#do not perceive how there's less than half an hour until it's monday for me shhhhhh

[zentriii]

happy six sentence sunday! this one's under the editing pile so hopefully it'll see the light of day soon-ish :D [edit: it's been posted]

“Boo, Omi-Omi! C’mon an’ gimme sumnthin’ betta than tha’,” Motoya drawls in a cheap and shitty imitation of his crush. “Don’t call me that.” Kiyoomi disregards the rest of Motoya’s request; haunted for life he may be, but a willing accomplice he is not. (Kiyoomi resolutely does not think how intertwined their lives are, and how little he’d care to actually change it.) “I’m just making conversation Kiyo-chan," Motoya whines, "Give me something to work with here.”

thanks for the tag @lenniereadsalot <3

[xmxisxforxmaybe]

Decryption_Error: “Fourth of July, Part I”

Summary: As Y/N deals with the stress of transitioning into her new position, she also has to find time to ask Elliot a very important question. 

Story Summary,  “The Server Room, Part I”,  “The Server Room, Part II”  “The Long Weekend, Part I”,  “The Long Weekend, Part II”,  “The Aftermath”,  “Undecided”,  **“Decided”,  “Spooked”

Word Count: 5500

Tags: @sherlollydramoine @rami-malek-trash @teamwolf2411 @limabein @txmel @hopplessdreamer @alottanothing @ouatlovr @backoftheroomandnotbelonging @moon-stars-soul​ @free-rami​ @ramimedley

If you want added or I’ve missed your request, let me know : )

Warning: SMUT and a lot of it so NO under 18s

The next few workdays were a blur as I transitioned to CISTech’s General Manager. I worked long hours, learning the ins and outs of what Miles did on a daily basis. Like with most jobs, the higher you climbed, the less you actually worked within your field, which was going to be a struggle because I counted on the way analyzing trends kept my mind balanced. I took note after note until Miles banned me from writing anything else down.

“This is all sensitive material, Y/N. You have to be cautious and leaving 500 post-its lying around is a surefire way not to safeguard sensitive information.”

Despite my scowl, Miles held firm, so I stopped taking notes and stuck to paying more attention as I shadowed him.

The transition wasn’t made any easier by the impending Fourth of July weekend. Since theFourth fell on a Thursday, the office was closed on Friday, too. That meant the interviews for my replacement weren’t going to take place for at least another week or two.

And weighing the heaviest on my mind was not my new job or who my replacement would be, but that in the midst of the chaos of my promotion, I was running out of time to invite Elliot to my parents’ house in Greenwich.

What made my procrastination worse was that he was being so patient as I was barely able to see him for more than a minute or two when I passed through the cybersecurity office. Sticking with routine, if I hadn’t texted him by 7:00 pm, he’d text me to ask how I was, to ask if I needed anything, or to ask if I just wanted to talk for a bit. In short, he was being the perfect boyfriend, the very thing he thought he couldn’t possibly be.

The beginnings of relationships are always so fragile, but because Elliot and I were friends first, and because of the trust we had built after I helped him, I knew he and I would make it through this hectic transition.

However, I was not so sure if we would make it through me asking him to meet my family. I knew it was soon, but I was also sure of my feelings for Elliot—I had meant it when I decided I was going to be a constant in his life. He deserved to have someone who cared about him, and he deserved to move forward, to not be haunted by his past or by what he perceived to be his “abnormalities.”  

Since it was the Monday before the Fourth, carving out a quiet moment with Elliot became a non-negotiable. I cleared my lunch hour and told my new secretary I was going to be out of the building.

When I appeared at Elliot’s desk, I almost scared him out of his skin. His fingers stumbled over the keys of his computer and he yanked out his earbuds. I had learned long ago that Elliot didn’t actually listen to music at work—he just put in his earbuds so no one would talk to him.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” I said, a smile playing with the corner of my mouth at his wide, surprised expression. “Do you have time for a quick lunch?”

More than a few eyes in the office were watching us with a mild curiosity. Word got out pretty fast about our meeting with HR, but I figured most people weren’t willing to believe Elliot and I were an actual couple. At least until they saw it for themselves.

“Uh, yeah. Sure,” Elliot said, closing out his windows and turning off his monitor.

As I watched his fingers move, I couldn’t help but to think back to what his hands felt like on my skin. And when I raked my eyes over his arms and up to his face, I couldn’t help but remember what his stubbled jaw had felt like under my fingertips as I pulled him in for that goodbye kiss—

“Is everything okay?” Elliot asked, his eyes searching my face, trying to figure out what I was thinking.

“Yeah, of course,” I said with an awkward smile as I looked down and adjusted my bag.

When Elliot stood up and slid his phone into the front pocket of his trousers, my eyes followed the movement, and I shook my head and turned around before an actual blush could appear on my face.

My body missed him.

I missed him.

We rode down the elevator in silence, standing just close enough that I could feel the fabric of his muted blue dress shirt glancing over the skin of my arm. Never had I wanted to hit the stop button on the elevator and just kiss someone senseless more than I did in that moment.

Elliot followed me out of the elevator and across the lobby. Again, neither of us spoke as we navigated the busy streets of Wall Street at lunch time, the silence between us just as loud as the bustle of taxis and cars.

“Is this good?” I asked, stopping outside of a mid-size Chinese restaurant we had ordered take-out from a few times.

“Sure.”

After we were seated and the waitress took our drink orders, I started talking in a stream-of-conscious ramble.

“I know this isn’t the ideal place or time or whatever to talk to you about this, but I’m running out of time considering I wasn’t expecting to get a promotion of all fucking things on top of a new relationship and it’s the Monday before the Fourth and I know this is last minute, especially for you, but it really can’t wait any longer.”

Elliot looked down as he muttered, “Okay,” before I started rambling again.

“My parents are having a get together over the Fourth of July, and they would really love it if you’d come. They’re eager to meet you and I’m eager for you to meet them. And by gathering I mean just my family—my mom, dad, sisters, and brother and their significant others. Oh, and my sister’s kids, of course, although I’m not really a very good aunt because I see them like three times a year.”

Elliot just stared at me, so I continued.

“I know it’s . . . a lot, but I wanted to tell you now, well, I wanted to tell you last week but time got away from me and I know you like to think about stuff, but I’m trying to give you some time to think about this because it is really important to me—don’t answer me now. Just think about it. Or ask any questions you have as you think about them. So, yeah. Think about it?”

“Are you ready to order?” the waitress asked, startling both of us from my one-sided conversation.

We ordered, me falling back on my staple of chow mein, and Elliot ordering his go-to, sesame chicken.

As soon as the waitress left, Elliot took a deep breath.

“I thought you were breaking up with me.”

I snorted, an absolutely unsophisticated honking of a laugh, which caused Elliot to half-smile.

“Well, in that case, is my actual reason for asking you to lunch better or worse?”

“Do I have to answer that right now?”

I smiled, relieved that Elliot hadn’t bolted, but saddened he still thought our relationship was so tenuous—the exact opposite of what I thought it was.

Elliot’s hands moved to circle around his glass.

“I miss you,” he said with a low voice, barely even a murmur, as his eyes watched the condensation on the glass.

I slowly reached across the table to lightly touch his finger. He moved it away from the glass and I slid my finger along his, my eyes slipping shut at the contact.

“Tonight. Stay over?”

I opened my eyes to find Elliot looking at me as I asked him to stay, and he gave me that small smile I loved so much.

“Okay.”

* * * * *

In a mimic of our first night together, the instant Elliot shut my apartment door behind him, I was on him, pressing him against the door, molding my body to his. Lunch had passed in fragments of idle conversation because we both knew the other was thinking about this.

When I pulled back from my kiss hello, he was right there, so present, in front of me with his grey eyes looking at me like I held some sort of secret he had been searching the world over for.

“Can we go slow tonight?” Elliot asked, his eyes holding mine as his hands rested lightly on my waist.

“Of course. Whatever you want,” I said gently.

“I want to be good for you,” Elliot clarified.

“Oh—” I said, a little surprised at his directness. “I want to be good for you, too. You’re not the only one who thinks about those things.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Elliot’s muscles relaxed and he tightened his grip on my waist.

“Come on,” I said, my breath ghosting across his lips.

“Wait,” Elliot said, his eyes slipping shut as he moved forward and kissed me.

His lips stayed pressed against mine for a long moment before they began to move. Elliot’s tongue softly swiped between my lips and I opened instantly, welcoming him to deepen the kiss and set the pace he wanted.

The kiss was slow as Elliot explored my mouth, his tongue moving so languidly that my body reacted, a gentle warmth of arousal building slowly within me.

He closed the kiss as softly as it began, and I opened my eyes to watch as he lazily opened his. I smiled softly and took his hand to lead him down the hallway to my room.  

When I released him to pull down my comforter and to turn on some music, Elliot stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, shuffling before uncrossing, then crossing his arms again.

“Relax. We’ve already done this,” I said with a chuckle as I scrolled through my playlists.

“Not like this. This is—” Elliot trailed off as he uncrossed his arms again.

I hit play and music began to emit from my speaker, not loud enough to be distracting, but loud enough to disrupt any uncomfortable silence.

“More intimate?” I questioned, fishing for what was really bothering him.

“What if we don’t work?”

I blinked, taken aback.

“We already worked. I mean, I worked just fine and I think you did, too?”

“Not physically. In all the other ways? What if we don’t work?”

I took a deep breath, and said, “This is about this weekend.”

Elliot sort of deflated as he walked to my bed and sat down, his feet just touching the floor because of my high bedframe.

“I’ve never met someone’s parents before.”

“It’s not as intimidating as you’re imagining it to be. Everyone will be there, so it won’t feel like the focus is on you. I want them all to know you, to see how smart you are. To see how kind you are. To see the way you look at me.”

Elliot looked up and gave me just the sort of look I knew my mother would notice.

“Like that,” I chuckled. “Full of affection.”

“Am I that easy to read?”

I snorted.

“God no. It’s just that sometimes, some part of you wears your heart on your sleeve. I like those moments so much. Those moments when you’re really here, really present. Whatever bothers you—depression, or your anxieties—it’s all far away.”

“Because you make me forget,” Elliot said to the floor.

“Forget what?” I asked slowly, unsure if I wanted to hear the answer.

Elliot ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands for a second.

“Forget what it’s like to be lonely.”

My heart fluttered at the tenderness of his sad words.

“You don’t ever have to feel like that again. I’m not going anywhere. Actually, we technically just signed a contract, remember?” I said, trying to get a little laugh out of him.

Elliot smiled softly, “If only it were that easy to make sure you stayed.”

“Boy. We’ve got loads of emotional baggage to unpack, huh?”

“You have no idea,” Elliot said, his voice barely concealing bitterness.

“All the more reason to meet my family. You can see that no family is ‘normal,’ especially not mine.”

Elliot looked up again, his voice a perfect monotone as he asked, “Are you really sure you want this—you want me so visibly in your life?”

“Elliot. We slept together once, I asked you to be my boyfriend, and then I went straight to HR to disclose. If that wasn’t a telling set of actions, I really don’t know how else to prove to you I’m really fucking sure I want to be with you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. Show me.”

His hands gripped the edge of the mattress as he lifted his head to squarely look at me. Elliot was characteristically quiet before finally replying, “Okay—I’ll meet them. I’ll spend the weekend with your family.”

With a sharp intake of breath, I bit my lip in an attempt to hide my grin. This was a big step, and I hadn’t been sure Elliot would take it.

I crossed the room and nudged my way between his legs. He reached up and wrapped his arms around my hips, pulling me in so he could hug me, his head pressing into my chest.

I ran my hand through his hair, gently scratching along his scalp and mussing his styled-straight strands. Once Elliot released me from his grip, I took a step back so I could kneel in front of him.

He was watching me with wide eyes as I began to untie his black dress shoe. I pulled it off, then untied the other one. I slowly reached my hands under and up his dark grey trousers, feeling for the edges of his black socks. When I found them, I curled my fingers in and pulled both of them off. His toes flexed as he reached to steady himself on the floor. I ran my fingers over the tops of his feet to see if he was ticklish, but he didn’t react. I smiled because I wasn’t at all surprised that Elliot Alderson wasn’t ticklish.

I ran my hands up the back of his calves and around his knees to slide across the tops of his thighs. I braced myself and stood, my hands sliding to his hips as I leaned forward to press a soft kiss to his lips.

“Is this okay?” I whispered against his lips.

“Yes,” Elliot breathed.

I unbuckled his belt and opened his pants before moving my hands to his dress shirt. Starting from the bottom, I worked my way up, opening each button. Before I slid his shirt off, I stopped to kiss along his jaw, working my way to behind his ear. As I sucked, just a little, Elliot’s hand shot out to grip at my hip.

I pulled back and slid his shirt off, tugging before I realized I hadn’t unbuttoned his cuffs. I made quick work of those buttons, pulled off the dress shirt, and dropped it to the floor.

As I reached for the hem of his black t-shirt, I looked at him, his cheeks tinged with color and his lips parted. Elliot was always so beautiful in moments like this with his edges softened and his eagerness to be loved becoming almost tangible.  

He straightened and lifted his arms as I pulled the worn fabric away from his body.

I delighted in the fact that Elliot was now mine to look at for as long as I pleased. We’d come a long way from my stolen glances in the bathroom as I tended his cuts and bruises.

“Uh?” Elliot mumbled quizzically, his hands back to grasping at the edge of the bed.

“I’m allowed to look at you as much as I want,” I said, my eyes half-lidded and with a smirk on my lips.

Elliot blinked up at me, and I smiled before I took pity on him and gave him something to do.

“Scoot back. Relax.”

He complied, and I reached to pull off his trousers, kicking them to the side so I could stand between his now dangling legs. He was perched on his elbows, watching me as I slid my nails up and down his bare thighs, loving the feeling of the thick, curly hair on his legs.

I toyed with the edges of his black boxer-briefs, sliding my fingers underneath the edges, creeping up until the fabric began to bunch.

Elliot’s cock was hard, outlined perfectly beneath his underwear, and I licked my lips before I looked up at him.

“Talk to me this time. Tell me what you like. What you want.”

And I flicked my eyes back to his underwear as I removed my hands from under them and reached to pull the waistband down. Elliot quickly lifted his hips, and I once again let my eyes rake over his body, now totally bared to me.

I didn’t look for long because his hips and his stomach were just too tempting, damn near begging to be tasted.

I bent over him, resting comfortably with my thighs pressing into the edge of the bed, and after sweeping my hair to one side, I licked a long stripe over the indentation of Elliot’s hip bone. I repeated my ministration on the other side of his body, then slowly began to kiss my way across his lower abdomen.

When I reached the dark strip of hair that extended down his stomach, I slowly licked my way up the trail, moving further and further from his cock, which was gorgeously swollen and nearly ready to leak.

Elliot’s fingers scrambled against my waist as he tugged on my shirt.

“Tell me what you want,” I said as I pressed soft kisses around his chest.

“Take off your shirt,” Elliot demanded.

A small grunt of pleasure escaped me at the way his voice rumbled through his chest, his command clear, almost confident.

I straightened and quickly pulled off my blouse. My fingers dipped under my bra straps and I stopped, looking at Elliot with a raised brow.

He nodded his head, and I slid off the straps then reached back to unclasp my bra. I ran my hands over my breasts, more out of the delight of finally being free from my bra than in an attempt to look sexy.

But Elliot definitely found my action alluring because he reached down to wrap a hand over his cock, squeezing just enough so that a drop of precum slid out and onto his thumb.

I could not have held back my moan at seeing him touch himself even if my life had depended on it.

“I—” Elliot’s voice faltered and he bit his lip.

“Tell me. Tell me what you need,” I said quietly as I leaned forward again, knowing what he wanted but needing to hear him say it.

“Your mouth. Please. I want your mouth,” he said as he gave himself one more squeeze before removing his hand and laying back on the bed.

I reached out to grip his hips on either side as I flattened my tongue and licked him from base to tip. Elliot’s body gave a little shudder, and I slid my tongue through his slit, tasting him for the first time. I hummed with pleasure and placed small kisses along his cock as I whispered, “I need to hear you, El. Don’t hold it in.”

And then I took him in my mouth, engulfing his hardness and taking him as deep as I was able.

Elliot groaned out a long, “Fuuuck.”

I removed one hand from his hip and wrapped it around the base of his cock. I worked him with my mouth, slowly, not wanting anything to end too soon and honestly, just enjoying the taste of him. I felt his fingers brush at my hair before lightly settling on my head.

I could feel Elliot’s body building to his release, and I reached down to lightly run my fingers over the smooth, tight skin of his testicles.

He groaned again before he breathed out, “Stop—stop.”

I let him go and pulled back, but Elliot was already moving, pulling me onto the bed with him.

“I want you,” he said, pushing me back and moving between my legs, reaching down to undo the clasp on my trousers, fumbling a bit before it popped open.

I helped him slide me out of my pants and my underwear, and I pointed to my nightstand’s drawer. He reached over and pulled out a condom, opening it and rolling it on. I watched and let my legs fall open in gesture of welcome.

“Are you ready?” he asked, his eyes scanning my face.

“God yes,” I said, pulling him on top of me.

Elliot’s eyes slid closed and he kissed me as he positioned himself and entered me. We both gasped into the kiss and Elliot’s hands found my arms, sliding down to my wrists so he could pull them above my head.

He fucked me like that, slowly and sensually, his body rubbing against mine and creating the most delicious friction as I chased my release.

I was so excited by him, and Elliot was surrounding me, overwhelming me—the taste of him in my mouth, the weight of his body on mine, his eyes watching my face until they slid shut with pleasure, his fingers pressing into my wrists, and his cock driving into me.

It didn’t take long before I was flushed and panting, my head thrown back and my mouth open as I ground into him, my aching clit finally giving way to my hard orgasm that rushed through my body, electrifying my skin and pulling out of my mouth a series of praises to god and to Elliot and maybe even to his cock.

And somewhere inbetween my praises and my moans, Elliot let go, his hips slamming into me before slowing as his orgasm sweept over him, his groans and his mumble of my name against my neck so much more subdued than my earlier outburst, but the deep rumble of his voice with a slight crack as he praised me caused another impossible shiver of pleasure to spiral through me.  

Too soon, Elliot untangled himself and sat up to pull the condom off. He tossed it in the trash on the other side of the nightstand and flopped back onto the bed, his chest rising and falling, a slight sheen of sweat glistening between his muscles.

“I was supposed to learn what you liked.”

“I liked that,” I said, smiling and reaching over to trace a finger down the dark trail of hair on his abdomen.

“I’m serious,” Elliot said as he rolled over to face me. “I want to be good for you.”

“Alright—is it my turn now?”

Elliot made a strangled noise of surprise as he struggled to answer, and I laughed out loud.

“I’m teasing,” I said, still laughing. “We aren’t 17.”

And, as if in agreeance with my statement, a yawn escaped, which made Elliot chuckle and hide his face in his pillow. He looked over again, sheepishly.

“I’m not the one yawning,” he said, his voice dripping with snark.

I giggled and opened my mouth in mock-offense.

“No need for the snark, Mr. Alderson.”

“Mmm,” Elliot mumbled as he wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me against him. I rolled over and settled in next to him, enjoying the feeling of him holding me. I wondered if he could fall asleep like that, but I didn’t find out that night because as soon as my eyes shut, I was dead to the world.

And when I woke up, it was to Elliot pressing light kisses along my bicep, over my shoulder, and against the base of my neck.

“I … like . . . this,” I mumbled, sleep still clinging to my voice.

“Yeah?” he asked as he continued to press featherlight kisses over my skin.

I rolled onto my back to give him better access and Elliot took full advantage, sliding on top of me and settling between my thighs.

He continued to kiss all along my jaw and down my neck, lightly sucking and licking as he made his way to my breasts. He teased my nipples and my body’s response to him was almost shamefully open; my nipples hardened, and my skin prickled with goosebumps. I wanted to rub my thighs together to seek out some contact, but Elliot was in the way, his strong hand holding my hip in place.

“Tell me what you want,” Elliot growled out against my stomach.

His words were an exact echo of mine from last night, and my eyes slipped shut as I reached above my head and squirmed against him.

“Your fingers—touch me, please.”

The weight of Elliot lifted, and I knew he was looking at me, his eyes raking over my wet heat, but I kept my eyes shut tight, wanting to feel everything he was willing to give.

Soon, I felt a tentative finger sliding over my mound and between my lips. My legs fell further apart and I grasped onto the slats of the headboard. Elliot was taking his time, watching my reactions and memorizing them.

He gently slid his finger from my clit to my folds, circling my inner lips before sliding in one long digit, and twisting to seek out the bundle of nerves hidden inside of me.

I hummed with pleasure and unlike Elliot, there was no hesitancy in my request.

“I want your mouth.”

I heard him suck in a shaky breath as the bed moved, and I shivered as Elliot’s hands pushed my thighs even further apart. When his tongue slid between my folds, the moan that escaped my lips was low and filthy.

I knew I was so wet and a part of me felt bad he was going to be covered in the evidence of my arousal, but when I opened my eyes and saw Elliot’s head between my thighs, I damn near came on the spot.

His hair was a mess. His thick fingers were digging into the flesh of my thighs, holding them open, one of them still glistening from being inside of me. And his eyes, dark in the grey light of the morning, were open, locked on mine as he closed his lips over my clit and sucked.

My thighs tried to snap shut but those hands held me open. Elliot relieved some of the pressure and began gently licking at my clit, but it was too late.

I came, hard and fast, my hands gripping the wood of the headboard so tight I was afraid it would snap.

I growled in frustration and wiggled away from Elliot.

“Fuck me,” I said turning over and positioning myself on my hands and knees.

“Y/N,” Elliot moaned, reaching for the nightstand again and rolling on another condom.

There was no pause this time because there was no need to ask if I was ready. There was only the feeling of Elliot sliding his cock into my aching, tight center.

My arms trembled as we fucked, Elliot setting the brutal pace I requested with every “harder” and “faster” muttered.

His hands that were gripping my hips let go to squeeze the flesh of my ass; his groans punctured the air between my moans and my chorus of yesses.

“Fuck, Y/N,” Elliot panted. “I’m going to come.”

“Not yet, not yet,” I begged.

Elliot made a noncommittal noise and pulled at my hips, forcing my arms to buckle so he could push me down into the mattress. He ground against me, and I felt his head rest between my shoulder blades before he pushed up a little on my hip, and that was it—

My second orgasm washed over me in an echo of the one from last night. It was pulsating and slow, warming me and making my heart pound against my chest.

I could feel Elliot’s own heart hammering, and once again, I missed his actual orgasm because I was busy riding my own out.

“So…was that good?” Elliot asked, his voice nothing more than a rasp.

“Shut the fuck up,” I said, breathless and grinning as I wiggled out from under him. “I need a cold shower.”

And maybe even better than all my orgasms combined was the sound of Elliot’s laughter as I made my way to the bathroom.

* * * * *

“Elliot,” I said, rummaging through the black duffle bag on his mattress. “It’s going to be 98 degrees tomorrow. You don’t own a pair of shorts?”

“I don’t like the way they feel.”

“Alright—how about swim trunks?”

“I—don’t swim.”

“Don’t? or Can’t?”

Elliot thought it over for a moment.

“Don’t.”

“Well, that’s a big part of what we do. Swim, kayak, hang out on the beach. You’re going to have to compromise a little.”

“I could just stay here.”

“Don’t you sass me—you told me you’d go.”

“I’m not sassing.”

“Yes, you are,” I said as I tossed another black t-shirt back in his bag and flung myself onto my back, exasperated.

“You’ve gotta work with me a little…just a little.”

“But this is a lot. I don’t think you realize how much this is,” Elliot mumbled, his hands on his hips as he looked around his apartment.

I sat up on my elbows and looked at him. The purple under his eyes was back and it was obvious he was feeling overwhelmed.

“Come here,” I said patting the mattress and sliding into a sitting position, pushing a pillow between my back and the wall.

Elliot frowned, but complied. He sat down on the edge of the bed, too far out of my reach to touch him. It was difficult to be with someone who could be so loving, so open, and then not want you to touch them, but I kept reminding myself that this was new for him and it was new for me. Not every day would be like the night we spent together on Monday.

“I know you’re feeling overwhelmed. Talk to me about it.”

After a minute or so, Elliot began to talk, a quiet murmur in his trademark monotone.

“I have no idea what it’s like to be with a normal family. Mine wasn’t. At least it wasn’t normal with any consistency. All I have, when I do remember, are normal fragments mixed in with all the fucked up shit. I think—I think it was more normal before he died. I remember going to the movies. I used to talk to him all the time, especially when he’d pick me up from school and take me to work with him. After…after he was gone, Darlene was the only sort of normal I had and,” Elliot broke off with a huff of a laugh. “And Darlene isn’t exactly what anyone would describe as normal.”

“Elliot—is that all you see when you look at me? Normal?”

“No,” he said glancing at me. “It’s just hard to look around that sometimes.”

“Maybe this weekend will show you that you’re more normal than you think—we talked about this. Normal is subjective.”

“It is, but I can promise you my childhood is not anyone’s version of normal. I’m not anyone’s version of normal.”  

“But you’re my version of perfect,” I said, smiling widely at Elliot, and enjoying the look of shock on his face.

“Don’t—”

“I love being with you, El. Now who can’t take a compliment?”

“I’m not perfect,” Elliot said slowly, as if I were a child.

“Perfect is subjective—”

“No. The literal definition is “free from flaws, without defects.”

“Sure—for the verb. The adjective, however, states that perfect is having all the required desirable elements, in other words, something being as good as it is possible to be. Sounds subjective to me…and sounds like I’m free to say that you, Elliot Alderson, are perfect for me.”

Elliot’s sigh let me know he wasn’t going to protest, and I said, “Come here.”

He tried to hide his small smile but failed as he scooted closer and sat next to me. I turned my body toward him and reached up to slide my hand along his jaw to cup his face. I turned his head toward me and his eyes, so alert in this moment but still dark in the dim lighting of the apartment, focused on me.

We stayed like that for a long moment until I broke our eye contact as I leaned in, my eyes sliding shut when my lips found his. This kiss was slow and sweet, lips on lips, until I felt Elliot’s tongue ghost along my lower lip.

When I pulled back, I rested my forehead against Elliot’s.

“I’m buying you some swim trunks,” I said, causing Elliot to chuckle, his breath a cool huff across my wet lips.

“Fine.”  

[lilyvandersteen]

Out of the Blue: Chapter 11

Cover art: @redheadgleek​

Beta extraordinaire: @hkvoyage​

Links: AO3, FF.net 

Author’s Note:

All's well that ends well :-) Thank you for coming with me on this adventure, and please let me know what you thought of it. I love chatting with my readers :-)

Chapter 11: Isabelle’s Wedding

"And will you promise me, never to enter into such an engagement?"

 "I will make no promise of the kind."

(An excerpt from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Blaine hadn’t been expecting any reply to his e-mail, but got a terse note back. Message received. All right, then. Moving on.

He threw himself into his work. By now, he’d pretty much become Cooper’s right hand, well-versed in the tricks of the trade, and maybe not as good at networking as his brother was, but a lot more efficient when it came to all the practical stuff.

And he liked the work. Coop did ads for all manner of things, so it never got stale, and each new contract brought fresh challenges Blaine could sink his teeth into.

Coop had carefully sounded him out over the summer to know if he considered staying on at Anderson Advertising after he graduated. “I’d give you half of the shares. We’re a good team, aren’t we, bro?”

Wow. Things were serious when Coop didn’t even call him ‘squirt’. But it was true that they worked together well, and complemented each other. So Blaine readily agreed to stay on, provided he could do other jobs on the side whenever an opportunity presented itself.

The week before his classes at NYU would start again was grueling. Long hours, clients from hell wanting to micro-manage things though they didn’t have a clue what they were doing, lots of fetching and carrying and sorting out small disasters before they could become big.

“Hamptons this weekend?” Blaine asked his brother on Friday, while locking up the warehouse.

“Sure, sounds great. Oh, but tonight, you’re on your own, ‘cause I have a date. I’ll come to the Hamptons on Saturday, all right?”

Blaine shrugged. “Fine.”

He drove to the Hamptons in Coop’s convertible, enjoying the wind in his hair. He’d been uncomfortably sweaty all day, and couldn’t wait to jump into the pool.

Once he arrived at the house, he started stripping immediately, grimacing at his sweat-soaked clothes. He hesitated for a second, and then peeled his underwear off, too.

Much better!

The Uptons next door were on a cruise anyway, according to Coop, so Blaine could do as he pleased. And that included jumping straight into the swimming pool without hunting for his speedo first. Humming happily, he strode out of the house, stopping at the parapet for a moment to soak up the sun and enjoy a soft summer breeze on his skin, and then diving into the pool.

Aah, bliss!

He’d barely done two laps when he heard someone next door, calling for ‘Kurt’. Could it be?

He swam to the side of the pool and looked into the neighbours’ garden. And yes, it was Kurt! He had his back to Blaine, but he’d recognize that quiff and that profile anywhere.

Kurt was wearing tiny yellow shorts that hugged his butt beautifully, and a T-shirt with flamingoes on it. It was the most casual outfit Blaine had ever seen him in, and it stirred feelings in him he desperately tried to squash.

He hasn’t noticed me. I should get inside and put some clothes on before I talk to him. Or I could just forget about him entirely and stay in the house until he’s gone.

Quickly, he hoisted himself out of the pool and grabbed a towel, meaning to head inside and get dressed, but his subconscious had other ideas. Before he knew it, his feet had led him into the neighbours’ garden, and he’d called out, “Kurt?”

Kurt turned around, and his mouth fell open when he took in Blaine’s state of undress.

Just when Blaine internally started berating himself, he caught a glint of heat in Kurt’s eyes, and he noticed that Kurt’s shorts had become just as snug in front as they were in the back.

Oh. Oh! I can work with that!

Blaine gave Kurt his most seductive smile and unobtrusively pulled his towel a little lower.

Kurt’s Adam’s apple jumped up, and his voice sounded high and thready when he greeted Blaine.

Blaine couldn’t help but feel a bit smug about the effect he had on Kurt, though he kept the conversation general and light.

And then there was that other voice again, and a tall and handsome guy, who looked vaguely familiar, sauntered up to them.

Suddenly, Blaine felt very underdressed and foolish again, and jealous of how Tall and Handsome moved into Kurt’s personal space as a matter of course, putting an arm around Kurt’s shoulder as he introduced himself to Blaine.

Elliott. Where have I seen him before? Oh, yes, at that very first wedding, officiating, right?

Much as he wanted to resent Elliott for barging in on his tête-à-tête with Kurt, he couldn’t, because the guy was so nice and welcoming. And apparently, a fellow NYU student, who also took Music History, albeit on Mondays, and was in Steve’s study group.

Before Blaine knew it, he’d agreed to join them for dinner, and was walking back to his own house to get dressed.

He could feel eyes following him, and with a grin, he loosened the knot of the towel, letting it fall off him entirely just before he slipped into the veranda.

Go on, take a look. You know you want to.

K&B

Dinner proved to be a noisy and informal affair. Kurt and his friends didn’t stand on ceremony. They just grabbed the take-away box with the food they wanted and dug in. Rachel didn’t stop talking for a minute, and in between bites, the others chimed in, too.

Blaine ate ravenously. He’d skipped lunch again because he’d been kept so busy, and he felt so hungry he could eat a horse.

The only one who noticed his less than dapper table manners was Kurt, who quirked an eyebrow at the sauce smeared all over his cheeks and his chin and gave him a paper towel to wipe his face clean.

Oops, totally forgot about making a good impression. Yep, Mr. Sloppy here, sorry about that…

Blaine tried to make up for it with a charming grin, and got a small smile back, which he counted as a win.

After dinner, there was singing. Blaine enjoyed the group songs, and loved jamming with Elliott, but the absolute highlight of the evening proved to be Kurt’s solo.

From the very first line of the song, Blaine was blown away by Kurt’s voice, which was clear as a bell and so pure that it brought tears to his eyes. Kurt’s performance was heartfelt and deeply moving, and Blaine felt himself falling more in love with him with every word he sang.

When it was Blaine’s turn to sing, he picked an old favourite of his, Teenage Dream. His eyes found Kurt’s, and he sang every word to him.

Kurt’s expression started out as polite interest, but his smile grew warmer and bigger with every verse, and when Dani took over from Blaine with a bluesy ditty, Kurt came towards Blaine of his own accord.

Soon, they were chatting like old friends and getting on like a house on fire, because of course Blaine had read Patty Lupone’s memoir, and of course Marion Cotillard was his favourite Vogue cover, that went without saying.

They talked until they were hoarse, and Blaine volunteered to go to the kitchen to get them both a glass of water. When he got back, Kurt had conjured up a blanket from somewhere, claiming he felt cold, and Blaine took that as an opportunity to put his arm around Kurt and cuddle in close.

Kurt shot him a thankful smile and shared the blanket with him for the rest of the evening.

Blaine was hardly aware of others being present besides themselves, having no eyes for anyone but Kurt. This was everything he’d ever wanted ever since he’d first clapped eyes on Kurt: this amazing guy noticing Blaine and liking him, and wanting to get to know him better.

When Kurt dropped his head onto Blaine’s shoulder, and started yawning, first discreetly, and then jaw-breaking yawns he couldn’t hide behind his hand anymore, Blaine knew that the polite thing to do would be to say goodnight and go home.

He threw a furtive look at the others, and found Mark grinning at him and winking.

Blaine grinned back, and shuffled around until he and Kurt were lying down instead of sitting, Kurt’s head on Blaine’s chest.

Blaine softly stroked Kurt’s hair, and Kurt nuzzled closer and made a content purring sound.

Within minutes, Kurt was out like a light. Blaine tucked the blanket in around him, and then just luxuriated in the feeling of having him so close-by and so trusting, grinning dopily at the ceiling and humming along whenever one of the others sang a song.

He didn’t fall asleep until long after everyone had gone to their respective bedrooms, feeling too jittery and hyper for his brain to slow down.

He half-woke early in the morning when Kurt got up to pee, but didn’t fully wake until a delicious smell wafted into his nostrils.

He sniffed appreciatively and opened his eyes.

Kurt was no longer with him on the sofa, but he wasn’t far away, bustling around in the kitchen. And baking, apparently. He was just taking a tray out of the oven, and the way his shorts stretched around his booty was as mouth-watering as the treats he’d made.

Blaine adjusted himself in his shorts and got up, stretching to get the kinks out of his back.

“Nice view,” said Elliott, waggling his eyebrows as he passed by Blaine on the way to the kitchen, and then “Ow!” when Dani poked him and hissed, “No hitting on other people’s boyfriends, you’ve got your own!”

Blaine beamed at being perceived as Kurt’s boyfriend. He saw everyone trickling in and grabbing cinnamon buns, so he hastened to take one too before they were all gone.

He took a big bite and closed his eyes as flavours exploded in his mouth.

His first bun was gone in mere minutes, but when he took a second, Kurt lifted it out of his hands again.

Before he could start pouting, Kurt handed it back to him, now dripping in glaze. And mmm, that made the bun ten times better still.

It must have been that level of perfection addling Blaine’s brain that made him suddenly blurt out a marriage proposal to Kurt.

Everyone took it as a joke, including Kurt, but the scary thing was that Blaine meant every word. He’d liked Kurt from the beginning, because he seemed to be the whole package: gorgeous, stylish, smart, witty, a great cook and a caring person, who went out of his way to help his friends. Last night had proved that they also had very similar tastes in music, movies and fashion, and that they shared the same views on relationships and life goals. And yes, it had taken Kurt far too long to notice Blaine, and there had been plenty of misunderstandings and road blocks on the way, but they’d established a connection now. They really clicked, just like Blaine always knew they would. It felt amazing, and Blaine never wanted to spend a day away from Kurt anymore.

Calm down, tiger! Slow and easy wins the race. You’ve made progress last night. Definite progress.

That seemed to be on Mark’s mind too when he asked what was going on between Kurt and Blaine.

If Blaine had any hopes of Kurt acknowledging this growing bond between them, they were dashed at once when Kurt brushed off the question and didn’t even look in his direction.

Quietly, Blaine excused himself and went home.

Kurt gave him some extra cinnamon buns to take with him, but he couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm about that.

Have I been misreading things again?

It was all the more confusing because Kurt smiled sunnily at him and told him to come over again that evening, and when Blaine mentioned his brother, nonchalantly said Coop could come along too, as if it didn’t matter one way or another.

The mixed signals made Blaine’s head whirl, and as soon as Cooper was awake, he discussed it with him.

“Well, I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for sure,” Coop hedged, “but there certainly seems to be something going on between you two. You know what, I’ll invite the lot of them to dinner tonight. If you’ll do the cooking. Then I can observe the two of you and tell you what I think. All right? We’ll do that. But for the record, squirt, I think you’re doing great. Just, don’t mope tonight, okay? Even if he’s being confusing, running hot and cold. Keep your cool and make sure you’re the most charming, interesting and sexy guy in the room.”

“Easy for you to say, Mr. Hottest Billionaire Under Forty.”

“Hey, you’ve got a lot going for you, squirt, and I’ve seen Kurt looking!”

Blaine sighed. “But Elliott’s going to be there too, and the guy’s this glitter rock vampire. Wears eyeliner and earrings, has plenty of tattoos. Cool factor through the roof! How can I ever compete with the likes of that?”

“Blaine.”

“Yes?”

“Who did Kurt talk to all evening last night?”

“Me.”

“That’s right. So don’t put yourself down. You have what it takes to get his attention. Make yourself so irresistible that this Elliott doesn’t even make a blip on his radar. Wear those red chinos of yours that do wonders for your butt, and DON’T gel your hair.”

Blaine saluted his brother. “Aye aye, sir.”

That evening, when Kurt and his friends arrived, they brought a spectacular dessert, and it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Kurt had made it. Was there anything he couldn’t do?

As he had promised his brother, Blaine didn’t mope, not even when Kurt sat far away from him at the table, or joined Cooper’s team to play Pictionary.

After the game, though, he took his chance to sit next to Kurt when Rachel gave up that place to go check out Cooper’s karaoke machine.

He jumped up again at once when Kurt asked if they could talk in private, and led the way into the garden.

Apparently, Kurt felt bad about misjudging Blaine, and wanted to clear the air between them so that they could start over.

Well, that was encouraging, so Blaine reassured Kurt as best he could, and then asked him to dance, right there in the garden.

He got so swept away by the romance of it all that he kissed Kurt mid-dance, and then jumped back, horrified at his lack of impulse control. Kurt didn’t seem to mind, though. He kissed Blaine right back, and they stayed in the garden until it got too cold.

Blaine walked Kurt back to the house next door, and then drew him in for one more kiss.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Kurt asked, a little breathless.

“You will. If this is not a dream I’m about to wake up from.”

Kurt’s eyes danced with mischief. “Want me to pinch you, honey?”

“I want… I want so many things. But I’d better shut up and go home before I scare you off.”

Kurt framed Blaine’s face with his hands and moved in until their foreheads touched. “Relax. I’m not easily scared. You can blurt out as many marriage proposals as you like. Fair warning, though: one of these days I might say yes. So don’t ask unless you mean it.”

Blaine huffed out a laugh. “Oh, I mean it. Marry me, Kurt?”

Kurt tapped his nose playfully. “One day, maybe. Keep asking. Good night, honey.”

Blaine was reluctant to open his eyes the following morning, convinced that it had all been a dream, but when he arrived in the kitchen, Coop was there and demanding “Deets, bro!”

Blaine blinked at him sleepily.

“You disappeared with Kurt and didn’t show up again all night. So, what happened? You didn’t elope, did you? Cause I’d have to disown you if you cheat me out of a wedding!”

Blaine filled a mug with coffee, drank deeply and then sat down at the table, helping himself to a piece of toast and buttering it. “Don’t worry, there was no elopement. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

He’d added strawberry jam to the toast and eaten half of it before Coop spoke up again. “But something happened, right?”

Blaine felt the corners of his mouth tilt up of their own accord.

“Spill!”

Just then, Coop’s cell phone started ringing, and when he checked the caller ID, he laughed and answered the call at once. “Hey Kurt! You’re on speaker phone.”

“Hey Cooper! I just realized that I have your number, but not Blaine’s. I forgot to ask last night.”

Blaine made a grab for Cooper’s phone, but Coop held it out of his reach and laughed again. “Now why would you be needing my brother’s number, Mr. Hummel? What are your intentions with him?”

Blaine groaned, “Coop!”

“Oh hey, good morning, honey!” said Kurt’s chipper voice.

Coop mouthed “Honey?”, but Blaine made a throat-slash movement and gestured for him to hand the phone over. Coop didn’t, though. He put it behind his back and wagged his finger reprovingly at Blaine.

Kurt’s voice floated out of the speaker again. “To answer your question, Cooper, I was hoping to ask Blaine out on a date.”

Blaine, grinning ear to ear, jumped Coop and tried to wrestle the phone away from him. After a short struggle, he managed to grab it, and ran away. “I’ll be in my room if you need me, Coop!”

As soon as he was in his room, he said, “Good morning!”

Kurt laughed. “What did you do, steal your brother’s phone?”

“I borrowed it. Tell me more about this date, please?”

“Well, how do you feel about going for ice cream this afternoon?”

K&B

After that first date, many more followed, and for months on end, Blaine felt like he was floating on air because he was so happy.

The proposing had become their inside joke, and whether or not they were together, the last thing Blaine said or texted each day was “Marry me, Kurt?”

Kurt always answered with some kind of quip, or with a kiss, but Blaine kept hoping that one day, he’d actually say yes.

They were both extremely busy, Blaine with school and work, and Kurt with school, work and the preparations for a high profile wedding. Isabelle, his boss at Vogue dot com, was getting married, and insisted on having Kurt as her wedding planner. Seeing as it would be a high society affair, with over three hundred big name guests, Kurt was determined to make it a wedding to remember.

“If all goes well, maybe I’ll be asked to plan other weddings,” he told Blaine. “I mean, professionally. Getting paid for it and all. I’ve planned loads by now, but those were always favours to friends and family, and if anything, I spent money on them instead of earning any.”

“You’d like to do this as a job?”

Kurt nodded. “Maybe not exclusively, but I love planning events.”

Blaine discussed this with his brother, who promised to network on Kurt’s behalf at Isabelle’s wedding. Coop knew Isabelle from his modelling days, and they had several friends and acquaintances in common, so that would be a good start.

Coop took Blaine to the wedding as his plus one again, but this time around, Blaine didn’t protest. He was actually eager to go, and see his boyfriend in his element.

Thanks to Kurt’s flawless taste and planning and Isabelle actually having a decent budget to work with, every aspect of the wedding was perfect, down to the minute details. Blaine smiled to himself as he took in the overall effect.

Isabelle looked splendid in a voluminous dress and a hat that looked like a bird flying away, and the ceremony was moving.

During the reception, Blaine let Cooper flit through the crowd schmoozing, content to stay on the sidelines and observe. Only… That led to him hearing a conversation he was definitely not meant to overhear, between Kurt and Isabelle.

“I must say, Kurt, you’ve outdone yourself!”

“Thank you, thank you! And thank you so much for inviting Cooper, who’s been talking me up to everyone he knows! I’ve already had ten people ask for my business card because they want me to plan their wedding, too.”

“Oh, of course I invited Cooper. Who else would buy me a Solange Azagury-Partridge necklace as a wedding present? Everyone else has bought me boring gifts.”

“Useful, you mean,” Kurt laughed.

“To you, maybe. A necklace is far more useful to me than a set of Japanese knives. Those will just collect dust in the kitchen.”

“How tragic… Thank heavens Coop bought you something you like!”

“Hmm… So you’re in demand as a wedding planner now, huh, thanks to Cooper? I bet you’re glad now that he accepted that fake invitation of Brittany’s that forced you to organize an actual wedding!”

“Oh, that wasn’t the first time I planned a wedding. That would have been my dad marrying Carole.”

Blaine paid no attention to the rest of their talk. He’d heard enough. So that wedding HAD been fake! And Blaine HAD been right calling them out about it!

Anger swelled inside of him like a balloon, and as soon as Isabelle moved away from Kurt to talk to other guests, he grabbed Kurt’s arm.

“Oh hey, honey! What… Are you okay?”

Blaine glared at Kurt. “No, I’m not!”

Kurt’s eyebrows went up. “I know it must be boring for you, but I’m working tonight. I need to keep an eye on things, and stay here until the party’s over to make sure everything goes as planned.”

“Oh, it’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“I heard you, just now. Brittana’s wedding was fake! Exactly as I thought! And you made me feel horrible for calling them out!”

Kurt’s eyes flashed. “Well, you WERE horrible, Mr. Snob! Dissing all my hard work and calling it cheap!”

“You tricked my brother into spending a fortune!”

Kurt rolled his eyes. “I doubt it even made a dent. He’s a billionaire. We gave him a party to remember in return, and he was perfectly content. The only one who was a stick-in-the-mud about it was you!”

Someone cleared their throat behind them, and they turned around.

“Father!” said Blaine. “What are you doing here?”

“Manners, boy! I was invited. So this is the twink who’s got his hooks in you? Hmm. Not a very good influence on you if he’s got you screeching like a fishwife. If you really have to pick a guy instead of a girl, why don’t you choose one with breeding? One with a pedigree instead of a mongrel. The Smythes have brought their son along. Sebastian. He’s a barrister, I believe, and he’s also chosen the gay lifestyle.”

Blaine pinched his nose and told himself to stay calm. “Nobody CHOOSES to be gay, Father.”

“Hmm. I’ll send Sebastian your way.”

Edward Anderson didn’t wait for an answer and walked away.

“Well, I’ll let you and the pedigree dog get acquainted, then,” Kurt said. “Careful, though. If he’s the guy I think it is, he’s been harassing several waiters, copping a feel and offering them money to give him a blowjob in the backroom.”

“Kurt, I’m…”

But Kurt was gone before Blaine could apologise, and when Blaine followed him, he was stopped by a tall guy with green eyes and a smirk.

“Blaine, if I’m not mistaken? I’m Sebastian Smythe. Pleasure.”

“Hi… Yes, I’m Blaine. Excuse me.”

Blaine wanted to step away from the guy and go find Kurt, but Sebastian grabbed him by the arm. “What do you say we go to the restroom and get better acquainted?”

“Uhm, no, thank you. Excuse me, I have someone to see.”

“When your father pointed you out to me, I thought, nah, not my type, but then I saw your ass and I thought, well…”

Sebastian goosed Blaine so firmly that he yelped.

A moment later, Sebastian was the one in discomfort. Kurt had come back and had taken Sebastian’s ear in a death grip, hissing, “Okay, that’s IT! Out with you!”

Kurt stalked out of the ballroom, tugging a whimpering Sebastian after him by his ear.

Kurt escorted Sebastian out of the building, only stopping at the reception desk of the venue to tell the security guard that Mr. Sebastian Smythe was on no account to be let back in.

Then he went back upstairs without even acknowledging Blaine, who had followed him and tried once again to apologise.

Uh-oh. He’s really mad.

Blaine stole back into the ballroom with his tail between his legs, standing quietly against a wall and observing again, but he no longer enjoyed it.

And then he saw his father talking to Kurt, and they both left the room. What was going on?

He debated following them out, but decided he’d done enough eaves-dropping for the day, and angered his boyfriend enough as it was.

Kurt wasn’t away for long. His face was impassive when he entered the ballroom again, and his shoulders stiff.

Edward Anderson followed a little later, his face a thundercloud. He looked around until he spotted Blaine, and headed straight to him.

“I forbid you to marry him. Understand? I will cut you off without a cent!”

Blaine raised his eyebrows. “Haven’t you done that already when I went to college?”

His father’s face turned puce. “You…”

“Yes?”

“There’s no arguing with either of you, is there? Stubborn fools! I offered the twink up to four million dollars to stay away from you, but he said no.”

Blaine smiled thinly. “We don’t need your money. I’ve enough of my own.”

His father froze. “You are NOT to marry that twink. If you do, neither your mother nor I will ever speak to you again.”

Blaine quirked an eyebrow and drawled, “That would be a terrible hardship.”

A vein on his father’s forehead swelled up to the point where it could explode any moment. “Are you mocking me? Ugh, I’m washing my hands of you. From now on, I only have one son. Goodbye.”

Blaine watched his father go.

Well, that happened… But surely, if Kurt refused Father’s offer, that means he won’t stay mad for keeps, right?

Right at that moment, he felt someone encircle his waist and hook their chin over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Blaine turned around in Kurt’s embrace and nuzzled his cheek. “I’m not. Good riddance, really. Cooper is all the family I need. And you, if you’ll have me.”

“Always. Even when you’re being a blockhead.”

Blaine beamed at Kurt. “So you’re saying yes?”

Kurt quirked an eyebrow. “To what question would that be?”

Blaine plucked a ring box from his inside pocket, opened it so Kurt could see the ring, went down on one knee and asked, “Kurt Hummel, will you marry me?”

Kurt pulled him up again and kissed him, then held out his hand for Blaine to put the ring on. “Yes. Yes, I will. I can plan the wedding, right?”

Blaine laughed, and then squeaked when his brother lifted up the both of them like they weighed nothing, twirled them around and boomed, “You’d better!”

When Cooper put them down again, he grinned and said, “I get to be your best man, right, Blaine? I’ve got LOTS of fun stories to share!”

Blaine groaned, and then grimaced when Kurt laughed delightedly and said, “I want to hear them all!”

Cooper clapped Kurt on the shoulder. “You will, bro-in-law! So, tell me, what do you guys want as a wedding present? Pick something fun, please!”

Kurt tilted his head to the side. “Hmm… Maybe a nice honeymoon? I’ve always wanted to visit Europe. London, of course. Platform Nine and Three Quarters, Buckingham Palace, Harrods, afternoon tea at the Ritz. Paris, to go see the Louvre and Versailles. Milan during fashion week. What do you think, honey?”

Blaine grinned. “Just the platform? Let’s do a whole Harry Potter tour! And go to Legoland!”

Cooper whooped. “Awesome! You get cracking on planning the wedding, and I’ll book you the perfect honeymoon. It’s going to be so much fun. Can I come too?”

“No!!”

THE END

[cestlemoment]

some ... ‘eliott since wednesday’ content 

mecredi : 10:40 

    he literally only came to school for lucas. he wanted to see lucas, and talk to him about everything that had happened since he had to leave lucas’ on sunday.            ( things he’d done: laid in his bed and hadn’t slept sunday night because he couldn’t get comfortable. called lucille to ask her to meet him and talk. told her that they were for sure broken up and that he was sorry for disappearing without telling her he was leaving. said that he wanted to be with lucas, but that she better not tell anyone.  she said she wouldn’t. thankfully.  but she still looked at him with that look that said  are you manic?   because they both know what happened last time, and he doesn’t feel manic. at all. he feels happy and calm and safe when he’s around lucas. which he can’t say he feels calm and happy with lucille anymore. he hadn’t been at school monday, tuesday, because he... still has trouble going to school. )      but he’s at school for lucas, and grinning through lucas’ science class window, and he’s trying to mask how tired he looks, but it’s probably not working, but he’s happy to see lucas, doesn’t remember that maybe he shouldn’t kiss lucas right in front of his classroom, and he remembers at lucas’ reaction.       it’s all good until the floor fucking drops out from under him at  don’t worry, i don’t talk to her anymore  (i’m not worried... why don’t you talk to her?)  because i don’t need crazy people in my life.       and that’s it. that’s the end, he knows it is. he thinks he’s going to die because of this.  it takes all of his willpower to not give lucas the kiss he lifts his chin up for.  because he doesn’t deserve that, he doesn’t even deserve that last, goodbye kiss.     (goodbye, lucas. that’s what his brain is saying when he walks away.)  

mercredi: 11:30

      he’s back at home. alone. always alone! always!  and he’s trying to block out lucas’ words from less than an hour ago. and he feels so fucking stupid for believing that he could have anything else in his life, that he could actually have the way that lucas makes him feel permanently.  it always happens this way. he thinks he might want something different, tries to get it, puts himself out there, and then gets it all thrown back into his face. cause he’s fucking stupid. backpack dropped by the door, and he’s already changed out of his school clothes, because he’s going to sleep this feeling off. whatever, he doesn’t have to do school stuff anyway, he just has to show up to his exams, and those are months away.  hands rub over his face, forcing any upset tears to not appear, and he’s messing with his phone for a few minutes, some desperate part of him hoping that lucas noticed he said something wrong, hoping that lucas will text him, because really, that’s all he wants, despite all of this.  and ... then the phone is on his desk, and he’s just going to sleep as long as his body will let him.  he’s tired of feeling this way. 

mercredi: 18:39

     his mom would be happy that he’s cooking, that he’s not just trying to sleep away the pit of hunger in his stomach because he’s too tired to get up and make something. and he’s making it hurt more because he keeps looking at his phone. and obviously there’s no text from lucas. there’s nothing from lucille. there’s ... no one else that texts him. he feels really fucking alone. but maybe he’ll fuck around and draw something, and he ends up at his desk, half an hour later, beers on the table around him, trying to draw away the way he feels.  he’s already decided he’s not fucking going to school the rest of the week, he can’t deal with it if he’s not going to see lucas. 

jeudi 17:50

       he’s spent all day thinking. all fucking day laying in his bed just thinking about what the fuck he’s supposed to do now. he’d laid all his cards on the table. his room smells like weed, he knows that, but he’s just tired and stressed and on edge and he’s not sure what else to do to calm down.  and then lucas’ text comes in.   ( ça y est, je l’ai dit a mon coloc.)   which, he’s proud, happy for lucas to have someone he could open up to, say something about ... them.  but there can’t be a them.  because lucas doesn’t want crazy people in his life, and he’s crazy, and he’s just going to hurt lucas.  so there can’t be a them.  and his response, his text, his that’s cool, i’m happy for you, but it’s moving too fast for me, it’s my fault, i’m sorry , is meant to be the easiest way for lucas to know there can’t be a them. not if that’s the way lucas feels. it’s meant to let lucas down easily, place all the blame on himself (because it is his fault. it’s his fault that he can never, ever, ever have what he truly wants.  lucas.  it’s his fault.)  and he doesn’t want to think about how lucas might feel, he almost hopes that lucas will reply, that he’ll call, that he’ll do something. he stares too long, and lucas doesn’t, and he wants to scream at himself because he could have said something to lucas.  (but lucas doesn’t want crazy people in his life.)  it’s easier this way, it’s easier for both of them. 

vendredi 09:18 

     breakfast. he’s trying. he got a message about some party that the foyer girls are going to be at, and apparently they... at least appreciate him trying to participate in their foyer thing, even if he’s been shit at showing up.  it was a surprise to see it.  the part of him that wants to believe that he can just hide his bipolar from lucas wants to text lucas to go with him to the party. not even as ... being together... just as ... he wants to see lucas. as dumb that that is.  he can’t see lucas, he’s not allowed to, because he can’t stand any more hurt.  his fingers are flashing through the motions until he’s typing  salut, j’ai un invitation à une fête ce soir, tu veux à viens avec moi?  to lucille. he’s a bit surprised that he gets back a  ouais, bien sûr j'irai.  from her.  he’d expected radio silence on her end. she doesn’t mention lucas, nor does he expect her to.  it takes all his willpower to not swipe back to his contacts, stare at his and lucas’ message thread. it’s right there, right above lucille’s name. it would be so easy. and it would be so easy to go look at lucas’ instagram again. all these things would be so easy.  he turns his phone upside down after sending lucille,  okay. 18h, j’allerais à toi.  the phone stays there most of the rest of the day, and he in his room, trying to find some sort of care about any of this.               ( he knows why he’s going back to lucille, maybe not all the way back, he doesn’t want to really be with her, anymore, but he can’t be with lucas, and he just needs something stable. everything’s falling apart at the seems, and he can’t seem to grab onto anything that doesn’t crumble under his touch. she knew him back when this was all just a mild case of depression, a little bit of anxiety thrown in for the fun of it. when it was just something half the people he knew had, because everyone’s stressed and depressed, and she understood back then. she understood that sometimes he got a bit more down than everyone else, and so they’d hang out at her place or something. it was nice of her, and he knows he’d been in love with her.          but the mania scared her, he knows that. no one knows how to deal with that. the mania and him doing irrational, impulsive things to get the attention of his best friend, the night of him frantic and afraid and panicked and wide-eyed after he’d kissed him, and been rejected, and he started spiraling, so, so bad and it’d been so close to exams he didn’t even know they were happening and she had, has a right to be afraid for him.  the mania scared her, but she doesn’t have any idea (no one can have any idea) how afraid it made him.  during,  after.  it’s fair that she’s afraid of him doing that same thing, now. but with lucas it is --- was different. because ... lucas wanted him too (wants? him too?) and didn’t reject him. he doesn’t feel manic. but he knows that lucas won’t like him if he’s manic. that’s ... a given, he knows that.       but lucille didn’t leave, didn’t abandon him, even if she’s been more and more -- overbearing... whether or not it’s him perceiving that it’s actually what she’s doing, but -- she’s familiar. it’s familiar to talk to her and make plans with her and just -- everything is falling apart around him so he doesn’t know what else to do.)

vendredi 19:30

       they’ve been here a while, the music loud from the minute they’ve gotten here, the familiarity of them going into a party together is strangely jolting, but still something easier to deal with than a crumbling foundation. it hadn’t taken long for them to fall back into old routines, years old routines of dancing together and sharing a drink and just talking. she talks around the topic of her thinking he’s manic, around the topic of lucas.  she doesn’t talk around is he going to school? and he talks around no, i haven’t.   he doesn’t know anyone here, not really. it’s weird, and he finally tells her that he wants to go home, and he knows that she can see the tiredness in his eyes, because she knows that tiredness.  there’s a familiarity here, them laughing a bit and they end up at the side of the house, slowing a little, talking, and it’s familiar and safe and stable, and he hasn’t really felt that way in a few days, and it just -- happens.  pushing in to kiss lucille, and it’s familiar (the way her lips feel under his, the way her hands rest on his waist.)  it’s familiar. but then she pulls away, her familiar voice  ‘soit nous sommes ensemble ou nous ne sommes pas’ -- and it’s true, she’s right.  (and....)  ‘qu'en est-il de lucas?’ and he doesn’t say anything. just asks if they can leave, get on the bus.  he wants to confide in lucille, because he doesn’t have anyone else, but he’s afraid to do that, too.  he doesn’t know what she’ll say, he just doesn’t know anything anymore.  he kisses her cheek when she gets off at her stop. he doesn’t know what to do about anything anymore, and he feels like he’s going to explode. everything is too overwhelming and he doesn’t know who to ask. what to do. he most certainly can’t show up to his parents’ at ... whatever time it is. (looks at his phone, and it’s not even that late... but ...)  he can’t sleep when he gets home, tossing and turning and scribbling things in his journal, and finally gives up and sets up his laptop to watch netflix until he feels like he’s emptied his brain enough to just ... stop thinking. 

[ladymacbethsspot]

Face-Off

I had a weird idea for some shenanigans. 2.6k words, mirrored on ao3.

The morning Levi forgot to shave, Erwin found himself mildly surprised. It was normally impossible to prevent Levi’s meticulous morning routine, the bathroom’s pull as inevitable as gravity once he woke.

Erwin said nothing.

Monday was a holiday, after all, and Lord knows the tightly-wound man deserved a break. Instead, Erwin smiled, running his thumb idly over the prickle of shadowy stubble framing Levi’s jaw, before tugging him back under the covers. There weren’t nearly enough long weekends to spoil his husband and he wasn’t going to miss a single chance.

As the week wore on, Erwin noticed a strange thing. Each morning when Levi awoke he immediately headed to the bathroom. Nothing odd about that. He showered while Erwin made coffee and boiled water for tea. But he left the bathroom a little earlier than usual, and the stubble remained.

In a way, it was nice. For once, Levi looked a little more relaxed, a little less severe. And Erwin was surprised by how much he liked it. He liked waking up to see Levi curled against his chest, hair mussed, eyes soft, cheeks rough and darkened. He liked the way it scratched, a subtle reminder of where Levi’s face was when they cuddled. He liked the way it pricked his lips and dragged against his skin when they kissed. Most of all, he liked the long rough scrapes it made, turning his flesh hot with desire, when they made love.

That week Erwin said nothing, and the stubble remained.

The second week Erwin began to wonder, curiosity growing each day. It wheedled at him, tickling almost as much as Levi’s bristly little kisses. By Wednesday morning the obtrusive thoughts had come to lurk everywhere he turned. They sat heavily in the corners, closing in, finally overcoming him. While Levi lifted a mug of tea to his mouth, blowing gently at the steam, Erwin broached the subject.

“You haven’t shaved the last few days.”

“No,” Levi corrected, “I haven’t shaved the last 12 days.”

“Any particular reason?” Erwin prodded.

“It’s No-shave November,” Levi answered, his flat tone giving nothing away.

“It’s January.”

“Fine, I’m growing a playoffs beard, then.”

Erwin sighed. “Levi, you don’t follow any sports.” He fixed Levi with a steady gaze, adding, “It’s not that I dislike it, I’m just curious. Are you growing a beard?”

Levi stared down into his drink, as though expecting to find an answer hidden within its depths, before responding carefully, “Not exactly. Or, maybe? I don’t know. It’s a sort of challenge.”

Erwin hadn’t been expecting a statement like this. If Levi had said he was growing a beard, then Erwin would know where he stood. But this answer, this half-formed, half-excuse of a thing, was not enough. Instead of sating his desire it only served to make him more curious, this dodging, evasive conversation.

“A challenge with yourself?” Erwin asked. Levi paused, and shook his head, “Then with who?” Levi made a face, thin lips twisting down at their corners, brow furrowing.

“Nile,” he admitted.

“My friend, Nile? Nile Dok?” Levi gave a curt nod, finishing his tea. “But, why, Levi?” Erwin felt even more bewildered than before.

“…Made a bet,” Levi grumbled, heading to the stove to pour more hot water from the kettle into his mug.

“What did you bet?”

The mug was set on the counter next to the kettle, a silent statement marked with a click. Levi turned, frowning slightly. Erwin knew the look. It meant he was about to say something he knew Erwin wouldn’t want to hear.

“I ran into Nile at work a few weeks ago and he bet me he could grow a better beard. Might as well have just called me a child. I agreed if he’d shave that ratty trash ‘stache off and start fresh to make it fair. So, here I am. Growing a beard,” Levi finished, spacing the words precisely, hands open, offering his explanation.

Erwin sighed, rubbing his thumbs into his temples. Nile’s unconscious ability to raise Levi’s hackles normally wasn’t an issue. But sometimes it was. He knew his old friend had a bit of a competitive streak. Still, this was not a fight Nile should be picking. Not with Levi. Not with a man who latched onto a challenge with the tenacity of a wolf, sinking teeth deeper with every attempt to dislodge him, locking crushing jaws into an inescapable hold.

“Okay,” Erwin said, “When will you be finished?”

Levi turned away, the tone in his voice betraying the displeasure of his hidden expression, “The last Friday of the month.”

Erwin steeled himself- two and a half weeks to go.

Levi turned back to look at Erwin. Grey eyes searched his face for a reaction. As the moment stretched it hit Erwin suddenly: Levi regretted making this bet. His husband was never unsure like this, never wavered or sought explicit permission. No, they both understood each other too well for that to be necessary. Still, Levi was looking to him, looking for something from him. Seeing Levi without his unshakable air of confidence sent a pang of something sharp corkscrewing through Erwin’s chest. He softened. He smiled. Levi needed reassurance; he was happy to give.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll have a full, handsome beard by then. Everyone will be asking who the new, hot lumberjack in my life is.” Levi shook his head and chuckled, the tension in his face replaced by the slightest crinkle around his eyes.  

By the next week it had become more than stubble. It didn’t look bad, exactly, Erwin told himself, but it didn’t look great either. As stubble, it had framed Levi’s jaw, making him look older in a masculine way. It had complemented his dark hair, given him a rugged look Erwin found adventurous and wild. Not to mention how it spiced things up in the bedroom. Compared to Levi’s normally impeccably groomed appearance, it had been an exciting change of pace. But this? This was no longer dashing, no longer gave off that same outdoorsy charm.

This had fallen on the other side of some imperceptible line. Erwin wasn’t exactly sure when it happened, but Levi’s facial hair had become something that made him look tired, drained, and drawn. Now it just looked like his husband had lost his job and the stress of the situation was preventing him from sleeping. Like he no longer cared about his appearance. Like he had given up.

It was too long to be stubble, but it was, at the same time, nowhere near what could properly be called a beard. Patchy, long enough in some places, but barely more than dark pricks of hair in others. It also seemed that, while Levi could grow facial hair in most places one would expect, the hair above his lip would never choose to join up with the rest, like it was ashamed to admit that it was really a part of the whole thing.

That week Levi grumbled about work. It was hard to get him to loosen up at the end of the day. When they got into bed, he turned the lights off immediately and faced the wall.

Erwin knew attributing it to the contest made no sense, but he couldn’t shake the suspicion that it was becoming a point of irritation for Levi. He’d catch Levi scratching absently at the hair, frowning slightly, or staring at his reflection in the mirror with a look of mild distaste. Always, Erwin would intercept him with kisses, taking small hands in large ones, pressing murmured words of love and praise to his husband’s temples and cheeks.

Careful to mention nothing, they navigated the days, and the hair remained.

The final week was excruciating. By this point Erwin had decided that he did not, in fact, find Levi’s beard attractive. He found it a bit sad and slightly dirty looking. Even worse, it was clear that Levi was as unhappy about it as he was, if not more.

Levi’s mood darkened. His beard stubbornly refused to fill in or become respectable.

He was tense, snapping sharply at perceived slights, more easily frustrated by breaks to their routine. He took increasingly long, increasingly hot showers, as though the scorching water would release him from the burden the bet had become. The toll it was taking on both of them was set into sharp relief when, one night, Levi stopped Erwin mid-kiss with a mumbled excuse. The half-hearted ‘too tired’ as he extracted himself carefully from Erwin’s arms, moving as far away as he could without leaving the bed, dropped, heavy as stones, to the bottom of Erwin’s gut.

Erwin had to hold himself back from counting down the hours until Friday. With each day, he renewed his determination to not show up at Nile’s house and strangle his so-called friend.

The day of reckoning dragged its heels every painful step of the way, but, nonetheless, it finally arrived. On the way home from work Erwin stopped by the shopping center to pick up a few things he hoped Levi wouldn’t be offended by. A cake of real shaving soap, sandalwood scented, and new blades for a favorite safety razor. Returning to the apartment, he assembled his purchases in the bathroom. He replaced the blade in Levi’s razor, unable to hide his pleasure at finding it as immaculately clean as all of his husband’s belongings. He found his old boar-bristle brush, rinsing and placing it in a small bowl to soak in warm water.

He waited.

When the locks clicked open and Levi entered the apartment, Erwin was there to meet him. For the first time in a few weeks Levi looked pleased, almost cheerful. “How did it go?” Erwin asked, feeling relief clear the air around.

“Great. I won.” Levi replied.

“Are you happy you won?”

“I’m happy it’s over.”

Erwin smiled. Levi smiled.

Gathering Levi to his chest in a tight embrace, Erwin leaned down and whispered into his hair, “Congratulations, my sexy lumberjack.” Levi snorted, suppressing a small laugh as he kicked off his shoes and set his bag down.

“I know you hate it. Don’t lie. I hate it. It looks disgusting.”

Erwin chuckled. “I don’t hate it, I could never hate any part of you. I do think I might hate Nile now though…” Another small huff from the man nuzzling comfortably into his button-down made Erwin loosen his grip slightly. Levi dug a phone from his pocket, holding it out as he pushed out of Erwin’s arms.

“Then you’ll love this. Here’s the final picture.” He turned the phone and Erwin squinted at the screen. Two men stood side by side. Nile on the left, Levi on the right. Nile’s mustache and goatee were exactly as Erwin had remembered, but even thinner, even scragglier. Sparse long hairs covered his chin and dusted his upper lip. What Erwin didn’t recognize were the extra bits of hair, sticking out on his neck and cheeks, all disconnected and meandering. No wonder he shaved most of it off, the rest was a shameful mess. Next to him, Levi didn’t look quite as bad. Sure, things were patchy in places. Yes, it was true that the hair on his jaw and chin wasn’t all the same length. It was also undeniable that his mustache still firmly refused to join the party with the rest of his beard, despite the obvious sloppy invitation. Still, overall it was a somewhat better attempt at a beard. Erwin shook his head, laughing at his friend’s ridiculous appearance.

“How did you decide whose was better?”

“Our coworkers voted. I won 10 – 4. Then I made a note to give everyone who voted for Nile a shitty peer-report,” Levi deadpanned.

Erwin laughed again, and tugged Levi towards the bathroom. “As much as I love this look on you, Levi, I also have a surprise I think you’ll like.”

Entering the bathroom, Levi’s eyes lit up as they fell on the shaving supplies. Erwin pointed to the counter next to the sink. “Sit and take your shirt off, I don’t want to get shaving cream on it.” Levi complied, unbuttoning his shirt and placing it, folded, on the counter before hoisting himself up to sit. Erwin wet a face towel, and handed it to Levi who patted it against his neck and chin while Erwin worked the shaving soap into a lather with the brush. When he’d built up enough of the foamy soap, Erwin applied it to Levi’s face.

The brush swirled and slid over Levi’s cheeks, tracing along his jaw and down his neck, carefully covering every hair in turn. It created peaks and whorls of fragrant soap in its wake, hiding dark hairs in a creamy layer, a thick blanket of deep snow laid gently over unsightly underbrush. Erwin tilted his chin up, miming an action Levi repeated. Pulling skin taut, the razor travelled through the soap, leaving fresh, straight traces. Sliding over each area once, twice, lather renewed between passes, bit by bit revealing smooth, pale skin. Levi sat: quiet, unmoving, eyes closed, with a rapturous expression on his face. When Erwin had finished, he wiped the last of the soap away. As the warm towel stroked against Levi’s cheek, the smaller man shivered, a tremor of bliss running through his body.

Erwin stifled a moan at the sight. The increasing tightness of his jeans hinted at how much he’d missed seeing Levi’s skin. Missed seeing Levi’s cheeks, pink from the friction and pressure of the razor, his sharp chin, his barely parted lips. Almost on instinct, Erwin lifted a hand, fingertips trailing from earlobe to mouth, an unbroken, smooth line. They paused there, and Erwin sucked in a small breath when Levi’s eyes opened. Another small breath left him when Levi’s tongue pressed and slid against his thumb, guiding into a waiting mouth for a playful, wet bite.

Moments later Erwin wasn’t certain how it happened. How he found his back and ass pressed against the bathroom wall. How his pants and underwear had ended up in a pile on the floor. How his hands had tangled into Levi’s dark, silky hair. He lost focus on everything but watching Levi’s mouth, lips wrapped tightly around his cock, cheeks hollowed, throat working against him. Smooth, slick, and soft, he let himself be hypnotized by the motion of Levi’s mouth.

Struggling to hang on, to hold back, Erwin grunted when Levi’s lips left him. He watched in silent appreciation as Levi rubbed a freshly-shaven cheek against the tight, hot skin of his cock. Hips twitched in a small jump and Levi looked up, their eyes locking. A small hand wrapped around his length, guiding the slick head slowly along the sharp-angled jawbone from ear to ear. Tracing back, Levi’s chin teased at Erwin, resting the tip between it and his lower lip, his head moving in small circles as he pressed forward. Erwin groaned as precum smeared over unbroken, unblemished skin- leaving it shiny and slick.

The low vibration of a chuckle travelled between them, carried from Levi’s mouth through where their bodies touched, stoking the desire in Erwin’s groin. Then his cock disappeared slowly, taken into Levi’s mouth again, pressed and sucked in between short bobs and quick breaths.

He didn’t last long, couldn’t when faced with such a perfect sight.

Erwin came, staring like a starving man at the face he knew so well, but had missed so terribly.

The next evening Erwin and Levi attended a social gathering organized by Levi’s workplace. They were standing, chatting with coworkers and laughing amiably over the business of the unfortunate beard contest, when they heard a familiar voice behind them.

“Come here, Marie, you’ve got to see it. If you thought mine was bad, just wait until you see Levi!” It was Nile. “Erwin, Levi!” they turned as Nile hailed them.

Nile’s face fell.

Marie snorted, Erwin stifled a laugh, and Levi rolled his eyes.

Levi had already shaved.

 Nile had not.

[ka-za-ri]

Metronome (Ignis x Reader)

Will I ever stop writing Ignis x reader? Apparently not. More experimental angst being thrown your way because all I can think about is heartbreak before and after the game. I also really REALLY love numbers and playing with them in writing. Expect that a lot. You’ve been warned. 

No beta for my experimental stuff, my bf should not be subjected to having to edit this. lmao.  Maybe now my muse will let me get back to my longer piece. 

Genre: Slice of Life/Angst Rating: SFW Pairing: Ignis x Reader Wordcount: ~ 1,500

Suggested Listening: Thinking Out Loud -- Ed Sheeran Cover by Sungha Jung

Tagging: @hypaalicious @thirsty-angst-lord @roses-and-oceans @louisvuittontrashbags @itshaejinju

Four beats to a measure makes for one hundredth of a page. A hundred pages later, and he find himself back at the beginning of his feelings for you.

The music he sent you was written with stardust and tasted of ashen lies. Each told a story of a blissful life without sorrow. Each song he sent you to listen made the tempo of your heart go faster until it became an unbearable and constant beating in your ears. He didn't have time for words, so he kept in you in mind with songs.

One. To gently wake you up for when he left for work before the sun rose. Three. For you to listen to as you got ready for the day. Five. For the commute to your workplace. Each song to be played again in backwards order as you returned home after a long work day. By the time your door is unlocked and you made your way back into his arms, the dulcet melodies he chose for you would have been long forgotten for the slow dance tune that was he heartbeat.

Each song he chose was perfectly timed to your routine and his life. Though it was difficult to see him gone so often, you could always find solace in relistening to Thursday or Monday on repeat until he came home. Oftentimes, he would find you asleep on the living room couch listening to the second to last song for a Wednesday when he came home too late to tell you good night.

One hundred days meant twenty-eight days you saw him. One hundred days into loving Ignis Scientia meant seventy-two days of music that reminded you of how much he thought of you. Six hundred and forty-eight unique ways to say "I love you" in melodies that never lasted more than five minutes and twenty seconds.

Four beats to a measure to the sound of a heart. Thumping in the back of his skull is the dull headache of missing someone dear. Four beats to a measure and the pace hastens to match the sound of your excited heartbeat.

Weekends were the only time he didn't play music for you. Instead, those days were always filled with wordless songs as your head laid in his lap while he read papers and you played the melodica. Saturday and Sunday were the lazy days you loved the most as you hoarded the image of him when the sunlight beaming through the windows caught on the dust at the corners of his glasses.

It's less than half an hour until supper and he hasn't bothered to move from his seat. "It's too comfortable this way." He says, combing through your hair and tracing imaginary constellations on your face.

One thousand three hundred and fourteen seconds pass before you stop playing the melodica in favor of listening to him tell a story over a mug of Ebony and supper made for two half an hour behing schedule. Of the twenty-two years he had lived, he only allowed a fraction of the time to be spent relaxed. The fact that you were able to share those precious moments with him made your heart sing as loud as the sky was wide.  

Metronome time passes as the sun sets on another rain filled day. Four beats to a measure and still, he cannot play the piano with one hand.

Not while his other hand was holding yours at least.

You loved feeling the callouses on his hands. Tracing over the rough spots that gave way to smoother skin, the topography of his hands was like the mixed meter of the last song he sent you three weeks and four days ago. He took great care and pain to achieve perfection for everyone to perceive, but through his stern mask, you saw his youth and tenderness. The creases in his palms ran deeply as his love for you, as strong as the beat of a pasa doble as the sun set.

His hand intertwined with yours as the night settled and the stars sprawled themselves across the sky. Blinded by the city lights, you could only ever pick out the brightest stars for him to look at. He'd always laugh softly, commenting about how old the light you were looking at was. He'd remind you to live in the present and not in the dull sparkle of what was in the past. Times like those, you'd lay your head on his shoulder, reminding him that your present, your past and your future meant hearing the evenly timed beats of his heart against the constant chaos of the world outside on the daily.

He'd smile and kiss your temple, promising a world made of love songs and dreams.  

Three steps to a waltz. Your favorite dance no matter what the occasion was. A hundred steps later and once again, he's at the beginning of a number.

Eight hundred and eighty-eight hours worth of songs compiled themselves into thirty-seven days worth of songs to play on repeat until the recording broke and so did your patience.

Lonliness was a cruel mistress to you. As many songs were sent, as many promises were exchanged, the waltz between love and hate manifested itself eventually. The summer storms felt colder than they ever had been when heated quarrels made it hard to be in the same space together.

"You don't understand."

What is there to understand at all?

"This is my life. This is how it is."

"I know... I know... but it doesn't stop me from feeling this way."

"Please understand."

"I will. I'll try."

There's nothing to understand.

There was nothing to comprehend about the two mismatched beats, scrambling to clutch onto the happiness that was built on trust and forgotten folk songs.

"It hurts."

To perceive the pain as nothing more than a passing pulse would be a lie to the two of you. Determination and honesty persevered as his hand is back in yours, rubbing confident circles on the back of your palm, while you kissed at his brows until the worried lines melted. His soft smile and the barest traces of tears were all that remained of what animosity you had previously towards him.

Three steps to a waltz, two quick one slow. Matching the breathing of two people in love in one frantic life.

The bed you shared was an empty ballroom whenever he needed to leave in the middle of the night. Too often to count, you found yourself caressing slightly wrinkled sheets from where he once slept. The warmth he left just barely lingered longer than a rest in a measure of your life.

He'd leave notes scattered for you to pick up. One after another, evenly dosed to lull you back the shores of sleep and as you breathed in the scent of Ebony and orchids.

I love you.

I'm sorry.

I have to go for a little bit.

I'll be back.

Wait for me.

Good night.

The sun would rise and he would press soft kisses on your sleep drenched eyelids to remind you that no matter how far he went, he'd always come back to you.

Three steps to a waltz and there is no partner left to dance with.

Two half beats in a note turns into a skip in the rhythm.

Two thousand three hundred and forty-nine songs made up a working year of missing Ignis. You counted two hundred and sixty-one pages worth of days where he was gone. Out of those long days, five hundred and twenty minutes went to missing him while he was at work. Twenty-eight thousand eight hundred seconds went to holding him as he slept. The last moments to see and feel each other never lasted longer than a combination of Monday and Friday's playlists.

And then, he stopped recording.

As he marched off to the beating drum of duty, you did everything you could to match with half hearted tunes from an old, worn melodica.

Eighty seven thousand six hundred hours later, your fingers were calloused and the notes no longer played themselves as easily as they used to.

A forced tune is instead on repeat in your mind as time ticked mercilessly by.

Two half beats in a note towards the place where he would see you again.

Do you miss me?

Two half beats to the time of a sea made of stars where you first met.

"It's been a long time, Ignis."

"I know. I'm sorry I took so long to come home."

"It's okay. Welcome back. The sunrise is beautful today."

And you'd kiss his eyelids until he could feel every second you thought of him over the last ten years.

[proofsaretalk]

rapidly barreling toward that 1k mark

The title is not what this post is about. (cw: five pages of boring navelgazing)

------

Sometimes, when I get really close to going to bed after staying up for far too long, I will say things like “What are you doing?” And I normally think about that as just my not-quite-totally-mentally-healthy ass’s way of saying “go to bed bro”

But somehow when I said it tonight the question sounded a lot more urgent. A lot more confused. A lot more like a question, in other words.

And I think best in writing.

So here are the basic facts:

I am very tired right now (4am)

I was (less) very tired about four hours ago

I intentionally chose to not go to bed four hours ago, 

After watching a really good SGDQ run.

I actually very much enjoy SGDQ runs.

But I did not spend the intervening four hours watching SGDQ runs.

Primarily because I knew I would not stay awake by doing so.

I more or less knew, when I made that decision, that I would be awake at 4am.

See 3.4.

I have been going to bed around 2-3am for the last couple days.

This schedule initiated by me staying up way too late on Sunday of last week, for reasons that were equally unreasonable but at least more familiar.

I need to be awake in 3 hours, or, at most 4 hours.

I have known for several days that I would need to be awake at 7am on Monday morning.

Less basic facts, with notably more reporting bias, probably:

The reason that I need to be awake at 7am on Monday morning is because I am going on a road trip with my dad and my roommate.

I am mostly going on this road trip because I want to spend more time with my dad.

And also because I want to signal to him that I want to spend more time with him.

Which I definitely feel like I have not, although I have had dinner with him for three nights this week; in no small part because I was in Montreal when he arrived and have not done a lick of work to help care for my grandmother while he was in town. 

In particular I don’t really care about where we’re going or what we’ll do there.

I intended to drive both ways— which I never told anyone that I was intending to do, which I suppose was good because I will certainly not do that now.

Maybe we’re approaching the actual reason I am doing this obviously stupid thing, Part I:

My main goals this summer are, in priority order

to get a fucking advisor, 

a.k.a. to work hard enough and deep enough on commutative algebra to determine whether it is a good idea to be Christine’s student, and

if so, to then decide whether I should work with Vic anyway.

to reach the 1k posts in 1k days goal with OTAM, 

which requires essentially exactly two posts per day every day for the remainder of the summer

which is, to an unbelievably strong level of consistency (like literally I do not believe it), four hours +/- 40 minutes of work.

that’s it

i fucking hate it when my family asks me “what have you been doing lately” because it’s like

I’M READING

I’M BLOGGING

THAT’S IT

Anything I do beyond this is— though it be, to some extent, necessary for keeping my sanity— something I perceive as an annoyance and do with a fair bit of guilt (which I do try to put off until after doing the thing, usually pretty successfully).

and you know what, yes, if I’m being honest, that includes spending time with my family

even though this is 110% my own damn problem and if I had locked myself in my room this week, my dad (in particular) would totally have understood

although he lives 1600 miles away, and is only here for two weeks, and his birthday is tomorrow, and I missed out on seeing him the first week because Montreal, because my dad is a pure cinnamon roll lol no but is (in particular) genuinely understanding about this stuff; the whole midwesterner guilt trip passive-aggressive thing is very much not his aesthetic

and also I really haven’t spent that much time with my family besides this week so. [ At most 3hrs/week previously ]

I have two blog posts scheduled for tomorrow and another one besides; that is, enough that I can go on the trip and wake up late on Tuesday and I won’t experience any interruptions

I was highly embarrassed that I had to miss the second Friday post this week

I spent a lot of time on Saturday working with the specific intention of having a large enough buffer to make sure that this did not happen again on Tuesday.

aka 4 blog posts

aka 12 hours of blogging, because the rate of 2hr/post only applies to the first two posts in a day, after which the evidence suggests (more on that below) that it’s a complete shitshow.

aka nothing else got done, which is relevant because

For the first time on our regularly scheduled Thursday meeting time, Christine actually gave me something to do — previously it was mostly entirely me being like “I’m reading the book, here are my questions”.

I have done essentially no work toward doing that thing.

See 3.4

See also 2.2 from the previous section.

I have never felt happy about the amount of time that I’ve been devoting to the algebra 

See 1.3.5 oh god this is becoming a labrynth isn’t it

Christine seems oblivious to this, or perhaps thinks that, since I bring it up every week, I am just trying to preempt any criticism she might make

which to be honest isn’t wrong but

I have experience with being advised by someone with fairly low expectations of me and yeah it drives me right up the fucking wall

and I am definitely keeping my eye on her essential silence w.r.t. progress

In particular, I don’t feel happy about the fact that I have been spending so much more time on the blog than on the algebra because the latter is clearly infinitely more important for my continued ability to support myself by doing the thing that makes me incredibly happy.

There are good reasons I have made this choice but I definitely expected that these would disappear after returning from Montreal

which they have, and hence my continued inability to spend time doing algebra is even more disappointing to me

despite the fact that new reasons obviously exist that are also obviously temporary since dad will leave on the 4th.

and that I also do strongly value my familial relationships and am extremely bad at showing this; and I understand that what I have chosen to do for the past week is a very shrewd calculation to maximize the number of people who have firsthand experience with my show of commitment (however obviously performative it may be)

to be clear, I do not know if it is obvious that it is performative

I do not even know if it is performative

The fact that my algebra assignment for the week came from Christine, and not from a vague sense of “you should probably finish this book”, adds a particular urgency to the task... 

...and what seems to be my inevitable failure to complete it, since I have only Tuesday and Wednesday; and Tuesday is the 4th of July so that might as well not exist, productivity-wise; and I still have to write the usual two blogposts for Wednesday so it’s not like I can cram a 14-hour session (which I have done before).

I do not know whether I am more concerned about potentially disappointing Christine or myself

(even though the former is so unlikely that it is almost certainly anxiety)

Okay that’s nice exposition but doesn’t actually explain why you’re awake at 4am (hint it’s 5am now), Part II:

When I walked out of Christine’s office on Thursday, I definitely did not think that I would be spending all of Monday, and essentially all of Friday, and a good half of Sunday, to be spent with family. (Of course, I still expected Tuesday to be shot.)

However, all of that was clarified by Friday afternoon, so I’ve had a couple days to mull on this.

I certainly did not make the decision to stay awake in hopes that I would get any work done.

In fact, if I am being honest, this was an intentional part of my thought process and I made the decision in spite of this fact.

What I did not consider is that, if I have to cancel the plans for today because I did this stupid thing, I certainly will not be able to fucking do anything tomorrow since I will have to sleep through everything. 

Dear God, the sun is rising through my window

I closed the blinds, whew

What I did end up doing over this four-hour period is mostly read career posts on math blogs, and reading PhD, with a little bit of SGDQ and a pinch of assorted internet clicking thrown in.

It is perhaps not obvious to anyone else that this has the feel of a self-care session to me.

The only thing that I could possibly have been consciously self-caring for, though, was the expenditure of energy at my dad’s birthday party today.

(Anxieties about the Christine reading only started appearing in the later phases of this period.)

And surely sleeping would have been equally good dramatically better self-care.

I definitely have a sometimes-useful tendency to want to do a single thing for as long of an uninterrupted period as possible, up to and including completely destroying my sleeping rhythm (which accounts for much of the ‘sometimes’ in ‘sometimes-useful’).

The part of me that likes to make needlessly grandiose statements and read into shit too much, is squawking about how I probably feel like I had expectations for how I would be spending my time (I did), and feel like I’ve been forced into a time-consuming alternate direction (which, again: no), and therefore making this stupid decision is a juvenile way of exercising control by breaking from what would probably be “expected” of me (i.e. fucking going to sleep before a day-long road trip)

I am currently convinced of this but also

I am even more tired than when I started writing this post and

I don’t trust my tired brain to be right about anything of this scope (based on extensive experience with incorrect sleeping decisions).

That’s all I got.

No alternate theories.

So, shit, that’s gotta mean it’s right, huh?

Lambda

Actually, continuing on the sleeping-as-control riff, I am quite experienced with (and, if I may say so, fairly good at) managing an awful sleeping cycle. Perhaps the stupid decision was not about controlling how I spend my time but rather more direct: demonstrating control in my life via crisis management w.r.t. sleeping.

This is actually a testable theory, at least in the sense that if I have something similar come up soon, I could replace “not sleeping” with “playing Starcraft”

[ it’s not perfect because I would also not be sleeping in that setting, but then the not-sleeping is a side effect rather than the actual display of control; and I think that I could (after the fact) actually distinguish between those two. ]

(and arguably, this has already been played out in prior incidents, but I am way too tired to examine whether similar issues were at play in those cases.)

And finally

I am equally concerned with the fact that this post has cost me two hours of sleeping as it has cost me two hour of algebra work,

which is to say, not at all, in either case

although I do perceive very little of value was gained by my writing it

which is a very confusing triplet of true statements, to me, at this moment.

I may have to cancel the road trip.

Perhaps this was my subconscious goal all along.

But I’ll go to sleep take a power nap and we’ll see.

If your sorry ass thinks that I’ve been writing this shit for two hours without theorizing how I could sanitize it into an OTAM post then frankly you don’t know me at all.

[ebenpink]

Why the “pause-button mentality” is ruining your health and fitness. ‘Getting a fresh start’ isn’t the magic bullet you thought it’d be. http://bit.ly/2Pwpzbz

“I’ll resume healthy eating after my vacation… once the baby is born… after Dad gets out of the hospital… January 1… Monday.” While this kind of “pause-button mentality” seems reasonable, it could be ruining your health and fitness. Here’s why, and what to do about it.

+++

There’s a question that’s been finding its way to me a LOT lately — from Precision Nutrition Coaching clients, Certification students, ProCoaches.

“Why don’t your programs offer a ‘pause’ feature?”

After all, what’s the harm in letting clients/patients take a break from a nutrition and fitness plan when they’re:

leaving for vacation,

completely swamped at work,

pregnant, or just after delivery,

injured, or

caring for an ailing family member?

For a client, the thought process boils down to:

If I miss some workouts, eat the wrong things, skip the homework… I fail.

Aren’t I more likely to succeed if I take a break, just until I have the time to do it right?

This is what I call the ‘pause-button mentality’.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I think it’s normal — even commendable — to want to do your best. To consider taking time to regroup and then resume (or start over) when life feels easier.

At the same time, this completely natural and well-meaning impulse is one of the fastest, surest, most reliable ways to sabotage your plans for improved nutrition, health, and fitness.

Here’s why — and what to do instead.

Starting fresh after you lose your way is a really comforting thought.

That’s probably why New Year’s resolutions are so popular, especially following the indulgence-fueled holiday season.

Give me that cheesecake. I’ll pick my diet back up on Monday!

In fact, we’ve learned in our nutrition coaching programs that the idea of a do-over is so alluring you don’t even need a mess-up for the pause-button mentality to take over.

Every January, we welcome a new group of clients. Every July, we take in the second, and final, group of the year.

In July, six months in, just knowing that there are new clients starting the program fresh in January makes some July clients “itch” for a new beginning, even though they’re already making progress, changing their bodies.

If only you’d let me start over, I’d really nail it this time!

But here’s the problem: The pause-button mentality only builds the skill of pausing.

Whether it’s tomorrow, Monday, next week, or even next year, hitting that imaginary pause button gives you some sense of relief.

It allows you a little respite from what can be a really tough slog.

(And the middle is always a tough slog, it doesn’t matter what kind of project you’re working on.)

This perceived relief is compounded by the illusion that if we “start fresh” later we can find the magical “right time” to begin.

Listen, I get it.

It can feel absurd to try to improve your eating and exercise habits while you’re in the midst of chronic stress / looking for a job / starting a new job / going on vacation / caring for aging parents / raising small children.

That’s probably why there are so many 21-day this and 90-day that. What adult has more than 90 days to go after their fitness goals with an all-out effort?

But what do these intense fitness sprints teach you?

The skill of getting fit within a very short (and completely non-representative) period of your life.

What don’t they teach you?

The skill of getting fit (or staying fit) in the midst of a normal, complicated, “how it really is” sort of life.

This is why the yo-yo diet thing has become such a phenomenon.

It’s not about willpower. It’s about skills.

In most fitness scenarios, you learn how to get fit under weird, tightly-controlled, white-knuckle life situations.

You build that one, solitary, non-transferrable skill — to slam the gas pedal down, drive the needle into the red, and squeal down the road for a little while, burning the rubber off your tires until you (quickly) run out of gas and crash.

What you don’t build is the ability to get fit under real-life conditions.

That’s why it doesn’t stick. Not because you suck.

But because the natural and predictable consequence of having a limited skill set is short-term progress followed immediately by long-term frustration.

What will be different next time?

I remember having lunch with a colleague who swore up and down that his low-carb diet plus daily running was the secret to staying in shape.

I had to follow up with a painful question: “Well, why aren’t you actually in shape?”

After a long pause: “Uhh, I’ve had a hard time sticking with it. We just had our second child. The holidays just ended. I just switched jobs.” He trailed off…

“But, once everything settles down, I’ll get with the program and get in shape again! I guess I’m just on a little break.”

This story illustrates the point perfectly.

Here’s someone who’s built his fitness on a house of cards. He knows only one thing: How to get in shape by following a very challenging program when the conditions are perfect.

And whenever life isn’t perfect, which is most of the time, he hits the pause button. He waits for a better time. (All the while losing the health and fitness he previously worked so hard for.)

That’s why, when our clients ask to press pause, we usually ask them:

“What will be different when you come back?”

Nine times out of 10, the honest answer is nothing. Nothing will be different.

Life is just… happening. And it’ll happen again in January, or after the baby is born, or after Mom gets better, or at any other arbitrary point you pick.

And what then?

I’ve wanted to press “pause” myself.

If you’ve ever felt like pressing pause, or you feel this way right now, it might help to know I’ve felt exactly the same way.

A few years back, my wife and I decided to renovate a home. During the reno, we lived in a tiny apartment above my in-laws’ garage. At the time I was also starting up Precision Nutrition.

Every day we’d wake up and get straight to work. At the end of the day, we’d drive 1 ½ hours to the new house to chip away at the reno. Then, late at night, we’d drive 1 ½ hours back and fall into bed. Repeat.

At first, I thought there was no way to exercise. My schedule was completely packed, I had nowhere to work out, and my eating was less than ideal.

But after a couple of weeks I realized that something was going to be better than nothing.

The renovations would continue. Running a business would only get more demanding. And we were planning to have our first child.

I realized I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t press pause. Because, if I didn’t continue, there’d never be that “perfect time” to hit play again.

I needed to find a way to squeeze in some kind of workout, however quick, easy, and unglamorous.

Let’s accept that life has no pause button.

The key lesson here is that, like it or not, the game of life keeps going.

There is no timeout.

There’s never going to be a moment when things are magically easier.

You can’t escape work, personal, and family demands. Nor can you escape the need for health and fitness in your life.

Here’s a thought experiment:

What if you tried to hit pause in other areas of your life?

Imagine you’re up for a big promotion at work. For the next two weeks, all you want to do is focus on mastering an upcoming presentation, and winning over your boss.

Trouble is, you’ve got two young children at home who tend to grasp, koala-like, onto your legs and demand your full attention.

Honey, you say to your spouse, I’m just gonna press pause on being a parent for now. I’ll be staying at a hotel. Don’t contact me.

I don’t know about you, but that would NOT go over well in my family.

You can’t really press pause — and you definitely can’t hit reset — on being a parent. (You’ve thought about it, though. I know you have.)

Just like you can’t stop showing up for work and expect not to get fired. Or “take a break” from being married and not wind up divorced.

Generally, when it comes to life, we know we’re not always going to be on our A Game. Sometimes we’re superstars. Most of the time we just do our best.

We muddle through. We keep going.

So why do we expect it to be any different with fitness?

In my case, above, I hired a coach and we came up with a simple workout program that met these criteria:

No more than 3x a week.

No more than 10 minutes per session.

Has to be done upon waking up, right next to the bed.

Requires no equipment.

I did that for about 6 months. Was it the Best Workout Ever? No! Did I end up, after 6 months, fitter than ever? Heck no!

But was it better than hitting the pause button and doing nothing? You bet!

See, perfectionism is not the point.

“Completing” a program, PN Coaching or any other, is not the point.

Being the “best” for a tiny window of time is not the point.

The point is to keep going. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes incompetently, sometimes downright half-assed. But to keep going nonetheless.

As I often teach our new clients:

The “all or nothing” mentality rarely gets us “all”. It usually gets us “nothing”.

That’s when I propose a new mantra:

“Always something”.

Instead of pressing pause, adjust the dial.

Nowadays I like to think of my fitness and nutrition efforts as a dial.

There are times when I want to dial my efforts up, and times when I want to dial them down. But I never want to turn the dial off completely.

Here’s how this plays out in the context of my life.

Sometimes, say when I’m training for a track competition or concentrating on a particular goal, my fitness dial might be tuned to 9 or 10 out of 10.

Channel 10 means I work out every day. Every meal is planned and carefully considered. I think a lot about fitness. And not much about anything else.

Work, family, hobbies… they’re all in maintenance mode (with the permission of the people this affects, of course).

However, as I write this, my life involves the following:

Settling into a new home.

Conducting major home renovations.

Raising 4 children, one of them still a baby.

Running a growing business with nearly 100 team members.

So these days, the dial rarely goes past 3 or 4. I work out, maybe, three days a week. And most of my meals are just “good enough”.

(For the record, I’m totally cool with that. There is no guilt about having my dial set a little lower. What’s most important is that the dial is still set to “on”.)

The important lesson: There’s a big difference between tuning your dial to 3, 2, or even a 1, and turning the whole thing off.

And when you realize how doable — and effective — channels 3 and 2 and 1 can be, you see that there’s never a good reason to hit “pause”.

I get it. It’s easy to discount the lower channels. Especially when you’ve done more in the past. But remember your new mantra…

“Always something.”

Precision Nutrition Coaching graduate Susan Olding was dealing with a family crisis during the program: Her dad became ill and eventually passed away.

Susan could have given up when her dad was sick. Asked for a pause. And no one would have blamed her.

Instead, she challenged herself to embrace imperfection and do something every day:

Each day, I asked myself: If I can’t do what was asked of me, what can I do? What can I manage (physically, emotionally, mentally) now?

Then I went and did it.

Meanwhile, I also tried to add spontaneous activity into my days. I paced the hospital halls, parked at a distance and walked to the hospital door. I went for evening walks.

Anything to stay active.

I remember Susan telling me about the random sets of squats she did in the corner of her dad’s hospital room while he was resting.

Susan’s takeaway:

Perfection never happens in real life.

We’re always going to be doing the best we can with what we have.

And that’s okay.

We can still make progress toward our goals and still improve our health and our fitness – whatever’s going on in our lives.

That progress doesn’t happen if you “press pause” and wait for a better time.

It doesn’t happen if you say “I’ll squat again once the Dad situation resolves itself”. Or if you ask for a re-do next week, next month, next year.

“Fitness in the context of real human life”.

That’s one of our mottos here at Precision Nutrition.

It’s what I think we’re the best in the world at: Helping clients be healthy and fit in the context of their real lives.

Not while pretending to be someone they’re not. Not by signing up for a 12-week boot camp with daily workouts and restrictive diets.

But by living their own lives and practicing “always something”.

In my opinion, pressing pause is buying into an imaginary ideal: a “perfect” time when everything will fall into place; a beautiful, linear trajectory from total suckiness to apex awesomeness:

Asking for a restart because you don’t want to mess that line up is deluding yourself that somehow, next time will be easier. Next time will be perfect. No interruptions, no distractions… no… life.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect time.

We may have magical moments, of course. Short periods of time when things seem to “click” and come together.

But then the dog poops on the rug. Or the kid throws up on the couch. Or both… and then one or the other tracks it all through the house.

You keep pressing pause, and your progress looks like this.

Or, worse yet, you end up flatlining, stuck on a never-ending (maybe eternal) pause.

What to do next.

Fitness in the context of real human life is just like the rest of life.

We’re all just doing the best we can in challenging, complicated circumstances. We are all living messy, imperfect lives. We are all human.

If we can just keep moving forward, no matter what happens, no pause buttons, no do-overs, we win the game.

Here are a few strategies for getting out of the pause-button mentality and into a more realistic, effective, sustainable way of thinking.

1. Try the dial method.

Think of your fitness like a dial that goes from 1 – 10.

If you were to dial it up to “10”…

What would your workouts look like?

What would your nutrition look like?

What other actions/habits would you practice in that scenario?

If you were to dial it down to “1”…

What would your workouts look like?

What would your nutrition look like?

What other actions/habits would you practice in that scenario?

Giving thought to your life right now, where is your dial set?

Would you like to make any adjustments?

Could you move the dial up a channel, or even half a channel?

If so, what would that look like?

On the other hand…

Should you move the dial down a channel so you can stick with health and fitness even during a difficult time?

2. Aim for a little bit better.

An all-or-nothing approach usually doesn’t get us “all”. It usually gets us “nothing”.

You know what actually works?

Small improvements done consistently over time work — we have proof in the over 100,000 clients we’ve helped through Precision Nutrition Coaching method.

You might be trying to make a meal out of hospital cafeteria food, or gas station food, or airplane food. You might be spending hours awake with a newborn in the middle of the night, or stuck in yet another full-day meeting.

These aren’t ideal scenarios, but they’re not necessarily hopeless either.

Look around. Get creative. See if you can find some small — maybe minuscule — improvements.

3. Anticipate, strategize and plan.

Since we already know that stuff is going to go wrong, the best thing we can do is anticipate and make plans for how to deal when they do.

A simple way to do this is by answering two questions:

What’s likely to get in the way of what I hope to accomplish?

What is something I can do today to help me keep going when I face those obstacles?

For some people, that might be a Sunday ritual where they prep food for the week so they won’t be scrambling for healthy meals on busy weeknights. For others, it might mean having a healthy meal-delivery service on speed dial.

Don’t be surprised and dismayed when things go haywire. They will at some point. Just arm yourself with the best tools and strategies so you can stay in the game when you’re thrown a curveball.

If you’re a coach, or you want to be…

Learning how to coach clients, patients, friends, or family members through healthy eating and lifestyle changes—in a way that helps them make consistent progress even when life gets complicated—is both an art and a science.

If you’d like to learn more about both, consider the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification. The next group kicks off shortly.

What’s it all about?

The Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification is the world’s most respected nutrition education program. It gives you the knowledge, systems, and tools you need to really understand how food influences a person’s health and fitness. Plus the ability to turn that knowledge into a thriving coaching practice.

Developed over 15 years, and proven with over 100,000 clients and patients, the Level 1 curriculum stands alone as the authority on the science of nutrition and the art of coaching.

Whether you’re already mid-career, or just starting out, the Level 1 Certification is your springboard to a deeper understanding of nutrition, the authority to coach it, and the ability to turn what you know into results.

[Of course, if you’re already a student or graduate of the Level 1 Certification, check out our Level 2 Certification Master Class. It’s an exclusive, year-long mentorship designed for elite professionals looking to master the art of coaching and be part of the top 1% of health and fitness coaches in the world.]

Interested? Add your name to the presale list. You’ll save up to 33% and secure your spot 24 hours before everyone else.

We’ll be opening up spots in our next Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification on Wednesday, June 5th, 2019.

If you want to find out more, we’ve set up the following presale list, which gives you two advantages.

Pay less than everyone else. We like to reward people who are eager to boost their credentials and are ready to commit to getting the education they need. So we’re offering a discount of up to 33% off the general price when you sign up for the presale list.

Sign up 24 hours before the general public and increase your chances of getting a spot. We only open the certification program twice per year. Due to high demand, spots in the program are limited and have historically sold out in a matter of hours. But when you sign up for the presale list, we’ll give you the opportunity to register a full 24 hours before anyone else.

If you’re ready for a deeper understanding of nutrition, the authority to coach it, and the ability to turn what you know into results… this is your chance to see what the world’s top professional nutrition coaching system can do for you.

The post Why the “pause-button mentality” is ruining your health and fitness. ‘Getting a fresh start’ isn’t the magic bullet you thought it’d be. appeared first on Precision Nutrition.

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[hundredbillionbottles]

The Hammock From Heaven

It’s all kicking off, essentially. We’ve sorted our trip to Medellín for the second bank holiday weekend of May, it’s less than two weeks until we hit the Caribbean coast for the duration of the Easter break, it’s less than 2 days until Estereo Picnic, a festival in Bogotá featuring The Weeknd, Justice and The Strokes among the highlights. Plus, we’ve only got the next three days at work to prepare for the Monday’s monstrous whole school, to-scale re-enactment of Alice In Wonderland, for which I’m in charge of producing almost a hundred giant playing cards, of which I have so far made one. We have also discovered the ease of which one can rock up to a bus station at short notice and hop on a bus to pretty much any place in Colombia, as was the case when we departed for San Gil, a town seven hours north of Bogotá, on Friday night for the bank holiday, or ‘Puente’, weekend.

Anticipating an unstoppable flood of people trying to leave the city for the long weekend, we got to the bus terminal at around half eight in a mind to catch the eleven overnight bus, but when we got to the ticket booth it became apparent that we had massively overestimated the level of demand for tickets and we were able to get ourselves booked on a bus leaving in half an hour. In short, the ride was long. It took over an hour just to get out of Bogotá and from then on the winding dirt roads either nudged us from one side to the other or shook us about like dice in a cup. Consequently, it was hard to maintain more than brief patches of sleep, several of which I woke from to find myself nuzzling with the wise-looking stranger-man sat next to me. His only words to me the entire seven-hour journey were “Something to eat?” when the bus pulled up at an empanada stand at 2am, but I could tell we dug each other’s vibe.

We finally arrived in San Gil at 5am, though tienda porches were still occupied by surly, moustached men, who must have either been coming to the end of their night out, or only just starting their Saturday morning. I must admit, at first I wasn’t entirely at ease with the prospect of trekking across town to get to our hostel at the early hours of the morning; there seemed to be type of ‘y’all ain’t from round here’ vibe as the natives followed along our weary walking with their eyes, as did the vultures which made a wall of speckled blackness on a building on the other side of the river, which we could only assume was some kind of meat factory. However, as the night began to enhance into the day, it was beautifully pleasant to hear San Gil waking up around us; some more people emerged out of their houses and into their cars, while the birds came to and began conducting their chirping orchestra.

It was almost completely light when we arrived at the Hostel Nirvana, and muggy as well. The quaint establishment stood neatly in front of a backdrop of vintage Colombian green mountains against an overcast sky with its contrasting but simultaneously complementing hard cheesy yellow walls and faded red roof tiles. I only needed to be in the place for three seconds before knowing that this was the best hostel we possibly could have booked; in the front room were two cats. Ordinarily, I’d end that sentence with a smugly bracketed ‘(Need I say more?)’, but in this case it is necessary that I say more. Behind the cats, in a humble cardboard box, was a litter of kittens, too shy to come out, too young to walk. The next delightful surprise was the pool out in the back, accompanied by a chunky inflatable crocodile. And I only needed to flick my eyes a flicker upwards to discover the true icing on the cake, a colossal hammock, suspended over the ground below by four mighty wooden masts that I fathom could have supported the hostel’s entire population at a squeeze. So, quickly abandoning the notion to nap until eight o’clock, I joined Stephen and Ela for a crack-of-dawn swim and a lounge on the hammock from heaven as the sun began to sweat its heat through the cloud, and birds of magnificent blues and yellows gathered and somersaulted, and the insects began to drone their sickly then sweet whistling drone. It was a morning that immediately etched itself into my memory, and the day was still new and untouched.

The plan hatched for the day was to head to Barichara, a small colonial town half an hour outside San Gil, and hike from there to Guane, an even smaller colonial town. To get to Barichara, we needed to catch a bus from a dusty, rustic bus station across the main part of town, which in turn entailed walking through the thriving hive of the morning market. In a heat just below the line of unbearable for us gringos, the buzz of activity was staggering. Looking around, there was not a single person not doing something, be they flogging vegetables from a stall, strapping a crate of oranges to their motorbike, or unloaded an enormous sack of twin-pot yoghurt out the back of their car. The fifteen-minute stroll was a mere insight to the hard-work and hustle that goes into the lives of these rural Colombians day in, day out, and anyone who tries to stereotype Latinos as lazy workers clearly does not know what they are talking about.

Barichara was a sweet town; its bright, petite square, boxed in by its clean white buildings on three sides and proud church on the remaining, it was essentially like a scaled down model of Villa De Leyva, where I had visited with Dad a few weeks before. It was a nice place to amble and we got some late breakfast (or arguably early lunch) followed by the most precisely, intricately made coffee I’ve ever had from a single quiet man, a coffee guru of sorts, in his tiny shop. Sufficiently caffeinated, we undertook the hike to Guane, which took us little over two hours, and the entire way round the views over the endless plains were breath-taking, as I have almost come to expect from any exhibition undertaken in this country. The rippling sun exposed all the radiant greens splattered across the landscape like some furious collage, and regularly a bird or lizard would delicately flutter or trickle across the canvas. The walking was tough going at times, so when we did finish up at Guane, a scaled down model of Barichara (so a super scaled down version of Villa De Leyva), we were sticky and uncomfortable enough to want to return to San Gil for a swim. So, as it turned out, the day ended as it started: a dip in the pool and a sink into the hammock. The key difference, however, was that all five of us were beer-in-hand, sat in an outward star formation, looking at the other stars in the murky, polluted night sky with our feet touching in the middle. It was one of those times where everything just syncs up with each other - the music, the setting, the people you’re with – and you know you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, and every bad thing that’s ever happened to you becomes good because they were events in a long chain reaction that brought you to this moment.

The next day we had wanted to go to the famous Caño Cristales. That didn’t work out, but it doesn’t matter.  Our back up plan was to check out a famous waterfall nearby, allegedly the best thing to do in the Santander area according to TripAdvisor. That didn’t work out either, but it also does not matter. We did some more ambling and headed back to Bogotá a few hours earlier than originally planned, and I watched the darkness of the road wisp past me while I listened to Nick Cave and thought about how crazy it actually is that I’m here, that all these experiences from the past few months are actually happening to me and not some character in a film or a book. I guess this blog could be perceived as boastful sometimes by some people but… you gotta admit, it’s pretty cool.

[oovitus]

Why the “pause-button mentality” is ruining your health and fitness. ‘Getting a fresh start’ isn’t the magic bullet you thought it’d be.

“I’ll resume healthy eating after my vacation… once the baby is born… after Dad gets out of the hospital… January 1… Monday.” While this kind of “pause-button mentality” seems reasonable, it could be ruining your health and fitness. Here’s why, and what to do about it.

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There’s a question that’s been finding its way to me a LOT lately — from Precision Nutrition Coaching clients, Certification students, ProCoaches.

“Why don’t your programs offer a ‘pause’ feature?”

After all, what’s the harm in letting clients/patients take a break from a nutrition and fitness plan when they’re:

leaving for vacation,

completely swamped at work,

pregnant, or just after delivery,

injured, or

caring for an ailing family member?

For a client, the thought process boils down to:

If I miss some workouts, eat the wrong things, skip the homework… I fail.

Aren’t I more likely to succeed if I take a break, just until I have the time to do it right?

This is what I call the ‘pause-button mentality’.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I think it’s normal — even commendable — to want to do your best. To consider taking time to regroup and then resume (or start over) when life feels easier.

At the same time, this completely natural and well-meaning impulse is one of the fastest, surest, most reliable ways to sabotage your plans for improved nutrition, health, and fitness.

Here’s why — and what to do instead.

Starting fresh after you lose your way is a really comforting thought.

That’s probably why New Year’s resolutions are so popular, especially following the indulgence-fueled holiday season.

Give me that cheesecake. I’ll pick my diet back up on Monday!

In fact, we’ve learned in our nutrition coaching programs that the idea of a do-over is so alluring you don’t even need a mess-up for the pause-button mentality to take over.

Every January, we welcome a new group of clients. Every July, we take in the second, and final, group of the year.

In July, six months in, just knowing that there are new clients starting the program fresh in January makes some July clients “itch” for a new beginning, even though they’re already making progress, changing their bodies.

If only you’d let me start over, I’d really nail it this time!

But here’s the problem: The pause-button mentality only builds the skill of pausing.

Whether it’s tomorrow, Monday, next week, or even next year, hitting that imaginary pause button gives you some sense of relief.

It allows you a little respite from what can be a really tough slog.

(And the middle is always a tough slog, it doesn’t matter what kind of project you’re working on.)

This perceived relief is compounded by the illusion that if we “start fresh” later we can find the magical “right time” to begin.

Listen, I get it.

It can feel absurd to try to improve your eating and exercise habits while you’re in the midst of chronic stress / looking for a job / starting a new job / going on vacation / caring for aging parents / raising small children.

That’s probably why there are so many 21-day this and 90-day that. What adult has more than 90 days to go after their fitness goals with an all-out effort?

But what do these intense fitness sprints teach you?

The skill of getting fit within a very short (and completely non-representative) period of your life.

What don’t they teach you?

The skill of getting fit (or staying fit) in the midst of a normal, complicated, “how it really is” sort of life.

This is why the yo-yo diet thing has become such a phenomenon.

It’s not about willpower. It’s about skills.

In most fitness scenarios, you learn how to get fit under weird, tightly-controlled, white-knuckle life situations.

You build that one, solitary, non-transferrable skill — to slam the gas pedal down, drive the needle into the red, and squeal down the road for a little while, burning the rubber off your tires until you (quickly) run out of gas and crash.

What you don’t build is the ability to get fit under real-life conditions.

That’s why it doesn’t stick. Not because you suck.

But because the natural and predictable consequence of having a limited skill set is short-term progress followed immediately by long-term frustration.

What will be different next time?

I remember having lunch with a colleague who swore up and down that his low-carb diet plus daily running was the secret to staying in shape.

I had to follow up with a painful question: “Well, why aren’t you actually in shape?”

After a long pause: “Uhh, I’ve had a hard time sticking with it. We just had our second child. The holidays just ended. I just switched jobs.” He trailed off…

“But, once everything settles down, I’ll get with the program and get in shape again! I guess I’m just on a little break.”

This story illustrates the point perfectly.

Here’s someone who’s built his fitness on a house of cards. He knows only one thing: How to get in shape by following a very challenging program when the conditions are perfect.

And whenever life isn’t perfect, which is most of the time, he hits the pause button. He waits for a better time. (All the while losing the health and fitness he previously worked so hard for.)

That’s why, when our clients ask to press pause, we usually ask them:

“What will be different when you come back?”

Nine times out of 10, the honest answer is nothing. Nothing will be different.

Life is just… happening. And it’ll happen again in January, or after the baby is born, or after Mom gets better, or at any other arbitrary point you pick.

And what then?

I’ve wanted to press “pause” myself.

If you’ve ever felt like pressing pause, or you feel this way right now, it might help to know I’ve felt exactly the same way.

A few years back, my wife and I decided to renovate a home. During the reno, we lived in a tiny apartment above my in-laws’ garage. At the time I was also starting up Precision Nutrition.

Every day we’d wake up and get straight to work. At the end of the day, we’d drive 1 ½ hours to the new house to chip away at the reno. Then, late at night, we’d drive 1 ½ hours back and fall into bed. Repeat.

At first, I thought there was no way to exercise. My schedule was completely packed, I had nowhere to work out, and my eating was less than ideal.

But after a couple of weeks I realized that something was going to be better than nothing.

The renovations would continue. Running a business would only get more demanding. And we were planning to have our first child.

I realized I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t press pause. Because, if I didn’t continue, there’d never be that “perfect time” to hit play again.

I needed to find a way to squeeze in some kind of workout, however quick, easy, and unglamorous.

Let’s accept that life has no pause button.

The key lesson here is that, like it or not, the game of life keeps going.

There is no timeout.

There’s never going to be a moment when things are magically easier.

You can’t escape work, personal, and family demands. Nor can you escape the need for health and fitness in your life.

Here’s a thought experiment:

What if you tried to hit pause in other areas of your life?

Imagine you’re up for a big promotion at work. For the next two weeks, all you want to do is focus on mastering an upcoming presentation, and winning over your boss.

Trouble is, you’ve got two young children at home who tend to grasp, koala-like, onto your legs and demand your full attention.

Honey, you say to your spouse, I’m just gonna press pause on being a parent for now. I’ll be staying at a hotel. Don’t contact me.

I don’t know about you, but that would NOT go over well in my family.

You can’t really press pause — and you definitely can’t hit reset — on being a parent. (You’ve thought about it, though. I know you have.)

Just like you can’t stop showing up for work and expect not to get fired. Or “take a break” from being married and not wind up divorced.

Generally, when it comes to life, we know we’re not always going to be on our A Game. Sometimes we’re superstars. Most of the time we just do our best.

We muddle through. We keep going.

So why do we expect it to be any different with fitness?

In my case, above, I hired a coach and we came up with a simple workout program that met these criteria:

No more than 3x a week.

No more than 10 minutes per session.

Has to be done upon waking up, right next to the bed.

Requires no equipment.

I did that for about 6 months. Was it the Best Workout Ever? No! Did I end up, after 6 months, fitter than ever? Heck no!

But was it better than hitting the pause button and doing nothing? You bet!

See, perfectionism is not the point.

“Completing” a program, PN Coaching or any other, is not the point.

Being the “best” for a tiny window of time is not the point.

The point is to keep going. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes incompetently, sometimes downright half-assed. But to keep going nonetheless.

As I often teach our new clients:

The “all or nothing” mentality rarely gets us “all”. It usually gets us “nothing”.

That’s when I propose a new mantra:

“Always something”.

Instead of pressing pause, adjust the dial.

Nowadays I like to think of my fitness and nutrition efforts as a dial.

There are times when I want to dial my efforts up, and times when I want to dial them down. But I never want to turn the dial off completely.

Here’s how this plays out in the context of my life.

Sometimes, say when I’m training for a track competition or concentrating on a particular goal, my fitness dial might be tuned to 9 or 10 out of 10.

Channel 10 means I work out every day. Every meal is planned and carefully considered. I think a lot about fitness. And not much about anything else.

Work, family, hobbies… they’re all in maintenance mode (with the permission of the people this affects, of course).

However, as I write this, my life involves the following:

Settling into a new home.

Conducting major home renovations.

Raising 4 children, one of them still a baby.

Running a growing business with nearly 100 team members.

So these days, the dial rarely goes past 3 or 4. I work out, maybe, three days a week. And most of my meals are just “good enough”.

(For the record, I’m totally cool with that. There is no guilt about having my dial set a little lower. What’s most important is that the dial is still set to “on”.)

The important lesson: There’s a big difference between tuning your dial to 3, 2, or even a 1, and turning the whole thing off.

And when you realize how doable — and effective — channels 3 and 2 and 1 can be, you see that there’s never a good reason to hit “pause”.

I get it. It’s easy to discount the lower channels. Especially when you’ve done more in the past. But remember your new mantra…

“Always something.”

Precision Nutrition Coaching graduate Susan Olding was dealing with a family crisis during the program: Her dad became ill and eventually passed away.

Susan could have given up when her dad was sick. Asked for a pause. And no one would have blamed her.

Instead, she challenged herself to embrace imperfection and do something every day:

Each day, I asked myself: If I can’t do what was asked of me, what can I do? What can I manage (physically, emotionally, mentally) now?

Then I went and did it.

Meanwhile, I also tried to add spontaneous activity into my days. I paced the hospital halls, parked at a distance and walked to the hospital door. I went for evening walks.

Anything to stay active.

I remember Susan telling me about the random sets of squats she did in the corner of her dad’s hospital room while he was resting.

Susan’s takeaway:

Perfection never happens in real life.

We’re always going to be doing the best we can with what we have.

And that’s okay.

We can still make progress toward our goals and still improve our health and our fitness – whatever’s going on in our lives.

That progress doesn’t happen if you “press pause” and wait for a better time.

It doesn’t happen if you say “I’ll squat again once the Dad situation resolves itself”. Or if you ask for a re-do next week, next month, next year.

“Fitness in the context of real human life”.

That’s one of our mottos here at Precision Nutrition.

It’s what I think we’re the best in the world at: Helping clients be healthy and fit in the context of their real lives.

Not while pretending to be someone they’re not. Not by signing up for a 12-week boot camp with daily workouts and restrictive diets.

But by living their own lives and practicing “always something”.

In my opinion, pressing pause is buying into an imaginary ideal: a “perfect” time when everything will fall into place; a beautiful, linear trajectory from total suckiness to apex awesomeness:

Asking for a restart because you don’t want to mess that line up is deluding yourself that somehow, next time will be easier. Next time will be perfect. No interruptions, no distractions… no… life.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect time.

We may have magical moments, of course. Short periods of time when things seem to “click” and come together.

But then the dog poops on the rug. Or the kid throws up on the couch. Or both… and then one or the other tracks it all through the house.

You keep pressing pause, and your progress looks like this.

Or, worse yet, you end up flatlining, stuck on a never-ending (maybe eternal) pause.

What to do next.

Fitness in the context of real human life is just like the rest of life.

We’re all just doing the best we can in challenging, complicated circumstances. We are all living messy, imperfect lives. We are all human.

If we can just keep moving forward, no matter what happens, no pause buttons, no do-overs, we win the game.

Here are a few strategies for getting out of the pause-button mentality and into a more realistic, effective, sustainable way of thinking.

1. Try the dial method.

Think of your fitness like a dial that goes from 1 – 10.

If you were to dial it up to “10”…

What would your workouts look like?

What would your nutrition look like?

What other actions/habits would you practice in that scenario?

If you were to dial it down to “1”…

What would your workouts look like?

What would your nutrition look like?

What other actions/habits would you practice in that scenario?

Giving thought to your life right now, where is your dial set?

Would you like to make any adjustments?

Could you move the dial up a channel, or even half a channel?

If so, what would that look like?

On the other hand…

Should you move the dial down a channel so you can stick with health and fitness even during a difficult time?

2. Aim for a little bit better.

An all-or-nothing approach usually doesn’t get us “all”. It usually gets us “nothing”.

You know what actually works?

Small improvements done consistently over time work — we have proof in the over 100,000 clients we’ve helped through Precision Nutrition Coaching method.

You might be trying to make a meal out of hospital cafeteria food, or gas station food, or airplane food. You might be spending hours awake with a newborn in the middle of the night, or stuck in yet another full-day meeting.

These aren’t ideal scenarios, but they’re not necessarily hopeless either.

Look around. Get creative. See if you can find some small — maybe minuscule — improvements.

3. Anticipate, strategize and plan.

Since we already know that stuff is going to go wrong, the best thing we can do is anticipate and make plans for how to deal when they do.

A simple way to do this is by answering two questions:

What’s likely to get in the way of what I hope to accomplish?

What is something I can do today to help me keep going when I face those obstacles?

For some people, that might be a Sunday ritual where they prep food for the week so they won’t be scrambling for healthy meals on busy weeknights. For others, it might mean having a healthy meal-delivery service on speed dial.

Don’t be surprised and dismayed when things go haywire. They will at some point. Just arm yourself with the best tools and strategies so you can stay in the game when you’re thrown a curveball.

If you’re a coach, or you want to be…

Learning how to coach clients, patients, friends, or family members through healthy eating and lifestyle changes—in a way that helps them make consistent progress even when life gets complicated—is both an art and a science.

If you’d like to learn more about both, consider the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification. The next group kicks off shortly.

What’s it all about?

The Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification is the world’s most respected nutrition education program. It gives you the knowledge, systems, and tools you need to really understand how food influences a person’s health and fitness. Plus the ability to turn that knowledge into a thriving coaching practice.

Developed over 15 years, and proven with over 100,000 clients and patients, the Level 1 curriculum stands alone as the authority on the science of nutrition and the art of coaching.

Whether you’re already mid-career, or just starting out, the Level 1 Certification is your springboard to a deeper understanding of nutrition, the authority to coach it, and the ability to turn what you know into results.

[Of course, if you’re already a student or graduate of the Level 1 Certification, check out our Level 2 Certification Master Class. It’s an exclusive, year-long mentorship designed for elite professionals looking to master the art of coaching and be part of the top 1% of health and fitness coaches in the world.]

Interested? Add your name to the presale list. You’ll save up to 33% and secure your spot 24 hours before everyone else.

We’ll be opening up spots in our next Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019.

If you want to find out more, we’ve set up the following presale list, which gives you two advantages.

Pay less than everyone else. We like to reward people who are eager to boost their credentials and are ready to commit to getting the education they need. So we’re offering a discount of up to 33% off the general price when you sign up for the presale list.

Sign up 24 hours before the general public and increase your chances of getting a spot. We only open the certification program twice per year. Due to high demand, spots in the program are limited and have historically sold out in a matter of hours. But when you sign up for the presale list, we’ll give you the opportunity to register a full 24 hours before anyone else.

If you’re ready for a deeper understanding of nutrition, the authority to coach it, and the ability to turn what you know into results… this is your chance to see what the world’s top professional nutrition coaching system can do for you.

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[selfhelpqa-blog]

Mental Efficiency

New Post has been published on https://selfhelpqa.com/mental-efficiency/

Mental Efficiency

MENTAL EFFICIENCY

AND OTHER HINTS TO MEN AND WOMEN

by

Arnold Bennett

I

Mental Efficiency

THE APPEAL

If there is any virtue in advertisements–and a journalist should be the last person to say that there is not–the American nation is rapidly reaching a state of physical efficiency of which the world has probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the American newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated announcements of “physical-culture specialists,” who guarantee to make all the organs of the body perform their duties with the mighty precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that never breaks down. I saw a book the other day written by one of these specialists, to show how perfect health could be attained by devoting a quarter of an hour a day to certain exercises. The advertisements multiply and increase in size. They cost a great deal of money. Therefore they must bring in a great deal of business. Therefore vast numbers of people must be worried about the non-efficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve efficiency. In our more modest British fashion, we have the same phenomenon in England. And it is growing. Our muscles are growing also. Surprise a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find him lying on his back on the floor, or standing on his head, or whirling clubs, in pursuit of physical efficiency. I remember that once I “went in” for physical efficiency myself. I, too, lay on the floor, my delicate epidermis separated from the carpet by only the thinnest of garments, and I contorted myself according to the fifteen diagrams of a large chart (believed to be the _magna charta_ of physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In three weeks my collars would not meet round my prize-fighter’s neck; my hosier reaped immense profits, and I came to the conclusion that I had carried physical efficiency quite far enough.

A strange thing–was it not?–that I never had the idea of devoting a quarter of an hour a day after shaving to the pursuit of mental efficiency. The average body is a pretty complicated affair, sadly out of order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind is vastly more complicated, not less sadly out of order, but perhaps even more susceptible to culture. We compare our arms to the arms of the gentleman illustrated in the physical efficiency advertisement, and we murmur to ourselves the classic phrase: “This will never do.” And we set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can show them off (through a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does not, perhaps, occur to us that the mind has its muscles, and a lot of apparatus besides, and that these invisible, yet paramount, mental organs are far less efficient than they ought to be; that some of them are atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and in the evening is so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will walk to the office, or he will play golf, or he will execute the post-shaving exercises. But let the same man after a prolonged sedentary course of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take his mind out for a stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, philosophic, or artistic subject. What will he do? Will he stay out all day, and return in the evening too tired even to read his paper? Not he. It is ten to one that, finding himself puffing for breath after a quarter of an hour, he won’t even persist till he gets his second wind, but will come back at once. Will he remark with genuine concern that his mind is sadly out of condition and that he really must do something to get it into order? Not he. It is a hundred to one that he will tranquilly accept the _status quo_, without shame and without very poignant regret. Do I make my meaning clear?

I say, without a _very poignant_ regret, because a certain vague regret is indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a mental inefficiency which might, without too much difficulty, be cured. That vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cultivated section of the public. It is to be detected everywhere, and especially among people who are near the half-way house of life. They perceive the existence of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest particle of which will they ever make their own. They stroll forth from their orderly dwellings on a starlit night, and feel dimly the wonder of the heavens. But the still small voice is telling them that, though they have read in a newspaper that there are fifty thousand stars in the Pleiades, they cannot even point to the Pleiades in the sky. How they would like to grasp the significance of the nebular theory, the most overwhelming of all theories! And the years are passing; and there are twenty-four hours in every day, out of which they work only six or seven; and it needs only an impulse, an effort, a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness, to give ��tone” to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with the splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it! But the regret is not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is as though they passed for ever along the length of an endless table filled with delicacies, and could not stretch out a hand to seize. Do I exaggerate? Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us a mournful feeling that our minds are like the liver of the advertisement–sluggish, and that for the sluggishness of our minds there is the excuse neither of incompetence, nor of lack of time, nor of lack of opportunity, nor of lack of means? Why does not some mental efficiency specialist come forward and show us how to make our minds do the work which our minds are certainly capable of doing? I do not mean a quack. All the physical efficiency specialists who advertise largely are not quacks. Some of them achieve very genuine results. If a course of treatment can be devised for the body, a course of treatment can be devised for the mind. Thus we might realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of that magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums. We have the desire to perfect ourselves, to round off our careers with the graces of knowledge and taste. How many people would not gladly undertake some branch of serious study, so that they might not die under the reproach of having lived and died without ever really having known anything about anything! It is not the absence of desire that prevents them. It is, first, the absence of will-power–not the will to begin, but the will to continue; and, second, a mental apparatus which is out of condition, “puffy,” “weedy,” through sheer neglect. The remedy, then, divides itself into two parts, the cultivation of will-power, and the getting into condition of the mental apparatus. And these two branches of the cure must be worked concurrently.

I am sure that the considerations which I have presented to you must have already presented themselves to tens of thousands of my readers, and that thousands must have attempted the cure. I doubt not that many have succeeded. I shall deem it a favour if those readers who have interested themselves in the question will communicate to me at once the result of their experience, whatever its outcome. I will make such use as I can of the letters I receive, and afterwards I will give my own experience.

THE REPLIES

The correspondence which I have received in answer to my appeal shows that at any rate I did not overstate the case. There is, among a vast mass of reflecting people in this country, a clear consciousness of being mentally less than efficient, and a strong (though ineffective) desire that such mental inefficiency should cease to be. The desire is stronger than I had imagined, but it does not seem to have led to much hitherto. And that “course of treatment for the mind,” by means of which we are to “realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of the magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums”–that desiderated course of treatment has not apparently been devised by anybody. The Sandow of the brain has not yet loomed up above the horizon. On the other hand, there appears to be a general expectancy that I personally am going to play the rôle of the Sandow of the brain. Vain thought!

I have been very much interested in the letters, some of which, as a statement of the matter in question, are admirable. It is perhaps not surprising that the best of them come from women–for (genius apart) woman is usually more touchingly lyrical than man in the yearning for the ideal. The most enthusiastic of all the letters I have received, however, is from a gentleman whose notion is that we should be hypnotised into mental efficiency. After advocating the establishment of “an institution of practical psychology from whence there can be graduated fit and proper people whose efforts would be in the direction of the subconscious mental mechanism of the child or even the adult,” this hypnotist proceeds: “Between the academician, whose specialty is an inconsequential cobweb, the medical man who has got it into his head that he is the logical foster-father for psychonomical matters, and the blatant ‘professor’ who deals with monkey tricks on a few somnambules on the music-hall stage, you are allowing to go unrecognized one of the most potent factors of mental development.” Am I? I have not the least idea what this gentleman means, but I can assure him that he is wrong. I can make more sense out of the remarks of another correspondent who, utterly despising the things of the mind, compares a certain class of young men to “a halfpenny bloater with the roe out,” and asserts that he himself “got out of the groove” by dint of having to unload ten tons of coal in three hours and a half every day during several years. This is interesting and it is constructive, but it is just a little beside the point.

A lady, whose optimism is indicated by her pseudonym, “Espérance,” puts her finger on the spot, or, rather, on one of the spots, in a very sensible letter. “It appears to me,” she says, “that the great cause of mental inefficiency is lack of concentration, perhaps especially in the case of women. I can trace my chief failures to this cause. Concentration, is a talent. It may be in a measure cultivated, but it needs to be inborn…. The greater number of us are in a state of semi-slumber, with minds which are only exerted to one-half of their capability.” I thoroughly agree that inability to concentrate is one of the chief symptoms of the mental machine being out of condition. “Espérance’s” suggested cure is rather drastic. She says: “Perhaps one of the best cures for mental sedentariness is arithmetic, for there is nothing else which requires greater power of concentration.” Perhaps arithmetic might be an effective cure, but it is not a practical cure, because no one, or scarcely any one, would practise it. I cannot imagine the plain man who, having a couple of hours to spare of a night, and having also the sincere desire but not the will-power to improve his taste and knowledge, would deliberately sit down and work sums by way of preliminary mental calisthenics. As Ibsen’s puppet said: “People don’t do these things.” Why do they not? The answer is: Simply because they won’t; simply because human nature will not run to it. “Espérance’s” suggestion of learning poetry is slightly better. Certainly the best letter I have had is from Miss H. D. She says: “This idea [to avoid the reproach of ‘living and dying without ever really knowing anything about anything’] came to me of itself from somewhere when I was a small girl. And looking back I fancy that the thought itself spurred me to do something in this world, to get into line with people who did things–people who painted pictures, wrote books, built bridges, or did something beyond the ordinary. This only has seemed to me, all my life since, worth while.” Here I must interject that such a statement is somewhat sweeping. In fact, it sweeps a whole lot of fine and legitimate ambitions straight into the rubbish heap of the Not-worth-while. I think the writer would wish to modify it. She continues: “And when the day comes in which I have not done some serious reading, however small the measure, or some writing … or I have been too sad or dull to notice the brightness of colour of the sun, of grass and flowers, of the sea, or the moonlight on the water, I think the day ill-spent. So I must think the _incentive_ to do a little each day beyond the ordinary towards the real culture of the mind, is the beginning of the cure of mental inefficiency.” This is very ingenious and good. Further: “The day comes when the mental habit has become a part of our life, and we value mental work for the work’s sake.” But I am not sure about that. For myself, I have never valued work for its own sake, and I never shall. And I only value such mental work for the more full and more intense consciousness of being alive which it gives me.

Miss H. D.’s remedies are vague. As to lack of will-power, “the first step is to realize your weakness; the next step is to have ordinary shame that you are defective.” I doubt, I gravely doubt, if these steps would lead to anything definite. Nor is this very helpful: “I would advise reading, observing, writing. I would advise the use of every sense and every faculty by which we at last learn the sacredness of life.” This is begging the question. If people, by merely wishing to do so, could regularly and seriously read, observe, write, and use every faculty and sense, there would be very little mental inefficiency. I see that I shall be driven to construct a programme out of my own bitter and ridiculous experiences.

THE CURE

“But tasks in hours of insight willed Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.”

The above lines from Matthew Arnold are quoted by one of my very numerous correspondents to support a certain optimism in this matter of a systematic attempt to improve the mind. They form part of a beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear that they run counter to the vast mass of earthly experience. More often than not I have found that a task willed in some hour of insight can _not_ be fulfilled through hours of gloom. No, no, and no! To will is easy: it needs but the momentary bright contagion of a stronger spirit than one’s own. To fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening, through months and years–this is the very dickens, and there is not one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet such is the elastic quality of human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready to ignore the sad fact and to demand at once: “what shall we will? Tell us what we must will.” Some seem to think that they have solved the difficulty when they have advocated certain systems of memory and mind-training. Such systems may be in themselves useful or useless–the evidence furnished to me is contradictory–but were they perfect systems, a man cannot be intellectually born again merely by joining a memory-class. The best system depends utterly on the man’s power of resolution. And what really counts is not the system, but the spirit in which the man handles it. Now, the proper spirit can only be induced by a careful consideration and realization of the man’s conditions–the limitations of his temperament, the strength of adverse influences, and the lessons of his past.

Let me take an average case. Let me take your case, O man or woman of thirty, living in comfort, with some cares, and some responsibilities, and some pretty hard daily work, but not too much of any! The question of mental efficiency is in the air. It interests you. It touches you nearly. Your conscience tells you that your mind is less active and less informed than it might be. You suddenly spring up from the garden-seat, and you say to yourself that you will take your mind in hand and do something with it. Wait a moment. Be so good as to sink back into that garden-seat and clutch that tennis racket a little longer. You have had these “hours of insight” before, you know. You have not arrived at the age of thirty without having tried to carry out noble resolutions–and failed. What precautions are you going to take against failure this time? For your will is probably no stronger now than it was aforetime. You have admitted and accepted failure in the past. And no wound is more cruel to the spirit of resolve than that dealt by failure. You fancy the wound closed, but just at the critical moment it may reopen and mortally bleed you. What are your precautions? Have you thought of them? No. You have not. I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance. But I know you because I know myself. Your failure in the past was due to one or more of three causes. And the first was that you undertook too much at the beginning. You started off with a magnificent programme. You are something of an expert in physical exercises–you would be ashamed not to be, in these physical days–and so you would never attempt a hurdle race or an uninterrupted hour’s club-whirling without some preparation. The analogy between the body and the mind ought to have struck you. _This_ time, please do not form an elaborate programme. Do not form any programme. Simply content yourself with a preliminary canter, a ridiculously easy preliminary canter. For example (and I give this merely as an example), you might say to yourself: “Within one month from this date I will read twice Herbert Spencer’s little book on ‘Education’–sixpence–and will make notes in pencil inside the back cover of the things that particularly strike me.” You remark that that is nothing, that you can do it “on your head,” and so on. Well, do it. When it is done you will at any rate possess the satisfaction of having resolved to do something and having done it. Your mind will have gained tone and healthy pride. You will be even justified in setting yourself some kind of a simple programme to extend over three months. And you will have acquired some general principles by the light of which to construct the programme. But best of all, you will have avoided failure, that dangerous wound.

The second possible cause of previous failure was the disintegrating effect on the will-power of the ironic, superior smile of friends. Whenever a man “turns over a new leaf” he has this inane giggle to face. The drunkard may be less ashamed of getting drunk than of breaking to a crony the news that he has signed the pledge. Strange, but true! And human nature must be counted with. Of course, on a few stern spirits the effect of that smile is merely to harden the resolution. But on the majority its influence is deleterious. Therefore don’t go and nail your flag to the mast. Don’t raise any flag. Say nothing. Work as unobtrusively as you can. When you have won a battle or two you can begin to wave the banner, and then you will find that that miserable, pitiful, ironic, superior smile will die away ere it is born.

The third possible cause was that you did not rearrange your day. Idler and time-waster though you have been, still you had done _something_ during the twenty-four hours. You went to work with a kind of dim idea that there were twenty-six hours in every day. _Something large and definite has to be dropped._ Some space in the rank jungle of the day has to be cleared and swept up for the new operations. Robbing yourself of sleep won’t help you, nor trying to “squeeze in” a time for study between two other times. Use the knife, and use it freely. If you mean to read or think half an hour a day, arrange for an hour. A hundred per cent. margin is not too much for a beginner. Do you ask me where the knife is to be used? I should say that in nine cases out of ten the rites of the cult of the body might be abbreviated. I recently spent a week-end in a London suburb, and I was staggered by the wholesale attention given to physical recreation in all its forms. It was a gigantic debauch of the muscles on every side. It shocked me. “Poor withering mind!” I thought. “Cricket, and football, and boating, and golf, and tennis have their ‘seasons,’ but not thou!” These considerations are general and prefatory. Now I must come to detail.

MENTAL CALISTHENICS

I have dealt with the state of mind in which one should begin a serious effort towards mental efficiency, and also with the probable causes of failure in previous efforts. We come now to what I may call the calisthenics of the business, exercises which may be roughly compared to the technical exercises necessary in learning to play a musical instrument. It is curious that a person studying a musical instrument will have no false shame whatever in doing mere exercises for the fingers and wrists while a person who is trying to get his mind into order will almost certainly experience a false shame in going through performances which are undoubtedly good for him. Herein lies one of the great obstacles to mental efficiency. Tell a man that he should join a memory class, and he will hum and haw, and say, as I have already remarked, that memory isn’t everything; and, in short, he won’t join the memory class, partly from indolence, I grant, but more from false shame. (Is not this true?) He will even hesitate about learning things by heart. Yet there are few mental exercises better than learning great poetry or prose by heart. Twenty lines a week for six months: what a “cure” for debility! The chief, but not the only, merit of learning by heart as an exercise is that it compels the mind to concentrate. And the most important preliminary to self-development is the faculty of concentrating at will. Another excellent exercise is to read a page of no-matter-what, and then immediately to write down–in one’s own words or in the author’s–one’s full recollection of it. A quarter of an hour a day! No more! And it works like magic. This brings me to the department of writing. I am a writer by profession; but I do not think I have any prejudices in favour of the exercise of writing. Indeed, I say to myself every morning that if there is one exercise in the world which I hate, it is the exercise of writing. But I must assert that in my opinion the exercise of writing is an indispensable part of any genuine effort towards mental efficiency. I don’t care much what you write, so long as you compose sentences and achieve continuity. There are forty ways of writing in an unprofessional manner, and they are all good. You may keep “a full diary,” as Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This is one of the least good ways. Diaries, save in experienced hands like those of Mr. Benson, are apt to get themselves done with the very minimum of mental effort. They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and if they are left lying about they tend to strife. Further, one never knows when one may not be compelled to produce them in a court of law. A journal is better. Do not ask me to define the difference between a journal and a diary. I will not and I cannot. It is a difference that one feels instinctively. A diary treats exclusively of one’s self and one’s doings; a journal roams wider, and notes whatever one has observed of interest. A diary relates that one had lobster mayonnaise for dinner and rose the next morning with a headache, doubtless attributable to mental strain. A journal relates that Mrs. —-, whom one took into dinner, had brown eyes, and an agreeable trick of throwing back her head after asking a question, and gives her account of her husband’s strange adventures in Colorado, etc. A diary is

All I, I, I, I, itself I

(to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary Baker G. Eddy). A journal is the large spectacle of life. A journal may be special or general. I know a man who keeps a journal of all cases of current superstition which he actually encounters. He began it without the slightest suspicion that he was beginning a document of astounding interest and real scientific value; but such was the fact. In default of a diary or a journal, one may write essays (provided one has the moral courage); or one may simply make notes on the book one reads. Or one may construct anthologies of passages which have made an individual and particular appeal to one’s tastes. Anthology construction is one of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is not mad about golf and bridge–that is to say, a thinking person–can possibly have; and I recommend it to those who, discreetly mistrusting their power to keep up a fast pace from start to finish, are anxious to begin their intellectual course gently and mildly. In any event, writing–the act of writing–is vital to almost any scheme. I would say it was vital to every scheme, without exception, were I not sure that some kind correspondent would instantly point out a scheme to which writing was obviously not vital.

After writing comes thinking. (The sequence may be considered odd, but I adhere to it.) In this connexion I cannot do better than quote an admirable letter which I have received from a correspondent who wishes to be known only as “An Oxford Lecturer.” The italics (except the last) are mine, not his. He says: “Till a man has got his physical brain completely under his control–_suppressing its too-great receptivity, its tendencies to reproduce idly the thoughts of others, and to be swayed by every passing gust of emotion_–I hold that he cannot do a tenth part of the work that he would then be able to perform with little or no effort. Moreover, work apart, he has not entered upon his kingdom, and unlimited possibilities of future development are barred to him. Mental efficiency can be gained by constant practice in meditation–i.e., by concentrating the mind, say, for but ten minutes daily, but with absolute regularity, on some of the highest thoughts of which it is capable. Failures will be frequent, but they must be regarded with simple indifference and dogged perseverance in the path chosen. If that path be followed _without intermission_ even for a few weeks the results will speak for themselves.” I thoroughly agree with what this correspondent says, and am obliged to him for having so ably stated the case. But I regard such a practice of meditation as he indicates as being rather an “advanced” exercise for a beginner. After the beginner has got under way, and gained a little confidence in his strength of purpose, and acquired the skill to define his thoughts sufficiently to write them down–then it would be time enough, in my view, to undertake what “An Oxford Lecturer” suggests. By the way, he highly recommends Mrs. Annie Besant’s book, _Thought Power: Its Control and Culture_. He says that it treats the subject with scientific clearness, and gives a practical method of training the mind, I endorse the latter part of the statement.

So much for the more or less technical processes of stirring the mind from its sloth and making it exactly obedient to the aspirations of the soul. And here I close. Numerous correspondents have asked me to outline a course of reading for them. In other words, they have asked me to particularize for them the aspirations of their souls. My subject, however, was not self-development My subject was mental efficiency as a means to self-development. Of course, one can only acquire mental efficiency in the actual effort of self-development. But I was concerned, not with the choice of route; rather with the manner of following the route. You say to me that I am busying myself with the best method of walking, and refusing to discuss where to go. Precisely. One man cannot tell another man where the other man wants to go.

If he can’t himself decide on a goal he may as well curl up and expire, for the root of the matter is not in him. I will content myself with pointing out that the entire universe is open for inspection. Too many people fancy that self-development means literature. They associate the higher life with an intimate knowledge of the life of Charlotte Brontë, or the order of the plays of Shakespeare. The higher life may just as well be butterflies, or funeral customs, or county boundaries, or street names, or mosses, or stars, or slugs, as Charlotte Brontë or Shakespeare. Choose what interests you. Lots of finely-organized, mentally-efficient persons can’t read Shakespeare at any price, and if you asked them who was the author of _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ they might proudly answer Emily Brontë, if they didn’t say they never heard of it. An accurate knowledge of _any_ subject, coupled with a carefully nurtured sense of the relativity of that subject to other subjects, implies an enormous self-development. With this hint I conclude.

II

Expressing One’s Individuality

A most curious and useful thing to realize is that one never knows the impression one is creating on other people. One may often guess pretty accurately whether it is good, bad, or indifferent–some people render it unnecessary for one to guess, they practically inform one–but that is not what I mean. I mean much more than that. I mean that one has one’s self no mental picture corresponding to the mental picture which one’s personality leaves in the minds of one’s friends. Has it ever struck you that there is a mysterious individual going around, walking the streets, calling at houses for tea, chatting, laughing, grumbling, arguing, and that all your friends know him and have long since added him up and come to a definite conclusion about him–without saying more than a chance, cautious word to you; and that that person is _you_? Supposing that _you_ came into a drawing-room where you were having tea, do you think you would recognize yourself as an individuality? I think not. You would be apt to say to yourself, as guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other guests: “Who’s this chap? Seems rather queer, I hope he won’t be a bore.” And your first telling would be slightly hostile. Why, even when you meet yourself in an unsuspected mirror in the very clothes that you have put on that very day and that you know by heart, you are almost always shocked by the realization that you are you. And now and then, when you have gone to the glass to arrange your hair in the full sobriety of early morning, have you not looked on an absolute stranger, and has not that stranger piqued your curiosity? And if it is thus with precise external details of form, colour, and movement, what may it not be with the vague complex effect of the mental and moral individuality?

A man honestly tries to make a good impression. What is the result? The result merely is that his friends, in the privacy of their minds, set him down as a man who tries to make a good impression. If much depends on the result of a single interview, or a couple of interviews, a man may conceivably force another to accept an impression of himself which he would like to convey. But if the receiver of the impression is to have time at his disposal, then the giver of the impression may just as well sit down and put his hands in his pockets, for nothing that he can do will modify or influence in any way the impression that he will ultimately give. The real impress is, in the end, given unconsciously, not consciously; and further, it is received unconsciously, not consciously. It depends partly on both persons. And it is immutably fixed beforehand. There can be no final deception. Take the extreme case, that of the mother and her son. One hears that the son hoodwinks his mother. Not he! If he is cruel, neglectful, overbearing, she is perfectly aware of it. He does not deceive her, and she does not deceive herself. I have often thought: If a son could look into a mother’s heart, what an eye-opener he would have! “What!” he would cry. “This cold, impartial judgment, this keen vision for my faults, this implacable memory of little slights, and injustices, and callousnesses committed long ago, in the breast of my mother!” Yes, my friend, in the breast of your mother. The only difference between your mother and another person is that she takes you as you are, and loves you for what you are. She isn’t blind: do not imagine it.

The marvel is, not that people are such bad judges of character, but that they are such good judges, especially of what I may call fundamental character. The wiliest person cannot for ever conceal his fundamental character from the simplest. And people are very stern judges, too. Think of your best friends–are you oblivious of their defects? On the contrary, you are perhaps too conscious of them. When you summon them before your mind’s eye, it is no ideal creation that you see. When you meet them and talk to them you are constantly making reservations in their disfavour–unless, of course, you happen to be a schoolgirl gushing over like a fountain with enthusiasm. It is well, when one is judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality. It is well to grasp the fact that you are going through life under the scrutiny of a band of acquaintances who are subject to very few illusions about you, whose views of you are, indeed, apt to be harsh and even cruel. Above all it is advisable to comprehend thoroughly that the things in your individuality which annoy your friends most are the things of which you are completely unconscious. It is not until years have passed that one begins to be able to form a dim idea of what one has looked like to one’s friends. At forty one goes back ten years, and one says sadly, but with a certain amusement: “I must have been pretty blatant then. I can see how I must have exasperated ’em. And yet I hadn’t the faintest notion of it at the time. My intentions were of the best. Only I didn’t know enough.” And one recollects some particularly crude action, and kicks one’s self…. Yes, that is all very well; and the enlightenment which has come with increasing age is exceedingly satisfactory. But you are forty now. What shall you be saying of yourself at fifty? Such reflections foster humility, and they foster also a reluctance, which it is impossible to praise too highly, to tread on other people’s toes.

A moment ago I used the phrase “fundamental character.” It is a reminiscence of Stevenson’s phrase “fundamental decency.” And it is the final test by which one judges one’s friends. “After all, he’s a decent fellow.” We must be able to use that formula concerning our friends. Kindliness of heart is not the greatest of human qualities–and its general effect on the progress of the world is not entirely beneficent–but it is the greatest of human qualities in friendship. It is the least dispensable quality. We come back to it with relief from more brilliant qualities. And it has the great advantage of always going with a broad mind. Narrow-minded people are never kind-hearted. You may be inclined to dispute this statement: please think it over; I am inclined to uphold it.

We can forgive the absence of any quality except kindliness of heart. And when a man lacks that, we blame him, we will not forgive him. This is, of course, scandalous. A man is born as he is born. And he can as easily add a cubit to his stature as add kindliness to his heart. The feat never has been done, and never will be done. And yet we blame those who have not kindliness. We have the incredible, insufferable, and odious audacity to blame them. We think of them as though they had nothing to do but go into a shop and buy kindliness. I hear you say that kindliness of heart can be “cultivated.” Well, I hate to have even the appearance of contradicting you, but it can only be cultivated in the botanical sense. You can’t cultivate violets on a nettle. A philosopher has enjoined us to suffer fools gladly. He had more usefully enjoined us to suffer ill-natured persons gladly…. I see that in a fit of absentmindedness I have strayed into the pulpit. I descend.

III

Breaking with the Past

On that dark morning we woke up, and it instantly occurred to us–or at any rate to those of us who have preserved some of our illusions and our _naïveté_–that we had something to be cheerful about, some cause for a gay and strenuous vivacity; and then we remembered that it was New Year’s Day, and there were those Resolutions to put into force! Of course, we all smile in a superior manner at the very mention of New Year’s Resolutions; we pretend they are toys for children, and that we have long since ceased to regard them seriously as a possible aid to conduct. But we are such deceivers, such miserable, moral cowards, in such terror of appearing naïve, that I for one am not to be taken in by that smile and that pretence. The individual who scoffs at New Year’s Resolutions resembles the woman who says she doesn’t look under the bed at nights; the truth is not in him, and in the very moment of his lying, could his cranium suddenly become transparent, we should see Resolutions burning brightly in his brain like lamps in Trafalgar Square. Of this I am convinced, that nineteen-twentieths of us got out of bed that morning animated by that special feeling of gay and strenuous vivacity which Resolutions alone can produce. And nineteen-twentieths of us were also conscious of a high virtue, forgetting that it is not the making of Resolutions, but the keeping of them, which renders pardonable the consciousness of virtue.

And at this hour, while the activity of the Resolution is yet in full blast, I would wish to insist on the truism, obvious perhaps, but apt to be overlooked, that a man cannot go forward and stand still at the same time. Just as moralists have often animadverted upon the tendency to live in the future, so I would animadvert upon the tendency to live in the past. Because all around me I see men carefully tying themselves with an unbreakable rope to an immovable post at the bottom of a hill and then struggling to climb the hill. If there is one Resolution more important than another it is the Resolution to break with the past. If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing. This may seem a hard and callous doctrine, but you know there are aspects of common sense which decidedly are hard and callous. And one finds constantly in plain common-sense persons (O rare and select band!) a surprising quality of ruthlessness mingled with softer traits. Have you not noticed it? The past is absolutely intractable. One can’t do anything with it. And an exaggerated attention to it is like an exaggerated attention to sepulchres–a sign of barbarism. Moreover, the past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment.

Personally, I could even go so far as to exhibit hostility towards grief, and a marked hostility towards remorse–two states of mind which feed on the past instead of on the present. Remorse, which is not the same thing as repentance, serves no purpose that I have ever been able to discover. What one has done, one has done, and there’s an end of it. As a great prelate unforgettably said, “Things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why, then, attempt to deceive ourselves”–that remorse for wickedness is a useful and praiseworthy exercise? Much better to forget. As a matter of fact, people “indulge” in remorse; it is a somewhat vicious form of spiritual pleasure. Grief, of course, is different, and it must be handled with delicate consideration. Nevertheless, when I see, as one does see, a man or a woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the loss of a beloved creature, and the world tacitly applauding, my feeling is certainly inimical. To my idea, that man or woman is not honouring, but dishonouring, the memory of the departed; society suffers, the individual suffers, and no earthly or heavenly good is achieved. Grief is of the past; it mars the present; it is a form of indulgence, and it ought to be bridled much more than it often is. The human heart is so large that mere remembrance should not be allowed to tyrannize over every part of it.

But cases of remorse and absorbing grief are comparatively rare. What is not rare is that misguided loyalty to the past which dominates the lives of so many of us. I do not speak of leading principles, which are not likely to incommode us by changing; I speak of secondary yet still important things. We will not do so-and-so because we have never done it–as if that was a reason! Or we have always done so-and-so, therefore we must always do it–as if _that_ was logic! This disposition to an irrational Toryism is curiously discoverable in advanced Radicals, and it will show itself in the veriest trifles. I remember such a man whose wife objected to his form of hat (not that I would call so crowning an affair as a hat a trifle!). “My dear,” he protested, “I have always worn this sort of hat. It may not suit me, but it is absolutely impossible for me to alter it now.” However, she took him by means of an omnibus to a hat shop and bought him another hat and put it on his head, and made a present of the old one to the shop assistant, and marched him out of the shop. “There!” she said, “you see how impossible it is.” This is a parable. And I will not insult your intelligence by applying it.

The faculty that we chiefly need when we are in the resolution-making mood is the faculty of imagination, the faculty of looking at our lives as though we had never looked at them before–freshly, with a new eye. Supposing that you had been born mature and full of experience, and that yesterday had been the first day of your life, you would regard it to-day as an experiment, you would challenge each act in it, and you would probably arrange to-morrow in a manner that showed a healthy disrespect for yesterday. You certainly would not say: “I have done so-and-so once, therefore I must keep on doing it.” The past is never more than an experiment. A genuine appreciation of this fact will make our new Resolutions more valuable and drastic than they usually are. I have a dim notion that the most useful Resolution for most of us would be to break quite fifty per cent. of all the vows we have ever made. “Do not accustom yourself to enchain your _volatility_ with vows…. Take this warning; it is of great importance.” (The wisdom is Johnson’s, but I flatter myself on the italics.)

IV

Settling Down in Life

The other day a well-known English novelist asked me how old I thought she was, _really_. “Well,” I said to myself, “since she has asked for it, she shall have it; I will be as true to life as her novels.” So I replied audaciously: “Thirty-eight.” I fancied I was erring if at all, on the side of “really,” and I trembled. She laughed triumphantly. “I am forty-three,” she said. The incident might have passed off entirely to my satisfaction had she not proceeded: “And now tell me how old _you_ are.” That was like a woman. Women imagine that men have no reticences, no pretty little vanities. What an error! Of course I could not be beaten in candour by a woman. I had to offer myself a burnt sacrifice to her curiosity, and I did it, bravely but not unflinchingly. And then afterwards the fact of my age remained with me, worried me, obsessed me. I saw more clearly than ever before that age was telling on me. I could not be blind to the deliberation of my movements in climbing stairs and in dressing. Once upon a time the majority of persons I met in the street seemed much older than myself. It is different now. The change has come unperceived. There is a generation younger than mine that smokes cigars and falls in love. Astounding! Once I could play left-wing forward for an hour and a half without dropping down dead. Once I could swim a hundred and fifty feet submerged at the bottom of a swimming-bath. Incredible! Simply incredible!… Can it be that I have already lived?

And lo! I, at the age of nearly forty, am putting to myself the old questions concerning the intrinsic value of life, the fundamentally important questions: What have I got out of it? What am I likely to get out of it? In a word, what’s it worth? If a man can ask himself a question more momentous, radical, and critical than these questions, I would like to know what it is. Innumerable philosophers have tried to answer these questions in a general way for the average individual, and possibly they have succeeded pretty well. Possibly I might derive benefit from a perusal of their answers. But do you suppose I am going to read them? Not I! Do you suppose that I can recall the wisdom that I happen already to have read? Not I! My mind is a perfect blank at this moment in regard to the wisdom of others on the essential question. Strange, is it not? But quite a common experience, I believe. Besides, I don’t actually care twopence what any other philosopher has replied to my question. In this, each man must be his own philosopher. There is an instinct in the profound egoism of human nature which prevents us from accepting such ready-made answers. What is it to us what Plato thought? Nothing. And thus the question remains ever new, and ever unanswered, and ever of dramatic interest. The singular, the highly singular thing is–and here I arrive at my point–that so few people put the question to themselves in time, that so many put it too late, or even die without putting it.

I am firmly convinced that an immense proportion of my instructed fellow-creatures do not merely omit to strike the balance-sheet of their lives, they omit even the preliminary operation of taking stock. They go on, and on, and on, buying and selling they know not what, at unascertained prices, dropping money into the till and taking it out. They don’t know what goods are in the shop, nor what amount is in the till, but they have a clear impression that the living-room behind the shop is by no means as luxurious and as well-ventilated as they would like it to be. And the years pass, and that beautiful furniture and that system of ventilation are not achieved. And then one day they die, and friends come to the funeral and remark: “Dear me! How stuffy this room is, and the shop’s practically full of trash!” Or, some little time before they are dead, they stay later than usual in the shop one evening, and make up their minds to take stock and count the till, and the disillusion lays them low, and they struggle into the living-room and murmur: “I shall never have that beautiful furniture, and I shall never have that system of ventilation. If I had known earlier, I would have at least got a few inexpensive cushions to go on with, and I would have put my fist through a pane in the window. But it’s too late now. I’m used to Windsor chairs, and I should feel the draught horribly.” If I were a preacher, and if I hadn’t got more than enough to do in minding my own affairs, and if I could look any one in the face and deny that I too had pursued for nearly forty years the great British policy of muddling through and hoping for the best–in short, if things were not what they are, I would hire the Alhambra Theatre or Exeter Hall of a Sunday night–preferably the Alhambra, because more people would come to my entertainment–and I would invite all men and women over twenty-six. I would supply the seething crowd with what they desired in the way of bodily refreshment (except spirits–I would draw the line at poisons), and having got them and myself into a nice amiable expansive frame of mind, I would thus address them–of course in ringing eloquence that John Bright might have envied:

Men and women (I would say), companions in the universal pastime of hiding one’s head in the sand,–I am about to impart to you the very essence of human wisdom. It is not abstract. It is a principle of daily application, affecting the daily round in its entirety, from the straphanging on the District Railway in the morning to the straphanging on the District Railway the next morning. Beware of hope, and beware of ambition! Each is excellently tonic, like German competition, in moderation. But all of you are suffering from self-indulgence in the first, and very many of you are ruining your constitutions with the second. Be it known unto you, my dear men and women, that existence rightly considered is a fair compromise between two instincts–the instinct of hoping one day to live, and the instinct to live here and now. In most of you the first instinct has simply got the other by the throat and is throttling it. Prepare to live by all means, but for heaven’s sake do not forget to live. You will never have a better chance than you have at present. You may think you will have, but you are mistaken. Pardon this bluntness. Surely you are not so naïve as to imagine that the road on the other side of that hill there is more beautiful than the piece you are now traversing! Hopes are never realized; for in the act of realization they become something else. Ambitions may be attained, but ambitions attained are rather like burnt coal, ninety per cent. of the heat generated has gone up the chimney instead of into the room. Nevertheless, indulge in hopes and ambitions, which, though deceiving, are agreeable deceptions; let them cheat you a little, a lot. But do not let them cheat you too much. This that you are living now is life itself–it is much more life itself than that which you will be living twenty years hence. Grasp that truth. Dwell on it. Absorb it. Let it influence your conduct, to the end that neither the present nor the future be neglected. You search for happiness? Happiness is chiefly a matter of temperament. It is exceedingly improbable that you will by struggling gain more happiness than you already possess. In fine, settle down at once into _life_. (Loud cheers.)

The cheers would of course be for the refreshments.

There is no doubt that the mass of the audience would consider that I had missed my vocation, and ought to have been a caterer instead of a preacher. But, once started, I would not be discouraged. I would keep on, Sunday night after Sunday night. Our leading advertisers have richly proved that the public will believe anything if they are told of it often enough. I would practise iteration, always with refreshments. In the result, it would dawn upon the corporate mind that there was some glimmering of sense in my doctrine, and people would at last begin to perceive the folly of neglecting to savour the present, the folly of assuming that the future can be essentially different from the present, the fatuity of dying before they have begun to live.

V

Marraige

THE DUTY OF IT

Every now and then it becomes necessary to deal faithfully with that immortal type of person, the praiser of the past at the expense of the present. I will not quote Horace, as by all the traditions of letters I ought to do, because Horace, like the incurable trimmer that he was, “hedged” on this question; and I do not admire him much either. The praiser of the past has been very rife lately. He has told us that pauperism and lunacy are mightily increasing, and though the exact opposite has been proved to be the case and he has apologized, he will have forgotten the correction in a few months, and will break out again into renewed lamentation. He has told us that we are physically deteriorating, and in such awful tones that we have shuddered, and many of us have believed. And considering that the death-rate is decreasing, that slums are decreasing, that disease is decreasing, that the agricultural labourer eats more than ever he did, our credence does not do much credit to our reasoning powers, does it? Of course, there is that terrible “influx” into the towns, but I for one should be much interested to know wherein the existence of the rustic in times past was healthier than the existence of the town-dwellers of to-day. The personal appearance of agricultural veterans does not help me; they resemble starved ‘bus-drivers twisted out of shape by lightning.

But the _pièce de résistance_ of the praiser of the past is now marriage, with discreet hints about the birth-rate. The praiser of the past is going to have a magnificent time with the subject of marriage. The first moanings of the tempest have already been heard. Bishops have looked askance at the birth-rate, and have mentioned their displeasure. The matter is serious. As the phrase goes, “it strikes at the root.” We are marrying later, my friends. Some of us, in the hurry and pre-occupation of business, are quite forgetting to marry. It is the duty of the citizen to marry and have children, and we are neglecting our duty, we are growing selfish! No longer are produced the glorious “quiverfuls” of old times! Our fathers married at twenty; we marry at thirty-five. Why? Because a gross and enervating luxury has overtaken us. What will become of England if this continues? There will be no England! Hence we must look to it! And so on, in the same strain.

I should like to ask all those who have raised and will raise such outcries. Have you read “X”? Now, the book that I refer to as “X” is a mysterious work, written rather more than a hundred years ago by an English curate. It is a classic of English science; indeed, it is one of the great scientific books of the world. It has immensely influenced all the scientific thought of the nineteenth century, especially Darwin’s. Mr. H.G. Wells, as cited in “Chambers’s Cyclopædia of English Literature,” describes it as “the most ‘shattering’ book that ever has or will be written.” If I may make a personal reference, I would say that it affected me more deeply than any other scientific book that I have read. Although it is perfectly easy to understand, and free from the slightest technicality, it is the most misunderstood book in English literature, simply because it is _not_ read. The current notion about it is utterly false. It might be a powerful instrument of education, general and sociological, but publishers will not reprint it–at least, they do not. And yet it is forty times more interesting and four hundred times more educational than Gilbert White’s remarks on the birds of Selborne. I will leave you to guess what “X” is, but I do not offer a prize for the solution of a problem which a vast number of my readers will certainly solve at once.

If those who are worrying themselves about the change in our system of marriage would read “X,” they would probably cease from worrying. For they would perceive that they had been putting the cart before the horse; that they had elevated to the dignity of fundamental principles certain average rules of conduct which had sprung solely from certain average instincts in certain average conditions, and that they were now frightened because, the conditions having changed, the rules of conduct had changed with them. One of the truths that “X” makes clear is that conduct conforms to conditions, and not conditions to conduct.

The payment of taxes is a duty which the citizen owes to the state. Marriage, with the begetting of children, is not a duty which the citizen owes to the state. Marriage, with its consequences, is a matter of personal inclination and convenience. It never has been anything else, and it never will be anything else. How could it be otherwise? If a man goes against inclination and convenience in a matter where inclination is “of the essence of the contract,” he merely presents the state with a discontented citizen (if not two) in exchange for a contented one! The happiness of the state is the sum of the happiness of all its citizens; to decrease one’s own happiness, then, is a singular way of doing one’s duty to the state! Do you imagine that when people married early and much they did so from a sense of duty to the state–a sense of duty which our “modern luxury” has weakened? I imagine they married simply because it suited ’em. They married from sheer selfishness, as all decent people do marry. And do those who clatter about the duty of marriage kiss the girls of their hearts with an eye to the general welfare? I can fancy them saying, “My angel, I love you–from a sense of duty to the state. Let us rear innumerable progeny–from a sense of duty to the state.” How charmed the girls would be! If the marrying age changes, if the birth-rate shows a sympathetic tendency to follow the death-rate (as it must–see “X”), no one need be alarmed. Elementary principles of right and wrong are not trembling on their bases. The human conscience is not silenced. The nation is not going to the dogs. Conduct is adjusting itself to new conditions, and that is all. We may not be able to see exactly _how_ conditions are changing; that is a detail; our descendants will see exactly; meanwhile the change in our conduct affords us some clew. And although certain nervous persons do get alarmed, and do preach, and do “take measures,” the rest of us may remain placid in the sure faith that “measures” will avail nothing whatever. If there are two things set high above legislation, “movements,” crusades, and preaching, one is the marrying age and the other is the birth-rate. For there the supreme instinct comes along and stamps ruthlessly on all insincere reasonings and sham altruisms; stamps on everything, in fact, and blandly remarks: “I shall suit my own convenience, and no one but Nature herself (with a big, big N) shall talk to _me_. Don’t pester me with Right and Wrong. I _am_ Right and Wrong….” Having thus attempted to clear the ground a little of fudge, I propose next to offer a few simple remarks on marriage.

THE ADVENTURE OF IT

Having endeavoured to show that men do not, and should not, marry from a sense of duty to the state or to mankind, but simply and solely from an egoistic inclination to marry, I now proceed to the individual case of the man who is “in a position to marry” and whose affections are not employed. Of course, if he has fallen in love, unless he happens to be a person of extremely powerful will, he will not weigh the pros and cons of marriage; he will merely marry, and forty thousand cons will not prevent him. And he will be absolutely right and justified, just as the straw as it rushes down the current is absolutely right and justified. But the privilege of falling in love is not given to everybody, and the inestimable privilege of falling deeply in love is given to few. However, the man whom circumstances permit to marry but who is not in love, or is only slightly amorous, will still think of marriage. How will he think of it?

I will tell you. In the first place, if he has reached the age of thirty unscathed by Aphrodite, he will reflect that that peculiar feeling of romantic expectation with which he gets up every morning would cease to exist after marriage–and it is a highly agreeable feeling! In its stead, in moments of depression, he would have the feeling of having done something irremediable, of having definitely closed an avenue for the outlet of his individuality. (Kindly remember that I am not describing what this human man ought to think. I am describing what he does think.) In the second place, he will reflect that, after marriage, he could no longer expect the charming welcomes which bachelors so often receive from women; he would be “done with” as a possibility, and he does not relish the prospect of being done with as a possibility. Such considerations, all connected more or less with the loss of “freedom” (oh, mysterious and thrilling word!), will affect his theoretical attitude. And be it known that even the freedom to be lonely and melancholy is still freedom. Other ideas will suggest themselves. One morning while brushing his hair he will see a gray hair, and, however young he may be, the anticipation of old age will come to him. A solitary old age! A senility dependent for its social and domestic requirements on condescending nephews and nieces, or even more distant relations! Awful! Unthinkable! And his first movement, especially if he has read that terrible novel, “_Fort comme la Mort_,” of De Maupassant, is to rush out into the street and propose to the first girl he encounters, in order to avoid this dreadful nightmare of a solitary old age. But before he has got as far as the doorstep he reflects further. Suppose he marries, and after twenty years his wife dies and leaves him a widower! He will still have a solitary old age, and a vastly more tragical one than if he had remained single. Marriage is not, therefore, a sure remedy for a solitary old age; it may intensify the evil. Children? But suppose he doesn’t have any children! Suppose, there being children, they die–what anguish! Suppose merely that they are seriously ill and recover–what an ageing experience! Suppose they prove a disappointment–what endless regret! Suppose they “turn out badly” (children do)–what shame! Suppose he finally becomes dependent upon the grudging kindness of an ungrateful child–what a supreme humiliation! All these things are occurring constantly everywhere. Suppose his wife, having loved him, ceased to love him, or suppose he ceased to love his wife! _Ces choses ne se commandent pas_–these things do not command themselves. Personally, I should estimate that in not one per cent. even of romantic marriages are the husband and wife capable of _passion_ for each other after three years. So brief is the violence of love! In perhaps thirty-three per cent. passion settles down into a tranquil affection–which is ideal. In fifty per cent. it sinks into sheer indifference, and one becomes used to one’s wife or one’s husband as to one’s other habits. And in the remaining sixteen per cent. it develops into dislike or detestation. Do you think my percentages are wrong, you who have been married a long time and know what the world is? Well, you may modify them a little–you won’t want to modify them much.

The risk of finding one’s self ultimately among the sixteen per cent. can be avoided by the simple expedient of not marrying. And by the same expedient the other risks can be avoided, together with yet others that I have not mentioned. It is entirely obvious, then (in fact, I beg pardon for mentioning it), that the attitude towards marriage of the heart-free bachelor must be at best a highly cautious attitude. He knows he is already in the frying-pan (none knows better), but, considering the propinquity of the fire, he doubts whether he had not better stay where he is. His life will be calmer, more like that of a hibernating snake; his sensibilities will be dulled; but the chances of poignant suffering will be very materially reduced.

So that the bachelor in a position to marry but not in love will assuredly decide in theory against marriage–that is to say, if he is timid, if he prefers frying-pans, if he is lacking in initiative, if he has the soul of a rat, if he wants to live as little as possible, if he hates his kind, if his egoism is of the miserable sort that dares not mingle with another’s. But if he has been more happily gifted he will decide that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging into; the ineradicable and fine gambling instinct in him will urge him to take, at the first chance, a ticket in the only lottery permitted by the British Government. Because, after all, the mutual sense of ownership felt by the normal husband and the normal wife is something unique, something the like of which cannot be obtained without marriage. I saw a man and a woman at a sale the other day; I was too far off to hear them, but I could perceive they were having a most lively argument–perhaps it was only about initials on pillowcases; they were _absorbed_ in themselves; the world did not exist for them. And I thought: “What miraculous exquisite Force is it that brings together that strange, sombre, laconic organism in a silk hat and a loose, black overcoat, and that strange, bright, vivacious, querulous, irrational organism in brilliant fur and feathers?” And when they moved away the most interesting phenomenon in the universe moved away. And I thought: “Just as no beer is bad, but some beer is better than other beer, so no marriage is bad.” The chief reward of marriage is something which marriage is bound to give–companionship whose mysterious _interestingness_ nothing can stale. A man may hate his wife so that she can’t thread a needle without annoying him, but when he dies, or she dies, he will say: “Well, _I was interested_.” And one always is. Said a bachelor of forty-six to me the other night: “Anything is better than the void.”

THE TWO WAYS OF IT

Sabine and other summary methods of marrying being now abandoned by all nice people, there remain two broad general ways. The first is the English way. We let nature take her course. We give heed to the heart’s cry. When, amid the hazards and accidents of the world, two souls “find each other,” we rejoice. Our instinctive wish is that they shall marry, if the matter can anyhow be arranged. We frankly recognise the claim of romance in life, and we are prepared to make sacrifices to it. We see a young couple at the altar; they are in love. Good! They are poor. So much the worse! But nevertheless we feel that love will pull them through. The revolting French system of bargain and barter is the one thing that we can neither comprehend nor pardon in the customs of our great neighbours. We endeavour to be polite about that system; we simply cannot. It shocks our finest, tenderest feelings. It is so obviously contrary to nature. The second is the French way, just alluded to as bargain and barter. Now, if there is one thing a Frenchman can neither comprehend nor pardon in the customs of a race so marvelously practical and sagacious as ourselves, it is the English marriage system. He endeavours to be polite about it, and he succeeds. But it shocks his finest, tenderest feelings. He admits that it is in accordance with nature; but he is apt to argue that the whole progress of civilisation has been the result of an effort to get away from nature. “What! Leave the most important relation into which a man can enter to the mercy of chance, when a mere gesture may arouse passion, or the colour of a corsage induce desire! No, you English, you who are so self-controlled, you are not going seriously to defend that! You talk of love as though it lasted for ever. You talk of sacrificing to love; but what you really sacrifice, or risk sacrificing, is the whole of the latter part of married existence for the sake of the first two or three years. Marriage is not one long honeymoon. We wish it were. When _you_ agree to a marriage you fix your eyes on the honeymoon. When _we_ agree to a marriage we try to see it as it will be five or ten years hence. We assert that, in the average instance, five years after the wedding it doesn’t matter whether or not the parties were in love on the wedding-day. Hence we will not yield to the gusts of the moment. Your system is, moreover, if we may be permitted the observation, a premium on improvidence; it is, to some extent, the result of improvidence. You can marry your daughters without dowries, and the ability to do so tempts you to neglect your plain duty to your daughters, and you do not always resist the temptation. Do your marriages of ‘romance’ turn out better than our marriages of prudence, of careful thought, of long foresight? We do not think they do.”

So much for the two ways. Patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel, according to Doctor Johnson, I have no intention of judging between them, as my heart prompts me to do, lest I should be accused of it. Nevertheless, I may hint that, while perfectly convinced by the admirable logic of the French, I am still, with the charming illogicalness of the English, in favour of romantic marriages (it being, of course, understood that dowries _ought_ to be far more plentiful than they are in England). If a Frenchman accuses me of being ready to risk sacrificing the whole of the latter part of married life for the sake of the first two or three years, I would unhesitatingly reply: “Yes, I _am_ ready to risk that sacrifice. I reckon the first two or three years are worth it.” But, then, I am English, and therefore romantic by nature. Look at London, that city whose outstanding quality is its romantic quality; and look at the Englishwomen going their ways in the wonderful streets thereof! Their very eyes are full of romance. They may, they do, lack _chic_, but they are heroines of drama. Then look at Paris; there is little romance in the fine right lines of Paris. Look at the Parisiennes. They are the most astounding and adorable women yet invented by nature. But they aren’t romantic, you know. They don’t know what romance is. They are so matter-of-fact that when you think of their matter-of-factness it gives you a shiver in the small of your back.

To return. One may view the two ways in another light. Perhaps the difference between them is, fundamentally, less a difference between the ideas of two races than a difference between the ideas of two “times of life”; and in France the elderly attitude predominates. As people get on in years, even English people, they are more and more in favour of the marriage of reason as against the marriage of romance. Young people, even French people, object strongly to the theory and practice of the marriage of reason. But with them the unique and precious ecstasy of youth is not past, whereas their elders have forgotten its savour. Which is right? No one will ever be able to decide. But neither the one system nor the other will apply itself well to all or nearly all cases. There have been thousands of romantic marriages in England of which it may be said that it would have been better had the French system been in force to prevent their existence. And, equally, thousands of possible romantic marriages have been prevented in France which, had the English system prevailed there, would have turned out excellently. The prevalence of dowries in England would not render the English system perfect (for it must be remembered that money is only one of several ingredients in the French marriage), but it would considerably improve it. However, we are not a provident race, and we are not likely to become one. So our young men must reconcile themselves to the continued absence of dowries.

The reader may be excused for imagining that I am at the end of my remarks. I am not. All that precedes is a mere preliminary to what follows. I want to regard the case of the man who has given the English system a fair trial and found it futile. Thus, we wait on chance in England. We wait for love to arrive. Suppose it doesn’t arrive? Where is the English system then? Assume that a man in a position to marry reaches thirty-five or forty without having fallen in love. Why should he not try the French system for a change? Any marriage is better than none at all. Naturally, in England, he couldn’t go up to the Chosen Fair and announce: “I am not precisely in love with you, but will you marry me?” He would put it differently. And she would understand. And do you think she would refuse?

VI

Books

THE PHYSICAL SIDE

The chief interest of many of my readers is avowedly books; they may, they probably do, profess other interests, but they are primarily “bookmen,” and when one is a bookman one is a bookman during about twenty-three and three-quarter hours in every day. Now, bookmen are capable of understanding things about books which cannot be put into words; they are not like mere subscribers to circulating libraries; for them a book is not just a book–it is a _book_. If these lines should happen to catch the eye of any persons not bookmen, such persons may imagine that I am writing nonsense; but I trust that the bookmen will comprehend me. And I venture, then, to offer a few reflections upon an aspect of modern bookishness that is becoming more and more “actual” as the enterprise of publishers and the beneficent effects of education grow and increase together. I refer to “popular editions” of classics.

Now, I am very grateful to the devisers of cheap and handy editions. The first book I ever bought was the first volume of the first modern series of presentable and really cheap reprints, namely, Macaulay’s “Warren Hastings,” in “Cassell’s National Library” (sixpence, in cloth). That foundation stone of my library has unfortunately disappeared beneath the successive deposits, but another volume of the same series, F.T. Palgrave’s “Visions of England” (an otherwise scarce book), still remains to me through the vicissitudes of seventeen years of sale, purchase, and exchange, and I would not care to part with it. I have over two hundred volumes of that inestimable and incomparable series, “The Temple Classics,” besides several hundred assorted volumes of various other series. And when I heard of the new “Everyman’s Library,” projected by that benefactor of bookmen, Mr. J.M. Dent, my first impassioned act was to sit down and write a postcard to my bookseller ordering George Finlay’s “The Byzantine Empire,” a work which has waited sixty years for popular recognition. So that I cannot be said to be really antagonistic to cheap reprints.

Strong in this consciousness, I beg to state that cheap and handy reprints are “all very well in their way”–which is a manner of saying that they are not the Alpha and Omega of bookishness. By expending £20 yearly during the next five years a man might collect, in cheap and handy reprints, all that was worth having in classic English literature. But I for one would not be willing to regard such a library as a real library. I would regard it as only a cheap edition of a library. There would be something about it that would arouse in me a certain benevolent disdain, even though every volume was well printed on good paper and inoffensively bound. Why? Well, although it is my profession in life to say what I feel in plain words, I do not know that in this connection I _can_ say what I feel in plain words. I have to rely on a sympathetic comprehension of my attitude in the bookish breasts of my readers.

In the first place, I have an instinctive antipathy to a “series.” I do not want “The Golden Legend” and “The Essays of Elia” uniformed alike in a regiment of books. It makes me think of conscription and barracks. Even the noblest series of reprints ever planned (not at all cheap, either, nor heterogeneous in matter), the Tudor Translations, faintly annoys me in the mass. Its appearances in a series seems to me to rob a book of something very delicate and subtle in the aroma of its individuality–something which, it being inexplicable, I will not try to explain.

In the second place, most cheap and handy reprints are small in size. They may be typographically excellent, with large type and opaque paper; they may be convenient to handle; they may be surpassingly suitable for the pocket and the very thing for travel; they may save precious space where shelf-room is limited; but they are small in size. And there is, as regards most literature, a distinct moral value in size. Do I carry my audience with me? I hope so. Let “Paradise Lost” be so produced that you can put it in your waistcoat pocket, and it is no more “Paradise Lost.” Milton needs a solid octavo form, with stoutish paper and long primer type. I have “Walpole’s Letters” in Newnes’s “Thin Paper Classics,” a marvellous volume of near nine hundred pages, with a portrait and a good index and a beautiful binding, for three and six, and I am exceedingly indebted to Messrs. Newnes for creating that volume. It was sheer genius on their part to do so. I get charming sensations from it, but sensations not so charming as I should get from Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s many-volumed and grandiose edition, even aside from Mrs. Toynbee’s erudite notes and the extra letters which she has been able to print. The same letter in Mrs. Toynbee’s edition would have a higher æsthetic and moral value for me than in the “editionlet” of Messrs. Newnes. The one cheap series which satisfies my desire for size is Macmillan’s “Library of English Classics,” in which I have the “Travels” of that mythical personage, Sir John Mandeville. But it is only in paying for it that you know this edition to be cheap, for it measures nine inches by six inches by two inches.

And in the third place, when one buys series, one only partially chooses one’s books; they are mainly chosen for one by the publisher. And even if they are not chosen for one by the publisher, they are suggested _to_ one by the publisher. Not so does the genuine bookman form his library. The genuine bookman begins by having specific desires. His study of authorities gives him a demand, and the demand forces him to find the supply. He does not let the supply create the demand. Such a state of affairs would be almost humiliating, almost like the _parvenu_ who calls in the wholesale furnisher and decorator to provide him with a home. A library must be, primarily, the expression of the owner’s personality. Let me assert again that I am strongly in favour of cheap series of reprints. Their influence though not the very finest, is undisputably good. They are as great a boon as cheap bread. They are indispensable where money or space is limited, and in travelling. They decidedly help to educate a taste for books that are neither cheap nor handy; and the most luxurious collectors may not afford to ignore them entirely. But they have their limitations, their disadvantages. They cannot form the backbone of a “proper” library. They make, however, admirable embroidery to a library. My own would look rather plain if it was stripped of them.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BOOK-BUYING

For some considerable time I have been living, as regards books, with the minimum of comfort and decency–with, in fact, the bare necessaries of life, such necessaries being, in my case, sundry dictionaries, Boswell, an atlas, Wordsworth, an encyclopædia, Shakespere, Whitaker, some De Maupassant, a poetical anthology, Verlaine, Baudelaire, a natural history of my native county, an old directory of my native town, Sir Thomas Browne, Poe, Walpole’s Letters, and a book of memoirs that I will not name. A curious list, you will say. Well, never mind! We do not all care to eat beefsteak and chip potatoes off an oak table, with a foaming quart to the right hand. We have our idiosyncrasies. The point is that I existed on the bare necessaries of life (very healthy–doctors say) for a long time. And then, just lately, I summoned energy and caused fifteen hundred volumes to be transported to me; and I arranged them on shelves; and I re-arranged them on shelves; and I left them to arrange themselves on shelves.

Well, you know, the way that I walk up and down in front of these volumes, whose faces I had half-forgotten, is perfectly infantile. It is like the way of a child at a menagerie. There, in its cage, is that 1839 edition of Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley, that I once nearly sold to the British Museum because the Keeper of Printed Books thought he hadn’t got a copy–only he had! And there, in a cage by himself, because of his terrible hugeness, is the 1652 Paris edition of Montaigne’s Essays. And so I might continue, and so I would continue, were it not essential that I come to my argument.

Do you suppose that the presence of these books, after our long separation, is making me read more than I did? Do you suppose I am engaged in looking up my favourite passages? Not a bit. The other evening I had a long tram journey, and, before starting, I tried to select a book to take with me. I couldn’t find one to suit just the tram-mood. As I had to _catch_ the tram I was obliged to settle on something, and in the end I went off with nothing more original than “Hamlet,” which I am really too familiar with…. Then I bought an evening paper, and read it all through, including advertisements. So I said to myself: “This is a nice result of all my trouble to resume company with some of my books!” However, as I have long since ceased to be surprised at the eccentric manner in which human nature refuses to act as one would have expected it to act, I was able to keep calm and unashamed during this extraordinary experience. And I am still walking up and down in front of my books and enjoying them without reading them.

I wish to argue that a great deal of cant is talked (and written) about reading. Papers such as the “Anthenæum,” which nevertheless I peruse with joy from end to end every week, can scarcely notice a new edition of a classic without expressing, in a grieved and pessimistic tone, the fear that more people buy these agreeable editions than read them. And if it is so? What then? Are we only to buy the books that we read? The question has merely to be thus bluntly put, and it answers itself. All impassioned bookmen, except a few who devote their whole lives to reading, have rows of books on their shelves which they have never read, and which they never will read. I know that I have hundreds such. My eye rests on the works of Berkeley in three volumes, with a preface by the Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour. I cannot conceive the circumstances under which I shall ever read Berkeley; but I do not regret having bought him in a good edition, and I would buy him again if I had him not; for when I look at him some of his virtue passes into me; I am the better for him. A certain aroma of philosophy informs my soul, and I am less crude than I should otherwise be. This is not fancy, but fact.

Taking Berkeley simply as an instance, I will utilise him a little further. I ought to have read Berkeley, you say; just as I ought to have read Spenser, Ben Jonson, George Eliot, Victor Hugo. Not at all. There is no “ought” about it. If the mass of obtainable first-class literature were, as it was perhaps a century ago, not too large to be assimilated by a man of ordinary limited leisure _in_ his leisure and during the first half of his life, then possibly there might be an “ought” about it. But the mass has grown unmanageable, even by those robust professional readers who can “grapple with whole libraries.” And I am not a professional reader. I am a writer, just as I might be a hotel-keeper, a solicitor, a doctor, a grocer, or an earthenware manufacturer. I read in my scanty spare time, and I don’t read in all my spare time, either. I have other distractions. I read what I feel inclined to read, and I am conscious of no duty to finish a book that I don’t care to finish. I read in my leisure, not from a sense of duty, not to improve myself, but solely because it gives me pleasure to read. Sometimes it takes me a month to get through one book. I expect my case is quite an average case. But am I going to fetter my buying to my reading? Not exactly! I want to have lots of books on my shelves because I know they are good, because I know they would amuse me, because I like to look at them, and because one day I might have a caprice to read them. (Berkeley, even thy turn may come!) In short, I want them because I want them. And shall I be deterred from possessing them by the fear of some sequestered and singular person, some person who has read vastly but who doesn’t know the difference between a J.S. Muria cigar and an R.P. Muria, strolling in and bullying me with the dreadful query: “_Sir, do you read your books?_”

Therefore I say: In buying a book, be influenced by two considerations only. Are you reasonably sure that it is a good book? Have you a desire to possess it? Do not be influenced by the probability or the improbability of your reading it. After all, one does read a certain proportion of what one buys. And further, instinct counts. The man who spends half a crown on Stubbs’s “Early Plantagenets” instead of going into the Gaiety pit to see “The Spring Chicken,” will probably be the sort of man who can suck goodness out of Stubbs’s “Early Plantagenets” years before he bestirs himself to read it.

VII

Success

CANDID REMARKS

There are times when the whole free and enlightened Press of the United Kingdom seems to become strangely interested in the subject of “success,” of getting on in life. We are passing through such a period now. It would be difficult to name the prominent journalists who have not lately written, in some form or another, about success. Most singular phenomenon of all, Dr. Emil Reich has left Plato, duchesses, and Claridge’s Hotel, in order to instruct the million readers of a morning paper in the principles of success! What the million readers thought of the Doctor’s stirring and strenuous sentences I will not imagine; but I know what I thought, as a plain man. After taking due cognizance of his airy play with the “constants” and “variables” of success, after watching him treat “energetics” (his wonderful new name for the “science” of success) as though because he had made it end in “ics” it resembled mathematics, I thought that the sublime and venerable art of mystification could no further go. If my fellow-pilgrim through this vale of woe, the average young man who arrives at Waterloo at 9.40 every morning with a cigarette in his mouth and a second-class season over his heart and vague aspirations in his soul, was half as mystified as I was, he has probably ere this decided that the science of success has all the disadvantages of algebra without any of the advantages of cricket, and that he may as well leave it alone lest evil should befall him. On the off-chance that he has come as yet to no decision about the science of success, I am determined to deal with the subject in a disturbingly candid manner. I feel that it is as dangerous to tell the truth about success as it is to tell the truth about the United States; but being thoroughly accustomed to the whistle of bullets round my head, I will nevertheless try.

Most writers on success are, through sheer goodness of heart, wickedly disingenuous. For the basis of their argument is that nearly any one who gives his mind to it can achieve success. This is, to put it briefly, untrue. The very central idea of success is separation from the multitude of plain men; it is perhaps the only idea common to all the various sorts of success–differentiation from the crowd. To address the population at large, and tell it how to separate itself from itself, is merely silly. I am now, of course, using the word success in its ordinary sense. If human nature were more perfect than it is, success in life would mean an intimate knowledge of one’s self and the achievement of a philosophic inward calm, and such a goal might well be reached by the majority of mortals. But to us success signifies something else. It may be divided into four branches: (1) Distinction in pure or applied science. This is the least gross of all forms of success as we regard it, for it frequently implies poverty, and it does not by any means always imply fame. (2) Distinction in the arts. Fame and adulation are usually implied in this, though they do not commonly bring riches with them. (3) Direct influence and power over the material lives of other men; that is to say, distinction in politics, national or local. (4) Success in amassing money. This last is the commonest and easiest. Most forms of success will fall under one of these heads. Are they possible to that renowned and much-flattered person, the man in the street? They are not, and well you know it, all you professors of the science of success! Only a small minority of us can even become rich.

Happily, while it is true that success in its common acceptation is, by its very essence, impossible to the majority, there is an accompanying truth which adjusts the balance; to wit, that the majority do not desire success. This may seem a bold saying, but it is in accordance with the facts. Conceive the man in the street suddenly, by some miracle, invested with political power, and, of course, under the obligation to use it. He would be so upset, worried, wearied, and exasperated at the end of a week that he would be ready to give the eyes out of his head in order to get rid of it. As for success in science or in art, the average person’s interest in such matters is so slight, compared with that of the man of science or the artist, that he cannot be said to have an interest in them. And supposing that distinction in them were thrust upon him he would rapidly lose that distinction by simple indifference and neglect. The average person certainly wants some money, and the average person does not usually rest until he has got as much as is needed for the satisfaction of his instinctive needs. He will move the heaven and earth of his environment to earn sufficient money for marriage in the “station” to which he has been accustomed; and precisely at that point his genuine desire for money will cease to be active. The average man has this in common with the most exceptional genius, that his career in its main contours is governed by his instincts. The average man flourishes and finds his ease in an atmosphere of peaceful routine. Men destined for success flourish and find their ease in an atmosphere of collision and disturbance. The two temperaments are diverse. Naturally the average man dreams vaguely, upon occasion; he dreams how nice it would be to be famous and rich. We all dream vaguely upon such things. But to dream vaguely is not to desire. I often tell myself that I would give anything to be the equal of Cinquevalli, the juggler, or to be the captain of the largest Atlantic liner. But the reflective part of me tells me that my yearning to emulate these astonishing personages is not a genuine desire, and that its realization would not increase my happiness. To obtain a passably true notion of what happens to the mass of mankind in its progress from the cradle to the grave, one must not attempt to survey a whole nation, nor even a great metropolis, nor even a very big city like Manchester or Liverpool. These panoramas are so immense and confusing that they defeat the observing eye. It is better to take a small town of, say, twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants–such a town as most of us know, more or less intimately. The extremely few individuals whose instincts mark them out to take part in the struggle for success can be identified at once. For the first thing they do is to leave the town. The air of the town is not bracing enough for them. Their nostrils dilate for something keener. Those who are left form a microcosm which is representative enough of the world at large. Between the ages of thirty and forty they begin to sort themselves out. In their own sphere they take their places. A dozen or so politicians form the town council and rule the town. Half a dozen business men stand for the town’s commercial activity and its wealth. A few others teach science and art, or are locally known as botanists, geologists, amateurs of music, or amateurs of some other art. These are the distinguished, and it will be perceived that they cannot be more numerous than they are. What of the rest? Have they struggled for success and been beaten? Not they. Do they, as they grow old, resemble disappointed men? Not they. They have fulfilled themselves modestly. They have got what they genuinely tried to get. They have never even gone near the outskirts of the battle for success. But they have not failed. The number of failures is surprisingly small. You see a shabby, disappointed, ageing man flit down the main street, and someone replies to your inquiry: “That’s So-and-so, one of life’s failures, poor fellow!” And the very tone in which the words are uttered proves the excessive rarity of the real failure. It goes without saying that the case of the handful who have left the town in search of the Success with the capital S has a tremendous interest of curiosity for the mass who remain. I will consider it.

THE SUCCESSFUL AND THE UNSUCCESSFUL

Having boldly stated that success is not, and cannot be, within grasp of the majority, I now proceed to state, as regards the minority, that they do not achieve it in the manner in which they are commonly supposed to achieve it. And I may add an expression of my thankfulness that they do not. The popular delusion is that success is attained by what I may call the “Benjamin Franklin” method. Franklin was a very great man; he united in his character a set of splendid qualities as various, in their different ways, as those possessed by Leonardo da Vinci. I have an immense admiration for him. But his Autobiography does make me angry. His Autobiography is understood to be a classic, and if you say a word against it in the United States you are apt to get killed. I do not, however, contemplate an immediate visit to the United States, and I shall venture to assert that Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography is a detestable book and a misleading book. I can recall only two other volumes which I would more willingly revile. One is _Samuel Budgett: The Successful Merchant_, and the other is _From Log Cabin to White House_, being the history of President Garfield. Such books may impose on boys, and it is conceivable that they do not harm boys (Franklin, by the way, began his Autobiography in the form of a letter to his son), but the grown man who can support them without nausea ought to go and see a doctor, for there is something wrong with him.

“I began now,” blandly remarks Franklin, “to have some acquaintance among the young people of the town that were lovers of reading, with whom I spent my evenings very pleasantly; _and gained money by my industry and frugality_.” Or again: “It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection…. I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week…. I crossed these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues; on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue, upon that day.” Shade of Franklin, where’er thou art, this is really a little bit stiff! A man may be excused even such infamies of priggishness, but truly he ought not to go and write them down, especially to his son. And why the detail about red ink? If Franklin’s son was not driven to evil courses by the perusal of that monstrous Autobiography, he must have been a man almost as astounding as his father. Now Franklin could only have written his “immortal classic” from one of three motives: (1) Sheer conceit. He was a prig, but he was not conceited. (2) A desire that others should profit by his mistakes. He never made any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes some trifling error, but that is “only his fun.” (3) A desire that others should profit by the recital of his virtuous sagacity to reach a similar success. The last was undoubtedly his principal motive. Honest fellow, who happened to be a genius! But the point is that his success was in no way the result of his virtuous sagacity. I would go further, and say that his dreadful virtuous sagacity often hindered his success. No one is a worse guide to success than your typical successful man. He seldom understands the reasons of his own success; and when he is asked by a popular magazine to give his experiences for the benefit of the youth of a whole nation, it is impossible for him to be natural and sincere. He knows the kind of thing that is expected from him, and if he didn’t come to London with half a crown in his pocket he probably did something equally silly, and he puts _that_ down, and the note of the article or interview is struck, and good-bye to genuine truth! There recently appeared in a daily paper an autobiographic-didactic article by one of the world’s richest men which was the most “inadequate” article of the sort that I have ever come across. Successful men forget so much of their lives! Moreover, nothing is easier than to explain an accomplished fact in a nice, agreeable, conventional way. The entire business of success is a gigantic tacit conspiracy on the part of the minority to deceive the majority.

Are successful men more industrious, frugal, and intelligent than men who are not successful? I maintain that they are not, and I have studied successful men at close quarters. One of the commonest characteristics of the successful man is his idleness, his immense capacity for wasting time. I stoutly assert that as a rule successful men are by habit comparatively idle. As for frugality, it is practically unknown among the successful classes: this statement applies with particular force to financiers. As for intelligence, I have over and over again been startled by the lack of intelligence in successful men. They are, indeed, capable of stupidities that would be the ruin of a plain clerk. And much of the talk in those circles which surround the successful man is devoted to the enumeration of instances of his lack of intelligence. Another point: successful men seldom succeed as the result of an ordered arrangement of their lives; they are the least methodical of creatures. Naturally when they have “arrived” they amuse themselves and impress the majority by being convinced that right from the start, with a steady eye on the goal, they had carefully planned every foot of the route.

No! Great success never depends on the practice of the humbler virtues, though it may occasionally depend on the practice of the prouder vices. Use industry, frugality, and common sense by all means, but do not expect that they will help you to success. Because they will not. I shall no doubt be told that what I have just written has an immoral tendency, and is a direct encouragement to sloth, thriftlessness, etc. One of our chief national faults is our hypocritical desire to suppress the truth on the pretext that to admit it would encourage sin, whereas the real explanation is that we are afraid of the truth. I will not be guilty of that fault. I do like to look a fact in the face without blinking. I am fully persuaded that, per head, there is more of the virtues in the unsuccessful majority than in the successful minority. In London alone are there not hundreds of miles of streets crammed with industry, frugality, and prudence? Some of the most brilliant men I have known have been failures, and not through lack of character either. And some of the least gifted have been marvellously successful. It is impossible to point to a single branch of human activity in which success can be explained by the conventional principles that find general acceptance. I hear you, O reader, murmuring to yourself: “This is all very well, but he is simply being paradoxical for his own diversion.” I would that I could persuade you of my intense seriousness! I have endeavoured to show what does not make success. I will next endeavour to show what does make it. But my hope is forlorn.

THE INWARDNESS OF SUCCESS

Of course, one can no more explain success than one can explain Beethoven’s C minor symphony. One may state what key it is written in, and make expert reflections upon its form, and catalogue its themes, and relate it to symphonies that preceded it and symphonies that followed it, but in the end one is reduced to saying that the C minor symphony is beautiful–because it is. In the same manner one is reduced to saying that the sole real difference between success and failure is that success succeeds. This being frankly admitted at the outset, I will allow myself to assert that there are three sorts of success. Success A is the accidental sort. It is due to the thing we call chance, and to nothing else. We are all of us still very superstitious, and the caprices of chance have a singular effect upon us. Suppose that I go to Monte Carlo and announce to a friend my firm conviction that red will turn up next time, and I back red for the maximum and red does turn up; my friend, in spite of his intellect, will vaguely attribute to me a mysterious power. Yet chance alone would be responsible. If I did that six times running all the players at the table would be interested in me. If I did it a dozen times all the players in the Casino would regard me with awe. Yet chance alone would be responsible. If I did it eighteen times my name would be in every newspaper in Europe. Yet chance alone would be responsible. I should be, in that department of human activity, an extremely successful man, and the vast majority of people would instinctively credit me with gifts that I do not possess. If such phenomena of superstition can occur in an affair where the agency of chance is open and avowed, how much more probable is it that people should refuse to be satisfied with the explanation of “sheer accident” in affairs where it is to the interest of the principal actors to conceal the rôle played by chance! Nevertheless, there can be no doubt in the minds of persons who have viewed success at close quarters that a proportion of it is due solely and utterly to chance. Successful men flourish to-day, and have flourished in the past, who have no quality whatever to differentiate them from the multitude. Red has turned up for them a sufficient number of times, and the universal superstitious instinct not to believe in chance has accordingly surrounded them with a halo. It is merely ridiculous to say, as some do say, that success is never due to chance alone. Because nearly everybody is personally acquainted with reasonable proof, on a great or a small scale, to the contrary.

The second sort of success, B, is that made by men who, while not gifted with first-class talents, have, beyond doubt, the talent to succeed. I should describe these men by saying that, though they deserve something, they do not deserve the dazzling reward known as success. They strike us as overpaid. We meet them in all professions and trades, and we do not really respect them. They excite our curiosity, and perhaps our envy. They may rise very high indeed, but they must always be unpleasantly conscious of a serious reservation in our attitude towards them. And if they could read their obituary notices they would assuredly discern therein a certain chilliness, however kindly we acted up to our great national motto of _De mortuis nil nist bunkum_. It is this class of success which puzzles the social student. How comes it that men without any other talent possess a mysterious and indefinable talent to succeed? Well, it seems to me that such men always display certain characteristics. And the chief of these characteristics is the continual, insatiable _wish_ to succeed. They are preoccupied with the idea of succeeding. We others are not so preoccupied. We dream of success at intervals, but we have not the passion for success. We don’t lie awake at nights pondering upon it.

The second characteristic of these men springs naturally from the first. They are always on the look-out. This does not mean that they are industrious. I stated in a previous article my belief that as a rule successful men are not particularly industrious. A man on a raft with his shirt for a signal cannot be termed industrious, but he will keep his eyes open for a sail on the horizon. If he simply lies down and goes to sleep he may miss the chance of his life, in a very special sense. The man with the talent to succeed is the man on the raft who never goes to sleep. His indefatigable orb sweeps the main from sunset to sunset. Having sighted a sail, he gets up on his hind legs and waves that shirt in so determined a manner that the ship is bound to see him and take him off. Occasionally he plunges into the sea, risking sharks and other perils. If he doesn’t “get there,” we hear nothing of him. If he does, some person will ultimately multiply by ten the number of sharks that he braved: that person is called a biographer.

Let me drop the metaphor. Another characteristic of these men is that they seem to have the exact contrary of what is known as common sense. They will become enamoured of some enterprise which infallibly impresses the average common-sense person as a mad and hopeless enterprise. The average common-sense person will demolish the hopes of that enterprise by incontrovertible argument. He will point out that it is foolish on the face of it, that it has never been attempted before, and that it responds to no need of humanity. He will say to himself: “This fellow with his precious enterprise has a twist in his brain. He can’t reply to my arguments, and yet he obstinately persists in going on.” And the man destined to success does go on. Perhaps the enterprise fails; it often fails; and then the average common-sense person expends much breath in “I told you so’s.” But the man continues to be on the look-out. His thirst is unassuaged; his taste for enterprises foredoomed to failure is incurable. And one day some enterprise foredoomed to failure develops into a success. We all hear of it. We all open our mouths and gape. Of the failures we have heard nothing. Once the man has achieved success, the thing becomes a habit with him. The difference between a success and a failure is often so slight that a reputation for succeeding will ensure success, and a reputation for failing will ensure failure. Chance plays an important part in such careers, but not a paramount part. One can only say that it is more useful to have luck at the beginning than later on. These “men of success” generally have pliable temperaments. They are not frequently un-moral, but they regard a conscience as a good servant and a bad master. They live in an atmosphere of compromise.

There remains class C of success–the class of sheer high merit. I am not a pessimist, nor am I an optimist. I try to arrive at the truth, and I should say that in putting success C at ten per cent. of the sum total of all successes, I am being generous to class C. Not that I believe that vast quantities of merit go unappreciated. My reason for giving to Class C only a modest share is the fact that there is so little sheer high merit. And does it not stand to reason that high merit must be very exceptional? This sort of success needs no explanation, no accounting for. It is the justification of our singular belief in the principle of the triumph of justice, and it is among natural phenomena perhaps the only justification that can be advanced for that belief. And certainly when we behold the spectacle of genuine distinguished merit gaining, without undue delay and without the sacrifice of dignity or of conscience, the applause of the kind-hearted but obtuse and insensible majority of the human race, we have fair reason to hug ourselves.

VIII

The Petty Artificialities

The phrase “petty artificialities,” employed by one of the correspondents in the great Simple Life argument, has stuck in my mind, although I gave it a plain intimation that it was no longer wanted there. Perhaps it sheds more light than I had at first imagined on the mental state of the persons who use it when they wish to arraign the conditions of “modern life.” A vituperative epithet is capable of making a big show. “Artificialities” is a sufficiently scornful word, but when you add “petty” you somehow give the quietus to the pretensions of modern life. Modern life had better hide its diminished head, after that. Modern life is settled and done for–in the opinion of those who have thrown the dart. Only it isn’t done for, really, you know. “Petty,” after all, means nothing in that connexion. Are there, then, artificialities which are not “petty,” which are noble, large, and grand? “Petty” means merely that the users of the word are just a little cross and out of temper. What they think they object to is artificialities of any kind, and so to get rid of their spleen they refer to “petty” artificialities. The device is a common one, and as brilliant as it is futile. Rude adjectives are like blank cartridge. They impress a vain people, including the birds of the air, but they do no execution.

At the same time, let me admit that I deeply sympathize with the irritated users of the impolite phrase “petty artificialities.” For it does at any rate show a “divine discontent”; it does prove a high dissatisfaction with conditions which at best are not the final expression of the eternal purpose. It does make for a sort of crude and churlish righteousness. I well know that feeling which induces one to spit out savagely the phrase “petty artificialities of modern life.” One has it usually either on getting up or on going to bed. What a petty artificial business it is, getting up, even for a male! Shaving! Why shave? And then going to a drawer and choosing a necktie. Fancy an immortal soul, fancy a fragment of the eternal and indestructible energy, which exists from everlasting to everlasting, deliberately expending its activity on the choice of a necktie! Why a necktie? Then one goes downstairs and exchanges banal phrases with other immortals. And one can’t start breakfast immediately, because some sleepy mortal is late.

Why babble? Why wait? Why not say straight out: “Go to the deuce, all of you! Here it’s nearly ten o’clock, and me anxious to begin living the higher life at once instead of fiddling around in petty artificialities. Shut up, every one of you. Give me my bacon instantly, and let me gobble it down quick and be off. I’m sick of your ceremonies!” This would at any rate not be artificial. It would save time. And if a similar policy were strictly applied through the day, one could retire to a well-earned repose in the full assurance that the day had been simplified. The time for living the higher life, the time for pushing forward those vast schemes of self-improvement which we all cherish, would decidedly have been increased. One would not have that maddening feeling, which one so frequently does have when the shades of night are falling fast, that the day had been “frittered away.” And yet–and yet–I gravely doubt whether this wholesale massacre of those poor petty artificialities would bring us appreciably nearer the millennium.

For there is one thing, and a thing of fundamental importance, which the revolutionists against petty artificialities always fail to appreciate, and that is the necessity and the value of convention. I cannot in a paragraph deal effectively with this most difficult and complex question. I can only point the reader to analogous phenomena in the arts. All the arts are a conventionalization, an ordering of nature. Even in a garden you put the plants in rows, and you subordinate the well-being of one to the general well-being. The sole difference between a garden and the wild woods is a petty artificiality. In writing a sonnet you actually cramp the profoundest emotional conceptions into a length and a number of lines and a jingling of like sounds arbitrarily fixed beforehand! Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us” is a solid, horrid mass of petty artificiality. Why couldn’t the fellow say what he meant and have done with it, instead of making “powers” rhyme with “ours,” and worrying himself to use exactly a hundred and forty syllables? As for music, the amount of time that must have been devoted to petty artificiality in the construction of an affair like Bach’s Chaconne is simply staggering. Then look at pictures, absurdly confined in frames, with their ingenious contrasts of light and shade and mass against mass. Nothing but petty artificiality! In other words, nothing but “form”–“form” which is the basis of all beauty, whether material or otherwise.

Now, what form is in art, conventions (petty artificialities) are in life. Just as you can have too much form in art, so you can have too much convention in life. But no art that is not planned in form is worth consideration, and no life that is not planned in convention can ever be satisfactory. Convention is not the essence of life, but it is the protecting garment and preservative of life, and it is also one very valuable means by which life can express itself. It is largely symbolic; and symbols, while being expressive, are also great time-savers. The despisers of petty artificialities should think of this. Take the striking instance of that pettiest artificiality, leaving cards. Well, searchers after the real, what would you substitute for it? If you dropped it and substituted nothing, the result would tend towards a loosening of the bonds of society, and it would tend towards the diminution of the number of your friends. And if you dropped it and tried to substitute something less artificial and more real, you would accomplish no more than you accomplish with cards, you would inconvenience everybody, and waste a good deal of your own time. I cannot too strongly insist that the basis of convention is a symbolism, primarily meant to display a regard for the feelings of other people. If you do not display a regard for the feelings of other people, you may as well go and live on herbs in the desert. And if you are to display such a regard you cannot do it more expeditiously, at a smaller outlay of time and brains, than by adopting the code of convention now generally practised. It comes to this–that you cannot have all the advantages of living in the desert while you are living in a society. It would be delightful for you if you could, but you can’t.

There are two further reasons for the continuance of conventionality. And one is the mysterious but indisputable fact that the full beauty of an activity is never brought out until it is subjected to discipline and strict ordering and nice balancing. A life without petty artificiality would be the life of a tiger in the forest. A beautiful life, perhaps, a life of “burning bright,” but not reaching the highest ideal of beauty! Laws and rules, forms and ceremonies are good in themselves, from a merely æsthetic point of view, apart from their social value and necessity.

And the other reason is that one cannot always be at the full strain of “self-improvement,” and “evolutionary progress,” and generally beating the big drum. Human nature will not stand it. There is, if we will only be patient, ample time for the “artificial” as well as for the “real.” Those persons who think that there isn’t, ought to return to school and learn arithmetic. Supposing that all “petty artificialities” were suddenly swept away, and we were able to show our regard and consideration for our fellow creatures by the swift processes of thought alone, we should find ourselves with a terrible lot of time hanging heavy on our hands. We can no more spend all our waking hours in consciously striving towards higher things than we can dine exclusively off jam. What frightful prigs we should become if we had nothing to do but cultivate our noblest faculties! I beg the despisers of artificiality to reflect upon these observations, however incomplete these observations may be, and to consider whether they would be quite content if they got what they are crying out for.

IX

The Secret of Content

I have said lightly à propos of the conclusion arrived at by several correspondents and by myself that the cry for the simple life was merely a new form of the old cry for happiness, that I would explain what it was that made life worth living for me. The word has gone forth, and I must endeavour to redeem my promise. But I do so with qualms and with diffidence. First, there is the natural instinct against speaking of that which is in the core of one’s mind. Second, there is the fear, nearly amounting to certainty, of being misunderstood or not comprehended at all. And third, there is the absurd insufficiency of space. However!… For me, spiritual content (I will not use the word “happiness,” which implies too much) springs essentially from no mental or physical facts. It springs from the spiritual fact that there is something higher in man than the mind, and that that something can control the mind. Call that something the soul, or what you will. My sense of security amid the collisions of existence lies in the firm consciousness that just as my body is the servant of my mind, so is my mind the servant of _me_. An unruly servant, but a servant–and possibly getting less unruly every day! Often have I said to that restive brain: “Now, O mind, sole means of communication between the divine _me_ and all external phenomena, you are not a free agent; you are a subordinate; you are nothing but a piece of machinery; and obey me you _shall_.”

The mind can only be conquered by regular meditation, by deciding beforehand what direction its activity ought to take, and insisting that its activity takes that direction; also by never leaving it idle, undirected, masterless, to play at random like a child in the streets after dark. This is extremely difficult, but it can be done, and it is marvellously well worth doing. The fault of the epoch is the absence of meditativeness. A sagacious man will strive to correct in himself the faults of his epoch. In some deep ways the twelfth century had advantages over the twentieth. It practised meditation. The twentieth does Sandow exercises. Meditation (I speak only for myself) is the least dispensable of the day’s doings. What do I force my mind to meditate upon? Upon various things, but chiefly upon one.

Namely, that Force, Energy, Life–the Incomprehensible has many names–is indestructible, and that, in the last analysis, there is only one single, unique Force, Energy, Life. Science is gradually reducing all elements to one element. Science is making it increasingly difficult to conceive matter apart from spirit. Everything lives. Even my razor gets “tired.” And the fatigue of my razor is no more nor less explicable than my fatigue after a passage of arms with my mind. The Force in it, and in me, has been transformed, not lost. All Force is the same force. Science just now has a tendency to call it electricity; but I am indifferent to such baptisms. The same Force pervades my razor, my cow in my field, and the central _me_ which dominates my mind: the same force in different stages of evolution. And that Force persists forever. In such paths do I compel my mind to walk daily. Daily it has to recognize that the mysterious Ego controlling it is a part of that divine Force which exists from everlasting to everlasting, and which, in its ultimate atoms, nothing can harm. By such a course of training, even the mind, the coarse, practical mind, at last perceives that worldly accidents don’t count.

“But,” you will exclaim, “this is nothing but the immortality of the soul over again!” Well, in a slightly more abstract form, it is. (I never said I had discovered anything new.) I do not permit myself to be dogmatic about the persistence of personality, or even of individuality after death. But, in basing my physical and mental life on the assumption that there is something in me which is indestructible and essentially changeless, I go no further than science points. Yes, if it gives you pleasure, let us call it the immortality of the soul. If I miss my train, or my tailor disgraces himself, or I lose that earthly manifestation of Force that happens to be dearest to me, I say to my mind: “Mind, concentrate your powers upon the full realization of the fact that I, your master, am immortal and beyond the reach of accidents.” And my mind, knowing by this time that I am a hard master, obediently does so. Am I, a portion of the Infinite Force that existed billions of years ago, and which will exist billions of years hence, going to allow myself to be worried by any terrestrial physical or mental event? I am not. As for the vicissitudes of my body, that servant of my servant, it had better keep its place, and not make too much fuss. Not that any fuss occurring in either of these outward envelopes of the eternal _me_ could really disturb me. The eternal is calm; it has the best reason for being so.

So you say to yourselves: “Here is a man in a penny weekly paper advocating daily meditation upon the immortality of the soul as a cure for discontent and unhappiness! A strange phenomenon!” That it should be strange is an indictment of the epoch. My only reply to you is this: Try it. Of course, I freely grant that such meditation, while it “casts out fear,” slowly kills desire and makes for a certain high indifference; and that the extinguishing of desire, with an accompanying indifference, be it high or low, is bad for youth. But I am not a youth, and to-day I am writing for those who have tasted disillusion: which youth has not. Yet I would not have you believe that I scorn the brief joys of this world. My attitude towards them would fain be that of Socrates, as stated by the incomparable Marcus Aurelius: “He knew how to lack, and how to enjoy, those things in the lack whereof most men show themselves weak; and in the fruition, intemperate.”

Besides commanding my mind to dwell upon the indestructibly and final omnipotence of the Force which is me, I command it to dwell upon the logical consequence of that _unity_ of force which science is now beginning to teach. The same essential force that is _me_ is also _you_. Says the Indian proverb: “I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers.” Yes, and they were all my twin brothers, if I may so express it, and a thousand times closer to me even than the common conception of twin brothers. We are all of us the same in essence; what separates us is merely differences in our respective stages of evolution. Constant reflection upon this fact must produce that universal sympathy which alone can produce a positive content. It must do away with such ridiculous feelings as blame, irritation, anger, resentment. It must establish in the mind an all-embracing tolerance. Until a man can look upon the drunkard in his drunkenness, and upon the wife-beater in his brutality, with pure and calm compassion; until his heart goes out instinctively to every other manifestation of the unique Force; until he is surcharged with an eager and unconquerable benevolence towards everything that lives; until he has utterly abandoned the presumptuous practice of judging and condemning–he will never attain real content. “Ah!” you exclaim again, “he has nothing newer to tell us than that ‘the greatest of these is charity’!” I have not. It may strike you as excessively funny, but I have discovered nothing newer than that. I merely remind you of it. Thus it is, twins on the road to Delhi, by continual meditation upon the indestructibility of Force, that I try to cultivate calm, and by continual meditation upon the oneness of Force that I try to cultivate charity, being fully convinced that in calmness and in charity lies the secret of a placid if not ecstatic happiness. It is often said that no thinking person can be happy in this world. My view is that the more a man thinks the more happy he is likely to be. I have spoken. I am overwhelmingly aware that I have spoken crudely, abruptly, inadequately, confusedly.

THE END

[ahlnandco]

Welcome to AHLN &Co

I am launching this blog AHLN&Co as a way to help myself brainstorm and navigate through these "muddy waters" we call life; as well as, to share personal Canadian experiences with an online community in hopes to create positivity and perspective on various aspects of living with a focus on health and wellness.

Although 2018 was a strangely unique and exciting year, first full year post graduation, first full year living on my own in a new town, single, with practically 1 or 2 friends and no family out here, there were a lot of highs and lows this year, and things I hope to change for next year!

Highlights for 2018:

-Started and ended my first ever 3 month online relationship

-Started and ended my first ever network marketing company while meeting multi-million dollar mentors in Memphis, Tennessee

-Successfully went to the gym almost daily and am finally able to 3 chin ups and 10 push ups and run for 10 minutes straight

-Went on my first full family vacation in the last five years to Dallas, Texas for my cousin's wedding

-Started in my first ever musical production of Rodger and Hammerstein's Cinderella

-Started Piano Lessons and had my first piano recital

-Went to Vancouver, British Columbia to celebrate one of my best friends wedding with a group of my besties

-Went to Winnipeg, Manitoba to run Mud Hero 2018

-Wrote the MCAT on my Birthday that I started to study 1.5 months before and epically failed (30th Percentile)

-Rode a Pontoon for the first time and got to go tubing for the first time and participated in my first ever boat parade

-Went to Niverville, Manitoba to celebrate another one of my best friend's wedding

-Visited home for many weekend trips and reconnected with friends and celebrated birthdays

My Top 2018 Moment

- was Vancouver, British Columbia- it was truly a relaxing Vacation with absolutely amazing company, started out with walking around downtown Vancouver, riding a ferry, eating food, hikes up through Lynn Canyon, Whitewater rafting in Squamish ,British Columbia, learning Black Pink's Boombyah Dance ,hitting The Red Room a nightclub in downtown Vancouver, making a day trip to Seattle and checking out the Public Market Centre, harbor and riding the Ferris wheel, then getting lost getting back to downtown Vancouver and just missing the Vancouver night market, but finding an amazing late night Asian food place that had super cheap food, having late night heart to hearts, then taking morning runs through Kitslano and up and down Jericho Beach, and experiencing the first of my immediate friends getting married with an amazing reception, with the drunk after effects of my friends as well, then spending an amazing day with friends exploring downtown Vancouver, and a day at the pool and an amazing night in where we got 100$ of free food due to an order mishap, honestly one of the best trips ever!

My Worst 2018 Moment

-was probably my Birthday, the day before I was a wreck stressed about the MCAT cause I still had 60 percent of materials to cover and failed a bunch of the practice questions, was scared I was going to be debilitated by the difficulty of the MCAT, so much so I could no longer study, then was stressed out visited my sister and played games and ate fried chicken all night, then MCAT day honestly it wasn't as bad as I thought, I just didn't know my stuff well enough, then after all the excitement of the test, the rest of the day felt mediocre but got to spend it with family so that was nice...to be honest it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either it would have been really nice to go dancing or karaoke or even spend the night with friends, cause that night I realized my family had out grown me, being a single mid 20s new grad, I am extremely single and ready to mingle whilst being the youngest in my family, despite my niece and nephew, it is very easy to feel left out, but I was glad I had them at least!

Overall though, I don't want to seem ungrateful, but 2018 was a great year looking back, but as I lay here writing and reflecting about moving 6 hours away from home and making my first 6 figure salary, half which went away in taxes( fyi joys of being Canadian) and the other quarter went back to payoff my line of credit for school, which I am officially one paycheck away from paying off (another joy to being Canadian, living at home and going to school, lower student debt), then a chunk going to car payments, rent, and insurances, does leave a fair bit amount for travel and shopping compared to someone making less, by moving to a new town with less to do and eat, I should be able to save money, but with less than 700$ in the bank, and not enough days to visit family, travel, explore, experience and gain new skills, I really want to go back to school to become a doctor, the perks of being a doctor in Canada, their high fee for service pay, and the lack of physicians in rural areas, the diverse nature of the field with a lot of growing potential, and the flexibility of hours depending on the field of medicine, disadvantages to being a physician may be the hours, the patients that don't really care about themselves, you work alone, and you don't get paid vacations or benefits, or pension. Currently, I work a steady Monday to Friday job 8 am to 415pm, I get 4 weeks of vacation, 2 travel days, benefits and pension, and make a six figure salary but after taxes it definitely 5 figures, I live six hours away from home, and if I moved back home the job market is severely lacking, would be making less meanwhile going back to a higher stress and more competitive job market!

To someone that end up reading this, I apologized, as this post if it was visually perceived my life would seem interesting and great and to be honest, I think I would be okay if I wasn't single, possibly married and had kids, because my life right now has a sense of balance. But as I lay having only been kissed once, single af, in a rural community, that has limited opportunity for me to pursue my interests such as Kpop dance classes, or classes for haikaido, and limited opportunities to meet people, meanwhile being so far away from my close friends and not being able to implusively go on road trips for the long weekends with friends and family. I need to move back to the city, but logically I can't if the job market means me having to work harder for less, so switching careers is the way to go!

Being a student has its perks, yes school is hard and you are constantly stressed by studying, and life passes by, but with 3 months of summer to catch up on or work, I call that balance and you are working towards self improvement and a finite goal! Although being a physician in my opinion has one of the best payoffs as a degree, there is a downside to my dream, my grades are mediocre for medicine, so I have to almost perfect the MCAT in order to be eligible, if I'm serious about this career move I may need to go back to school to boost my gpa, which means more money!

But that is the reality, as a Pharmacist, yes I may be able to learn the stuff a physician knows and apply it to an extent, but I will never have the full rights to use my knowledge, and unless I own my own pharmacy I will never truly be able to dictate my own hours, that is why becoming a physician is my goal. Becoming a physician is such an challenging process as they work for the right to apply their knowledge and provide direct care for patients as primary providers, meanwhile until the public is aware of allied health and the other health care providers there will always be a shortage of physicians and a demand for them! Same thing to any profession though, you are vetted and tested, such that you may have the right to supply information knowledge or care, but physicians are one of the few that can be incorporated.

As I continue this post by airing out my thoughts, my goal for 2019:

-ace the MCAT

-lose weight and reach my goal of 180lbs (currently, 196lbs to 198)

-get abs and be able to do 10 chin ups, 20 push ups, and run for 20 minutes straight

-apply for medicine (goal is to get an interview)

-save at least 20-25% of my income (redirecting the money I would have spent paying student loans)

- consistent posting on this blog, if not daily, weekly, so by the end of 2019, I can see my year in review and track my progress!

When I think about it, people are going to hate me and hate this Tumblr cause it is literally first world problems, but when people say TIME IS MONEY it literally is! We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and it is up to you how you choose to spend it, and hopefully I spend mine wisely! #Self-Care #Self-Improvement

Ps. Physicians if they worked full time in a northern community they could make 3-6x more than a Pharmacist, just saying (perks of being Canadian) but the goal is work less get paid more so... Work one-third of the year for the same amount of pay! #TenYearGoal

[when-we-went-wrong]

Dear Tyler,

There are so many apologies I’ve felt I need to make, but I doubt they’re things you’d care about hearing. I hope your relationship is going well, that it’s healthy and you’ve found your person. You deserve to have your person and a happy life. I’m destructive, splitting from Colin taught me that very quickly. He told his friends about situations that had happened with me and they all made a list of all the ways in which I’m destructive and essentially abusive. I believed everything on their list for a long time, and I still believe some of it. I’m controlling and manipulative in the way I act. I act out of a place of fear and anxiety and therefore my actions and words are received as manipulative and controlling. I lose myself in relationships, and my identity merges in an extremely unhealthy way with the person I’m dating. I did that with you, and I’m so sorry for it. I’m alone now, and I don’t know that I trust myself enough to be with someone again. I caused you pain and I caused Colin pain. I know you both contributed to it, but I stayed in a toxic situation for too long in both cases because I was afraid to be alone. I didn’t think I could be happy without a boyfriend, I thought that was the only way to be as happy as I could be. That’s probably right, I’m not going to be the level of happy alone that I am in a relationship. I am less stressed and anxious alone though, that much I know for certain. I can’t trust, not yet, maybe not ever, and I don’t even think it started with you. It started with Rob when I came home and he was with someone new, then you kept things from me in our relationship, and Colin kept things from me in my relationship with him. I’ve never known what it’s like to be in a relationship where someone is honest with me, even when they know it’ll hurt me. I give that to an extent that Colin likely perceived it as abusive and manipulative, because I compensate for what I’ve never had by sharing everything, even if there are certain thoughts and feelings that would go away without me having to say anything. This isn’t a letter to make you feel sorry for me, if anything; it’s a letter to make you feel sorry for yourself for having dated me. I touch things in ruin and destroy them completely. I’m sorry for how quickly I got together with Colin after breaking things off with you. If I’m being honest, I was so distraught and depressed after we split that the only thing I could find to make me happy was someone else. I didn’t know him until two months after you and I had broken up, I promise he wasn’t in the picture at all beforehand. I’m sorry for having a Tinder account while we were together. That was disrespectful to you and I know now that I did it because I wasn’t happy. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to heal my inner issues with other people. I know now that the only way to heal is to do it myself without anyone else’s help. Colin is a felon now for possessing and distributing child porn. When you messaged me last Christmas we had found out that his case was being investigated November 1st. I stood by him until February when he talked to his friends and the list was made. After that, we argued and he fell out of love with me because I didn’t agree with everything that him and his friends said I needed to change about myself. I think he decided that if I didn’t do exactly as he thought I should, he didn’t want to bother with me anymore, and he didn’t. I started having panic attacks, multiple times a day, I completely lost touch with reality and what little bit of my identity was left. I started seeing a therapist, who I no longer see anymore. We got into an argument in the car one Sunday when I was taking him back to campus and I sarcastically told him I should go in and tell his friends that I knew they all hated me and we should just get it out of the way. He took me seriously and scolded me for it, and I told him that if where we were at was how it was going to be, I didn’t want to see him again. I made sure none of his stuff was at my house and he got out of the car and didn’t look back at me as he went into the dorm. I came off the adrenaline almost immediately after the door shut behind him and I regretted what I had said, but I knew that we were still too angry to resolve anything, so I told myself I’d leave it until the next evening. I woke up that Monday morning and wrote up what I wanted to say to him and went to work. It was about 11:00 a.m. when I got a text from his mother that he had been arrested that morning. He was in jail from Monday morning until Wednesday of that week at noon. I went to the jail and spoke with him Tuesday evening and apologized the best I could, I thought things could be fixed. Him and his mother picked me up from work Wednesday evening and we went to dinner. I hadn’t slept but 2 hours the night before and I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I wasn’t in a good place and he was going back to Connecticut in the morning, so this was the last time I would see him until his pre-trial date in two and a half months. They dropped me off at my house after dinner and he told me he’d made plans with his friends that evening, and that was that. That Friday I texted him telling him I still had some things I needed to say to him, then I chickened out and said never mind. That’s when he said his peace and we agreed that we’d break up. I don’t know why I just told you all of that, I guess because I haven’t gotten to tell many people about it. My parents know and Victoria and Sam know, and other than that I have to skirt around the subject of Colin for fear I’ll let something slip. If nothing else, I hope this shows you that you definitely have it more figured out than I do, and I hope you appreciate what you have and what you’ve been through a little more. It could always be worse...right? He’s with the girl I was jealous of throughout our entire relationship now too. I’m nothing but baggage and brokenness now. Aren’t you glad you jumped ship when you did? 

Take care,

Erin

[travelerwithacause-blog]

Daisies & Compost

Daisies and Compost; a reference to the highlights and lowlights of an individual’s day.

**please note that so many things have been happening and that these are just bits a pieces. If I tell you everything I’ll more likely end up providing you with a nap!

 Daisies of the past few weeks:

New Friends! Over the past month, in particular, I had the wonderful opportunity to live and work with two AMAZING young women, Rachel and Livia. Before these two wonderful humans moved into the house that I am living in, I felt rather awkward and more often than not, like an outsider. Upon the arrival of both of them, it didn’t take long for me to begin to feel more comfortable around the house and at Missionvale. I’d say they both brought out the best in me during their time here. I’ve laughed to the point of crying numerous times in the last month and cried until I laughed. My last day working with the two of them was on Friday and I tell you what, the whole day was difficult for me. Knowing that come Monday I won’t have my dancing and singing buddies with me. Dinner on Friday was sad as Rachel flew out that evening, Saturday afternoon and night were especially difficult for me, as Livia flew out Saturday afternoon-not only was she my housemate and co-volunteerer, but she was also my roommate. She was the first roommate I’ve had so far living in this house and I couldn’t have asked for a better human to have shared a room with! I wish both Rachel and Livia the best of luck on their future endeavors and look forward to seeing them again in the future!

Nature’s Valley. Three weeks ago now, a large group of people from the house and I travelled to Nature’s Valley, which is a gorgeous area near Tsitsikamma. There we stayed at the lovely hippie-esque hostel called Wild Spirit Backpackers; which was the kind of place that I knew I’d love from the moment we pulled into the drive. The scenic views that surrounded the grounds, the most perfect sunrise-watching spots along with a platform in a tree for watching sunsets! It really captured my heart. Also, there were dogs and puppies, naturally I adored the place! We didn’t go for the hostel alone though; Saturday we woke up bright and early, watched the sunrise and then headed out to do a 5 hour hike. I honestly have no idea what the name of this hike/trail is, but I could get to the trailhead from the hostel and get through the hike no problem now that I’ve done it! (= This hike was amazing, it was challenging but not too challenging, and the views that came with it were worth every drop of sweat. At one point we were walking along a long stretch of beach. We looked out into the ocean and there were orcas feeding! I kid you not, there must have been at least ten orcas out there! Later on, after hiking almost to the top of a mountain…that we didn’t need to hike to the top of….we had this spectacular view of the ocean where we saw hundreds of dolphins as well as a humpback whale. Now, usually I would’ve been pretty made about putting in the much effort in the high heat of the day, but this time around, I really couldn’t complain at all.  We didn’t do too much for the weekend, that hike was really our biggest event. Sunday a few of us went to Monkeyland, which was neat, but nothing too crazy. The whole weekend was really just a nice get away from the city, which anyone that knows me, knows is my kind of weekend!

Concert at Bridge Street Brewery. I feel extremely fortunate to have arrived in Port Elizabeth already knowing a few people that reside here. It made being here easier and more comfortable for me. One of the lovely humans that I knew upon arrival is my friend Shelby. She’s hella rad. You should be jealous if you don’t know her. Shelby also has great taste in music, which is one of the many things I love about her. I also love that she fills me in about things such as local shows while I’m here! She informed me that a band called Desmond and the Tutus was going to be playing at Bridge Street Brewery. I had never heard of this band so I gave them a listen and decided that they were fun and rad, so I agreed to go. I also invited the previously mentioned Livia to join, so she did. We got there a bit early to enjoy dinner and some beers, and this made for a good start to what ended up being the best night I’ve had in P.E. thus far. The first two of three openers where solo artists that did mostly covers, they both had a lot of talent and were enjoyable to listen to. The third opener was this great local band, Too Many Chiefs, they were great. They did a wonderful job of getting the crowd warmed up and raising the energy levels. Seriously, check them out, I’m sure you’ll love them. After enjoying their great set, it was finally time for the main act, Desmond and the Tutus I tell you what, that was the most energy I’ve ever felt in a crowd. We were right next to the stage (don’t get too excited now, it was a small venue) and were up close and personal with the singer and guitarist. At one point the delightful guitarist even handed us his bottle of adult drink and each of us in our little group were able to take a drink before handing it back. That isn’t something that I’ve ever had happen, so yes, it was amazing. I can’t forget to mention the fact that it rained…it rained hard. Of course the band was covered and so was 90% of the crowd. Of course we were standing right in the small space between the roof of the building and the roof of the tent. We left soaked to the bone but that was more than alright, the memories made that night were worth it.

Now for the Compost:

Livia Leaving. This was one of the two most difficult things for me to handle lately. Livia became more than just a roommate or housemate for me. She became one of my best friends. Her month here flew by much too quickly and saying “see you later” to her was more difficult than anyone else so far. Please don’t think that I haven’t met other people that I will miss, because I have, but Livia was my roommate and I grew closer to her than I have to any other individual in my time here. I know that it wasn’t a good-bye, that it really was a “see you later” because we definitely will, somehow, someday, somewhere, see each other again, hopefully with our significant others in tow! I’m not going to lie to any of you, I cried when she left. I cried quite a lot to be honest. Also, my room was much too empty last night. So here’s to a new a beautiful friendship!

True Heartbreak. I apologize now if this breaks your heart as it broke mine. Friday, as we were handing out the half loaves of bread and powdered soup to the “late-sleepers” I witnessed a young (30’s) woman shove an oma (elderly woman) to the ground as she tried to get in line BEHIND her. The oma was shoved so hard that she hit her head and her feet flew up over her. Luckily one of the wonderful staff members at Missionvale also witnessed this atrocity and removed the young woman (and her son) from the center. When the oma approached the window she still had tears in her eyes. My heart shattered once as I watched the incident take place and again when I saw the look on her face. I gave her an extra scoop of the soup and immediately stepped away from the window, I couldn’t hold back my tears and felt the sadness all the way to my stomach. I was happy that I hadn’t eaten much because I’m sure I would’ve seen it a second time if I had.

Internship Struggles. Let me just say, that my internship is absolutely nothing like I had expected it to be. Prior to leaving for South Africa I had all of these great ideas brewing in my mind of what I might possibly do, what ways; that I could remember from last year, might I be able to help. I had ideas for projects and honestly felt rather prepared to be here. I was wrong. I was not at all prepared, turns out I didn’t even bring a notebook... To start, I spent my first week at Missionvale Care Centre working without the managers knowing that I was here, to this day I’m not sure that the manager who helped me arrange all of this, knows who I am. I am learning so much about what I, as an outsider, perceive to be a need for the community, and what it is that this beautiful community needs from me. It is difficult for me to abandon all that I had wanted to do, in order to do what actually needs to be done; but I’m quite sure that is the point of my being here. I’m also learning how to be more patient. The culture in South Africa is not nearly as fast-paced or organized as it is in America. Things move a little more slowly with less steps than I’m used to and honestly, some days that frustrates the hell out of me. For example, I am supposed to meet with the Health Promotion Team at Missionvale and go with them into the school to see what it is they do. For two weeks now I have been told to come back the next day and the next day. I told those ladies, like it or not, I’m going to be there Tuesday morning and they’re just going to have to figure out what to do with me! They had a good laugh and promised it’ll work out on Tuesday…I’ll keep you all updated on how that goes.

As I type up this “Internship Struggles” bit as Compost, I am realizing, that maybe this isn’t actually compost, at least not in the long run. I feel that it is these small, annoying and frustrating things that are going to help me be the professional that I can possibly be later on in life. So maybe for today, yes, this is Compost; but hopefully in the future I will look back at this and see that it has nurtured the ground and allowed Daisies to grow.

 With all of my love, from the land of my dreams, Ubuntu.

[smokeybrandcompositions]

She and Me

I was born in 1984. For all intents and purposes, that was the year where the first few of the Millennial generation were born. I am, quite literally, the top of the spear for what ails society, according to almost every generation before me. One could argue that Generation ME, Me, Me as Time so eloquently titled us back in 2013, started as early as 1981. Some say it started as late as 1989. All I know is my older brother and sister are Gen X-ers. And the end of them. I was born after so I consider myself a Gen Y or a goddamn Millennial. And it’s that margin od discrepancy that I want to address. I’ve had the distinct frustration of living with a 19 year old for half a year and, even though she is technically a Millennial, I can honestly say, there is a distinct difference between how I and she interact with the world.

Entitlement

Me: When I was young, my parents were frustrated with my Grandmother because they perceived her to be spoiling me. Now, to clarify, this was my Mother’s ma. I spent weekends over there and came back home with new toys almost every time. What my parents didn’t realize or want to admit, I that I was actually earning the funds to buys those toys.  I spent weekends with my Grandma cleaning, gardening, and whatever else. She gave me a stipend for my efforts, never more than a 50 in month, and I used that to buy my things., In time, I learned monetary responsibility and the meaning of having to work honestly for your dime. Working for my other grandma, my dad’s dad, felt more akin to working at some stupid f*cking conglomerate. There was an expectation that I kill myself for her because I was her grandkid. I would do more work for her and received less compensation. She had that sense of entitlement to my man hours because her son was my father, similar to how jobs have that sense of entitlement because they sign my checks. By the time I was in the third grade, I understood nothing is given to you. I understood that receiving an honorable mention ribbon or participation trophy was f*cking nonsense. If you wanted something in life, you had to go earn it, which will lead me into my next point but first, let’s address what I saw out of the 20 year old.

Her: Man, this chick is a carton when it comes to entitlement. She feels like everything should be hers! Like, I would order food and she would just stare at me until I offered some. When she got comfortable with me, she’d ask, not just for a bit or some, but the majority of it! After a wh9ile, she had the expectation that, when I bought myself food, I would buy her food, too. She’s 20! This is some sh*t you do for your child, not another adult. My act of kindness, to her, was an obligation. There was a shallow thank you but, in her mind, it was my responsibility to make sure she got food. Even though she was an adult. Even though she had her own job. Speaking of jobs, she would throw active tantrums when no one gave her a ride to work! Like, throw herself on the ground and kick about. Like a 4 year old. This grown ass woman would act out like a toddler because no one wanted to make sure she got to work on time. Even though there were buses. Even though there’s uber. Even though she had legs and could walk. Chick would wait for me to get home, around 4, and spring on me at the last minute she needed to be at work by 5 and that she’s d be ate if I didn’t give her a ride. She was late a great deal, let me tell you that much!

Laziness

Me: When I was about 3 years old, my dad threw me out of bed and taught me how to clean the bathroom. A few months later, he taught me how to clean the kitchen. I learned to vacuum and wash windows. When I was in the 5th grade, I deduced how to wash clothes on my own. By the time I was 12 years old, I knew how to clean an entire house, among other things. I never received an allowance or stipend, this sh*t was just something you did because you lived in the house.  I always thought it was chicken sh*t that I did all the cleaning and the adults in the house basically laid around all day but whatever. They fed me some stupid line about having to do it when they were kids and that’s the way it is, and I’ll get to that stupid sh*t later, but I paid my due. To this day, I hate cleaning, not because it’s arduous and unending but because I was made to keep up after grown mother*ckers who flat out didn’t give a sh*t how big of a mess they made. That nonsense made me exceptionally sensitive to cats not cleaning up after themselves or wasting things that need not be wasted. Sh*t like leaving toilet paper afloat in the can or not putting the top back on the tooth paste irk the f*ck out of me. Cooking at 2 am only to leave your crusted pots all over the kitchen counters make me furious. Not having the common decency to keep the common areas of your shared living space make me want to commit arson. Admittedly, I don’t clean as profusely as I once did. That’s because I work 10 to 12 hours days. I tend to come home and sleep until the weekend and, on Sunday, I clean as much as I can. Unless my house is destroyed which is more often than not now because the 20 year old I live with is filthy. I don’t clean up after adults anymore so my house is a disaster area. Because the Woman-child I lived with refuses to act like an adult and pick up after herself.

Her: As I cleaned the bathroom yesterday, i went to take out the garbage that was full of her used toilet tissues from removing her copious amounts of makeup (we’ll get to her narcissism next) and, as i picked up wad after wad off my bathroom floor, I ended up grabbing a used tampon. It was dry and scabby which means it had to have been there for a few days. Considering there was enough tissue to basically hide it from me, it had to have been there forever. You share this space with two other people. I understand that this is a bodily function but really? Like, you can even take out the garbage after this? Not only that, but instead of maybe flushing it, you just check it on the goddamn ground and walk off?? Really? This chick will cook food, eat half of it, and just walk away leaving her plate wherever she placed it. I’ve seen her chop potatoes, decide she didn’t want them, and just left those motherf*ckers on my counter. For months. For three months, to be precise. I counted. And it’s not just that. She leaves her makeup in my bathroom sink. Her clothes are strewn all over my house. What space I allotted to her in the closest doesn’t matter because she never closes the doors so her sh*t spills out in the hallways. Like, I listened to her complain about having no clean clothes to wear on a Monday, and then complain about the same sh*t on another Monday, two weeks later! You don’t have a job! You literally have all of the time in the world! How did you not wash your clothes??

Inclusiveness

Me: There is a wide berth between our mentalities. While I understand and accept that certain social stigmas are unjust and often times, outright cruel, I understand that there is work to be done on both sides to improve these situations. There has to be a dialogue. There has to be an equal exchange of ideas and scenarios, even if they aren’t the same as yours or the purveying accepted thesis. Yes, we should be more inclusive as a society. Yes, we have gotten better at being inclusive with our representation. No, the work is not done. We still have a long way to go .We still need a great deal more social empathy and we need to pick our battles  wisely lest we set back the whole movement. BLM, the Kap Knees, and the 1 Percenter protests are all necessary and the right way to go about change. These are the things we needs to do, and cats my age, tend to do.

Her: this chick is am arm chair activist. She spends her time on Facebook posting racially charged memes and accusing anyone who doesn’t believe in what she believes to be an ignorant problem. The thing is, her outrage is superficial. Her perspective on life is colored by MTV and TMZ. Chick has no idea what actual society is like because she’ never attempted to enter it fully. Quite literally, at 20, she considers her 14 year old self “So Tumblr.” That’s only a 6 year difference! You’re telling me you’ve gained perspective in 6 years, even though you’ve never went to college, even though you still run with the same circle of friends, even though you have all of the same bad habits? Nah, your opinion have changed and your need for them to be heard has increased because you’re an “adult” but you still don’t know sh*t. What can you, a 20 year old who’s lived outside of your parents’ home for all of two years collectively, tell me, a 33 year old who’s been on his own since he was 20, anything about life? What can you contribute to the discussion about the gender wage gap, even though you’ve never worked a job earning more than minimum wage? What can you, an adorable mixed gender chick, tell me, a giant black man, about police discrimination? How can you berate a cop for profiling one minute, but then claim to think all white people with dreadlocks smell like garbage the next? Your Social Justice is a fad that you swap out like the sneakers you spend too much money on.

Impatience

Me: The purveying notion is that millennials are, for lack of a better term, impatience. We need instant gratification as opposed to playing the long con. That’s actually pretty true, even in my case. I hate waiting on other people to get me the resources I need in order to produce. I hate depending on other people to the things necessary so that I can do the things I need to do. I am crazy impatience when things aren’t going at the pace I need them to. I understand that, in life, you need to wait for things to happen. I understand that there is a system in the word where being put off somehow equates earned gratification. I do not buy into that nonsense. If I’m at a job, and I’m selling you my time, and I excel at the position, I expect to move upward at the same rate. Why am I busting my ass to show you how great I am as an employee, only to toil away on the vine because you refuse to recognize my shine? I want to be compensated for my ability, not placated and I am VERY impatient when it comes to that. So I try to diversify my expectations. While I might have that lack of fulfillment at my job, I have a blog that I write pretty regularly. I’m working on a novel. I tend to doodle throughout the day and create actual art on the weekends. My impatience with society is almost wholly subverted with my knowledge that I can control other aspects of my life. This is enough for me to cog my way through the professional world. For now.

Her: This chick throws tantrums when you don’t so the things she wants, exactly when she wants them done. Like, she’ll ask you for a favor and then get upset when you don’t from everything and commit to that favor immediately. She applied for a job, didn’t get the position she wanted by was offered two other ones, and promptly left the interview. She bad mouthed the boss when she got home because it made her feel better. She refused to accept that maybe the position she wanted wasn’t hers to take and that maybe she would have to alter her life plan to make up for it just a bit. This chick’s inflexibility is derivative of her lack of social patience. Being so young, she feels like everything she wants, needs to happen immediately and that’s just not how the world works. It never has. The difference between she and   in this respect, is that I learned that lesson early in life. She refuses to even acknowledge it.

Rejection

Me: I don’t care about rejection. I don‘t care about losing. I could give you some nonsense about those situations being learning experiences but they’re not. If i fail at something, I tend to analyze why and adjust. I suppose that could be seen as learning but I don’t think it is. It feels more like an accumulation of new data to incise rather than “I’m gonna be a better person for my loss.” Even in passive social situations, if someone tells me “No”, it’s really whatever. If I’m denied something or a service, I move on, maybe finding an alternate route to what I needed. Rejection is a temporary inconvenience to me and I usually find a way to circumvent it with little to no hassle.  You’re going to get a ton of “No” in life. It doesn’t make sense to dwell on them if you’re about your sh*t.

Her: man, my brother told her he was going to go hang out with his friends instead of staying in with her (he had spent literally the entire day with her) and she lost her sh*t! For 3 days! She went through her phone and called all of their mutual friends to complain about how much of an “ain’t sh*t n*gga” he was, after she threatened to jump off a goddamn bridge! All because he denied her more of the time she wanted with him. And it wasn’t like she wouldn’t see him ever again, they f*cking live together! They literally sleep in the same bed together! Chick punched a hole in my wall because she couldn’t have the last bread stick. These are extreme examples of her reactions to rejection but they’re a thing. Usually she just throws tantrums but, seriously, destroying sh*t or trying to ruin someone’s reputation because they deny you some semblance of personal gratification is both ridiculous and wildly childish.

Mental Health

Me: I’m a mess. Much like most millennials born in the 80s, I come from a broken home. My parents were emotionally divorced and never really interacted. My dad blamed me for that and viciously took his jealous anger out on me every chance he got. I suffered many an indignity.  I was terrorized by one of the people who was charged with my growth and protection, while the other just turned a blind eye to it because she couldn’t fathom someone being so cruel to their own. I’ve experienced the very worst of people for a very long time and it’s left me pretty scarred. I have extreme difficulty with accepting affection and trusting people. I tend to be unreasonably introverted which, I imagine, leads to some form of depression. I often have panic attacks when I remember my childhood, I’ve had nightmares every night of my life since I was about 5 years old which has led to chronic insomnia. 5 hours a sleep is great for me. I was afraid of people for so long that it’s difficult for me to even relate to the smallest things in social situations. I’d say I have Asperger’s but I’m not autistic, just jaded. My intelligence is rather high, I as certified genius with an IQ of 154 when I was in the 3rd grade, so that further alienated me from my peers.  I learned early on to be dumb in order to fit in but, as an adult, I tire of that game so I don’t play as often anymore. I have a severe lack of empathy and have next to no regard for life which kind of makes me a sociopath. I exhibit a lot of the qualities troops have after returning from war with PTSD. Therapists have told me I’m too much to treat with just counseling, that I needed drugs to be a person. That seems ridiculous so I just pretend.  I wear my “person” suit to the best of my ability and just kind of retreat inward when I grow wary of other people. No, I’m not a serial killer or a criminal or a monster. Interestingly enough, because of the way I am, I would make a great politician, police officer, or spree killer. It’s funny how thin that line is. My point is, with all of my traumas and slights, I learned to cope. I learned to accept that I was damaged and found a way to move forward. I don’t use my issues as a crutch or excuse. I challenge them every day and, while I’ll never be okay, I can be better. I am better. And that’s the journey.

Her: I’m not someone who would belittle another person’s trauma or degrade their struggle. That’s not my place. Everyone goes through it and their journey is their own. She and I have spoken candidly about why she is the way she is. Why she’s depressed. Why she’s slow to trust. Why she is manic. Why she is the way she is or rather, why she believes herself to be. Her issues are strikingly similar to my own lady’s issues but the way the two of them have gone about remedying their respective shortcomings is vastly different. While my chick is in the same boat as me, dealing with her trauma day-to-day with the help of meds and counseling, the 20 year old does nothing. She weaponized her emotional and mental distress to use as a means to deflect and attack the things she doesn’t like. I refer you back to the example where she spazzed out for a weekend because my brother decided to hang out with his friends one night. She chalked that up to be “off her meds”. She comes home and tells me stories about hoe hurtful her mother is in how she’s peaks to her because “She knows I’m mentally fragile.” Again, harsh words send this girl into a fury. Rejection sends her into a spiral. It’s ridiculous. The thing is, though, she KNOWS it. She KNOWS that these things are issues that needs to be addressed and she flat pit refuses. How do I know? I asked her. She said to me it’s too hard working on herself so she’s not going to do it. She’s just  going to kill herself when it gets too hard. She’s going to pull one of those “13 reasons why”, guilt-from-beyond-the-grave bullsh*t. Obviously, this is a cry for help, and I tried to do just that, but you have to WANT to get better in order TO get better. This chick has no intention of even ATTEMPTING to do that. It’s everyone else who’s at fault she’s sad. The world isn’t fair not her circumstances. He has no control over her emotions. It’s literally never her, always everyone else, even though it’s her life and she’s the common denominator.

I feel like if you actually took a poll of the older Millennials, the mid to later thirty-somethings, you’d see a sharp contrast to the accepted narrative of how Millennials are portrayed. True, we don’t buy into that “American Dream.’ None of us want the house with the white picket fence and 2.3 kids. The Cleavers were already played out by the time our parents came of age, what makes you think we’d want any part of that nonsense? True, we demand equal compensation for equal amounts of our time. We watched our parents toil away only to lose their jobs after giving companies 20 to 30 years of their lives. If I give you 40 hours of my life a week, I thoroughly expect to take 8 to 16 a month for myself. Who’s trying to work themselves into an early grave for a conglomerate that doesn’t give a sh*t about you? True, we feel like the State would fit the bill for education and healthcare because that seems like a system that breeds true happiness among the populace, or rather, I’d like to see a doctor and not have to sell a kidney to get my heart checked out. Maybe actually attend a university where my math book didn’t cost 700 f*cking dollars or have to graduate with a mortgage full of debt and only an unpaid internship lined up for this degree I worked so hard to get. True, we are the most diverse generation to date and yes, we demand that we ALL are represented both fairly and without judgement of the superficial but I kind of feel like that more a human decency thing rather than a generational divide. True, we don’t care about diamonds, Sears, Buffalo Wild Wings, or Harley Davidson. All them sh*t’s are relics from a bygone era where people were told what was important rather than feeling out what is important to them. Yes, we are the Me, Me, Me generation, not because we’re conceited, entitled, knobs, but because we watched the generations before us buy into that “all for one” rhetoric and get burned alive for it. Excuse us if we’d rather not end up as the same kind of kindling as our parents.

This chick I live with is legally an adult. She is legally looked upon  the same way I am but the differences in how we exist and how we engage society are wildly different. I feel like the media hones in too much on the aspects of my generation that she represents, and not the aspects that I represent. Of course a 20 year old is going to be narcissistic, they’re 20. They don’t know any better. They were raised to be. Everyone gets a gold star and, if you try hard, your goals will be achieved! They’re 2 years removed from High School where that nonsense is spewed at them every day. These kids are vaulted into a world that doesn’t give a sh*t if they tried. The world wants results and she, like many of her twenty-something kindred, was not prepared for that in the slightest. Their parents failed them. The system failed them. Society failed them. But society failed me, too. I was 20 years old once. I was 20 with a job, an apartment, a significant other, and living two states away from my home. I learned, early on, that while I am unique and f*cking amazing, I’d have to either constantly prove that to other people or just learn to be okay with knowing how bright I shine, myself. Use that outstanding to fuel my dreams and that’s what I’ve been doing. The thing is, she’s not even trying to learn the tools necessary to engage because of her stupid f*cking entitlement! The fact that she refuses to learn who she is because it’s too hard, stifles her growth as a person , adult, and woman. Her sh*ttiness is then perceived to be the purveying tone of my entire generation and that’s f*cking bullsh*t!

I think a lot of why she’s so goddamn awful is her youth but, at the same time, I see a lot of the same sh*ttiness in my 40 year old sister. She’s not even a millennial! Maybe it’s not my generation at all! Maybe it’s no one’s generation. Maybe there are just asshole outliers that are so visible because they are out there on the fringe making the most noise. Maybe there are just sh*tty people that are extremely sh*tty. Ultimately, one could make the argument that ol’ girl is part of Gen-Z but, much like the beginning of my generation, the inception of those kids is highly debated. I think she’s closer to my circumstance; that tweener of two generations, torn between Y and Z. I thick she personally identifies as a Millennial so, I guess, that’s where we are going with that. I imagine that these hallmarks and grievances kind of grew over time. As younger and younger parent started having more and more kids, that whole “you can be whatever you want to be” aspect kind of took off. The placation and something of helicopter parents has bread a slew of children with no gauge for reality outside of their safe space bubble and instead of understanding their world is cold and hard, they want to make it warm and familiar, like it was when they were literal children. I personally never had a safe space. I was terrorized in home and out. Sure, it’s dope to fill your kids with dreams and hopes but that is no substitute for actual parenting. Telling your child they’re a snowflake doesn’t do them any good. Telling them that they are unique but will have to earn a place for that uniqueness in a world that is going to try and pound that out of you is a more realistic circumstance to prepare your child to engage. Because that’s the reality. I was born in 1984. I am at the beginning of the Millennial generation. I am at the end of Generation X. She was born in 1997. She is at the end of the Millennial generation. She is the beginning of The Facebook Generation. We are two ends of the same spectrum, and like that color wheel, there are many, many hues along the way but, the ends are wildly different. One red, one blue. We are all colors, sure, but we are definitely NOT the same. Trying to paint a portrait of what my generation looks like while using only that single color is both shortsighted and makes for a terrible painting.

[smokeybrand]

She and Me

I was born in 1984. For all intents and purposes, that was the year where the first few of the Millennial generation were born. I am, quite literally, the top of the spear for what ails society, according to almost every generation before me. One could argue that Generation ME, Me, Me as Time so eloquently titled us back in 2013, started as early as 1981. Some say it started as late as 1989. All I know is my older brother and sister are Gen X-ers. And the end of them. I was born after so I consider myself a Gen Y or a goddamn Millennial. And it’s that margin od discrepancy that I want to address. I’ve had the distinct frustration of living with a 19 year old for half a year and, even though she is technically a Millennial, I can honestly say, there is a distinct difference between how I and she interact with the world.

Entitlement

Me: When I was young, my parents were frustrated with my Grandmother because they perceived her to be spoiling me. Now, to clarify, this was my Mother’s ma. I spent weekends over there and came back home with new toys almost every time. What my parents didn’t realize or want to admit, I that I was actually earning the funds to buys those toys.  I spent weekends with my Grandma cleaning, gardening, and whatever else. She gave me a stipend for my efforts, never more than a 50 in month, and I used that to buy my things., In time, I learned monetary responsibility and the meaning of having to work honestly for your dime. Working for my other grandma, my dad’s dad, felt more akin to working at some stupid f*cking conglomerate. There was an expectation that I kill myself for her because I was her grandkid. I would do more work for her and received less compensation. She had that sense of entitlement to my man hours because her son was my father, similar to how jobs have that sense of entitlement because they sign my checks. By the time I was in the third grade, I understood nothing is given to you. I understood that receiving an honorable mention ribbon or participation trophy was f*cking nonsense. If you wanted something in life, you had to go earn it, which will lead me into my next point but first, let’s address what I saw out of the 20 year old.

Her: Man, this chick is a carton when it comes to entitlement. She feels like everything should be hers! Like, I would order food and she would just stare at me until I offered some. When she got comfortable with me, she’d ask, not just for a bit or some, but the majority of it! After a wh9ile, she had the expectation that, when I bought myself food, I would buy her food, too. She’s 20! This is some sh*t you do for your child, not another adult. My act of kindness, to her, was an obligation. There was a shallow thank you but, in her mind, it was my responsibility to make sure she got food. Even though she was an adult. Even though she had her own job. Speaking of jobs, she would throw active tantrums when no one gave her a ride to work! Like, throw herself on the ground and kick about. Like a 4 year old. This grown ass woman would act out like a toddler because no one wanted to make sure she got to work on time. Even though there were buses. Even though there’s uber. Even though she had legs and could walk. Chick would wait for me to get home, around 4, and spring on me at the last minute she needed to be at work by 5 and that she’s d be ate if I didn’t give her a ride. She was late a great deal, let me tell you that much!

Laziness

Me: When I was about 3 years old, my dad threw me out of bed and taught me how to clean the bathroom. A few months later, he taught me how to clean the kitchen. I learned to vacuum and wash windows. When I was in the 5th grade, I deduced how to wash clothes on my own. By the time I was 12 years old, I knew how to clean an entire house, among other things. I never received an allowance or stipend, this sh*t was just something you did because you lived in the house.  I always thought it was chicken sh*t that I did all the cleaning and the adults in the house basically laid around all day but whatever. They fed me some stupid line about having to do it when they were kids and that’s the way it is, and I’ll get to that stupid sh*t later, but I paid my due. To this day, I hate cleaning, not because it’s arduous and unending but because I was made to keep up after grown mother*ckers who flat out didn’t give a sh*t how big of a mess they made. That nonsense made me exceptionally sensitive to cats not cleaning up after themselves or wasting things that need not be wasted. Sh*t like leaving toilet paper afloat in the can or not putting the top back on the tooth paste irk the f*ck out of me. Cooking at 2 am only to leave your crusted pots all over the kitchen counters make me furious. Not having the common decency to keep the common areas of your shared living space make me want to commit arson. Admittedly, I don’t clean as profusely as I once did. That’s because I work 10 to 12 hours days. I tend to come home and sleep until the weekend and, on Sunday, I clean as much as I can. Unless my house is destroyed which is more often than not now because the 20 year old I live with is filthy. I don’t clean up after adults anymore so my house is a disaster area. Because the Woman-child I lived with refuses to act like an adult and pick up after herself.

Her: As I cleaned the bathroom yesterday, i went to take out the garbage that was full of her used toilet tissues from removing her copious amounts of makeup (we’ll get to her narcissism next) and, as i picked up wad after wad off my bathroom floor, I ended up grabbing a used tampon. It was dry and scabby which means it had to have been there for a few days. Considering there was enough tissue to basically hide it from me, it had to have been there forever. You share this space with two other people. I understand that this is a bodily function but really? Like, you can even take out the garbage after this? Not only that, but instead of maybe flushing it, you just check it on the goddamn ground and walk off?? Really? This chick will cook food, eat half of it, and just walk away leaving her plate wherever she placed it. I’ve seen her chop potatoes, decide she didn’t want them, and just left those motherf*ckers on my counter. For months. For three months, to be precise. I counted. And it’s not just that. She leaves her makeup in my bathroom sink. Her clothes are strewn all over my house. What space I allotted to her in the closest doesn’t matter because she never closes the doors so her sh*t spills out in the hallways. Like, I listened to her complain about having no clean clothes to wear on a Monday, and then complain about the same sh*t on another Monday, two weeks later! You don’t have a job! You literally have all of the time in the world! How did you not wash your clothes??

Inclusiveness

Me: There is a wide berth between our mentalities. While I understand and accept that certain social stigmas are unjust and often times, outright cruel, I understand that there is work to be done on both sides to improve these situations. There has to be a dialogue. There has to be an equal exchange of ideas and scenarios, even if they aren’t the same as yours or the purveying accepted thesis. Yes, we should be more inclusive as a society. Yes, we have gotten better at being inclusive with our representation. No, the work is not done. We still have a long way to go .We still need a great deal more social empathy and we need to pick our battles  wisely lest we set back the whole movement. BLM, the Kap Knees, and the 1 Percenter protests are all necessary and the right way to go about change. These are the things we needs to do, and cats my age, tend to do.

Her: this chick is am arm chair activist. She spends her time on Facebook posting racially charged memes and accusing anyone who doesn’t believe in what she believes to be an ignorant problem. The thing is, her outrage is superficial. Her perspective on life is colored by MTV and TMZ. Chick has no idea what actual society is like because she’ never attempted to enter it fully. Quite literally, at 20, she considers her 14 year old self “So Tumblr.” That’s only a 6 year difference! You’re telling me you’ve gained perspective in 6 years, even though you’ve never went to college, even though you still run with the same circle of friends, even though you have all of the same bad habits? Nah, your opinion have changed and your need for them to be heard has increased because you’re an “adult” but you still don’t know sh*t. What can you, a 20 year old who’s lived outside of your parents’ home for all of two years collectively, tell me, a 33 year old who’s been on his own since he was 20, anything about life? What can you contribute to the discussion about the gender wage gap, even though you’ve never worked a job earning more than minimum wage? What can you, an adorable mixed gender chick, tell me, a giant black man, about police discrimination? How can you berate a cop for profiling one minute, but then claim to think all white people with dreadlocks smell like garbage the next? Your Social Justice is a fad that you swap out like the sneakers you spend too much money on.

Impatience

Me: The purveying notion is that millennials are, for lack of a better term, impatience. We need instant gratification as opposed to playing the long con. That’s actually pretty true, even in my case. I hate waiting on other people to get me the resources I need in order to produce. I hate depending on other people to the things necessary so that I can do the things I need to do. I am crazy impatience when things aren’t going at the pace I need them to. I understand that, in life, you need to wait for things to happen. I understand that there is a system in the word where being put off somehow equates earned gratification. I do not buy into that nonsense. If I’m at a job, and I’m selling you my time, and I excel at the position, I expect to move upward at the same rate. Why am I busting my ass to show you how great I am as an employee, only to toil away on the vine because you refuse to recognize my shine? I want to be compensated for my ability, not placated and I am VERY impatient when it comes to that. So I try to diversify my expectations. While I might have that lack of fulfillment at my job, I have a blog that I write pretty regularly. I’m working on a novel. I tend to doodle throughout the day and create actual art on the weekends. My impatience with society is almost wholly subverted with my knowledge that I can control other aspects of my life. This is enough for me to cog my way through the professional world. For now.

Her: This chick throws tantrums when you don’t so the things she wants, exactly when she wants them done. Like, she’ll ask you for a favor and then get upset when you don’t from everything and commit to that favor immediately. She applied for a job, didn’t get the position she wanted by was offered two other ones, and promptly left the interview. She bad mouthed the boss when she got home because it made her feel better. She refused to accept that maybe the position she wanted wasn’t hers to take and that maybe she would have to alter her life plan to make up for it just a bit. This chick’s inflexibility is derivative of her lack of social patience. Being so young, she feels like everything she wants, needs to happen immediately and that’s just not how the world works. It never has. The difference between she and   in this respect, is that I learned that lesson early in life. She refuses to even acknowledge it.

Rejection

Me: I don’t care about rejection. I don‘t care about losing. I could give you some nonsense about those situations being learning experiences but they’re not. If i fail at something, I tend to analyze why and adjust. I suppose that could be seen as learning but I don’t think it is. It feels more like an accumulation of new data to incise rather than “I’m gonna be a better person for my loss.” Even in passive social situations, if someone tells me “No”, it’s really whatever. If I’m denied something or a service, I move on, maybe finding an alternate route to what I needed. Rejection is a temporary inconvenience to me and I usually find a way to circumvent it with little to no hassle.  You’re going to get a ton of “No” in life. It doesn’t make sense to dwell on them if you’re about your sh*t.

Her: man, my brother told her he was going to go hang out with his friends instead of staying in with her (he had spent literally the entire day with her) and she lost her sh*t! For 3 days! She went through her phone and called all of their mutual friends to complain about how much of an “ain’t sh*t n*gga” he was, after she threatened to jump off a goddamn bridge! All because he denied her more of the time she wanted with him. And it wasn’t like she wouldn’t see him ever again, they f*cking live together! They literally sleep in the same bed together! Chick punched a hole in my wall because she couldn’t have the last bread stick. These are extreme examples of her reactions to rejection but they’re a thing. Usually she just throws tantrums but, seriously, destroying sh*t or trying to ruin someone’s reputation because they deny you some semblance of personal gratification is both ridiculous and wildly childish.

Mental Health

Me: I’m a mess. Much like most millennials born in the 80s, I come from a broken home. My parents were emotionally divorced and never really interacted. My dad blamed me for that and viciously took his jealous anger out on me every chance he got. I suffered many an indignity.  I was terrorized by one of the people who was charged with my growth and protection, while the other just turned a blind eye to it because she couldn’t fathom someone being so cruel to their own. I’ve experienced the very worst of people for a very long time and it’s left me pretty scarred. I have extreme difficulty with accepting affection and trusting people. I tend to be unreasonably introverted which, I imagine, leads to some form of depression. I often have panic attacks when I remember my childhood, I’ve had nightmares every night of my life since I was about 5 years old which has led to chronic insomnia. 5 hours a sleep is great for me. I was afraid of people for so long that it’s difficult for me to even relate to the smallest things in social situations. I’d say I have Asperger’s but I’m not autistic, just jaded. My intelligence is rather high, I as certified genius with an IQ of 154 when I was in the 3rd grade, so that further alienated me from my peers.  I learned early on to be dumb in order to fit in but, as an adult, I tire of that game so I don’t play as often anymore. I have a severe lack of empathy and have next to no regard for life which kind of makes me a sociopath. I exhibit a lot of the qualities troops have after returning from war with PTSD. Therapists have told me I’m too much to treat with just counseling, that I needed drugs to be a person. That seems ridiculous so I just pretend.  I wear my “person” suit to the best of my ability and just kind of retreat inward when I grow wary of other people. No, I’m not a serial killer or a criminal or a monster. Interestingly enough, because of the way I am, I would make a great politician, police officer, or spree killer. It’s funny how thin that line is. My point is, with all of my traumas and slights, I learned to cope. I learned to accept that I was damaged and found a way to move forward. I don’t use my issues as a crutch or excuse. I challenge them every day and, while I’ll never be okay, I can be better. I am better. And that’s the journey.

Her: I’m not someone who would belittle another person’s trauma or degrade their struggle. That’s not my place. Everyone goes through it and their journey is their own. She and I have spoken candidly about why she is the way she is. Why she’s depressed. Why she’s slow to trust. Why she is manic. Why she is the way she is or rather, why she believes herself to be. Her issues are strikingly similar to my own lady’s issues but the way the two of them have gone about remedying their respective shortcomings is vastly different. While my chick is in the same boat as me, dealing with her trauma day-to-day with the help of meds and counseling, the 20 year old does nothing. She weaponized her emotional and mental distress to use as a means to deflect and attack the things she doesn’t like. I refer you back to the example where she spazzed out for a weekend because my brother decided to hang out with his friends one night. She chalked that up to be “off her meds”. She comes home and tells me stories about hoe hurtful her mother is in how she’s peaks to her because “She knows I’m mentally fragile.” Again, harsh words send this girl into a fury. Rejection sends her into a spiral. It’s ridiculous. The thing is, though, she KNOWS it. She KNOWS that these things are issues that needs to be addressed and she flat pit refuses. How do I know? I asked her. She said to me it’s too hard working on herself so she’s not going to do it. She’s just  going to kill herself when it gets too hard. She’s going to pull one of those “13 reasons why”, guilt-from-beyond-the-grave bullsh*t. Obviously, this is a cry for help, and I tried to do just that, but you have to WANT to get better in order TO get better. This chick has no intention of even ATTEMPTING to do that. It’s everyone else who’s at fault she’s sad. The world isn’t fair not her circumstances. He has no control over her emotions. It’s literally never her, always everyone else, even though it’s her life and she’s the common denominator.

I feel like if you actually took a poll of the older Millennials, the mid to later thirty-somethings, you’d see a sharp contrast to the accepted narrative of how Millennials are portrayed. True, we don’t buy into that “American Dream.’ None of us want the house with the white picket fence and 2.3 kids. The Cleavers were already played out by the time our parents came of age, what makes you think we’d want any part of that nonsense? True, we demand equal compensation for equal amounts of our time. We watched our parents toil away only to lose their jobs after giving companies 20 to 30 years of their lives. If I give you 40 hours of my life a week, I thoroughly expect to take 8 to 16 a month for myself. Who’s trying to work themselves into an early grave for a conglomerate that doesn’t give a sh*t about you? True, we feel like the State would fit the bill for education and healthcare because that seems like a system that breeds true happiness among the populace, or rather, I’d like to see a doctor and not have to sell a kidney to get my heart checked out. Maybe actually attend a university where my math book didn’t cost 700 f*cking dollars or have to graduate with a mortgage full of debt and only an unpaid internship lined up for this degree I worked so hard to get. True, we are the most diverse generation to date and yes, we demand that we ALL are represented both fairly and without judgement of the superficial but I kind of feel like that more a human decency thing rather than a generational divide. True, we don’t care about diamonds, Sears, Buffalo Wild Wings, or Harley Davidson. All them sh*t’s are relics from a bygone era where people were told what was important rather than feeling out what is important to them. Yes, we are the Me, Me, Me generation, not because we’re conceited, entitled, knobs, but because we watched the generations before us buy into that “all for one” rhetoric and get burned alive for it. Excuse us if we’d rather not end up as the same kind of kindling as our parents.

This chick I live with is legally an adult. She is legally looked upon  the same way I am but the differences in how we exist and how we engage society are wildly different. I feel like the media hones in too much on the aspects of my generation that she represents, and not the aspects that I represent. Of course a 20 year old is going to be narcissistic, they’re 20. They don’t know any better. They were raised to be. Everyone gets a gold star and, if you try hard, your goals will be achieved! They’re 2 years removed from High School where that nonsense is spewed at them every day. These kids are vaulted into a world that doesn’t give a sh*t if they tried. The world wants results and she, like many of her twenty-something kindred, was not prepared for that in the slightest. Their parents failed them. The system failed them. Society failed them. But society failed me, too. I was 20 years old once. I was 20 with a job, an apartment, a significant other, and living two states away from my home. I learned, early on, that while I am unique and f*cking amazing, I’d have to either constantly prove that to other people or just learn to be okay with knowing how bright I shine, myself. Use that outstanding to fuel my dreams and that’s what I’ve been doing. The thing is, she’s not even trying to learn the tools necessary to engage because of her stupid f*cking entitlement! The fact that she refuses to learn who she is because it’s too hard, stifles her growth as a person , adult, and woman. Her sh*ttiness is then perceived to be the purveying tone of my entire generation and that’s f*cking bullsh*t!

I think a lot of why she’s so goddamn awful is her youth but, at the same time, I see a lot of the same sh*ttiness in my 40 year old sister. She’s not even a millennial! Maybe it’s not my generation at all! Maybe it’s no one’s generation. Maybe there are just asshole outliers that are so visible because they are out there on the fringe making the most noise. Maybe there are just sh*tty people that are extremely sh*tty. Ultimately, one could make the argument that ol’ girl is part of Gen-Z but, much like the beginning of my generation, the inception of those kids is highly debated. I think she’s closer to my circumstance; that tweener of two generations, torn between Y and Z. I thick she personally identifies as a Millennial so, I guess, that’s where we are going with that. I imagine that these hallmarks and grievances kind of grew over time. As younger and younger parent started having more and more kids, that whole “you can be whatever you want to be” aspect kind of took off. The placation and something of helicopter parents has bread a slew of children with no gauge for reality outside of their safe space bubble and instead of understanding their world is cold and hard, they want to make it warm and familiar, like it was when they were literal children. I personally never had a safe space. I was terrorized in home and out. Sure, it’s dope to fill your kids with dreams and hopes but that is no substitute for actual parenting. Telling your child they’re a snowflake doesn’t do them any good. Telling them that they are unique but will have to earn a place for that uniqueness in a world that is going to try and pound that out of you is a more realistic circumstance to prepare your child to engage. Because that’s the reality. I was born in 1984. I am at the beginning of the Millennial generation. I am at the end of Generation X. She was born in 1997. She is at the end of the Millennial generation. She is the beginning of The Facebook Generation. We are two ends of the same spectrum, and like that color wheel, there are many, many hues along the way but, the ends are wildly different. One red, one blue. We are all colors, sure, but we are definitely NOT the same. Trying to paint a portrait of what my generation looks like while using only that single color is both shortsighted and makes for a terrible painting.