#do not discount yourself

[hindahoney]

Converts, please do not sell yourself short or underestimate the position that you hold within Jewish communities. Your love for Judaism, the Jewish people, and the Jewish culture is infectious and can make people realize the value of the culture they've simply grown up in. When people ask you, "Why did you want to convert?" don't take it as them really asking "Are your reasons for converting up to my standards, to which I will thereby judge whether you're worthy or not?" Most of the time, what we're really saying is, "Please tell me why you love the thing I just grew up in. Tell me why someone would choose this."

Many Jews grew up facing antisemitism in school. So it's baffling to think that someone would willingly subject themselves to this, and some of us grew up internalizing this shame and rejecting our Jewish identity in order to fit in. But you, as a convert, spark light within these people. You, as a convert, have boldly gone against the grain because you see the value in our way of life, one that is not easy. You've joined a people, many times at the expense of your friends and family, and your safety. You're something to aspire to. You rekindle the love and connection we have to our nation. If you don't already realize the value in this, you will when you notice those around you being moved by your words.

Being a convert is not a mark of shame because you're "different," it's a badge of honor. In many ways, you are lighting the torch for the next generation of Jews you come in contact with.

[dailybloopy]

[runefactorynonsense]

Happy Valentines Day, 2024 ♥

[m0e-ru]

guy who knows krav maga fights himself like a girl

[shiftperception]

once a friend told me I wouldn’t enjoy some game that took actual skill (forget title) because I liked more casual games. I believed her cause like how was I supposed to argue when I only played pokemon on my DS and didn’t own any other systems. I’ve always kinda dismissed the idea of getting into harder games but currently have a really bad addiction to mh now. my main series friend told me I wouldn’t have gotten to the level I am if I weren’t good at the game and that complaining about rajang seismic tossing me was a right of passage for every hunter. it’s making me rethink my view of myself and have delusional thoughts such as ‘should i buy rise?’

I walk/hike daily to do hunt-a-thons or elder raids in mhnow. A few weeks ago I felt the urge to one up someone who kept being ahead of me in multiplayer quests (just for fun??). I thought I had no competitive instincts because I’ve found the idea of competing (even for fun) nothing but draining my entire life. I am thinking ‘suck it crimson!! (affectionate)’ about a person I don’t know outside the game and have no beef with. is monster hunter changing my brain chemistry? wtf

[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.

[mylittleredgirl]

so one of my skills in life is that i test very well, largely because of pattern recognition, and i realized today that it’s pretty detrimental to the medical evaluation process. i basically scored perfect on a hearing test today that ruled out some diagnoses, and i am only now going back over the process in my mind and realizing that i didn’t actually hear a bunch of stuff i said i did, i just knew the right answer because the pattern of words and beeps was a consistent speed and pattern and they told me in advance what words they were going to use so like? yeah?? of course i knew when to raise my hand and could figure out what word you were saying? anyway i got an A in hearing which is normal to want yet perhaps detrimental to achieve.

and i can’t really call them and go “sorry i think i outsmarted your test, like a dumbass” so if i notice my hearing getting worse i’ll call them back and get re-tested, and bring someone with me to be like “your goal is not to pass the test. repeat after me. your goal is not to pass the test.”

[wriiothesleys]

i don’t know who needs to hear this, but your mutuals, even your friends, don’t have to exist in the same world as you and your f/o if they also self ship with that character.

there doesn’t need to be competition or feeling like they’ll pick your friend over you. your f/o is yours and they exist in your own space separate from someone else’s. it isn’t wrong or mean either to keep people out of your self ship. if you’re having a hard time because someone “shares” your fave, just remember that person doesn’t even exist in your self ship universe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

think of your f/o as a copy, and there’s plenty to go around for everyone to enjoy and love in their own unique and comforting way.

[the-busy-ghost]

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

[tittyinfinity]

My super nice water bottle broke beyond repair and I can't replace it because my mom doesn't have her company discount anymore and this cup costs $60😭

[3416]

Luke Fox are you ready to die. He literally did this shit last year with the whole Marner/Keefe situation that people STILL bring up and act like Mitch was actively strapping Keefe to a chair and waterboarding him until he agreed to 'walk back' comments about them not playing like elite players. And EVERY TIME people eat it up because they want to be angry, they want to live in their false narratives so they can seethe and rage about accountability

literally... it cracks me up that fans think players owe accountability to THEM. fklsdjfkldsjklf like girl you sit on your couch while they're out here trucking around the ice every other night for your entertainment and accuse them of not trying, lol.

luke fox and honestly all of the big toronto media guys KNOW mitch marner brings the most clicks out of sheer rage on twitter dot com so they do it every time. should not let myself be surprised but it's such sloppy fucking journalism to portray it that way every time. i even see people who i consider level headed eating it up without looking for context and i'm like. are you all genuinely stupid. seriously. don't even get me started on the Walking things back last year that was totally made up. if you watch mitch's interview from that day he's so ????? like does not comprehend what they're trying to accuse him of, it's so funny.

[iiusia]

i feel. like there is a balance to strike between distinguishing what is actually scrupulousity and what is genuinely you feeling guilty because God is convicting you of something. like yeah theres a point where you're just making yourself miserable over things that hold no consequence because you're terrified of doing something wrong. but. i think. that if you can find good (scripture-supported) arguments for why this God wouldn't want you to do this thing, to then dismiss that as scrupulousity is just deliberately closing your eyes to it.

[snathark]

Girls on their birthdays

[minecrussy]

‘It’s against company policy to discount baby food for any reason’ suck my shit hard from the back you cop ass cunt

[joi-in-the-tardis]

Yesterday, an older lady called me over with "sir" but when I spoke she said "oh you're a ma'am" and then there was a brief pause "or you're whatever you want to be." I told her I'll answer to anything other than "late for dinner" and we shared a laugh.

That nonbinary energy, acknowledged.

[bashhowardproductions]

Have to watch the jenny nicholson video in chunks because if i watch it too long i get sad i dont work at disney world anymore