#anyways i have been insanely fixated on learning it for the past 3 months

[hexcitrine]

randomly looked at this account to update my age and holy shit it's been a while since i posted here..........i have a small pile of art i have yet to post but hbhbshdbshbd too lazy

[skeedelvee]

Carry On Countdown Day 20 - Teeth

For this year's COC I've decided to put together daily fic rec lists! Let me know if you find any new favorite reads from these <3

For todays prompt I've gone with fics all involving teeth! Vampire teeth! Werewolf teeth! Goblin teeth! Dragon teeth!

Hungry Like The Wolf by @adamarks and Theflyingpeach

One word: toothsome

This one is incomplete, but I love it and think of it often

Rated E, 18,984 words

I think I’m bad at this. I’m the only one I know that’s not part of a pack. That’s never been part of a pack. How do werewolves get into packs anyway? - Three years ago Simon was changed and left without a family, left to die. He's learning how to live, but tired of feeling alone. At least he's got his best friend to help him find his way. And what's with the mysterious, definitely-not-hot, weird smelling guy that just moved in next door? This is a story about finding love and finding your place... And maybe eating a few dog treats along the way.

Oral fixation by Multifanfic666

Rated E, 2,945 words

Baz has been having too many lollipops and has a cavity and Snow has to put his fingers in his mouth to help him out. Yes this is smutty ;)

I feel by @facewithoutheart

Rated M, 1,813 words

After visiting Oxford for Christmas, Baz comes home to Simon.

come here often? by Xivz

Rated E, 4,289 words

BITE commercializes itself as an adult establishment, but, to those few who know, it’s a vampire club. A place where Normals get glamoured and bitten (or more) and sent on their merry way. Simon Snow knew what he was looking for when he signed the waivers and paid the admittance fees, what he hadn’t realized was that he’d wind up with Baz Pitch.

Bite me by @orange-peony

Rated E, 7,109 words

“What the fuck is this?” he asks, showing me a bag with Lush’s logo on it. “A bath bomb,” I explain. “A bath what?” Or a fic about bath bombs, saying what you want and vampire biting.

Greener Grass by @captain-aralias

Rated T, 39,411 words

Sometimes I try not to look at Baz just because I know that if I do, he might look at me – and he’ll find me out. Realise who he’s with and change his mind. Sometimes I don’t look at him because I know that I’m not going to be able to see him after I break up with him, and I have to get used to it. But today, it’s just because I don’t want to look at myself. Because somehow (thanks to another kind of goblin also taking against me) I’m in Baz’s body. And not in the scary way that I think he was trying to push for a few months ago. In an even more scary way where I actually am him. And he’s me, which is much worse. -- A 'Wayward Son' bodyswap - about vampires, communication, and learning to like yourself. A story for everyone who wished the second book had been about getting past trauma as well as living with it.

Show Me Your Teeth by Poptartsss

Rated E, 4,630 words

We come home from the pub in the unusual way. Usually we get home, get settled. Throw on a movie. Make dinner. Stop paying attention to the movie, slowly find any excuse to touch and taste and be on top of one another. Tonight was a bit different. For no particular reason, we just needed to get on with it. Or: Maybe Simon-- just a little bit-- fetishizes the vampirism part of his vampire boyfriend.

Goblins Fuck by Theflyingpeach

Rated E, 2,221 words

I’ve got two dicks up my ass and one down my throat. Not how I thought I’d be spending a Wednesday after work, but I guess it’s better than heating up a frozen dinner and having a wank.

take a Picture by Humbum

Rated E, 4,001 words

I can’t handle it anymore. Him. Baz. It’s been absolute torture. He’s driving me fucking insane. He’s so cute. Like tooth rottingly, heart stoppingly cute. It’s a lot to take in on a regular day. But these past few days have been a proper test on my nerves.

✨Gratuitous self rec✨

First Moon by me! @skeedelvee with art by @hgari

Rated E, 4,302 words

Set post AWTWB. It's the first full moon since their adventure in America, and Simon is in for a life changing transformation. Or: Simon turns into a were-dragon and has to navigate his growing needs with Baz.

If you have any recs that fit the prompt that I've missed, feel free to leave them in the comments! There's plenty of gaps in my reading so there's a good chance I may not have read it

Also I've had a hard time finding if some people are here on Tumblr, so if you know someone who hasn't been tagged, feel free to leave that in the comments as well <3

@carryon-countdown

[erosia-rhodes]

Top 9 Newbie thoughts on Supernatural after Six Months of Madness

I started watching Supernatural a week before the series finale, and full disclosure, it was only because I heard about the gay angel. I loved me some Good Omens, so I decided to check out a series my only previous thoughts about had been, "Is that show still on?" In the past six months, I've watched about fifty percent of the episodes scattered across all fifteen seasons. I've also spent time following the bonkers-in-the-best-way fandom on Tumblr, and here is what I have learned:

1) Everyone who loves Supernatural also hates Supernatural

No one is capable of praising this show without also trashing it. Supernatural is as awful as it is awesome. Watching Supernatural is like hate-fucking your nemesis against a wall; you're totally conflicted about it, but it's enormously pleasurable and you know you're going to do it over and over again. No one has a pure, untainted love for this show. They only have complicated emotions. This is because…

2) The fact that the show needs to be fixed is an essential part of its appeal

Strangely, if this show were better, it wouldn't be as popular. If you love a show that is perfect, you watch it once or twice or thrice, make a bunch of memes, and move on with your life two years later when you find something else to hyper-fixate on. If you love a show that's broken, you spend the rest of your life obsessed with fixing it. It's the crooked photo hanging on the wall that yearns to be straightened (because, you know, this show is bad at making things straight). It's the stray dog you know would be adoptable if you fattened it up and socialized it with your other dogs, and just like some people can't stop rescuing animals, Supernatural fans can't stop thinking about how to fix a show that isn't great, but could be with a flea bath and a trip to the groomers. Supernatural fans are not fans of the actual show, but of the show they imagine it could be, one that only exists in an alternate universe. They are in love with the Platonic ideal of Supernatural. That's also the reason why…

3) The fans understand the characters and themes better than 95% of the people who worked on the show

The people who watch Supernatural have thought about it way, way, way, more than anyone who produced it. I have read complex essays about what the color of people's clothing imply and how the state of the Impala reflects the state of Dean's mental health and other things I'm certain this show did not do intentionally. People can find depth in the shallowest aspects of this series. Any random fan could explain the complicated dynamics of the Winchester family and the overriding themes of the series better than most of the people who worked on it. That includes the LGBTQ stuff, which leads to the fact that…

4) The show is simultaneously too gay and not gay enough

On one end of the spectrum are fans who are offended you would dare to suggest one of the Winchesters might like kissing a boy and they'll shove you in a locker and duct tape your butt cheeks together for it. On the other end of the spectrum are fans who think it's odd that every episode doesn't end with two attractive men dry humping in a dark corner of the bunker library. No one is happy with the level of gayness on this show. It's always got too much "No Homo" or too much queer subtext, which is why I've concluded that…

5) The audience this show wanted is not the audience they got and they are resentful of it

The original pitch for this show targeted a male demographic who’s into toxic masculinity in a non-ironic way. It was about bros and beers and muscle cars and shotguns and hot chicks who will be killed to further the man's storyline. However, when making that show, they accidentally created a show that attracted female viewers who liked speculating about the queer subtext of each scene while looking at pretty men with traumatic backstories fight back their man tears. The show depends on the unintended audience segment to survive, but is bitter about it, which they remind you of time and time again by killing the female and non-white characters and toying with endless queer-baiting. It's like the writers got a plane to Rome, ended up in a gay nightclub in Amsterdam instead, and even though the canals and tulips make it a lovely city to visit, they wanted to go to Rome, damnit, and they'll never let you forget it! I also suspect that…

6) The people who made this show were at constant war with each other

This show has such a split personality. Sometimes it leans into the gay stuff and other times it makes fun of it outright. Sometimes they'll introduce an interesting side character that could make the show more diverse and then they'll slaughter that person for practically no reason. Sometimes they praise free will and other times they force people down pre-destined paths. The writers feel like a dysfunctional family stuck at Thanksgiving dinner endlessly squabbling with each other—who then had to write a TV show together over dessert. That's why it's such a weird hot mess. The show's unevenness makes me think that…

7) Some people's attachment to the show can only be explained by the fact that it imprinted on them when they were young

Some fans have mentioned they started watching Supernatural when they were kids. It's a pretty common experience to go back and watch things you loved when you were a kid and realize they were…not so good. Your memories of them are far better than the reality of them, but you cling to them anyway. The shows you watch when you're young imprint on you in a way you never forget. Supernatural fans are like a baby duck who looks up at a cat and assumes it’s their mother. Then that cat slices open their poor little hearts, leaving them wounded but not dead, forever be toyed with in agony. The only relief is that…

8) The fandom is batshit insane in the best way

I started following the Supernatural fandom on Tumblr in November of 2020 and OMG, it was AH-MAZE-ING. It was total insanity. I didn't understand half of what was going on, but it was more fun than a yard full of puppies doing zoomies. People were posting detailed PowerPoint presentations theorizing how the series would end, citing extensive physical evidence like the background in Misha's hotel room. People learned election results through Supernatural memes. Destiel went canon every other week. When the Spanish dub was released, Tumblr literally crashed! Obama's Twitter was following a Destiel account. There was a Twitter wedding for Destiel on Valentine's Day, which made the one-month anniversary on Pi Day.

It's been a ride, y'all. I have no idea how you guys survived fifteen years of this. The fandom has been so much fun that I actually sat down and watched more than 100 hours of this show so I could understand everything better. It's like the show is an extension of the fandom instead of vice versa. If anything sums up Supernatural for me, that's it. It's all about the fandom and the show is secondary to that. It's like the fans willed the show into existence as part of some partially botched spell. And part of that twisted spell is that…

9) The show will never die until someone finds its bones and burns them

This show has been off the air for more than six months now and it keeps trending on Tumblr consistently. Misha recently trended on Twitter simply because he was at the Oscars. That was it! He didn't even do anything there, he just attended, and some people figured it out by the reflection in a photo posted by someone else! And just as I was proofreading this post, Destiel started trending again because John Cena is a stan or something? This fandom is crazy and unpredictable and I love it like Dean loves pie! If there ever does come a time when this show stops trending, that will be the moment when they decide to reboot it or revisit it.

There is a lot more I could say about this show, but these were the elements that seemed most unique and bizarre about it. I wouldn't say Supernatural is a ride-or-die fandom for me, and I have no intention of watching another 100 hours of this series, but it's been hella' fun to drop in for a while. The show is just as much a dysfunctional mess as the Winchester family and I guess that's why people love it, right?

[mikazukikannagisjourney]

Spiritual Log October 16, 2019

Subtitle: Various healing tones for pretty much anything

Hi everyone, how are you all again? I hope you're all doing great. But if you're having tummy issues like yours truly here, and your eating habit is still normal, it's possible that

1. You're a generator whose stomach was starting to clear up,

2. You're starting to undergo major energetic shifts, or

3. Both 1 and 2.

Either way, congratulations! You're well on your way towards healing and raising your consciousness and awareness levels. Don't let it get into your head though, these things aren't fun and believe me when I say that despite the magical stuff, I sometimes wish I was still dead asleep because I get more and more sensitive to so many stuff. Like the recent super-typhoon in Japan, like the name HAGIBIS in Tagalog literally means "super-duper ultra fast-moving and strong" and it has winds as strong as Haiyan, which we had here in the Philippines a while ago and that was strong AF, like I live somewhere in the north and the typhoon went to the southernmost part of the country but the strong winds were still very evident where I lived. The anxious vibes due to the strong typhoon went straight to my solar plexus and it just felt horrible, so I had to lay down for what feels like forever until the full moon popped up. (still sending Reiki to Japan and where I am right now because why not, every energetic movement counts)

Anyways, with that out of the way, let's move on to the topic on hand: Healing tones! I am super passionate about this stuff, I swear by it, as well as a whole bunch of other people in the rest of the world too. Even the early indigo children who are now probably in their 70s or even 80s had a go at it during the psychedelic era because hey, it was a freaking spiritual boom and so many methods got discovered. And now that the stuff's going mainsteam-ish, I would like to give my 2 cents on this topic.

Stuff I listen to: Binaural beats, isochronic tones, solfeggio tones, subliminals and boosters, singing bowls, tingsha bells, gongs, guided meditations, some singing chants (for Kundalini Yoga meditations)

How did this came about? Well, some years ago, during the early years of my awakening (which I used to call my darkest times, well, it was my first and major Dark Night of the Soul so yeah) I suffered from a really, really horrible backache, not only was the pain shootingly extreme but I also lost mobility from my waist all the way down to my feet. Like a power switch for my legs were turned off. So I couldn't stand, and it was very painful especially when sitting and squatting for releasing bodily fluids. I had to pee standing up, and because I couldn't squat, dumping the #2 was limited to twice a week. It was very horrible because as an anally-fixated person who HAS to do it daily, it sucked. Not that I can eat much though, I was sleeping most of the time due to painkillers so no time to eat. Of course, I tried my best to get up as much and walk and move just to rehab myself (I was pretty much a bum because I wasn't paid from the past work that I did so no moolah for rehab and physical therapy and it was DIY mode again) but the pain was very, very unbearable. If you know how it feels when you slit your wrists (trigger! Sorry!) or if you have your period cramps (gah!) well transfer those kinds of pains in your lower back all the way down your feet, then magnify the pain intensity to about 100x, then shut off your ability to walk, then any form of lower body movement just hurts. Best 6 months of my life, plus the annual flare-ups ever since. My only escape from the pain were my medications, which weren't OTC and were actually quite regulated. Unfortunately I had to be weaned from the drugs about 3 weeks in because of the cash issues and the fact that I was taking in a substance that was closely-related to morphine so yeah, you get my point.

I had to find some sort of alternative one way or another, because that's what happens when you're desparate as fudge. By synchronicity, I came across solfeggio tones as well as binaural beats for cellular regeneration and pain relief, respectively. I listened to those tracks nightly for a good 2 months straight just to get some sort of comfort, and I was able to walk properly and stand, even sit for a good 20 minutes per day since the 1st week that I started. Unfortunately I pushed my luck too much after getting cocky in the 2nd month of healing so I had to go back to taking drugs while also listening to the track. Me and my dumbass ego lol But anyway...

During the time, I also accidentally downloaded a lucid dreaming track though, and that got me really hooked with the sound healing thing. Because of that track, I started learning how to do wake-induced lucid dreaming (WILD), I got to walk a lot again, experience no pain, and became a bit more spiritual. Of course I was still unaware that I was awakening, and as usual I kept ignoring my intuit on starting a meditation practice so I was stuck in there for another 2 years or so. By the time I realized fully that I was, and had been awakening since I was 24 years of age, I was already full of effing regrets for not taking the call seriously, I wasted a very long time in my Dark Night 1.0 and was plunged into Version 2.0, which was a lot more gory and horrible, apart from the ramped-up anxiety with depression and the fun painful flareups every now and then.

Of course, now I know that the flareups were due to my extremely contracted lower chakras, especially the root chakra. If you're asking me why I thought the pain was metaphysical, well it's not exactly fun being in extreme pain while going to the orthopedic clinic, then getting expensive imaging modalities and getting UNREMARKABLE results. I just couldn't stand the fact that I was in extreme pain and the docs can't find anything. It sucked. That shit took me like a good 4 years before I was able to connect all the dots. It sucked but also it was my fault for not following my nagging thoughts on meditating. Now I regularly listen to any healing tone and meditate even for 11minutes a day, so now most of my pains and sometimes my depressive states get managed a bit better, but the empath part still sucks (though that's another topic altogether lol).

Ok, so what's the point in all of these?

Well, for starters, having these experiences made me realize better why everything was energy, I mean, soundwaves literally helped me heal my pain and my lower back, and as far as I know it was all due to resonance of frequencies. If I wasn't made up of energy I won't even experience any relief and comfort. It was, and still is an exciting thing for me because after a considerable number of years listening to various healing tones, I am still sane-ish, somewhat, in an insane world.

So if you're looking for non-invasive alternatives for healing, I highly recommend healing tones. You can purchase them or just go to video-hosting sites, but of course you have to also tailor-fit them to your needs. Like if you're having sleeping issues, start with a calming track, or if you're in pain try the binaural or isochronic tones for killing pain. You can even improve your subconscious beliefs, activate your DNA, or become even more attuned to subtle energies because some tracks have intent, energetic transmissions, as well as subliminal messages in them. I won't be posting about subliminals and boosters here though, that's another topic worth vomiting words for lolz but I will, probably sometime after this post.

Well, I hope this post had some value for you, even if it just entertained you lol. But really, I take healing quite seriously as well as personal development ever since I can remember, so if you feel like you need to amp up yourself, then please do. Your soul and the whole collective will definitely benefit from it, especially in these chaotic times. Us woke people must be healed fully so we can be better way-showers to others who are also starting to awaken, like seriously think about the time when we were waking up and we had zero clues about it. At the very least, we can help one person ease through it, somehow. Don't feel bad though, we were built to shovel the snow away from the roads so others can pass through, and I think that's a wonderful gift we can give. Plus it's free lolz.

I pray you find the healing you seek.

Wishing you all the love and hugs from Source above,

三日月🌙

Mikazuki

PS. If you found the information in this post to be very helpful, insightful, and of great value to you and your own personal journey, please feel free to reblog, share and heart/like, or if you feel super-generous, energetic exchanges are welcomed! Please click here and use this email address: may_chan_otaku@yahoo.com

Thank you so much and be blessed!

[bmichael]

January stuff: activities, books, and such

I’ve never been, and never will be, a diarist. I realized today was Feb 1 and that I’d closed a few threads (or semi-closed) that I wanted to think about and process.

I attempted one of those “Dry January” things people do. On paper it actually seems to be quite good. I once had a roommate that fasted once a week. It wasn’t a big impact on his life, really, and it meant his body ended up processing 1/7 the food he’d ‘normally’ eat. Which, actually, is quite healthy. I have no idea if he’s still doing this, but it struck me as intelligent. Not drinking for a month (a 31 day one, at that) seems similarly healthy. That’s a whole 1/12th of the year you’re not drinking alcohol, which, if you drink a lot (...?!) then that’s good. I was mostly successful, drinking only about three of the 31 days. So not really successful at all, strictly speaking. It just goes to show how hard it is to get rid of vicious habits.

In a lot of ways. it was actually much easier to do an 80 day running challenge, which I completed on Jan 6.

The challenge for me was to run at least a mile every day for 80 consecutive days. I think I averaged about 3 miles per run, which ended up being less than my usual weekly/monthly mileage. The experience taught me a lot about sticking with a habit and pushing through mental resistance. I almost never run after work, but during the 80 day run streak, I ran after work about half the time. I bought a headlamp as this all occurred in the fall and winter. I ended up going for a very drunk run after the Ohio State - Michigan game, and I fell down on the sidewalk and really scraped myself up. I realized an easy one mile run can turn into a really fun, energizing three or five mile run. I think I’ll probably go for another run streak, although by the end I was constantly tired and sore.

January was a disappointing month from a health and fitness perspective. I ended my 80 day run challenge, and immediately picked up a new one: to run ten miles more than the previous month’s mileage, for at least six months. The problem was, I had run about 90 miles in December, so I had a goal of 100 in January and an eventual goal of 150 in May, which would be about my maximum monthly mileage. As I mentioned above, I was really worn out from the run streak (how do people stack up years-long streaks?) and turning my mileage up to a very high level was a bad idea. It didn’t end up mattering anyway, as I got to be very sick for the last two weeks of the month (just feeling better now) and I haven’t run since Jan 20.

I picked up another challenge, but one without a time component. Spurred by a friend’s push-up streak and an oblique reference to it from a Learned League question, I decided to train to do the “Sally Up” challenge:

If you don’t watch the video above, the gist is to do push-ups, planks, and whatever you call holding yourself off the ground, but with your elbows bent to 90 degrees - all to the tune of Moby’s “Flower”. The song samples a blues song with the lyrics, “Bring Sally up / and bring Sally down / lift and squat gotta tear the ground”. On “bring Sally up” you push up and hold until “bring Sally down”, at which point you bend your elbows to 90 degrees but don’t rest your body on the ground. It’s quite hard. I’d come across it maybe a year ago and only made it about a minute in. My only training for it was to do it after running, and I went from about 1:20 to 1:45. But I haven’t done it since the 20th. I also haven’t researched ‘strats’ for it, but I presume that by just doing the activity I’ll improve at it. Of course, I do pull-ups as a counter motion to this, but I end up feeling some tendonitis or something in my right elbow from doing a lot of push activities, so who knows if I’ll ever be able to do this.

Another reason why I know for a fact I’m no diarist is that I had attempted to chronicle each of the 80 or so runs I did during my run streak. I made it to run three, and then penciled in maybe number 80. Like, utter failure. I don’t know why I can take up physical challenges pretty easily, but forcing myself to do ‘work’ is infinitely harder. I have a form of discipline, but it’s not that one I guess.

I have a few other self-improvement projects, like learning Spencerian penmanship. As I also have a more than vague interest in pens and things, I thought it was stupid to have bad handwriting. Similar-wise to drawing. I’ve wasted so much of my life being fixated on things. I’ve always loved pens and art supplies -- notebooks, pencils, rulers, markers, paints -- but I’ve never taken any kind of instruction or tried to learn anything artistic. So I had and have been working on that. It’s relatively easy to be able to draw forms and figures if you practice, but being creative can’t be taught.

Over what I like to call the ‘Winter Break’, I received for Christmas and read Masha Gessen’s book about Putin. It’s quite good. I don’t know anything about Russian history, so I have to remind myself constantly to temper my reactions to her stories, but it seems... hella fucked up? It’s improbable and frightening how quickly Putin gained, consolidated, and abused his power. Obviously, there are many, many parallels to Trump. It almost seems by design, which I wouldn’t discount. I’ve constantly found many leftists chiding this new-found Russo-phobia to be consternating or outright puzzling. I know Glenn Greenwald is aware of Russia’s policies in re: freedom, press, minority and gay rights. But he seems pretty non-plussed about it all. Like liberals in the US are just continuing the cold war or something. Which, I think is probably sort of true. But also, the motivations here seem totally different? The political apparatus opposing Russian interference in American political life doesn’t seem like it will gain much materially from its actions. And the opposite faction actually has everything to gain. I don’t understand.

One book that’s helped me to understand somewhat is The Devil’s Chessboard, a long history of Allen Dulles and the CIA, written by David Talbot, who founded Slate. Again, I know very little about anything, so I’m constantly having to remind myself that there are countervailing interpretations and views about all of this. But if even half of what Talbot writes about is true, Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles are two of the most powerful and little-discussed (in the mainstream, popular press or history curriculum) men in American history. The Dulles brothers ran the CIA and State Department throughout from WW2 through the Kennedy administration. So: they ran the official and unofficial foreign policies of the most powerful country in the world during the period in which it gained the majority of its power. With little public accountability. And their only guiding principles being to topple Communism and make money for their former clients and friends in the insanely affluent world of international business. Take away about 80 points of IQ and trade Islam with Communism, and you have today’s state of affairs.

My thinking has been dominated by trying to contextualize all of what’s happening with whatever accounts of the past I can find. This book on Dulles has been an amazing resource for that, and if you’re unfamiliar with the political context of the cold war, then I’d recommend it. It’s very relevant. The whole of American foreign policy, official and secret, can be traced directly to Allen Dulles. From collaborating with Nazis to creating pan-national corporate states to destabilizing foreign regimes to promote or protect the interests of those states to utterly ignoring the rule and spirit of the law to accomplish all of the above. It’s headspinning, breathtaking, whatever. It’s literally incredible, and I’m looking forward to reading something more ‘basic’, like Halberstam’s book about the 50s, to get some more perspective. But it’s beyond a doubt in my mind that America right now is just where it deserves to be.

I haven’t been listening to as much new music and such this month. I came very late to the Kevin Gates album. He’s been consistently one of my favorite rappers, even though he has a plethora of corny songs (”Hard For” is a major cringer). But his flow is ferocious and his voice is just about singular. Whereas it seems like all the other young rappers have moved to welp-like squeaks and squawks for their vocal style, there’s something strangely transgressive about his deep throated gravelly sound.

I’ve rediscovered my love of Phish. It’s just happy, great, energetic music. I just found out Phish is playing a 13 day stand at MSG, and I hope to go to one of those shows. But, TBH, I could live in the summer 1993 tour and be happy forever.

Up until the election, I listened to so many political podcasts, and then after the election I stopped finding entertaining political ‘news’ and journalism. Especially Jon Favreau. What a smarmy fuck. I hope his new podcast “saves america” or whatever, but I highly doubt it will, unless he can find a way to weaponize the uniquely grating sound of condescension and overconfidence masking his one good attribute in life: having a great boss, once. 

I’ve recently discovered an older podcast (though still ongoing!) called Tincture. It’s a post-apocalyptic one, like listening to an alternate universe version of Fallout. Like, if Fallout 3 were actually amazing and somehow influenced by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series (but only the good parts). It’s awesome, so far. Highly recommended, along with Doughboys, my favorite comedy podcast of the last year. It’s started off a little ‘ehhh’, but the last episode with Jon Gabrus (who also has a pretty good podcast, High and Mighty) was an achievement. Maybe a little too up its own ass for new listeners, but that’s sort of the whole MO of the Doughboys. Maybe you have to get frog-boiled accustomed to it, though. 

There are lots of other things going on in my life, and January has marked an inflection point in one of them. I’m hoping that things somehow the general situation improves. Going to the women’s march in New York was inspirational for the size of the crowd and the diversity of the voices, but it was just one day. I know people are protesting and resisting throughout the country (and world), but I fear that unless the resistance can become commoditized into some form of media or consumption (basically, subsumed into capitalism) a la Fox News and MAGA hats, then it’s doomed to fail. It’s not fun to stand outside in the cold all day yelling. It’s fun to have well groomed people on TV telling you things you agree with. That’s something you’ll do every day and spend money on, perpetuating the messaging and power it has. I just don’t see a way out until people on the left can start to coexist and consolidate their world views into something sustainable in some form that’s empowering and most of all easy to do. I know that’s not very revolutionary, and making a liberal Fox News sounds like simultaneously an unambitious and meager, sham-like goal. But just being practical, everyone tearing everyone else apart on twitter all day is the opposite of productive. There has to be something else.

(I know it’s ironic that I’m calling for some sort of agreeable mass media to give leftist views a mainstream platform for consolidating and propagating their views just a few lines after slamming the Favreau podcast. Maybe I’m just not the target audience for it, so I walk my condemnation back a little and say, more power to you and good luck.)

January is over. Tomorrow is James Joyce’s birthday. I might go for a run today, but I probably won’t. Twenty-eight days later, this post will almost certainly not see a sequel.

[coffeeandcontemplationblog]

Goals for 2018

I’m so tired of feeling like year after year passes me by without making a significant mark on the world (or at least my world). So here are my goals so that 2018 doesn’t travel down the same, unproductive road. I’m really excited about the fresh beginning of a new year; the start of the next 365 days where anything is possible if you work for what you want...right?

Wellbeing

1. Get Back to the Gym: I’ve lost a lot of confidence lately and it’s vital for my mental health to get that confidence back. I slipped out of any semblance of a gym routine these past few months and it absolutely shows. I feel flabby and thick in all the wrong ways, and so this is the year that I discipline myself all year long, carve out time to go to the gym six days a week, and regain pride in my body like I’ve never known before.

2. Make Creativity a Priority: The majority of my days are filled with scrolling aimlessly on various apps on my phone, bartending at my day job, or focusing too much thought and energy on my relationship. I love my boyfriend, but we’re in a wonderful place together so there’s no need to obsess and fixate on the status of our relationship. I need to get my head out of my ass and start nurturing my creative spirit again. I haven't performed in any way in months, and have tons of journals and notebooks that are only half-filled or not at all. So how am I going to go about doing this?

Use my love of social media and online browsing as a tool: It’s clear that I have an addiction to the internet and I don’t think I’m alone in that. So, instead of trying to cut down my time on technology, I’m going to use my habits to my advantage and commit to writing here on tumblr or more deep-diving posts on instagram. I want to write something of import at least three times a week. I’ve had ideas of starting my own blog page, but until I have a focused vision and message I think I’ll hold off. 

Follow the impulse to explore photography: As someone who loves taking photographs but never took the idea seriously, I want to devote 2018 to doing all the things that I want to do. I plan on starting with a camera my parents own but never use, a Canon of some sort, and then go from there.

3. Keep drinking limited to 4 nights a week: I’ve noticed in the last 3 months or so that I’ve started to have at least one drink every day. I don’t know if that’s as big a deal as it feels, but I know that for my life it’s definitely unnecessary. It doesn’t help that Im a bartender and having a drink is my primary method of relaxing or dealing with the anxiety that comes with a packed bar. But if I’m really going to commit to the gym again then I won’t have empty calories to waste on wine every day anyway. SO I think 4 nights is a good compromise with myself. And who knows, maybe once I cut down I’ll realize even four is unnecessary and I’ll even go down to three. 

4. Really start learning French: This has been a goal of mine for so long that if I don’t get serous about it now I fear I never will. And what better time than now anyway? I’m dating someone who speaks the language, who’s mother also speaks the language, and we’re planning to vacation in France for the SECOND time this summer. So what’s stopping me? Laziness and money. But this is something I truly want and have wanted for years. Ever since high school, really, when I was too insecure to do anything that my friends weren’t doing. I have another friends who speaks the language and I’m going to reach out to her about setting up lessons. If i could get a handle on the language by July I would be so proud of myself and it would be such a huge accomplishment off my life bucket list.

Career

1. Land Representation: This has been a tough one for me for a long time. Each year I say will be the year I finally sign with agents and a manager, and each year I let myself down. Not this year. I’ve just reached out to an agent who has been stringing me along for over a year, asking her to please put me in touch with another agency if she does not feel we’re a good fit for one another. She hasn’t responded yet but I’m hopeful. If that route doesn’t go anywhere then I’m going to reach out to everyone I know, audition for every single play and film I can possibly find, and hopefully get something to invite all of the agents and managers to that I’ve met in passing.

2. Go Back to Class: It’s become very clear to me lately that I still have so much to learn about technique and preparation. Maybe I’ll never be done learning about it. But I cannot sit idly by while day after day passes and I am not practicing my craft for weeks or months at a time. That’s insanity. So I think I’m going to reach out to Michael again this month about returning to taking lessons with him. It’s a gamble because of the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies a relationship with Michael, but it’s worth it if his rates are cheap and I feel artistically fulfilled each week. 

3. Make a Promise to Perform Every Three Months: It doesn’t matter if its a play, student film, or finally getting the courage to write and perform slam poetry. If I don’t keep performing, I’m letting excuses and fear run my life. And I’m done with that. So. By the end of this month I am going to have a performance date of SOME SORT scheduled in the books. 

Travel

This past year I got to travel a good amount. I went to several parts of France I’d never seen, Iceland, Budapest, Hudson, and D.C. What follows is a list of all the places I want to or plan on traveling to in 2018:

1. Brittany, France

2. Egypt

3. Tiny House (Catskills, NY)

4. Vermont

5. Ireland

6. Budapest

7. Montreal

8. LA/ Northern California

9. Colorado

10. Scotland 

Relationships

While my boyfriend is my partner and the strongest relationship I have in my life, I want 2018 to be an exploration in strengthening and prioritizing friendships that I’ve allowed to fall by the wayside. I recently moved out of the home I shared with my best friend, and before doing so we made a pact to see each other once a week every Tuesday. However, her holiday and work schedule took priority and so now we haven’t seen one another in a month. Instead of addressing my feelings of neglect and hurt to her after canceling on me several times, I’ve allowed my frustration to fester and grow like a bacterial disease, resulting of course in me being angry to the point where I can’t text her or else it would start a fight (which of course I’m already in, in my mind). So, I would like to take the opportunity of this new year to be less passive aggressive and more communicative with those close to me when I’m feeling hurt or disrespected. I’m going to reach out to my friend tonight and tell her how I feel. It would have been more mature of me to address these feelings as they were first happening, but that time has passed and I have to start somewhere. 

It’s not just this one friend that I’ve been unsuccessful at keeping up with. I find that I have very few friends that I actually see. Sometimes I try to see someone in particular and they regularly blow me off, and sometimes I get invites to see people whom I regularly blow off. I’ve decided that if someone cares enough at this point in time in our lives to make an effort to see me, then I will make an effort to see them. As far as the friendships that I value who I don't see often, I will continue to pursue and reach out to them in the hopes of having more people in my life who I consider to be “close” with. 

This is the first time I’ve ever written out resolutions like this, organized and categorized in this manner, but I found it really helpful and in the last hour have gained an immense amount of clarity on what it is I’m truly looking to gain from this next cycle around the sun. I hope it inspires others who come across this post to do the same!

- Ashleen Xx

[brepynx]

How to feel

Sometimes in life some people that you wouldn’t expect to be influential to you affect the way you feel about certain things the most. How certain individuals reactions in certain scenarios can sway your future opinions towards things. You can get so incredibly fixated on the idea of something, something you thought was oh so right for you, that not for a minute do you think things will ultimately feel differently. I found myself trapped in a two-year relationship that I was convinced was the extent of my love life forever. I told myself I was okay with that, while now I see how truly unhappy I would have been. I was determined to prove everyone who ever doubted my relationship, which is why things continued as long as they did. He was good to me, and that’s something that will always haunt me when I’m alone. Towards the end however, little things he would do bothered me more than they should have. I didn’t care whether he called me to say good night or if I even saw him that day at all. I practically hoped he’d forget about me so I could avoid the hurt for longer. Things he was willing to do for me compared to the things that became deal breakers for me just began to build it’s importance. I found myself not feeling like myself, committed to this person who was surely my best friend for the past two years but, I felt different towards him. We felt different. I was changing and he was remaining the same. I came to the realization that I would never truly happy along the side of someone who didn’t understand me at all. 

Music had been so important to me my whole life and I never found someone who shared the interest as strongly, which bummed me out. I never was in the relationship that gave you absolutely no fear to share every dumb song you find on Spotify.  I have had two serious boyfriends in my life and neither of them ever valued my passion for music. To be honest, they both under appreciated me  in that department. I would spend hours writing songs about how i felt about them, I was so desperate to be loved. And with each boyfriend I cherished for God knows why, neither of them reacted to my love songs the way I had hoped. That made me start to lower my expectations for guys. I thought I had to settle to not feel lonely, to be loved.

And hey, I like to smoke weed. So what. I started smoking weed towards the end of my first relationship. He smoked. I didn’t. I wanted to. He didn’t want me to but, I did anyways. That relationship only lasted a month or two later than that. I spent a year on my own, feeling fucking undesirable and depressed. I cut myself, only because my friend did it. I thought I hate myself too, might as well. That became a thing I did, for a while and when it fucked all my friendships, for bullshit reasons I don’t even want to get into I got out of that habit. Left enough scars anyways. During my year alone I wore thick black eyeliner, kept my hair straight and long as a safety blanket, and was usually fucked up. I smoked weed all day and didn’t give a shit about anything. At night I’d get wasted with my “friends” and repeat that cycle almost daily. I smoked a lot of cigarettes, because all troubled teens who hang around the skatepark did. I met my next boyfriend at the skatepark, matter of fact. 

He was on probation for selling weed, so from day one he hated when I smoked. I should have just stopped right there, but I didn’t. I wanted to be desired. We dated two years and the entire time he loved me more than I loved him. We had a lot of issues but, i still thought I would marry him. He was ambitious, so I thought we’d be well taken care of. But our major differences that I could not bring myself to look past gave me doubt. He would tell me how in the past, he would fixate on one feature on the face, or a mannerism his girlfriend would have and it would drive him insane. He told me that he never felt that way with me. That I was perfect to him. This sat unsettlingly with me for a while, mostly because I COULD find things I didn’t like about him. I ended up breaking his heart. It hurt both of us bad. I hated that I felt this way. I hated that I couldn’t be myself with him.

When someone tells you how to feel, your initial reaction is to go against it. Nobody likes being told how to feel. When college started for my best friend at the time, her boyfriend who she dated all of senior year cheated on her within the first week. She was devastated. I cared more about her than she did about me and being that thoughtful friend I am, I tried to cheer her up. On Instagram I had seen my best friend from pre-k when I was 3 was going to the same school as her. I decided I would do some match making. I was still dating my ex at the time but, I was fucking bored. I added my friend on snapchat and began telling him about my friend from high school. I asked him if he smoked weed because my friend did and was looking for some smoke. He told me he did and actually turned out to be a stoner for the most part. He was appreciative for setting them up and that night the two of them hooked up. I was excited for them but, that night I saw something more in him and felt he was too good for her. He began to like her and she only strung him along to get back at her ex. Days later, she cut him off completely and I felt horrible. She got back with her cheating ex boyfriend. At this point I had already been thinking bout breaking up with my boyfriend, and not because of my childhood friend, but because of all the reasons I listed previously. This was the point where I was told how to feel. After telling my mom about my friend’s situation she laughed and said I should date him instead of my boyfriend she never liked. This of course pissed me off and I rolled my eyes, but a little part of me agreed with her.

Eventually, I went to my grandparent’s cabin in the mountains one weekend with my family. One night me and my old pal were snapchatting and having really intimate conversations together, learning all about one another and commenting on how similar we are. That weekend I decided I would break things off with my boyfriend. I did and it was rough but, I didn’t care. I began valuing the friendship of my oldest pal than my own boyfriend. Things started getting more flirty with us a and eventually, right before hurricane Irma, I went down to his college and we stayed in his dorm throughout the storm. Instantly, from the moment we first reunited we were best friends. I felt so comfortable with him. I never wanted to go back. We have the exact same music taste. He even asked me to send him my Spotify playlist, something my ex never wanted to listen to. We would get stoned and have great sex, which was hot and fun and new and exciting. I even wrote him my best song yet and he reacted amazingly  appropriately to it. He’s the sweetest guy I’ve ever met and he makes me feel like myself. He’s my other half although he’s far from me. He took me to town during my time there and I found him synchronizing our footsteps as we walk beside each other holding hands. Something I would normally do. He’s just like me and I don’t know what to do. I never thought I’d find someone so similar to me. Someone who genuinely cared about me and my interests and supported me. He’s still my best friend in the world and I miss him everyday. I don’t know what our future is for us while in college but, I know he’s in mine. He’s my future. Also been thinking about the Facebook post I’m going to make when i’m his wife and our first kid turns three. I can say some cheesy shit like “Today my first born is the same age I was when I met my best friend in the world and my husband all in one day.” Idk probably gonna marry his fine ass...