunities for action and giving them an entire open world to explore and character sheets to customize.

Choices that are forced upon us, like invisible walls in a game world, feel weird and are demotivating. Scott Rigby states that it isn’t exactly the act of — for instance — customizing your character that will satisfy autonomy, but rather coming back to your character later and having a feeling that “I created this and it’s awesome.” According to PENS, autonomy is particularly important for titles that achieve a perennial value for players, those that are played for years and define their players’ identities. In his research he found that first-person shooter (FPS) titles — more commonly known for creating competence need satisfaction —  also satisfy the need for autonomy.

Relatedness

Satisfying the need for relatedness is possible through features such as social grouping and status feedback systems. MMOs and multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBAs) are big on relatedness need satisfaction because they provide a strong sense of belonging through parties and guilds. In these games, you’re always looking after your party and you are looked after by them.

Relatedness is commonly thought of as “the social need” and often, mistakenly, thought of as pertaining only to multiplayer titles. However, non-player characters (NPCs) can be a big driver of relatedness where, when scripted properly, players end up having an emotional connection to that character. Anyone who played Fallout 4 probably related to Dogmeat, the NPC dog that accompanies you in your travels through the wasteland.

Conclusion

By focusing on the three basic psychological needs that the SDT model proposes, game developers are creating psychological experiences that form the building blocks of fun and not only fun itself. According to the scientists at Immersyve, this is a preferable approach because fun is “only” the outcome of the experience and therefore an intangible construct. 

As game designers and product managers we have to ask ourselves: Does this feature promote competence, autonomy, or relatedness? I found out the practical way (read: the hard way), that game mechanics and systems can either promote or, if not done properly, thwart these three basic needs. 

Remember that you don’t have to design all three needs into every little microfeature of your game, but when you look at the macro of that feature — the overarching, big feature — it does have to address the three needs. Maybe a couple of micro-features will address relatedness and another five will have both a combination of competence and autonomy, but when you look at the big picture of the (to use scrum language) Epic feature all three needs should be well represented for that Epic to be successful in the long-term.

This framework helps answer how to keep players engaged and create long-term satisfaction, but does it also explain the motivation behind users’ install and purchase decisions? Why did players install your game to begin with? In part two of this series, we’ll dive into Jason Vandenberghe’s framework, the Domains of Play, and how it helps explain what drives users to install or purchase your game.

The post Leveraging Player Motivation Models to Increase App Engagement – Part 1 appeared first on Liftoff.

Leveraging Player Motivation Models to Increase App Engagement – Part 1 published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

[foreverycung-blog]

hi there! if you haven’t plotted with me before, my name is franny or fran. i play a bunch of kids and these are their intros. sorry for the move of account, i got a little wound up about my tags being so messy so please forgive me. i promise after a little organisation in the next few minutes i’ll be settled!

HONEY FONTAINE from JUSTICE GROUP she’s EIGHTEEN, HETEROSEXUAL & works as a HOTEL HEIRESS.( SHE/HER )  ( pinterest 

Honey fontaine is daughter to jackson fontaine, hotel mogul. he’s got a chain of hotels named the fontaine and traveled the world building them with honey. she’s adored the rich lifestyle her entire life and resides in the fontaine hotel in the hamptons in a suite.

her mother left when she was little and she’s always longed for female energy in her life afterwards being an only child. she’s always pined for a motherly figure. her mother was awful, distant, violent, cold and icey. she didn’t love the family.

her mother left one night when she snapped and attacked her daughter. her dad came home and left with her and she never came back. honey thinks about her every day and deep down blames herself.

despite being close with her father in early years, he’s taken himself off around the world and hasn’t much time for honey which doesn’t help her severe abandonment issues but whatevs. 

he’s left her in what would have been a ceremonial co-ceo position within his business in new york when she was seventeen ( it’s a world wide brand so whilst it’s a big position, it’s also not the end all and be all of his business considering it’s 1 of 92 cities he has hotels in ) 

what should have been a title only position, honey has really began to thrive with responsibilities with the hotels in new york. one being in the city and one in the hamptons ( which is the second largest one in the world, only second to thailand where her father mainly residents in later years ) 

honey has always been a wildly competent young women, graduating high school in early 2017 and being offered several college spots for  computer science, graphic design and web design. she’s taking a few classes in her private time online but has chosen to opt out of the college experience, finding that the world life is much more fulfilling. she’s also mainly been self taught in her tech savvy ways.

despite this, many people underestimate her for her baby face and young age and that’s pretty fair. she’s eighteen and looks more barbie than business woman but she’s just got a head for business and enjoys it. it’s also super fair to say she isn’t doing everything alone and despite being bright and taking the position with a zealous no-one expected, she’s still just learning.

whilst she has a lot of power in the current branches in new york, her father has placed her amongst a lot of verrrrry capable people and obviously there’s the co-ceo who does deal with most of the money side of the business and runs a lot of the meetings. she’s mainly someone who has a lot of bright ideas and how to bring the business into the modern age and has been dealing mainly with their web design and marketing. 

her connection to mallory was slim. she knew of her but not well enough to claim any kind of feelings about her. infact, she disliked her. honey was pretty fond of jared robertson. his law firm worked pretty closely with the fontaine and she knew him well. once he was charged with murder, she found herself in the justice group out of curiosity but she agrees with it more than she would let on.

EVIE  WESTWOOD from THE BOOK STORE. she’s NINETEEN,  BI-SEXUAL & works as a BOOK STORE CLERK. ( SHE/HER ) { pinterest }

Evie dropped out of school when she was fifteen due to excessive partying, she missed too much school due to boozing and drugs. she was partying herself into the grave until her father took her out of the custody of her mother and saved her life, helping her to have a steady, healthy home.

the blonde was the queen bee of the upper east side even after leaving school. she was fierce and a little evil and known for being someone to fear.  it wasn’t until her eighteenth birthday her father decided to save her.

she found that outside of her mothers loathing and the drinking, she was a pretty calm girl but there’s always that fear she could go back to what she was.

her father ( and mother ) are filthy rich but you wouldn’t really know it by looking at evie, she’s a dresser downer and very relaxed. her father stays with her in an apartment in brooklyn to keep her grounded since the upper east side and the toxic environment there gets to her head.

she eventually did night school and graduated and began to get her life in order. she had lost all of her friends from the party scene and ended up rather alone. she forced herself to keep positive but truthfully, evie has destructive tendencies and has a penchant for self destruction. whenever she’s depressed, she does something to ruin a part of her life.

but luckily, her dad got her a job at the book store and she loved it and she met mallory. the worst worker ever but evie was heart eyes over her, unsure if she wanted to be like her or be with her. she adored her and she chatted with her every morning about comics, mallory didn’t get it but she always sweetly smiled and bonded with evie.

it would be a lie to say that mallory and evie were close, they were work friends and evie admired her deeply but evie has many issues where she puts her adoration onto people.

KITTY ITO who is PART OF THE ONLINE CONSPIRACY GORUP. she’s EIGHTEEN, BI-CURIOUS & is a trust fund baby,

kitty aka katerina fiana ito is a privileged little girl. her mother owns a huge record label and her father works at the board of admissions at cornell. there’s never been a time that kitty wanted for something and it wasn’t met with immediate success.

with that came laziness though, she loves to try things out but gives up when she’s not instantly skilled at them. she owns a baby grand piano, expensive guitars, bikes, horses, all sorts and none have ever pleased her.

kitty grew up in a huge mansion in the hamptons that put many of her neighbours to shame, they even owned their own stables. but in the last year, mommy has rented her out a pent house in the upper east side so she can be more available for friends and school

she would never tell you but she has a rapt interest in true crime and spends most of her down time watching documentaries, which led her into the mallory case and into the boards but she’s been a little distant from them as of late due to the admin being murdered.

kitty is spoiled and a cry baby and isn’t used to being told no and usually throws a strop until she gets what she wants.

listen, we both know she should not be in cornell but...daddy is on the board of admissions and mommy is donating a whole new computer lab for under privileged students and kitty did have a successful athletic career in high school....yeah, someone call aunt becky bc kitty should be locked up too

she’s kind of dumb, like honey but different. she has no sense of when to say things and when not to, and is missing an empathy key despite being genuinely kind. she just....doesn’t process things through her head.

ROSIE FITZGERALD who is IN THE YOGA CLASS. she’s NINETEEN, BI-SEXUAL & works as a COLLEGE STUDENT . ( SHE/HER )

rosalie fitzgerald was born in boston but her family moved to new york for a job opportunity. her father owned a travel agency and they were going global with head offices in new york so they uprooted their life to live there when rosie was seventeen.

prior to that, she had been a painfully good girl. she hadn’t stepped a toe out of line and had been considered the golden girl of her family. head cheerleader, strong gpa and was looking like she could attend any college of her dreams. her twin sister struggled a little more than her but they remained close, regardless.

the new york social scene was more aggressive than in boston and she ended up getting a little too hard but still kept her gpa up and get into cornell

she’s still enamoured by the glitz and glam of the social scene and can’t help herself but get involved.

she’s a sorority girl at delta gamma and a cheerleader and studying hotel administration.

rosalie has an older sister and a fraternal twin sister. they’re all quite close but all very different. rosalie also maintains a good relationship with her father and mother but lately her father has been distant, awkward and uncomfortable.

rosalie stumbled upon him sleeping with another woman when she found his car parked down the road, she went up to it and noticed the woman and him in an intimate situation. right now, rosie is the only one to be aware of this and hasn’t told her sisters or mother.

[bpd-black]

hey guys, so this is gonna be a long ass post, but here’s the tldr version: i love you and i hope you continue to learn about yourselves, and advocate for your mental wellbeing cause y'all are literally so beautiful and important and an integral part of our universe, the world literally wouldn’t be the same without you ✊🏾💕

SO, i just wanted to let y'all know that if you’ve ever messaged me (and this is for my black followers, btw, the rest of y'all … i don’t know why tf you’re here, but none of this is for you so ✌🏾bye, you can leave lol) please please know that i almost always read whatever’s in my inbox right away, and that i do care about your questions and what you have to say, even when i don’t answer right away or at all. you guys reaching out to me is NEVER bothersome. NEVER dumb. NEVER ridiculous. and tbh, it’s always flattering to think anyone would come to me w/ mental health concerns, considering that this blog literally started as a place for me to just vent out into the void & that i used to block anyone that followed me, lol.

(i jus didn’t want people to follow my blog ??? idk, i just felt like i had no other outlet to scream, and i was in a really bad place back then, idek, it made sense at the time. anyway, NOW this blog is a place for me to store information, affirmations and links to resources that i find informative or helpful. and i actually really love getting feedback (cough and validation cough) from you guys 💖 so pls, just know that you mean a lot to me.)

THE THING IS, though: i’m still not a professional. and when it comes to something as serious as mental health (especially in the black community) i just feel like i still have too much learning to do and too much healing to do before i’m qualified to offer any real advice. rn, all i have to say to most of y'all is ‘damn, thas unfortunate, me too’ and i really don’t want to give anyone a half assed answer like that, lol. it might take me a while to research what you wanna know, so yeah. bls be patient with me.

also i kinda wanted to introduce myself, since i don’t think i’ve ever posted an intro on this blog lol:

in summary, i’m a twenty one year old black girl, gay as hell, still living at home, still unemployed, still on leave from college, and still struggling just to shower and get out of bed every day :)) which sucks and i hate my life rn and i battle with like, intense self hatred cause a lot of my family is very disappointed in me and, quite frankly, i’m very disappointed with myself.

moving on, lol, more about my mental state: i’ve only ever been professionally diagnosed with depression and gad, though i personally believe i experience too many bpd symptoms to rule out the possibility that i am, in fact, borderline, and so i consider myself as such.

(( a small rant about that real quick: imo, and tbh, labels are just terms that researchers make up to help organize studies, keep track of patterns, and come up with plans and solutions to help large groups of people. so, basically, i am a strong advocate of NOT beating yourself up too much when it comes to finding the ‘right’ label for you and NOT attacking someone else that you don’t think ‘fits’ the description for a disorder or illness according to your research. like, yeah, fake ass neurotypicals are annoying as hell and they can all choke but ! the only person who really knows what’s going on in someone’s brain is that person themselves. and NO ONE owes you a dissertation on their mental struggles just to ‘prove’ they’re in pain. so, imo !!! it’s just a lot more important to recognize and identify what SYMPTOMS you struggle with, and the severity of said symptoms, and worry about umbrella terms later !! cause that insight will make it easier to look for help and advice and !! mental illness and personality disorders are all on a spectrum. so yeah. go easy on yourselves 💕 anyway, i struggled a lot with that concept, and for far too long, SO just wanted to get that out of the way before i continue (hope that made any sense) but i digress!!! ))

i also struggle with both intrusive and suicidal thoughts, a few minor self destructive habits, and i’m currently taking medication for my depression and anxiety. and tbh, though i still have some pretty terrible days, i will say the meds have helped a LOT. and i’m so glad, cause i’m the first in my family to openly take medication for a mental illness (stigma stigma god fucking stigma) and i was so so scared the meds would just make it worse, but they didn’t, so yeah :)

also, and this is a bit personal (but i’m willing to be a bit vulnerable with you guys, if it’ll help anyone at all) but, i planned on killing myself last year. it didn’t happen (evidently lol) but i ended up staying at the hospital for a week and then participating in a two week partial program after that. i’m currently looking for a new partial program or support group that i can join, and i’m trying to get a job and get back to school.

also, i have been seeing a therapist since my senior year of high school (which !!is a bit of a wild tale tbh, but long story short, my parents literally refused to believe mental illness was a real thing for the longest time. and it wasn’t until i told them i literally wouldn’t graduate high school if i didn’t get some help that they believed me.) my first two therapists were awful racist white women (still fuckin hate them btw) but my third therapist was a really cool white woman who actually introduced me to my current therapist who is this really amazing black woman and so far, i feel like she’s been the best fit for me. but i’ve very recently had to put my therapy sessions on pause cause i’m poor as hell and couldn’t pay for them anymore, so yeah. and, tbh, that’s really been stressing me the fuck out as of late, but what i’m trying to do is make the most of whatever other resources are available to me (helplines, textlines, self care strategies, forums, blogs, google, etc.) and i still have a social worker so idk, i should be okay 👌🏾

anyway, that was a lot of oversharing but, now you all know where i am atm ;) and i only share this with you guys cause a lot of asks i receive are about feeling like shit for not knowing what pd you have, or about being too poor to afford good health care, or not knowing how to convince your conservative ass black parents that you’re dying and need help and like !!! all of those topics are so so important to me on a very personal level !!! and i wanna help y'all so bad. but tbqh, i’m still trying to figure this shit out myself 😕 so, what i’m hoping is, just by letting you know more about my experience and being as honest as i can about it, at least one of you readin this might feel a little less lonely dealing with your pain. idk.

anyway, second to last thing: fr tho, i hope y'all know that it is both a rare, and amazing trait to be as insightful as so many of you are. even just trying to figure out ‘god, what is wrong with me’ and taking the time to do the research, is self care. it’s defiance. it’s acknowledging that a better life is possible, and it’s straight up refusing to settle for the pain you’re in now, for a life less fulfilling than what you know you deserve. i feel like the generations before us didn’t do that enough (with good reason, tbh, even today it’s still hard to know who we can trust) but it’s high time black people start healing our minds and our hearts. so power to you ✊🏾

and yeah. that’s all i wanted to say this morning. i’ve been wanting to say all that for a while, but wasn’t sure where the hell to start. i just hope that was all coherent and made sense, lol. don’t ever hesitate to message me guys. i may be an emotional wreck that takes too long to reply, but i do love you. lol.

and please please please continue to research things on your own as well, like. keep up with the latest studies, the TED talks, the blavity articles, the mental health blogs etc. etc. learn as much as you can about how to take the best care of you, even if my executively dysfunctional ass can’t help right away lol.

also !! (last thing, i promise) a quick update about this blog: i edited it a bit, namely my tagging system, to make it a bit more useful. i won’t go through all my tags here (maybe i’ll add an about page and a tag page later) but, for example, there’s my new affirmations tag (full of helpful reminders that i like to think about everyday) my positivity tag (just, yk, positive shit that makes think positive thoughts) and my black tag (whatever content i feel like pertains to just my fellow black + mentally ill peeps, cause lbr a lot of our struggles only happen at the intersection of both identities) 💕

i also have a music tag for music recommendations!! cause i like to believe music is very healing all on its own ;)

AAAAND that’s it lol 😘 stay safe out there guys !! this world is wild but, tbh, we know better than anyone what it means to make the very most out of our lives no matter what. happy black history month 🖤

[merzelifestyle]

Traveling Through Connecticut - Stop By Lyric Hill Farm

Lyric Hill Farm is a family owned homestead located in a tiny rural town of Granby, in the Northern part of Connecticut.   They are solely dedicated to sustainability, respecting people, animals, the environment and organic practices. 

Lyric Hill Farm sells all natural luxurious goat milk hand and laundry soaps using home grown flowers and herbs as well as other all natural ingredients. Also available are beautiful living succulent wreaths.

Lyric is a French and Latin word coming out of the late 16th Century, meaning of song or poetry.

When driving pass this picturesque farm, I am always captivated by the sweet array of prized French Alpine dairy goats grazing and buzzing with activity.  One can quickly ascertain in looking at each of the cute little goats that they have individual personalities as they gleefully looked toward you in curiosity. 

Lyric Hill Farm is well appointed with lush flowers and vegetable gardens on their sprawling acreage. This is a working family farm and it is obvious to the onlooker that they treat each of their animals as beloved pets and cherish the land for the rich sustainable earth that it was meant to be.  This farm gives one a sense that both land and animal live together in poetic harmony.    

  The goats supply the farm with an abundance of milk needed to make their certified all natural goat milk products.  The farm also keeps horses, chickens and based on Nancy’s conversation with me, other fine characters such as skunks and rabbits that tend to like her prized garden vegetables, herbs and flowers.  It feels to me like a story coming right out of a Beatrix Potter novel telling of constant humorous tales of frolicking and pranks that the animals consistently supply their owners, Nancy and Don Butler.

  I sat down with Nancy to find out more about her and her journey in coming to own Lyric Hill Farm.  I’ve always admired her constant strength and ability to move toward a more balanced life. 

  In visiting Nancy in her new manufacturing facility which is located on the farm, I was struck by how thrilled she was with her new work space.  She called it her own private area where she can create freely and have privacy. A far cry from her beginnings when using the kitchen sink to work her magic. In talking with her, I instantly thought about a scene in the movie “Pride and Prejudice” that was released in 2005. In the movie, after Charlotte Lucas married Mr. Collin she invited Lizzy Bennet to visit her at her new home in Kent. Charlotte, then newly married, quickly brought Lizzy to her “own special parlor” where no one would bother them.  The enchanted look shown on Charlotte’s face was the very same I saw in Nancy on the day we spoke. I thought it was a very special and telling moment on how content her life is today.

  In 2004, Nancy and Don bought Lyric Hill Farm not really having any specific plans on what they were going to do with the existing buildings and land.  The house and land needed to be tended to after years of neglect.  They started renovating their new home and purchased a few goats with the understanding that her middle child, Austin, then 7 years old, was going to help care for them.  As years passed and Austin grew into a teenager, his interests soon started to drift more toward playing the guitar (typical teenager) and less about tending to the goats . That’s when Nancy started to think about what to do next with these little critters.

  Along with owning goats comes the immediate decision about what to do with the continuous daily supply of goat milk.  Nancy spent many a year making goat cheese and after a while started experimenting with making goat milk soaps.  Today, when asked what makes her most proud about her business, she states, “taking and making something from nothing; going through this evolution process and that it’s grown.  To me that is pretty remarkable! When you have amateurs under pressure, especially on a farm, comedy becomes important and it often happens.”

Prior to her role as a small business owner, Nancy working in the corporate world as a business executive for many years.  When we met about 13 years ago, I was considering leaving my corporate career to pursue a more fulfilling and less stressed life myself. She was the first woman that I really knew that had gone through this transition process and I had always been interested in how she came to her decision because as we all know, it is not an easy pursuit.  Through the years, I’ve come to know her more and really respect her independence and love how she is so centered in her life today. She is exceptionally intelligent, very humorous and beyond humble.

  As I questioned her, I was hoping to get to how she came to find the determination and courage to make the transition from corporate women to small business owner.  The answer, it wasn’t easy. Here’s her story……… 

  Nancy was an only child for 8 years of her life before her sister showed up in the world.  She was “painfully shy and quiet”. 

“As an only child you become comfortable around adults because there is nobody else there.  They (only children) kind of just push it and there isn’t a comparison mode that you would get from other family’s that have children. “

  She went to pursue an undergraduate degree in Geology and Civil Environmental Engineering from a prestigious Ivy League College, Cornell with the hopes of becoming a Geologist in the Oil Industry.   The oil industry had a major turn down and when she graduated no one was hiring.  She hoped to then pursue a Master’s Degree and obtain residency in Alberta, Canada but first decided to visit a friend in Connecticut and, the rest is history.

Nancy started working in the corporate world immediately and did enjoy it for a time.  “I loved my clients and got to see a lot of different things”. At that time, most of the senior managers were male.  She had a heavy work load and worked well with her peers. In asking her about what made her successful in working with her male counterparts especially during a time when women were fairly rare in the manufacturing industry, she said “women bring to the table a sense of comradery and companionship and the ability to make it a relationship rather than just work. It helps to offset a lot if you are able to use self-deprecating humor and don’t take yourself too serious. You can’t do that in every case but it does help.” 

The need to change her career direction came when she had her daughter Molly.  She tried working but her traveling took her away from home and it really weighed on her.  She hoped to work from home but the company said, “No, it would set a precedent, so I made a decision to leave.”

So, she left her corporate life and worked a part time job at Saint Joseph’s College for some time. “Then, I got sick. I didn’t know the progression of my illness and didn’t want to spend my time there.  I wanted to spend my time with my family so I left my job altogether.”

After recovering from her illness a couple years later, she did consider going back to her corporate job because the money was good, “but I just couldn’t.  I felt like there was a cataclysmic shift after being sick, after being a mom, after moving on the farm; that the gain from the money didn’t out weight what I would loose with my life now.  I would lose the ability to show up in the classroom to help out, I would lose the ability to not be stress all the time. There isn’t enough to go around in every aspect of your life.  It’s a huge lie when people say you can do it all, you can’t.  You certainly can’t do it all without help.  Do you want a good corporate career? Yes, you do but you will need to have a house keeper, a cook, a nanny and all that other stuff in order to keep it balanced otherwise you start to stress out.”

So her business started as a means to keep the goats, to contribute to the household again and allowing her to be around for the family. “It was very important to be around.”

Nancy’s courage to change comes from perseverance.  “It was a matter of just keeping your head down and just keep going.  I don’t overthink it. It helps to have supportive spouses and wonderful friends that you can use as soundboards.  You know, when I was in the corporate world I needed a lot of things to offset the stress and I didn’t even know I was stressed.  I would go out shopping all the time.  I would buy things because I could and I earned a good income.  I was definitely more of a consumer compared to now.” 

Nancy reflected on her process of transformation.  “Moving here did change a lot, because suddenly the environment changed and it was acceptable to forge a new path.   I then started meeting other women who were doing the same thing that had given up much more than I had.  They had walked away from big careers in NY.  It became evident that there were women who had so much to offer outside of that corporate role.”

When asked if she feels stress causes illness she stated, “Absolutely I do. I am sure that it is one of the things that made me sick.  There are other factors but absolutely, absolutely and if it doesn’t cause it, it certainly exasperates it. No doubt in my mind.” 

As she looks at some of the most stressful times in her life, she can find comic relief in her story. During difficult times, humor is important. “It’s those little humorous moments were the comic relief in the situation brings relief.” 

Persistence, hard driving and the ability to just plow through difficult times is what makes Nancy a source of strength.  She is a finisher and puts her nose to the ground and just does it as stated.  The same characteristics from when she was a child to now.

The joy she finds now is simply stated, “Each and every day, people, and the beautiful world around me is what makes me happy these days. I get up every morning and love what I do.  I just find joy in the simple pleasures.  In the corporate world your focus is there. Even when you are out in the world you are so hyper-focused on what you are doing that it becomes your world and in reality it’s not.  It’s a great big world out there outside of that great big concrete jungle.  When you are immersed in the corporate world, it becomes all-consuming and important, and it’s not seeing the forest through the trees.”

She feels grounded now instead of constantly lifting the heaviness of stress.  “What’s relevant and important when you are in the corporate setting is not truly evident to me anymore. It’s almost like a false existence.  There are people, don’t get me wrong, that can separate that but I was never that person.  I was not a person who could strike that balance.” 

“Getting sick was the great equalizer because you just don’t know what burdens a person is carrying around every day.  You just don’t know what their life is like.  People could look at me and would never realize what struggles I had on the inside and I think that has made me much more tolerant, more forgiving than I was as a younger person.” 

To the younger people looking for directions she would say to them, “Find out who you really are and be true to yourself and don’t sweat the small stuff.  Find out those things that are really important to you.  At the end of your life will you ask yourself, did I make a difference?  What have you done to make life better for those who live here?   The overall impact. A good life is the same as a successful life but the measures are different depending on where you are in life.  I don’t measure success externally.  It’s more about pleasing versus adulation’s.  I needed adulations in my corporate job to keep me going and now it’s more self-fulfilling. Success is a life well lived and that’s a good life. Taking that leap of faith.  I know it’s like jumping off a cliff at times but the only way to know if it is the right thing for you is to try it.  With failure comes adversity.  It only goes up and you get stronger.  When the fulfillment comes from outside instead of inside, you will consider yourself never measuring up. External validations and fulfillment will never make you happy.  The stress and burden of external validation comes with that life and then constantly maintaining it and all the trappings takes a great amount of energy and are the things that often weigh you down. “

“If you started out at 20 years old knowing what you know at 50, where would there be for you to grow? You evolve into that person. I love women who start their own business at 50 and older.  They get it!  In the end, it’s the humanity of a person’s life and the humor in your life that keeps you going.”

Lyric Hill Farm is as special as Nancy.  She and her family work very hard to keep all her products certifiably natural. 

They really value selling local and would prefer to keep it local. They will sell externally as well but the product line is restricted by natural products. “If I wanted to have a scent like Lilly of the Valley soap I would need to add chemicals.  All that I grow is free of chemicals and 100 percent natural.  I don’t make lotions because they require me to add chemicals and we, as a business do not want to support anything other than natural ingredients.” 

The business model has changed a little.  They have moved into a more wholesale model but still doing retail in order to keep those local connections.  They are doing more weddings and other favors for events. The process is a natural evolution as all businesses do. Nancy also has started designing beautiful living wreaths and selling them. They are just beautiful!

To learn more about Lyric Hill Farm, click on the link below

Lyric Hill Farm

As with everything I post on my blogs, please feel free to comment, or if you have any questions, please email me through my contact page. I welcome it anytime!

Design with your heart™️

Happy entertaining my friends!

Mary

"May your home be a place where friends meet, family gathers, and love grows. "  -- Anonymous

[marisdoner]

What Does It Really Mean to Be Happy? 6&nbsp;Experts Explain

No need for the flu shot use The Hydrogen Peroxide Ear Treatment

When you go to your “happy place,” you might picture yourself relaxing on a beach in Bali, fitting back into a pair of favorite old jeans, or landing that promotion you’ve been gunning for. But here’s the thing: Elation, achievement, and success aren’t the same as the warm and fuzzy feelings of happiness—and mixing them up may actually bum you out. That’s why we endeavored to learn what happiness really means, by interviewing a handful of people who have devoted years of their lives to studying it. Read about what their research and real-life experience has taught them; then use their wisdom and advice to boost your own joy. (Spoiler alert: Those old jeans will do more good in the giveaway bin.)

RELATED: 7 Self-Care Tips That Will Make You Happier

“Happiness isn’t something you feel. It’s something you do.”

I used to think I had a clear idea of what happiness looks like. I came to the U.S. at 13. My family emigrated from Russia, and we lived outside of Detroit. It was a really rough time, especially because I didn’t speak English. I was overwhelmed with anxiety and self-doubt. The only time I felt OK was when I achieved anything—the day I was moved from remedial English, the day I moved out of the projects.

I thought, “This is how I’m going to be happy: I’m going to achieve things.” I lived my life with this attitude. I’ll be happy when I get into a good college. When I graduate. When I move to New York. When I get married. When I’m able to take care of my family...

I was always proud of my achievements, yet the happiness bubble would eventually pop. I thought I wasn’t doing enough to gain the privilege of feeling good, but I hit a wall, burned out, and couldn’t push anymore.

When I stumbled onto research about gratitude nine years ago, I thought it was a bunch of BS. Saying three things I was grateful for would make me happy? Ridiculous. If I was grateful for everything, I wouldn’t work for anything. Still, I decided to do a 30-day experiment. I told my husband and daughter that each day, I’d write down something I was grateful for and say “thank you” to someone at least once.

RELATED: Here’s How Feeling Grateful Can Improve Your Life

The punch line is obvious. I noticed a difference right away. It’s not like I became a happy-go-lucky person, but I started to find joy in small, everyday moments. Tiny things, like my daughter running up to give me a hug. Coming into my living room and noticing the light hitting a vase of tulips. Even driving to work in minimal traffic and suddenly enjoying the commute.

Before I began practicing gratitude, I wasn’t present for those moments. I only stepped on them before running away. Happiness, I now realize, is not something you feel, but something you do. We don’t have to earn it, or be “good enough.” We just have to practice.

— Nataly Kogan, CEO of the learning platform Happier and author of Happier Now: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Everyday Moments (Even the Difficult Ones)

“Winning the lottery won’t make you happy indefinitely.”

Even though money matters, it’s not the only thing that contributes to our happiness. If money means covering all of our basic needs, it can positively contribute to happiness. However, after basic needs are met, increasing your disposable income follows the law of diminishing returns.The impact on happiness from 100 more dollars when you’re already rich? Close to zero. In happiness research, there’s something called “set-point theory.” It states that the increase in someone’s happiness in response to life events, such as winning the lottery or moving into a bigger house, will return to its baseline after time. This theory teaches us that we should enjoy the journey, not the destination, of life events. It’s important to remove the illusion that there is any one thing in this world that will make us permanently happy.

— Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute and author of The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

RELATED: Trying to Be Happy Is Making You Miserable. Here's Why

“Being happy is more than satisfying your impulses.”

Many neuroscientists would tell you that all happiness is a chemical and electrical process in the brain: motivation, followed by reward. As much as I love neuroscience, I like to stay curious about the possibilities beyond what science is ready to prove. The more I learn about timeless happiness, the more I see that it correlates with three experiences—relationships, contribution, and mastery. By “relationships,” I mean a feeling of connection and belonging—being seen for who we really are. (Tribes in South Africa traditionally greet each other with “Sawabona,” which translates to “I see you.” The response? “Sikhona,” or “I’m here.”) By “contribution,” I mean a sense that we’re offering something to the world that’s uniquely our own and makes a difference to others. And by “mastery,” I mean growing and working to be better versions of ourselves.

The fourth thing that ties into happiness and often gets overlooked is reflection. Not vegging out, but actually making time to quiet the mind and take stock of where you are currently in life.

The stuff we think gives us “happiness” right now—such as scrolling through social media—activates the brain’s ancient motivation-and-reward system, and only gives us momentary pleasure. The average American swipes her phone thousands of times a day. We don’t even know we’re doing it anymore. When we first “liked” that post on Instagram, it felt great. Now, it’s just a habit. To have happiness, we need to say yes to things that strengthen our relationships, help us contribute to the world, or allow us to master new skills—and learn to resist things that just satisfy our impulses. In other words, spend less time looking at screens and more time looking at nature, the people you care about, and yourself. Do that, and you’ll feel a sense of satisfaction: You’re doing more than just what your brain is telling you to.

— Ellen Petry Leanse, leadership coach and author of The Happiness Hack: How to Take Charge of Your Brain and Program More Happiness into Your Life

“We can find happiness at work.”

The quality of your relationships is the number one factor for your happiness. Some people think that means only at home. It’s like, “Why would I try to be friends with people at work? Spare me the fluffy stuff.” I used to think that too, and I now realize how shortsighted that mentality is. If we’re working full-time, we spend more time with our colleagues than with anyone else. Why wouldn’t we try to invest in those relationships?

Get face-to-face and make eye contact. We have “mirror neurons” in our brains, which make happiness and unhappiness contagious. So it’s important to pay attention to how you’re showing up at work, because that’s what you’ll get back from your coworkers later on in the day. You are the culture. We’re all affecting each other, and research shows it extends out, not just to your colleague but your colleague’s colleague. Invest whatever and however you can in relationships. Practice forgiveness, though it’s easier said than done. Practice kindness. And don’t just band together when things are going wrong; celebrate your successes when things are going great. That’s when you can really solidify your bond.

—Scott Crabtree, founder of the coaching and consulting organization Happy Brain Science

“Don’t chase happiness—look for meaning instead.”

Happiness is typically defined as a positive emotional state—this smiley-face ideal. People quote Aristotle as saying, “A good life is a happy life.” But really, the Greek word that Aristotle uses in his teachings, eudaimonia, better translates to “flourishing” than “happy.” And when you read him, he specifically makes a distinction between “flourishing” and “happy.”

Flourishing is living a virtuous life where you pursue excellence in your work, relationships, and community. Doing those things might not make you feel happy all the time. They’re hard. They can be stressful. Being a parent or leader takes effort, right? But it leaves you with a deeper sense of meaning.

I advocate for the pursuit of a meaningful life, rather than chasing happiness. Research backs me up on this. When people pursue eudaimonia, they end up with greater well-being. They’re actually healthier, and they live longer, too. People who believe their lives are meaningful have less of the brain plaque associated with Alzheimer’s disease, and they’re less likely to develop cardiovascular disease.

So what does it take to create meaning? That’s the million-dollar question. One of the key aspects of a meaningful life is transcendence—those rare moments when you step outside yourself and feel connected to a higher reality. It might happen on a trip to the Grand Canyon, or while you’re meditating, or sitting in church. Transcendent experiences exist on a wide range, and they can change you.

—Emily Esfahani Smith, journalist and author of The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“To be happy, be brave.”

My former job—hosting Live Wire!, a nationally syndicated radio variety show—was a dream. I got paid to write comedy. I met fascinating people. I had actual fans who loved the show and told me so. I mean, who gets to have fans?

But it was so anxiety-producing that for two weeks out of every month I was filled with dread about the next live show. Even so, I did it for almost a decade, until the night before our ninth-anniversary show, when I had a massive anxiety attack that would not go away. It lasted for two days.

The show brought so many extraordinary things and people into my life that I thought I should be happy. Everyone thought I was lucky, and when everyone thinks you’re lucky, it takes you a lot longer to realize how miserable you are.

The anxiety attack was the world’s most unpleasant wake-up call. Still, it took me a couple of weeks to let the hosting job go.

My whole body changed the moment I did. My shoulders dropped, and I could breathe again. But I wasn’t immediately  happy. In fact, I was immediately out of sorts and wondering what the hell to do with my life. That’s what sparked my Okay Fine Whatever Project—I wanted to see if I could teach my brain that everything was going to be OK by doing things that scared me and then writing about them to process the experiences.

Instead of thinking, “That sounds terrifying” when confronted with a new and weird experience, I thought, “Well, that sounds interesting.” And that was enough to make a difference.

Do I feel there’s a link between bravery and happiness? A hundred percent. Regret and complacency are bitches. No one wants to hang out with them, and fear invites them in, over and over again.

Bravery is a daunting word—I wish there was a word for tiny braveries: Trying to make a new friend as an adult. Going to Thailand when flying gives you panic attacks. Letting the person you’re dating know that you care about them before you know how they feel about you.

These are things you’re not going to win medals for, but when you add them all up at the end of your life, they are going to define whether it was a life worth living.

I think people’s striving for some ideal “happiness” is one of the great causes of unhappiness in the world. If we strive for anything, it should be a healthy mind and body, a sense of purpose, and the ability to give and receive love without reservation or expectation. That seems as close to true contentment as I could get.

Also, cheese makes me happy. A good, strong vintage cheddar.

—Courtenay Hameister, author of Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went from Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things

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What Does It Really Mean to Be Happy? 6 Experts Explain was originally posted by Health Nutrition And Strange Science News

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Why I’ll Never Regret My (Awful) Audition to Be a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader

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Why I’ll Never Regret My (Awful) Audition to Be a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader

As a high school cheerleader, one of my favorite perks was the body. Growing up, I’d always been slightly pudgy, but the extra pounds magically melted off once I started cheering. By senior year, I was a size two, and my prom dress needed to be tailored closer to zero. Some of my neighbors thought I was anorexic, but I loved to eat everything from hero subs to Cap’n Crunch. My extreme weight loss was simply the product of a suddenly sky-high metabolism and cheering at practices and games.

My newly concave stomach followed me to college, where I proudly wore crop tops and skimpy bikinis. Even the discovery of alcohol and late-night Papa John’s at my self-professed “party school” didn’t do much to derail my svelte shape.

That is, until after graduation, when the realities of a desk job and lack of exercise caught up with me. I’d gotten out of school and onto a rollercoaster that would take me on a 15-year ride of gaining and losing the same 20 pounds again and again. (At one point, I was 45 pounds heavier than I’d been in college.)

I tried every means possible to reclaim my former form, from the Curves diet to Weight Watchers to Nutrisystem to juice cleanses. I even took part in several infomercial focus groups and adopted a rigorous workout regimen and the lean diet required to participate. My attempts almost always succeeded temporarily, but like a stubborn rubber band, my weight always snapped back to its new, higher “anchor” number.

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Though I’d lost my fit cheerleader physique, I hadn’t lost the desire to cheer. After college, I spent a few years dancing for a semi-pro team in Chicago, but I secretly yearned to take the floor with the Luvabulls, the Chicago Bulls dance team. This desire followed me when I moved to Los Angeles, where I longingly eyed annual audition calls for the Clipper Girls and Laker Girls.

Next year, when I have a better body, I promised myself. Not surprisingly, I found myself making that same promise every year—and never hitting that magic number on the scale.

So naturally, when the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team reality show debuted on CMT, I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of watching these women endure the rigorous training camp and—if they were lucky—receive their reward of those coveted white boots at its conclusion. I became intimately familiar with the organization’s impossibly stringent standards, from a dangerously lean figure to Rockette-worthy high kicks.

My husband often teased me about my about my guilty pleasure. (“Watching the DCC again?”) It was clear: The DCC had been indelibly added to the wish list that the Laker Girls, Clipper Girls, and Luvabulls already occupied. Except the DCC somehow seemed different—their big, flirty style of dancing was closer to my own, and they didn’t mandate technical dance experience like many other pro squads. Maybe I could actually do this… if I could get the body.

When I turned 35, a sense of urgency struck—it was now or never. Ten long years had passed since I’d begun my annual “next year” resolution. I was well aware that I was far above the age (and weight) of most NFL cheerleaders, but the story of 40-year-old Bengal cheerleader Laura Vikmanis gave me a glimmer of hope. It was time to hit the gym and go for it—or let go of the dream for good. So I booked travel to Dallas for the May auditions, figuring that would make me accountable for follow-through.

I was on a mission.

I began exercising six times weekly, throwing myself into Pilates, Zumba, Spin, yoga, kickboxing, and weightlifting with a vengeance. I took burlesque and hip-hop classes. I enrolled in a weight-loss challenge at my gym, which tracked my measurements and body fat percentage. (Let’s just say it was considerably higher than the DCC average of 12-15 percent.)

At my audition It was harder to get my diet in check. With every indulgence, I felt increasingly guilty and worried. I knew all about the catty comments made by the audition judges and the way the reality show worked. “I just don’t want to be in the fat montage,” I said to my husband, picturing the sports bra and booty shorts I’d have to wear on national television.

When the scale hadn’t moved much by April, it was time to employ extreme measures: I resurrected the lean protein diet I’d learned from the infomercials; I stepped up my exercising, working out daily—sometimes twice or several times; I turned down business lunches and dinners, knowing the caloric avalanche that accompanied. I had already given up alcohol, but I started adding aloe vera juice and protein/flax smoothies into my daily regimen.

The scale finally dipped, and not a minute too soon—tryout week had arrived. My anxiety escalated as I scrambled to achieve the look. I ordered compression tights for the illusion of thinner legs. I booked a colonic for a flatter stomach. I purchased water pills to ensure minimal bloat. I spray-tanned for a more contoured look.

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Somehow, I arrived in Dallas two pounds from my goal weight, with an acceptably flat-ish stomach. I felt like I actually might be able to wear a midriff in front of the masses.

When I arrived at Cowboys Stadium for the audition, 400-plus girls were already in line. It was an attractive pack, with former Pro Bowl cheerleaders, college dance team captains, and even high schoolers on the verge of graduation. I was one of just a tiny handful over 30—including a 56-year-old who aspired to be the oldest DCC in history, and a 62-year-old grandma who’d undergone thyroid surgery and realized “life was too short” not to chase your dreams. Like me, she’d kept her decision to audition a secret from almost everyone she knew.

The day went like this: Hit the “fluff and puff” area for beautification, hear a pep talk from fearless leader Kelli Finglass, and then hit the tryout floor in groups of five for the carefully cultivated panel of judges (including a tanning salon owner and the DCC fitness guru).

When my group’s turn came, we stood in front of the judges under the relentless glare of the hot CMT reality show lights. This was the moment. I tried to stop my leg from shaking as I introduced myself on the microphone, then stepped back as the music began.

I purposefully launched into my freestyle combination and swiftly made rookie mistake No. 1: My hair got caught in my lip gloss and completely covered my face. My cheer career had trained me never to stop for snafus, so I kept going even though I probably resembled Cousin It.

Though I’d lost my fit cheerleader physique, I hadn’t lost the desire to cheer.

I then committed rookie mistake No. 2: completely blanking on my choreography. I went into full-blown panic mode and ended up doing an unflattering squat and some other, equally uninspired moves.

As the music wound down, we stood in front of the judges for final scrutiny. My hair continued to stick to my lips. I scurried offstage, bewildered and mortified. My many months of preparation had culminated in… that?! I managed to sit through the rest of the groups and make peace with it. At least I’d gotten out there—at that point, all I could do was laugh.

After the audition, a CMT producer requested an interview in one of the stadium suites. My mind raced—I knew how the show worked. I was going to be the older “hot mess” candidate who’d completely flubbed her audition. I decided to take them up on it, figuring I could redeem myself and give them some footage beyond a flailing mess of an audition.

When the semi-finalist board was revealed, I wasn’t surprised to see my number missing from it. My spirits were still somewhat high as I said goodbye to new friends and took one last look at cavernous Cowboys Stadium. I drove back to my hotel in a daze and immediately passed out from mounting exhaustion and disappointment.

I awoke a few hours later, completely disoriented and half unsure whether the whole thing had been a dream—then the panic washed over me, as I pictured looking ridiculous on reality television. Despite all of my hard work, I’d managed to neglect the one simple thing I needed to survive the audition in style: They hadn’t seen the real me, the person who loved to dance and excelled at it. Sure, I fit into skinny jeans, but did it matter?

Then it hit me: I’d been so obsessed with my body for so long that I’d lost sight of my real purpose—honoring my lifelong love of dance and enjoying one last hurrah. My fixation with my weight had overcome me. In the end, I’d gotten the look that I wanted, but my audition couldn’t have gone worse.

Sure, I fit into skinny jeans, but did it matter?

That was the healthy dose of perspective I needed (along with a juicy Texas burger). With the DCC audition experience checked off my bucket list—for better or worse—I decided to grant myself a pat on the back and move on. And thankfully, the reality show gods took pity on me when the show premiered, as I was nowhere to be seen on screen.

The experience helped me realize that while I may not be waif-thin—and no longer pro dance team material—I’m a lucky woman, with a supportive husband, a fulfilling job, and a life she loves—curves and all. And that alone is more than enough.

For me, that’s the spirit.

Jen Jones Donatelli is a freelance writer and editor who recently relocated from Los Angeles to Cleveland, Ohio. She is also the author of the Team Cheer fiction series and a contributor to numerous dance- and cheer-related publications. Say hi on Twitter at @creativegroove.

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❝ EZRA ADDAMS IS A 24 YEAR STUDENT & BARTENDER, LOOKS A LOT LIKE KEIYNAN LONSDALE, & HE IS ORIGINALLY FROM RIVERSIDE, CA 🌞

TW: homophobia

At seemingly every turn in Ezra’s life, he was deemed to be outside the norm.

His mother and father, Tanya and Dale, had been high school sweethearts; lovesick, jubilant, and blind to each other’s faults as teenage lovers tended to be. Their families laughed the whole thing off at the time with the certainty that it’d eventually fizzle out, fickle, hormone-ridden minds moving on in due course. But before they knew it graduation happened, his father joined the army, and a few short years later their first child was born – Ezra’s older sister. Around the time she was born, and when Dale retired from active service, that’s when the glitter seemed to fade and the rose-tinted glasses were forced to come off.

It was undeniable that war had changed him, anyone who knew him could see that. He had all the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder but instead of heeding his wife’s pleas of desperation to get professional help, he ended up losing himself in a spiral of destructive habits in an attempt to self-medicate; drinking and gambling mostly. None of which helped his frayed nerves and notably short temper. When Tanya ended up pregnant the second time she hoped against all her better judgement that this baby would be a wake-up call for him.

But just days after Ezra was born, the foundations upon which their lives were built shifted under their feet. After one of the absolute worst, most verbally abusive, earth-shattering arguments to date his mother decided that enough was enough, and ended up kicking him out, no matter how much it broke her heart to do so. The safety of her children came first, and despite how awful it was to think, they were no longer safe around their own father.

After the chaos that night had wreaked, his grandma came to live with them to support his mother, and so Ezra grew up surrounded by strong women whom he was very close to. From his mom, to his grandma, to his sister – right from the get-go he had a very strong feminine influence in his life and even to this day he has an easier time connecting to women than other men. His family means the world to him. They were alternative, but not in his own eyes – to him it was all he’d known and they were no more or less than normal. He was happy.

As a child, Ezra was so carefree. So bright, exuberant, and would befriend literally any and every other child he came across. Even if his thought process wasn’t quite sophisticated enough to recognise it back then, he’d always had this inner tendency to look for the good in people, and the inner belief that every single person has something uniquely interesting and worth knowing about them.

Josh knew more about Pokemon than any other kid in their class;

Alex invited every single kid to his birthday party, even those that got picked on;

Shania always laughed at his dumb jokes, no matter how awful, and he laughed at hers back.

After a while though, his life started to… change. In subtle ways a first, which snowballed into what became more prominent, persistent issues with much more resulting damage.

What was previously considered childish friendliness turned into ‘fruitiness’ in the eyes of his peers, and he seemed to be getting laughed at a whole more than laughed with, his quirks and free-spirited, effeminate nature no longer viewed in quite the innocent way it once was. Being different became something he was painfully aware of. He was confused. And angry. And upset. All… the… time…

Over the course of middle school, Ezra closed in on himself. Shut himself up and faded into the background as much as he could. Inbred feelings of insecurity and anxiety weaved their insidious tendrils into the very fabric of who he was and he became someone his family and friends barely recognised anymore. He second-guessed and overthought his every move, word and action, and it was exhausting to put himself through but it became a second nature. So, to adapt he moulded himself into a more ‘acceptable’ version of himself. A boy who didn’t speak in class unless spoken to. Who played soccer on the school’s team (okay, so… maybe soccer wasn’t all that bad. He was naturally athletic and enjoyed playing it and the camaraderie of being on a team, just not the fact that it was partly a tool to hide his genuine self). Who didn’t take part in creative pursuits because ‘they were for girls’.

It wasn’t even that he was directly bullied or anything like some other less fortunate kids in his grade, a large amount of the harm and trauma he suffered was self-inflicted. Maybe that’s where the extra level of shame came from; that he didn’t have it the worst so he had no reason to feel this low in the first place.

He’d always been told what a bright boy he was, how effectively his mind worked and how he always seemed to think so deeply about just about everything. Now that aspect of his personality was working against him. He overthought everything, so much to the extent that his mind worked overtime racing to agonise over flaws and mistakes and missteps that simply weren’t there and his mind conjured from thin air.

It took a lot of personal growth, hard work, and practicing self-love to come to a point where Ezra allowed himself to be easier on himself. His sister saw the signs of distress in him one night after a particularly bad anxiety attack that she managed to walk in on and was a catalyst to him seeking help and talking to someone about the anxiety and depressive episodes he was prone to (without really understanding what they were). It didn’t happen overnight, and only came about when he fully confronted the fact that he wasn’t just interested in girls. Looking back, he’d known for a long time, but expended so much energy simply shoving it to the back of his mind and forcing himself not to even consider it.

He was just so… tired of not being himself. Of living this over-embellished lie that he’d gotten so good at performing he convinced himself it was the truth.

Coming out as ‘queer’, and being diagnosed with anxiety and depression and getting official help with them saved him from himself. Finding the strength to face those demons sort of freed him from the dark place he felt himself gradually slipping further into.

Little by little, Ezra came back into himself. It wasn’t all at once, and he was never that boisterous, unencumbered kid that he once was, but he got better. He started expressing himself a little bit more in his dress sense, played around with his hairstyles, let himself unashamedly enjoy certain types of music + media he liked, began engaging with previously abandoned creative outlets. Some steps looked superficial on the outside, but every little victory felt like a quiet, proud celebration in his head. For that scared, anxiety-ridden kid. Like someone slowly turned up the dimmer switch in his head as he gradually let himself feel vulnerability, let himself be open once more with other people after shutting himself out for so long.

He started to smile again. Widely; uninhibited. Let himself feel joy.

His mom once described it as like he’d finally exhaled after years of holding his breath. He cried and let her hold him. Like it was emotional catharsis for the both of them.

He’s come to accept that he’ll never be truly 100% ‘fixed’ and that maybe he was predisposed to these conditions from the beginning. Maybe his father was too. There’s no way of knowing – so he’s chosen to get on with his life and is at peace with the extra obstacles. There’s no other way to be. All he can do is try and make himself happy any way he can.

Ezra is very much an empath – he cares so deeply for others, loves so strongly and is very sensitive to the emotions of other people. Everyone needed help at different points in their life and for different reasons, he’d experienced this first-hand, and a part of Ezra truly felt that his great calling in life was to help people. Provide care and to look after people, that’s where he found fulfilment and happiness within himself. A helping hand pulled him out of such a dark place and, admittedly, probably saved his life. To be able to give that back to the universe… meant the world to him. This, along with a solid academic performance, led him into the path of nursing as a career.

Because of his family’s financial situation, he decided to take a couple of years out after he graduated in order to get a job and save up some money for college, out of both an inner-born sense of independence, and not wanting to burden himself on his mom or have to take money from her or his grandma. And that’s what led him to his job at ‘The Q Spot’ as a bartender, a position which he actually loves and still holds to this day. Yeah, the novelty of working in a nightclub tended to wear off as you realised it wasn’t quite so much fun being there when you’re sober, but just being in a space full of other LGBTQ people dancing, having fun, being seen and celebrating life gave Ezra a certain sense of contentment. Plus, the pay check wasn’t bad and at least it was better than working in a straight bar. He earned double the amount of tips that some of his straight friends did working elsewhere.

Those couple of years between graduating high school and starting college, in which him and a group of his friends all got jobs and basically just worked, partied, road-tripped, hung out and had a good time, were the most amazing of his life. He was the free-spirit that spent years stifled under layers of repression. His dry, witty sense of humour had started to return.

He was at a point in his life where he’s been through a hell of his own making and back again but has made it out the other side. It’s not perfect, there are bad days, but he’s content. He’s made progress. He’s at college and has made what feels like a best friend for life.

He’s more himself than he’s been in years, and he can’t wait for what the future will bring.

EZRA IS PLAYED BY : ABBIE