#but im overwhelmed with choice

[muirneach]

i need to make a quilt before school starts and start a new knitting project soon so i have something to do at work

[laurzvahll]

soft abt them tonight sry

[ratatatastic]

crying that sashas explaining each plate while maffhew intently listens to him and realises hes not gonna be able to eat all this and tells him to "you know, finish that off (for him)" and sasha proceeds to help him

[mxnkeydo]

"you have nothing to be stressed out about you're literally in school wait until you're an adult and-" NO SHUT UP you have no clue what its like to be a teenage girl nowadays, you always have to look good and smile even when you dont feel like it, sometimes you feel so alone when your friends already have other friends, you feel pressured to be pretty because you like this guy and then you start feeling so insecure about yourself and you start to notice the tiny tiny flaws of yourself, you have to keep your grades up even when you're burnt out because thats what matters right, the grades? but then there are the kids who have the extracurriculars, the pressure from their parents that they have to do more even when they really dont want to and still through all of that we have to be happy. like damn. give me a break.

[lords-of-fortune]

Mixed feelings on the choices stuff but also annoyed that out of the three choices that are to be made I technically haven't made two of them yet bc I haven't finished inquisition and therefore trespasser ajdkfl

[kaurwreck]

you remind me of a time i wish i could go back to; a time in which i would obsessively read and keep reading about anything that interested me slightly. i would stumble into entirely new ways of thinking with all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop, and learn to engage with it on its own terms. the ability got lost somewhere in the haze that was school and uni and people and work and now i’ve… lost the ability to think on my own. it comes maybe twice a month, in random bursts, and i fucking hate that i don’t have access to it continuously anymore. i hate that now when i’m bored i can’t think up stories in my head and chew on ideas in my free time. i see you and i’m so happy and so envious; i wish for my thirst for life back. i’m so tired. i’m saying this to you because, of all people, might be able to see it clearly. i respect the fact that you managed to retain it to adulthood or beyond is so much. you don’t know how much that means to me, as a young adult.

If it helps, I don't read nearly as much as I did as a kiddo. Like, not even remotely close. Quite frankly, I've only recently gotten back into reading lit, after years of only reading comics and manga, and not nearly at the volume I did before.

But! There are all sorts of opportunities to engage with stories and ideas and reconnect the synapses that spit where they used to spark. Once, in the throes of a heavy and prolonged period of uncertainty, I was gripped by the color of spray paint on the sidewalk on the way to pick up an espresso while sleep deprived. I consciously chose to stop and appreciate it.

Which is to say, I also get exhausted and burnt out and go through periods where I wonder if I've lost some fundamental part of myself. But then I rest or I change my routine or I receive an affirmation I didn't realize I desperately needed, and my verve returns, as it does. I think having pediatric onset bipolar disorder has advantaged me in this regard because even when I feel like nothing, I know that the intensity will return, and that it will continue to ebb and flow like the tides. I used to dread the ebb, but the ebb has its own value, too; in the ebb is where I nurture roots.

But to my earlier point, there are lots of stories and ideas buried in all sorts of moments. We can imbue meaning in the things we do as an observed ritual until it becomes habit until it becomes sincere. And for the periods in which we can't, it's worth remembering that the winter solstice is the longest evening of the year, but the sun will come back because it always has. In the meantime, you can stoke a hearth and sip on coaxed together warmth while tucking into your memory this grief so that you will recognize what you've been missing when it returns, so that feeling excited is remarkable enough to cut the present ennui. In time, you'll start to feel substance in the contours of the grief, too, because to be exhausted and numb and tired means that you exist enough to be anything at all.

And, if you're too untethered from yourself for even that, find something mundane and look for a glimmer of anything worth observing. If you can't find anything, choose to give some facet of what you see meaning anyway.

(It's not that the sidewalk was purple. It's that I chose to see that it was that particular, beautiful shade of purple rather than remain adrift into my own ether and, in doing so, tethered my intangible enormity in something tangible enough for me to stoke while I weathered the season.)

If you practice enough, this becomes muscle memory. Same with thinking on your own. I don't think reading is ever enough on its own anyway; sometimes, we mirror ideas and mistake them for our own. Or we encounter ideas but don't allow ourselves to be changed by them.

It's why it's important to engage intentionally, and it doesn't have to be with text. It can be with movies, art, those around us, our environment, our own understanding of the world, the condensation on a window. Mindfulness helps, but so does adopting the mindset of a toddler and asking why? Constantly. Again, it may begin as a rote exercise, but the more you do it, the more it becomes muscle memory. If you think you know something, consciously stop and ask why? Where did you learn that? What assumptions does your conclusion rely on? Could there be another explanation? Pretend you're someone else for a moment, a favorite character or historical figure or loved one. What would they think given the same facts? Also important is saying, like a toddler, because I said so! as the only reason you need. Try things for the sake of having not tried them before. There's a reason why Lao Tzu advises being like a newborn baby, soft boned with a strong grip.

There's very little I do, read, watch, or consume that I don't think about applying elsewhere, too. This is sometimes exhausting. But it's also where I get my well of passion. Because there's always an opportunity for meaning, my life bursts with it.

This doesn't mean I don't still have rough weeks or months or years. I have bipolar, adhd, cptsd, and social phobia; I have frequent insomnia and sleep paralysis, etc. etc. But I look forward to what I might learn next, and there's purpose and intention to how I experience even my lows. The life I'm currently living is so unlike where I came from, in part because I decided I wanted meaning and purpose. Before I knew what that was supposed to look like, I picked a direction and strove for it, feeling out what I couldn't see. I still do, when necessary. It will always be necessary.

So, while I don't know if what works for me will work for you, I can promise that something will excite you again, eventually. Adulthood isn't a linear decline or a separation from yourself. It's variable and dynamic, and you have agency in what you do with that. There isn't any objective meaning or purpose to be assigned, so you get to choose it for yourself, and it can be as variable and dynamic as you need it to be. So, if you don't want to grow into someone who can't think on your own, you don't have to. If you don't like your current state of mind, you don't need to settle in it.

tl;dr: It's not what I've retained, it's that I've ebbed and flowed and changed, and given myself the space to clumsily stumble towards what I want and what I value, even if I'm not always sure what those are. I'm letting go of the construct that I have to be anything, and I emphatically choose not to be lots of things. It's a process, and it's nonlinear. But nothing is, and there's grace in the inevitably of ebb.

[ficsempai]

Getting older really changed my perspective on Natasha somehow, im more forgiving and compassionate than I used to be with her.

She’s a child.

I guess she really was young, uh, that’s definitely something you realise with age.

[dandyshucks]

yall im honestly a little afraid of getting very far in this game bc i am notorious for never using TMs or HMs unless its necessary for like. getting around. like the rock break one for example. and also i never use X Defense or X Attacks, i just don't use items and I let my pkmn learn moves naturally so i'm scaredddd of like... the Z-move stuff,,, and any other boost elements of the game,,, it just feels overwhelming and its hard for me to choose what to use where bc im already flailing around as is - i'm just really Bad at strategizing 😭😭😭

[pcktknife]

do you have any tips for a first time art fight?

not really well other than 1) dont expect a revenge attacks back for every attack you do and 2) the other side of that dont expect yourself to do revenge attacks for every attack you might get. some people do but not everyone can and you might burn yourself out <:3 take breaks if u need👍🏾

[rhysnolastname]

idk how to do an evil play through. like i make all the evil choices no. im already crying i fear

[3416]

whats the fic that would be perfect and whats the thing you dont like about it

i can't drag an author like that on main 😭 i support everyone writing what they want to write, i just am surprised at how little fic is written abt 1634 in general. i feel like if anything they've gotten more insane since being rookies, not necessarily less but 😭

[martyrbat]

so many of you talk about the cruel adults in your childhood that negatively effected you and caused lifelong insecurity yet you're still perfectly fine with being that mean stranger to any kid that has the misfortune of existing around you and thats just really gross !!!

[fairwinds-safetravels]

[trashogram]

Love the idea of a monster’s s/o becoming more like them - developing monstrous features slowly or gaining eldritch powers over time and the monster becoming horrified because they realize that their lover is becoming tainted by the monster’s mere presence.

[doctorodyssey]

if you're feeling like your mental health is too fragile to bear witness to the suffering in palestine, like you need to do "self care" and avoid reading the news...

i want you to consider the unimaginable privilege needed to even think such a thing. the people in gaza have lived under a permanent blockade for 16 years. they are trapped and israel controls their access to food, electricity, water, and medical supplies. israel has been OPENLY massacring and displacing the palestinian people for 75 years. the entire world sits by and lets it happen. palestinians are dehumanized constantly by the western media. the world's most powerful countries give israel endless funds to commit genocide.

israel WANTS you to look away. they don't WANT you to see the babies they've murdered and the hospitals and schools they've bombed and the white phosphorus they've used on residential areas that is hot enough to burn through to the bone and the armed militias with government-provided guns patrolling the streets killing palestinians and the people their soldiers have raped & tortured and the people they're keeping in cages and the systematic starvation and the mass destruction of palestinian farmland and the screaming, hysterical parents whose children were taken from them and...

if you look away, you're complicit. you have to see it. you, as a westerner, have very few options. but palestinians are BEGGING the world to bear witness. we are watching a genocide in real time. we HAVE to call it what it is and we HAVE to share the images and videos that palestinians and journalists in gaza have quite literally given their lives to get to us.

[gay-fordeath]

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