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antihero-writings · 6 years ago

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The Things We Say Aloud—Pandora Hearts Fic for Phmonth18 Rainsworth Trio Week—Prompt 2: Family (Full Fic)

Fic Title: The Things We Say Aloud

Fic Synopsis: The Rainsworth Trio has a tradition of midnight snowball fights. But what if this is Break’s last?

Notes: This is another fic I wrote last Christmas (for the prompt “Rain”), but I think will work well for Phmonth18. I think it works best for the Rainsworth Trio Prompt 2: Family. You don’t have to have read the previous Christmas fic to understand it, but they are supposed to take place in the same year, and there are a few connections/references between them. (The other one is called “In Plain Sight” and you can read it on this blog, and/or at I_prefer_the_term_antihero ‘s Ao3!)

Out of all the PH fics I’ve written so far, this is honestly probably my favorite. I would deeply appreciate it if you commented to let me know you enjoyed it!

I feel like the Rainsworth Trio–especially Sharon and Break–don’t really talk about Break’s death, even though they know it’s coming. I thought it would be interesting to explore how such a conversation would go, and almost made myself cry writing it!

Also, point of interest, a song that I think works really well for the section of this fic where Break is pondering if it will be his last Christmas is “Into the Open Air” from the Brave soundtrack.

P.S. This is a repost of an old fic!

Fic:

Rain pounded its tune on the roof. It was the kind of rain that swarms the air, making it misty, grey, and cold with the buzzing of a thousand tiny drops.

It wasn’t that he disliked the rain. There will always be something about the rain that’s soothing to people dealing with sorrow. But rain like this; that pounds, and pounds, and doesn’t dissipate, sometimes serves to extend the mistiness inside too. Though it could be a rest, a relief, people like him always pray for the sun to come back. For sunny days and summer light were something people like him, with red eyes, and a past full of sin, knew they didn’t deserve, but couldn’t help seeking all the same.

Xerxes Break walked through the hallway of the Rainsworth manor. He wore his turquoise and gold outfit, half of his white hair falling across his shoulder, the other, shorter side, messily added to the covering the bandages provided—bandages over the place where his left eye should have been, though it rarely bled anymore.

As he passed by one of the rooms, he saw Sharon. She looked so small, but so regal, sitting on the windowsill, with her back to the glass, now frosted with condensation. Her chestnut hair was pulled back with a ribbon, and she was wearing her little pink dress. The little girl was pouting, staring at the ground, her arms folded over her chest in the characteristic expression children wear when they don’t get their way.

He paused, resting his hand on the doorframe.

She lifted her head.

When she met his eyes, he remembered very quickly that was not in his skill set to comfort little girls.

When he glanced back, she was giving him a look that said Well? Aren’t you going to come comfort me?

He knew better than to disobey such a look. He took a deep breath and walked in, hopping up on the windowsill next to her.

Like the rain, it wasn’t that he disliked kids, he just didn’t know how to deal with them. When they cried and threw tantrums…in short, he didn’t know how to deal with emotion (well, strong ones anyways). He couldn’t help hoping that kids like her could stay happy, and innocent forever. Like he had hoped for his young mistress from another time, and seen it go so very wrong, then later heard, through his own interference, that he had made it go far worse. But children would have to get hurt, they would have to grow up, some day. And in turn, they would become the kinds of creatures who hurt, and caused pain, who even killed, and made excuses for it…creatures like himself.

Luckily, he found that Sharon was a much happier, much kinder, much stronger child than most.

When she didn’t speak—(he didn’t dare ask, for fear of making it worse)—he turned to look outside the window.

“Xerx-niisan,” she began at last, “Why is the sky crying?”

He turned back to her, raising an eyebrow. “Huh?”

They weren’t siblings; they weren’t even remotely related. But for some reason, the name fixed itself in her mouth, and nothing he did or said could change that.

She could be a little tyrant sometimes.

At his misunderstanding, she continued to pout, averting her eyes. Then she jerked back to look at him, (he flinched a little), and said in a high pitched voice, “It’s almost Christmas! Why is it raining? It should be snowing!”

“Oh,” he relaxed a little, contemplating his response, “Well…it’s not going to stop raining just because you want it to. Sometimes,” he gave a sardonic smile that was more painful than the frown that seemed fixed on his face, looking away into the rain, as if he would find answers reading the drops, “things…people…that should be happy, just can’t be. And no matter how much you want something…”

He trailed off, and when he turned back, he saw tears welling in her eyes.

Nice going, Xerxes, you barely have to open your mouth to make a little girl cry.

There they were, brimming to the surface: all those emotions he didn’t know what to do with. He could only sit there, waiting for her own brand of rain to start, wanting more than anything to escape, to not have to figure out the right words to fix her.

It was the crying he hated the most. Maybe it was because it reminded him too much of a certain day, long ago, of a certain girl…but the snow did fall that day…

Still, he wasn’t going to tell her that if she just wished hard enough, if she believed in hope, the-general-goodness-of-the-world-and-its-inhabitants, and maybe a little bit of magic, that the snow would fall, that she could change things. Wishes were dangerous things, and he didn’t suggest anyone make them. You never know who, or what, might be listening.

Fortunately, before the tears reached her cheeks, Sharon’s mother, Shelly Rainsworth, appeared at the doorway. She looked almost exactly like an older version of her daughter, the same chestnut hair, the same smile that shined with a light of its own.

Upon seeing the tearful look on her daughter’s face, she marched into the room, put her hands on her hips, and turned to Break.

“Xerxes,” she said his name like he really was Sharon’s brother, “what did you say to her?”

“Why do you assume it was my fault, Shelly-sama?” he muttered, sounding like the child she was calling out.

“Let’s just say you have a habit of stepping on people’s feelings.”

He sighed. “I was only telling her that it won’t start snowing simply because she wants it to.”

“It’s almost Christmas, mother!” Sharon said like she was pleading her case, the tears reappearing in her eyes.

Shelly smiled, shaking her head.

“What am I going to do with you two?” she crouched down in front of Sharon, and paused, contemplating her own question for a moment. “Tell you what, sweetie; I can’t promise it’ll start snowing because you want it to, but I can promise this:” she pushed her daughter’s tears away, “The moment it starts snowing—or, I suppose,” she interrupted herself, “the moment there’s enough snow on the ground, but no later!—we’ll go outside, and have a snowball fight. How does that sound?”

“Really?” Sharon raised her head, the sadness lifting a little.

“Even if I’m busy, or it starts snowing in the middle of the night,” Shelly elaborated, grinning, “No, especially, if it’s in the middle of the night,” she placed a finger on Sharon’s nose, at which the little girl giggled, “I’ll wake you up—or you me—then, while everyone else is asleep, we’ll run around the house in just our pajamas and coats, we’ll wake Xerxes—”

“What?!” Break blurted out.

“Yes, we’ll wake Xerxes,” she repeated smirking, “drag him outside—”

“Do I get a say in this?!”

“Nope,” she grinned mischievously, “Don’t think I’m letting you get out of this one.”

“Tch.” He looked away.

She walked calmly to the couch, picked up one of the pillows, as if she was going to fluff it, brought it over to them, and smacked him with it.

He growled, his red eye starting to blaze, like some caged beast.

She threw the pillow back onto the couch, sighing, saying seriously, “I don’t want you sitting here on this windowsill forever…I know, somewhere inside you, there’s someone…” she pondered it, then smiled, saying simply, “Someone who’s not afraid. You’re stronger than you think. Deep down, I think, these sorts of things that seem childish, like snowball fights, and tea-parties,” she smirked, “fun things, you actually enjoy.”

He looked away, as if knowing he could only disappoint her.

She added softly, placing a finger on his chin, making him look at her,

“We’ll see that smile someday, Xerxes Break.”

He stared at her as she took her fingers away, then he blinked, averting his eyes again. murmuring something about, “Really, Shelly-sama…I’d just ruin—”

“Sharon,” Shelly interrupted his mutterings, turning to her daughter, “Do you think Xerxes should sit here sulking, day in and day out, or do you think he should join our snowball fight?”

“Xerx-niisan should come with us!” she didn’t even take a breath before she answered.

He stared into the little girl’s eyes, so full of hope, no question, no hesitation, just…kindness, endless kindness.

Shelly smiled at her daughter, which turned into devious smirk when she looked at him.

“Checkmate.”

He bit his lip before jumping back down to the ground, muttering incoherently his displeasure, knowing once they were set, he couldn’t change their minds.

They could be tyrants sometimes.

Most people wouldn’t have gone near him, much less want him to be a part of something…well, fun. He knew what people said about him. It didn’t matter, it had been a long time since he had cared what other people thought, plus, he more than welcomed the lack of company. But, the thing is, he knew they were right; he was creepy, and dark, and very, very dangerous. So, he too, often wondered why they had taken him in, why they treated him like something worth saving, worth dragging out of bed for snowball fights, and tea-parties, rather than being sure, like rest of the world was—like he was—that he would just darken everything with any amount of light in it.

That’s what Children of Misfortune were for, right?

A little girl, who should have been more scared of him than anyone, who should’ve wanted him as far away from her and her snowball fights than anyone, could not only go near him, but fail to hesitate as she bounded up to this dark-and-dangerous man, looked into that blood-red eye, and asked him why the sky was crying, gave him flowers, and called him “brother.”

And that was worth more to him than he would ever dare admit aloud.

*****

It was from nightmares about knights, and blood, little girls, dolls, and names that he never mentioned, that Xerxes Break awoke from.

Breath and heartbeat weighed heavily on his chest. Once the memories faded enough for him to remember that, though it may have been real, it was not now, he gritted his teeth together, slamming his fist into the wall behind him. He didn’t care how much pain was pulsating through his hand.

If only it would take his mind off the throbbing in his empty eye socket.

If he had been a weaker man, perhaps he would have screamed, even cried, perhaps he would have whispered something pitifully to the sheets about not wanting to remember again, not wanting nightmares like this one to show their faces in his head. But he had already made a wish, and these nightmares were its descendants. He didn’t have the authority to dream anymore.

All he had was the anger and regret surging through his body, and nowhere for it to go, except make his past a weapon that shattered him just as much as it did his enemies, into glass shards, and cold bones, and bloodstained roles.

Still, there was some part of him that hoped after so many years they would have stopped haunting him. And sure, maybe it wasn’t every night, but they did come. Perhaps that’s why they call them ghosts; There were too many horrors to be reminded of, too many sins to feel guilty for, too little he could do to fix it, and the nightmares were all too eager for the task. One lifetime was not enough for them to let him forget.

They say ‘there’s no rest for the wicked’, and his mind was often cruel enough to remind him.

When he raised his gaze, he saw that the curtain was open just slightly, and something in the sliver of window flickered.

The Mad Hatter sighed, throwing his legs over the side of the bed.

It was awfully cold.

He stepped up to the window, gently pulling back the curtain, just enough so he could see.

He drew in a breath softly, his eye widening at the view:

It was snowing.

There was enough moonlight to see flakes falling upon the grounds—which were cloaked in white by now.

Like that time years ago, for the whole month, the only thing that fell from the clouds was rain, and finally, the sky decided that Christmas Eve was no time to be laying in bed, sleeping, or else dreaming about past follies.

“Well, Shelly-sama, what do you think?” he spoke softly to the merciful sky, “One last snowball fight?” he paused a moment, turning, leaning against the window, as if waiting for an answer to be whispered in his ear.

He stepped over to his wardrobe, throwing a coat over his pajamas, taking up some winter gloves, putting on socks and boots, and, as always, placing Emily on his shoulder (she wouldn’t want to miss this).

Lighting the candelabra on his nightstand, he ventured into the hallway, making his way toward Sharon’s bedroom.

Opening the door as quietly as he could, he walked in, setting the light on her nightstand.

Sharon was sleeping soundly on her curtained bed, her hair splayed all over the sheets, wrinkled in the night’s sleep, and she hugged her pillow.

He resisted the urge to laugh at her un-proper appearance.

Break sat on the side of her bed, by her head, saying quietly,

“Ojousama.”

She stirred in her sleep, muttering something indecipherable.

He gently ran his hand through her hair, saying louder, “Sharon.”

She blinked open fuchsia eyes to see her servant.

“Break,” she muttered his name softly.

Slowly, she sat up, yawning, looking around.

“Break, what’re you…?” she began, fatigue weighing down her words, then shook it away by shaking her head, “What are you doing in my room?! In the middle of the night! How dare you wake me up!”

He knew what was coming next: she grabbed one of the pillows, and he dodged it before she hit him with it. “Do you think you can just come in here as you please?!”

“Really, Ojousama,” he laughed, standing back up, “You think I’d risk injury without good reason?”

She folded her arms over her chest, pouting. He walked over to the window, throwing open the curtain, standing beside it.

“This better not be one of your pranks, Break,” she muttered, walking over to the window.

“Relax. When have I ever been that cruel?”

She glared at him, as if to say I-could-name-a-few-times, then turned to the window, surveying the landscape outside.

Her aggravated expression broke for widened eyes and a smile.

“Break!” she exclaimed, all grievance forgotten, grabbing his hands and spinning him around, “It’s snowing!!” she let go of him, and jumped up on the bed, repeating, “It’s snowing!! It’s snowing!!”

He smirked, folding his arms over his chest; No matter how old she really was, she still looked like that little kid to him.

“What do you say?” he helped her down from the bed, “One last snowball fight?”

“What are you talking about ‘one last’?” she grabbed the pillow and managed to catch him off guard this time. “You better not be talking about that again!”

She didn’t wait for him to respond as she dropped the pillow and ran over to her wardrobe, found a little coat to throw over her nightshirt, boots, and gloves, then handed him a ribbon to tie her hair back.

“Ready?” he tapped her on the shoulder when he had finished tying her hair.

She nodded, beaming.

They weren’t too far from Reim’s room when Break asked her to hold the candelabra, and stepped down the stairs to the front door.

“Where are you going?” she asked, “Reim’s room is this way.”

“This will only take a moment,” he grinned.

She put her hand on her hip, scowling at him as he ran out the front door. Quickly he returned, with the first snowball in his gloved hand.

“Break! Just what are you intending to do with that?!”

“You’ll see!” said Emily.

Sharon sighed, placing her head in her hand.

Reim stayed at the Rainsworth’s often enough that he had his own room (albeit, not a very fancy one). They quietly entered it to see the servant laying on a bed, much neater than either of theirs, facing away from them. His glasses, and some extra paperwork he just couldn’t leave at work, lay dormant on his nightstand.

Break tiptoed up to his friend, gently pulled back the collar of his shirt, and stuffed a snowball down the back of his shirt.

It was a moment before it took effect, but when it did, Reim skyrocketed out of bed, dancing around, until the snow fell onto the floor.

Break could barely contain his laughter.

He rested his hands on his knees panting. When he regained his bearings enough to figure out what had just happened, and saw Break laughing, he shouted,

“XERXES, YOU BASTARD!!”

Reim lunged at Break, at which the older man only needed to step out of the way, to make Reim trip onto the floor.

“Yes, a tired Reim-san, without his glasses, is definitely a match for me,” he remarked, leaning over him,

“A normal Reim-san isn’t exactly a match either!” Emily squeaked.

“Now, now Emily,” Break chided his doll playfully, “we mustn’t rub this sort of thing in people’s faces.”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Reim’s voice was muffled by the floor

Break laughed, “Is that so?”

“All in good fun!” Emily chirped.

“It’s not fun for me!” he retorted, sitting up, “How can your idea of fun be tormenting your best friend!” Reim got up off the floor and sat on his bed.

“Come now, Reim-san, ‘torment’ is a little harsh, don’t you think?”

“I meant what I said! I mean, who in their right mind thinks a good way to wake their friend up is to stuff freezing-cold snow—”

He interrupted himself, looking at each of them with question in his eyes. He repeated the word, “Snow…?”

Sharon and Break grinned at each other.

Break helped his friend up, saying, “And whoever said I was in my right mind? Didn’t you know? All the best people are mad.”

Reim rolled his eyes.

Sharon and Break stepped up to the window to unveil the answer to his question. Reim followed to inspect the view outside.

Then he looked at each of them, shaking his head and smiling. “Really, you two, after all these years…”

He trailed off, going over to his wardrobe to put on the winter clothes he kept there.

They barely had time to blow out the candles before Sharon grabbed both their hands and dragged them out into the moonlit hall.

They were like little kids trying to get a peek at Santa; bumbling down the hall, almost falling over each other, shushing each other, as they made their way through the manor, down the stairs, out the front door, into the cold grounds.

Even with their winter clothing, the cold still crept in. The snow muffled ordinary sounds, falling seamlessly, sparks of scattered moonlight gleaming off the flakes.

“So, we’ll—” Reim was interrupted by Break throwing a snowball at the back of his head.

“Oy! I was talking!” he whirled around.

“What’s there to talk about, Reim-san?” Break tossed another snowball up and down in his hand.

“I was simply—”

This time it was Sharon who threw the snowball at his face.

“Nice shot, Ojousama,” Break mentioned.

“Thank you,” she grinned, “You’re next, Xerx-niisan.”

“Alright, you two are going down,” Reim challenged.

“That’s more like,” Break smirked.

It didn’t make sense that three adults could have so much fun doing something so childish as playing in the snow. But between exploding snow and shouting, their laughter was what radiated like light from the scene. Maybe they forgot they weren’t children, they forgot that they had grown up things to do, responsibilities to attend to, and that the world was really comprised of blood and pain, and worthless names, not innocence and friendship.

The mad tea party, forever trapped in a moment, forgotten by time.

It was a while later when another voice broke through:

“Hey, what are you guys doing?”

They paused, turning to see Oz at one of the balconies.

“Our humblest apologies, Oz-sama!” Reim shouted back, bowing low, “We didn’t intend to be so loud!”

“No worries!” he yawned, “Are you…having a snowball fight?”

“That’s right, Oz-kun,” Break answered, “Would you like to join us?”

“Really?! You’ll let me?!”

“Sure,” he tossed a snowball up and down in his hand again, “but we certainly won’t be going easy on you!”

Oz beamed. “Hang on a sec! Lemme grab Gil and Alice!”

Not long afterwards, they heard the all-too-familiar sounds of Gilbert and Alice shouting, and they their annoyed faces appeared on the balcony.

“Why are you three having a snowball fight at 6:00 in the morning!” Gilbert yelled down to them.

“Oh? You scared you didn’t make the cut?” Break taunted . “Clown! Is this your doing?!” Alice demanded, “I’ll come down there and make you pay for waking me up!”

As Break spoke to them, Reim saw it as an opportunity to get his own revenge, and snuck up behind him. Break, of course, still heard him coming and, once again, tripped him, as he got close.

Break walked around him in a circle, grinning shaking his head, “You’re going to have to try harder than that to beat me.”

Reim gave an expression akin to Gilbert’s evil eye.

Break kicked some snow onto his head as he walked by, just to rub it his face (quite literally).

Oz, Gilbert, and Alice tumbled down the front steps, already laughing and yelling at each other before they even joined the fight.

“Well look who it is,” Break taunted, leaning over them, then Emily continued,

“The dumb bunny, the spoiled brat, and—” he didn’t get to finish, because the two lunged at him.

There weren’t really any teams, or way of keeping score—it was everyone against everyone else, though each of them had their own approach: Gilbert had a more meticulous method; creating a stash of snowballs, and walls to hide behind, (often getting hit in the building process). Oz was would sneak up on people, and took particular pleasure in knocking down, or stealing, Gil’s hard work, while Alice ran around pelting everyone in sight, holding a particular grudge against anyone who landed a hit on her (who were mostly Break and Oz).

Near the end of their fight, as Break snuck up on Sharon, just about to land a hit on her, he found himself falling, and was then somehow on the other side of the yard,

He paused to regain his bearings, and stood back up to his full height, quickly discerning what had happened.

“Is that really fair, Ojousama?” he called across the yard, knowing she had used her Chain.

She chuckled like it was a trivial offense, “Since when have you cared what’s fair Xerx-niisan?”

Well, she got me there.

It was at this moment he felt a rush of cold! against his neck, and tensed, resisting the urge to spill some choice words. He spun around to see that Reim had been waiting behind a nearby tree and, as he addressed his mistress, Reim had managed to get the perfect revenge.

Break pulled back his shirt to make sure the snow fell, scowling at his friend.

“Say it,” Reim folded his arms over his chest.

“What? That you got me?”

Reim’s expression was unmoving.

“I’ll say nothing of the sort, Reim-san,” he flicked his glasses, “After all, you merely copied me. You should be more creative next time.”

Reim’s fingers curled into fists, practically growling at him.

“I didn’t know we could use Chains!” Oz called, running up to them, having noticed Sharon’s expert use of Eques, (but not the following exchange between Break and Reim.)

“Seaweed-head! Release my limiter!” Alice shouted when she heard, “I want to smash the clowny bastard to smithereens!”

“Is that so?” Break called, “You really want to go down that path, Alice-kun?” Break smirked evilly, “My Mad Hatter would destroy you before Gilbert-kun even had the chance.”

“You wanna go, clown!” Alice hollered, and Gilbert had to hold her back to keep her from rushing at him with teeth and claws.

Reim looked worried, and Oz—wearing a similar expression—spoke in hushed tones, “No, Alice! You don’t want to go up against his Mad Hatter!”

“Try me, Manservant!”

“Break! No one wants to see you killing yourself over some stupid fight with some little girl!” Gilbert scolded.

“Oy! Who you callin’ ‘some little girl’?!” Alice snapped at Gilbert.

That seemed to return Reim to his senses,

“That’s right!” Reim scolded, “What did I tell you about being reckless with your powers?!”

“Always so tense, you two,” he walked up to Alice and ruffled her hair, “I’m only teasing.”

Alice broke free, and the fight resumed, though the others were glad to see neither managed to draw blood, and that it quickly returned to the antics of the snowy game.

And for one brief moment, Break forgot about everything else. About the nightmares, the regrets, and the answers he clung to so desperately as a reason to keep himself from falling further. And for one moment, he could see those flickering lights behind dark eyes, and he was happy he could feel the cold biting his skin, he was happy he could see their faces—rosy-cheeked, all smiles and laughs, even if they were yelling at him—for one precious flicker of a moment, he was happy to be alive.

That moment would end. The shadows would crawl back from the corners of his mind, the smiles would become fake again, the world would become a wax museum of happiness. Reasons that were just that, empty reasons; desire had left them behind in an alleyway long ago, for better, darker wishes. The pain would come back, and once again he’d convince himself, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care about them. About what happens to me. The snow white chaos would return to tears too fast. But in this moment, it was okay. He was okay.

Sharon and Reim ran at him, but instead of getting out of the way, this time he let them bowl him over, the three of them collapsing in the snow.

Shock flitted across their faces, which broke for smiles.

He wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to tell them over and over I love you both so very much. But he wasn’t the only one who knew that those words falling from Xerxes Break’s lips was all too close to admitting defeat. Because if he admitted he cared, then he wouldn’t be able to let them go when the end came. And he knew it would come all too soon. His lips wouldn’t dare betray him with such miserable words.

So they settled for a smile.

His real smile. Not the smirks and grins he gave away at a moment’s notice. The smile that was barely perceptible, but which, for them, captured within its folds more sunlight than anything else in their world.

Sharon and Reim glanced at each other, then smiled back at him, deciding not to sully the moment with words.

And, as soon as it came, the true smile was replaced with a smirk.

“You two really are gullible,” he put snow in their hair.

They jumped up, shouting his name, trying to rub it out, then quickly ran after him.

He couldn’t tell them the truth. He couldn’t tell them that he was thinking how this might be his last Christmas. He couldn’t tell them how he was wondering if they would still put his stocking on the mantelpiece when he was gone.

He didn’t get a chance to anyways, because it wasn’t long afterwards when beads of citrus and crimson light began tracing the navy sky.

They paused, panting, raising their eyes to look into the sunrise.

For a moment they stared silently at the art the morning made of daybreak, gentle smiles tracing their lips at the beauty.

Then Oz broke in, exclaiming,

“Merry Christmas, everyone!”

“Merry Christmas!” they answered, a little tiredly.

“What do you guys think?” Reim asked, “Ready to go inside?”

“Aww, but we were having so much fun!” Oz protested, trying to mask the fatigue in his voice.

“Easy for you to say, we’re exhausted!”

“To be fair, we were out here much longer than them,” Break panted, realizing just how tired he was. “Perhaps I have gotten old after all. If you youngin’s want to go on—” he flapped a shirt sleeve their direction.

“There he goes again calling himself old!”

Sharon broke in, “Don’t you want to open presents?”

“Presents?!” Oz repeated, like a dog who had seen a squirrel, glancing at Gilbert and Alice, his grin widening.

They began to make their way inside, still laughing and talking about the plays they each had made, and how they would eventually get each other back. As they walked back, instead of joining the conversation, Sharon gently tugged on the corner of Break’s coat, holding him back.

He turned to see that instead of the tired, but joy-full smile that had traced her face moments earlier, she was hanging her head low.

“Ojousama?” he asked worriedly, crouching down beside her, seeing tears begin to grace her cheeks.

The others noticed, and stopped too.

“Xerxes! What did you do?!” Reim demanded.

“Yeah, Break! How dare you make a girl cry on Christmas?!” Oz questioned, running up to her.

He rolled his eyes at them.

“I’m fine, everyone,” Sharon reassured them, giving a somewhat plastered smile, “I’ll just be a moment.”

They all glanced at each other, knowing something was clearly wrong.

“Are you sure?” Gilbert asked.

“Yeah, Sharon-chan, if you need something—”

“Yes. Please, go inside. Break and I will catch up with you.”

They glanced at each other.

“Alright, Sharon-chan. Just let us know if you need anything, okay?” Oz put a hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you, Oz-sama,” she smiled.

The others gave similar smiles back to her, then they gave Break a collective you-better-not-make-this-worse look before walking up the stairs into the manor.

“Sharon?” he asked softly.

No matter how many years went by, he still couldn’t handle the sight of a child in tears.

“Xerx-niisan,” he could tell she was fighting back against the tears, “What if… What if this is your last Christmas?”

He gasped; he didn’t expect her to be thinking about the same thing.

“What if…” she continued, breath taut, “What if we never get to have another snowball fight? What if…?”

“Well,” he rubbed his neck, looking away, “you and Reim can still—”

“Don’t act like everything will be the same when you’re gone!” she threw snow into his face.

He fell back onto his elbows, gently brushing it out of his hair. After a moment a laugh bubbled in his throat, and he put his hand on his face.

“What’s so funny?!” she demanded, scowling.

Obviously that was the wrong thing to do.

If only she had chosen someone else to comfort her; someone like Oz, who could read the situation, and chose his words carefully. Or Gilbert, who was sensitive enough to understand. Even Reim would be better, despite his rather unemotional, straightforward nature. But she had chosen him.

“It’s funny…to tell you the truth,” his voice became more serious, “It’s just…I was thinking about the same thing.”

Shock added to the concoction of hurt and yearning in her eyes.

“Y-You were?”

He looked at the ground and nodded ever so slightly.

“How dare you laugh at that?” she balled a fist in the snow, but the strength seemed to leave her.

She shook her head, tears fluttering back to her eyes, “You can’t…Xerx-niisan, you can’t! I…I don’t want to be alone!” she put her arms around him and fell onto him.

His eye was wide, his breath harsh and cold as he looked at the girl in his arms, forgetting for a less than a moment that she was not that little girl in a darkened room, surrounded by coffins.

He shook his head of the memory.

“You won’t be alone, you’ll have Reim, and Sheryl-sama, and—”

She lifted her head to scowl at him, as if to say must-I-repeat-what-I-said and he cleared his throat, changing his method of attack.

“Well, I won’t go down easy, that’s for sure. But, despite how it might seem,” he gently ran his finger along her cheek, giving that sad but true smile, and whispered, “I am not that strong.”

“You think you can talking about you dying all the time and I’ll just—?!” she tried to fight back, to be angry, but her words fell like the snow, and she murmured again, she let her head fall back onto his shoulder, and whispered back, “Xerx-niisan…”

He gently wrapped his own arms around her.

“I want to be there for you…” she murmured, “I don’t want you to do something stupid…You’re always running into fights without a second thought…” she sobbed for a moment before saying, “Maybe we could…maybe we could stop it? I-I could go into the fights with Eques…Oz-sama and Gilbert-sama—”

He pressed a kiss into her hair, and as she lifted her head off his shoulder to look at him with the wide and teary eyes of her younger self. The look in his eyes was enough to say I’m sorry, Sharon.

“It’s just like I told you, Ojousama,” he ran his fingers through her hair, and murmured into her ear, “No matter how much I may want it to, I can’t stop it from raining.”

She lifted her head off his shoulder to look at him.

“No matter how much we might want it to, we can make the snow fall. Our wishes can’t change things. Even if…” his words were blown by the wind into the stars.

She shook her head gently, murmuring that name.

“Just promise me you won’t make any illegal contracts to bring me back,” he laughed a little, which turned into a grimace, and she knew just how serious he was being.

She smiled for the first time since the conversation started. “I promise.”

For a moment they sat there, together, in a sort of limbo, watching as the sunrise turned into a light blue sky—a present sorrow caught between the earlier joy, wondering which emotion of the two would soon come. Moments were so finicky.

“I can’t promise I’ll have another Christmas, but we still have today. Let’s not waste it with talking about depressing things.”

She nodded, smiling.

He gently reached down and picked her up.

“Xerx-niisan!” she protested at first.

He touched her nose with his finger.

After a moment, as he took her inside, she rested her head against him sleepily, murmuring, “Xerx-niisan, I don’t want…I don’t want you to pretend you’re okay for my sake.”

His eye widened and he jerked his head to look at her.

“Don’t give me that look,” she responded, “I know you do it. You think I can’t handle it.”

He took a deep breath, “I’m fine, Ojousama,” he murmured, and smiled, “It’s Christmas, after all.”

She shook her head, “No you’re not!”

Once again he kissed her head gave her his real smile, “No, really, Sharon. I am. At least for today.”

The smile she returned was real too.

And that was worth far more to them than either of them needed to say aloud.

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floralkittygambler · 4 years ago

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Return of The Thing

Sort of. By thing, I mean me. But I love this movie and the meme. Ok, context for this post: - Where I’ve been - Why I left - Whats hip happening - Where I’ve Been:

Long story short, I’ve had real life matters to deal with. Firstly, my entire household contracted COVID. Well, *almost*. We’ve been through constant testing, quarantine zones, and had the ambulance up numerous times. My parents and 2nd oldest sister were hit the hardest. My 3rd oldest sister was positive and asymptomatic. Now something none of us could predict that I would be completely COVID free despite my compromises. Despite that I was in close contact with them all, including the 2nd oldest who contracted it first and accidentally being coughed on a few times lol. I went through the exact same testing and yet nothing. No symptoms. No presence of COVID. And I took no precaution to isolate from my family as I presumed in our small house we’d all get it, so I was more preoccupied with caring for the sick. Ultimately, I’ve either gotten off scott free this time or there’s a chance I may actually either be highly resistant or even immune. Even then, I WILL be having the vaccine as and when my family are eligible. And we all still follow regulations set. I’ve also had other real life obligations, much of it either mundane fixing up my living circumstances to more personal matters. Overall, I have been extremely preoccupied.

A mini update, the stray cat Big has been in our porch a lot more in recent times due to the snow as well as being even more affectionate. And Queefster passed away after a good life and a full tummy. Why I Left:

Aside from COVID, business, and my own health declining, I’ll be blunt. I left because of how disgustingly toxic most fandoms are nowadays, but Hazbin is one of the WORST for it. That includes harassment, death threats, mocking MI and triggering an ED. In fact, I’ve even seen others get rape and death threats. So yes, even if YOU are a decent fan, collectively most of you arent doing any favours. Even some critical blogs seem to be overtly catty in ways no one else seems to pick up on under this ‘look how blunt I am’ look and it’s just... You dont have to be a prick to have your say, to be honest and to disagree with the trending. That’s a few on and off of tumblr, and no one I follow anyways.

In regards to my ‘sensitivities’ - two things: 1) Of course trauma is going to hurt, 2) Im fully aware of kids doing and receiving much of this, which hurts MORE. I have my own lil squids and Im worried of them eventually having to deal with this shit. And no, no one SHOULD have to put up with such rude and poor behaviour. Agree to disagree doesnt live in some people’s realities, but by God harassment and bullying seems ok if YOURE doing it or enticing it. That ISNT ok. Even if it seems like nothing to you it could kill another. I certainly will not take your shit.

On huskerdust I STAND by my words. It’s fucking creepy and there is sexual harassment and obsession. And there are large triggers. I will not go into detail here because Ive done that dance before and I’ll be refining it again. YOU may like it, however it triggers my very real traumas as well as those in my bloodline. Be respectful and keep that shit away from me. And for goodness sake, parents PLEASE dont raise your children to behave as such online. And no, being anon isnt actually fully anonymous. Also to send hate and threats anon is not only traceable but also cowardice. Grow a pair and find a hobby. I avoid my traumas for the most part. I will not allow you to weaponise or diminish my own or others experiences for your fictional based gratification. Likewise, if it becomes canon, I’ll just make an AU where it is not. Simple. You can hate it but Im not your personal circus so go be toxic elsewhere. IF you like HD and follow me, honestly... Youre probably better to unfollow as I am deeply and passionately against it and stolitz, and valvox, and am very vocal on that. Dont mistake my traumas and discomfort as a personal attack - and dont personally attack me over it either. And before anyone claims homophobia, no. This is nothing to do with sexuality. You arent the victim. If you love these pairings with your soul to the point of a ‘stan’, then youre best off unfollowing because I really am too old for extremists and rabid fans more crazed than the infected in REC. Also I never used to hate angel but now... Fans behaviour is abhorrent and hes so over saturated that I honestly really dislike him now. Doesnt mean you have to hate him too, but just bloody respect that angel isnt loved by all, he can be triggering to some as well as toxically enabling [incl. past addicts], a vile homophobic gay stereotype and just overall a lack of knowledge and respect of sex workers as a whole. When you know a lot of the ins and outs and victims, it’s hard to overlook. I respect your triggering ships by avoiding that mess. Respect others. The problem with Viv - and I will elaborate in the future - is that your audience is often a reflection of your work and it’s message/presentation. And most of the fandom Ive met are awful. Honestly, though lonesome I find more comfort keeping distant from fandoms because yall often extremely toxic and petty. Perhaps others have had better experiences than I however Im drawing a line in the sand. For MY sake. I’m annoyed with virtually anyone I sense great potential in that becomes wasted. Im angry at Viv because she can do so much better but is blocking HERSELF. This is from a creative and business mindset. When someone has potential that gets wasted - especially creatively - it burns me. Im just passionate on artistic fields. It doesnt mean I hate them. I hate the waste of full potential.

I’ll state things here people disagree with but encouraging harassment, hate or just being an overall cunt just aint on- It’s like people charade as being this fair being but its all bullshit. Self improve and sod off, I do NOT have time to parent you online.

And obviously there are RL duties I must fulfil. Some in which I will need the publics assistance for if you can spare it. Overall, Im just... Fandoms behaviour generally disgusts me. Disappoints me. We SHOULD be better than this. It’s like listening to bloomin incels rant on fuckin chad or some bullshit pill theory instead of looking to improve themselves too. Honestly... I do mostly acknowledge my own flaws and faults and try to improve each day. It just feels fewer folk see that in themselves and do the same. And that’s coming from an old cunt whos far from fuckin perfect. Also, my fuckin laptop broke so I waited a week for a bloke nearby to fix it. What a fuckin lifesaver, he’s the real mvp!

Also Also, one of you did privately apologise and I appreciate that. I certainly hope we agree to disagree and continue to grow as people on our separate ways. Trust me, I dont forget small acts like this. Even the trauma that caused and the aftermath, please dont think I dont appreciate the apology. However you’re also entitled to know that the forgiveness and healing side may take longer for me due to various factors that occurred - much that few are aware of, including yourself especially. I wish you well and safety.

Hip Happenin Now:

Still busy but slowly visiting. I’ll reply and reblog soon, be patient please. Ive still many things to sort which take priority as well as other things. Im trying to get money n shit for a future and whatnot. Health issues are strong in the blood rn and Im spending extended time with both Big and the other pets to keep up harmony, especially now that Big is accepting slowly that our porch is a welcome shelter for him and he’s free to leave and stay whenever. Trust me, overloaded isnt even the word. Im prepping shit early this year and from now on. Also, my God Ive been dealing with more physical issues as well and had to play doctor. May even need medical interference but holy shit I could never see this coming. Still... It’s... An experience- If you could call it that. Staying more active and healthy. Cat’s nearly clawed my eye out in my sleep (to which I can only presume Billy got too close or hyper) but it’s fortunate placement so Im alright. Most of my body is in pain to the point of absolute normality at this rate. And I plan to make space for a better altar. Future of the Blog:

Errr, it’s my fuckin space so it’s whatever I want really. Ill still have my Viv rants (ie, pros and cons of her work, HH/HB, other shit like that) however I just really dislike most the fandom at this point as well as the poor management and lack of professionalism and attitudes of staff. It’s just draggin me down and making me ill. I also want to showcase more of MY work (from redesigns to projects to some dumb 2am shit), cosplays, fashion, hobbies, spiritual practises - MY. SHIT. I feel like Ive strayed slightly. But I WILL be honest. And damn well will it upset people. And if it does and I’m genuinely ding something wrong/harmful - guide me patiently. Educate me. If it’s like this HD shit where Im not only allowed my opinions but justified on my traumas or mocking my disabilities or features, then just yeet yourself elsewhere. Also some of my gaming shit too. Getting to know folk who interact with my stuff and just... Create my space. For me. Something hopefully others can enjoy. Something that can function as a bit of an art portfolio as well. Critiques and whatnot. But I will continually not stand for anyone’s shit or poor handling of serious matters. You will not cause me to doubt and invalidate my experiences like you have to others. For now, Im tottering but slowly returning. For those who I previously and daily interacted with, I will get back to you. And Im sure you’re patient and understanding of my situation - it’s appreciated. But in terms of any fandom, more so if it’s known to be as hostile, I’d rather keep a healthy boundary between us. That’s for newer folk. Perhaps we may bond further and you’re welcome to try, however I do feel far safer not getting involved into other people’s shit any longer. I will put anon back on but any toxic shit will be reported as well as compiled so at least I have a reference on the actual toxic nature of fandoms. Likewise, Im slowly getting there but god theres a lot of fuckin work. So much that not even my closest friend has heard too much from me until recently. I’ll be returning to the grind for now as I have duties, as well as many demanding felines for my attention. Alongside some physical medical concerns which require additional care, I’ll be popping off now. Im thankful for those who have checked in on me. I will reply shortly. Take care

#im fucking tired #ive hardly had any alcohol lately as well #ive snuck some though but not as much for unwind time sadly #also discovered sourz alcohol and it is wonderful #i made someone laugh until literal pissing themselves though so #im taking bloody pride in that comedy so

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bladelearnt · 7 years ago

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k so i. really need to rant about this somewhere and i feel like im annoying the people who already know so im just gonna dump it here. yall dont have to read its really long

so we (me and my friend / roommate, lexi) had to move into these new dorms at a new location because the first set my college ran out of space for with the new students coming in. thats a whole new can of worms that im already over, but honestly, im so done with living here. we’ve been living here since the end of august and im about to murder half of the people living here. the only people i DONT want to murder are the people i go to class with, two girls, one of those girls being lexi.

at first it wasnt so bad. yeah, 6 people (including myself) is a pain in the ass to cram into a 3 bedroom apartment, so yeah we had to make some space adjustments, but thats UNDERSTANDABLE. you expect that kind of thing to happen. we had a meeting in the beginning over what some people disliked and what rules to put in play. everything was peachy.

2 weeks or so later, everything started going to shit. i dont know how does it, if its all three of these girls or just one, two, it doesnt matter. whoever is doing it leaves food out on the kitchen counter for DAYS. it not only goes to waste and takes up space for people who want to use the counters / stove but its disgusting. secondly, theres this girl who doesnt do shit herself. shes spoiled by her family so shes REALLY bad about taking out the trash. one time it was literally falling out and she still wouldnt take it out. i wasnt going to take it out because i am NOT her father and im not taking that shit out for her. shes older than i am, she needs to learn. these girls have also used things without asking as well, and i find that incredibly frustrating. if its not yours, no matter what it is, ASK. especially if youre not putting money into paying for it

the most frustrating part about this is we’ve had TWO meetings about this with these girls, so theres no excuse. the first time it happened it was getting better for about a week, and then it went back to normal. the second time it seemed to get worse out of spite for us. all because we were asking to do a simple thing. they always claim that theyre never home but i know theyre home because whenever they are home, i could probably hear them from outside due to how loud they are. its ridiculous.

then there was a whole situation with one of the girls, her name is laura, who had something of hers moved towards the trash can. it wasnt trash and she was very upset about it and left it in a note. we told her that it wasnt us. lexi had also left a note saying that she had moved it off of her desk (she has a mac desktop that is EXTREMELY expensive and people use it as a coat rack basically along with the desk) to the dining room table and not the trash and also that the kitchen was disgusting (6 pots all on the counter half full of food for nearly a day). this bitch got all up in arms in her next note and threatened to take it to the RD and said that lexi basically lied even though she SPECIFICALLY said that she moved it to the table, not the trash

we want to move so bad. so we go to talk to someone about it today and, fortunately, they have a space open for us, but they still are forcing us to wait a week or so after hes talked to them about cleaning and things like that to see if things get better. yeah, maybe they clean some today, but its day one. that shit aint gonna last. it doesnt help that laura literally talks shit about lexi right in front of her. ever since the meeting too shes been making passive aggressive remarks about her RGIHT IN FRONT OF LEXI but she wont talk to her. she’ll just say it to someone else. and now shes putting dishes in the dishwasher but claiming she cant do them bc the dish cleaning pods arent hers and she doesnt wanna “get hell” for using them. NOBODY SAID YOU CANT USE THINGS. WE JUST SAID TO FUCKING ASK FIRST. OPEN ! YOUR ! EARS ! god i hate her. i hate her so much for being such a fucking child over such a simple concept

im so sorry about this rant guys im just so done i dont wanna wait a week i dont want to wait i wanted to be out weeks ago i hate these girls i hate what theyre doing to the best friend ive ever made here at college i hate how me and lexi organize ours schedules so we dont have to see them i hate that they wont stop being children I HATE IT I HATE LIVING HERE

#✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* { the garbage has arrived (ooc) }#this doesnt have to do with anything online its just irl drama #and im just kinda done honestly

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rookiewithachance · 7 years ago

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ok you know what this is getting its own post so tumblr doesnt delete half my tags and therefor half the shit i have to say about this like it did with the first version of this post

personal shit below the cut—nothing bad or graphic or triggering (unless you count minor gender dysphoria and parents not getting it...) just me ranting about my parents and the gender identity crisis im going through right now.... so read at your own discretion

i knOW that this isn’t like a special or new issue.... this shit happens to lots of people, where they’re going through gender identity crises or what have you, and when they talk to their parents about it the parents just don’t fuckin get it. they’re not even like angry about it they just actively don’t understand, and they do it in a semi harmful way.

but listen okay l i s t e n

if i have to listen to my mom say “but why do you need to label it, why can’t you just be you” one more time im gonna mcfuckin lose it ok

she means well i know she does and she and my dad are from a very different time where labels were considered Bad but listen ma, i love you but a) why does what i choose to call myself bother you so damn much especially when you can see that im upset about it when i brought it up, and b) this??? IS me being myself????? that is exACTLY WHAT’S HAPPENING RN im trying!! to figure out who or what myself is!!! but thank you!!!!! for adding to my doubt and feeding the voice in my head that tells me that i’m just making shit up and that i’m taking away from the people who are actually going through gender stuff and that im just overthinking myself..................... because lowkey it feels like thats what im doing. and i know i kNOW that that’s probably not true because that’s exactly what i did with mental illness and boom would you look at that, and my mental health is probably affecting this as well, but...... mER

i dont even know if i can CALL this gender dysphoria... idk like that phrase carries such weight to me and this doesnt feel like its... at that level?? i dont feel like i was born into the wrong body or that i need to transition in any way bc to me my genitals dont have to define my gender. like look ok fuckin listen i have a fuckin vulva and a vagina and mammaries’r’w/e and shit but that doesnt have to mean im a girl. i dont need a dick to be masculine, just like i dont have to have a vulva to be feminine. which side tangent why do i even care masculinity and femininity are both social constructs and are complete bullshit in my opinion so whY DOES THIS EVEN MATTER TO ME??? @my brain what the actual fuck why are you like this

anyways

its not even like.... being referred to as female is what bothers me. i don’t mind she/her pronouns, i dont really care about what pronouns people use for me, but it’s just................. when someone uses female-coded or even male-coded language in reference towards me. things that started as gendered but became more neutral like dude or babe and other shit dont bother me its just...... like listen every time one of my parents calls me baby girl it lowkey actually makes me want to cry, and i dont know why i just feel so shitty being called that

i also just sometimes.... feel more masculine or more feminine than other times and wanna present differently. like im considering looking into getting a binder because i really feel like that would help with the presentation stuff but also!!! theres that doubt again!!!!! ahahahahaha silly kelli ur not trans binders arent For You and if you buy them that’s appropriation or something, either way its bad and you should feel shitty for considering it :)

is this like................ idk, is this genderfluid???? is that what this is??????? idk idk ive just been saying gender nonconforming bc that covers the gist of it and lets me sort my shit out without the pressure of needing to “””stay true””” to whatever label or thing i use..... again, another irrational anxiety but h e y thats me for ya

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa this is getting long but heres the thing: i love my parents. i really fucking do. they have their shortcomings of course because being the perfect parent is literally impossible, but all in all im pretty fortunate to have such loving parents. but theyre just. theyre a lot right now. i get it okay i do, they miss me and theyre going through separation stuff and they feel like theyre losing me or whatever but like...... i dont........ want to video chat every night, like we did my freshman year. i needed that then, and what i need now is...... space. some space to figure out how to be a singular entity doing shit for myself and having time to be alone with my thoughts yknow. my mental health is in the goddamn sewers and i havent been sleeping as well as i should be and im feeling overwhelmed with schoolwork and clubs and then of course all this gender stuff started happening :) so yeah sorry if im not very talkative when you chat with me every single night. i dont have much to talk about, and the stuff you guys talk about???? sorry but.... i dont really care. its shitty to say but i just. i dont. i love you guys but i have better shit to be doing than talking about who you saw in the coffeeshop this morning or what happened at work

and see, normally i would talk to them about this. but i just... dont think that would do anyone any good. they wont understand it, and then when i explain it theyre just gonna feel dumb, and theyre gonna forget and slip up and never remember and then just go around feeling guilty about it without ever changing their language...... and their guilt is gonna make me feel like shit too. so whats even the point of telling them about it?? of getting them to actually sit down and listen instead of bringing it up in the middle of sobbing my way through my woes and my parents asking me well meant but upsetting questions and then moving on as if nothing happened

sigh........... idk. thats about it i guess. congrats if you got this far, im sending you digital hugs. words of support are of course appreciated but not at all necessary, i aint fishin for anything im just here to lay it all out in one place. hopefully i get some of all this mess sorted out. if i had more money id just go ahead and buy a binder but im a bit strapped for cash. not broke per se but i have very limited funds and those have to carry me through the entire semester, so....... trying not to make any unnecessary purchases and my brain refuses to justify a binder as something worth the money.......... which again, is probably not true, but.... we’ll see.

much love to you all, im gonna head to bed and try to sleep cause i got class in the morning and i still havent finished the readings ;3

#personal #about me #long post #//fingerguns #im not really looking for answers or anything i just needed to put it all down in one place and idk why else do i have a blog than to #send my thoughts spiraling into the endless void of the unforgiving internet to be lost to obscurity #//flails limbs #im tired #night yall

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muffin--stuffin · 6 years ago

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Traveling

I'm sorry if this doesnt make a whole lot of sense but i'm just going to brain dump.

You know, all my life i felt like i was watching time pass, always waiting for something better. It was always: next month ill do this, next year ill do that, when i graduate ill be able to do this ... and so on. I kept realizing that i kept waiting for things to get better rather than taking those strides myself, i always felt i was subjected to a clock or a calendar or an agenda that someone else made for me. These past few years, and it certainly wasn’t instant, i’ve been making huge steps to take control of my life. I've been going out with me, taking myself to restaurants, movies, events, initiating making plans with friends. And through all that i really learned more about myself, who am i, what i like, and how i want to be treated. And when i learned more about myself i stopped letting myself be treated in shitty ways.

Only when I cut off people who were treating me poorly did i learn that what they were doing wasn't love like they said, but their own faults and shortcomings that they need to deal with. I became so much happier when i took control of how i was being treated. And honestly the more control i take of my life, the more happier i get. People who didn’t deserve my love, kindness, or patience lost out and i put that energy into people who love me well in return.

One of the biggest steps i’ve been taking is travelling more. Meeting and learning about new people who grew up differently from you really helps you grow as a person. And all around the world you’ll meet good and bad people.

I’ve traveled twice now by myself, and both times at the end i’ve felt sad. However, as i sit here on a plane reflecting on both trips i can honestly say that they were two very different kinds of sadness.

Without going into too much detail both trips were incredible in the sense of gaining new experiences and having fun, you know i love travelling. But the first trip ended with a sadness of realization that i wasnt happy with how my life was, the people i was with, the relationships we had were hollowness being held together on by a thread, it didnt have a sturdy base, i was homesick, tired, and most unfortunately, i felt lonely around people who said they loved me, and that was a big realization for me. I changed a lot of my life up again.

The bad experiences i had i don't regret tho, i learned a lot from it. And im learning during my good experiences too, so next:

Vegas.

Man lets talk about vegas, what a way to spend a weekend. B was there and the opprtunity presented itself to go, so i bought a ticket thursday and flew out after working overnight into friday. Man was i so sleep deprived that day lmao. I think i woke up at 2 pm after working wed night, bought a ticket, packed my bags, and went to work thursday. Went home friday morning and dealt with delays, couldnt sleep on the plane and arrived in vegas at like 9pm (12 am east) punk ass time difference >:(. But after getting off that plane a second wind got me, we went out late at night, went to a club, made connections with fun people, went to bed at like 4 am. That night club was jewel, we got in for free and finagled some drinks. Never, ever drink AMF, regardless of what some girl is tryna tell u when ur already sloppy drunk, its worst than long island. Ive never been so drunk before hahah so honestly i dont really remember that night. But i think we had the best pizza ever at a place called eataly.

Saturday!! First full day in Vegas, and boy did i luck out, not on slots tho (i lost so much money gambling) and its probably because i used all my luck finding PG. Not til later tho. Saturday i walked all around sober, found some amazing sushi for the lads and just felt free. It was incredible, the views, the freedom, the exploration. That’s one of my favorite parts of travelling, feeling so free and small in such a big world. Later was the meet up, and i was nervous, of course, but like i felt so comfortable immediately. That night was a lot of fun, i think like 6 of us went out but... as i sit here writing this, i kinda realized that i don’t want to write everything out to the public. The memories we all made together are special to us and not for the world to know. They are memories that i'm going to cherish and they belong to us. In both a group setting and especially one on one time i spent with my friends, i was so, so happy. & you know what happens in vegas ..stays in vegas 😆

But one of the main points to this was to talk about my emotions about leaving vegas, so i will touch on that. So as quick as it came, as quick as it left unfortunately..

Leaving vegas - i’m sad but for a happier reason, i dont want to leave quite yet, this feelings getting cut short. Like friday and saturday i was having the time of my life, sunday was amazing, but then i kinda got hit with a wave. I caught myself not being me and it was because im going to miss the people i met, the times we had, and the friends we made. But it was hard, i really had to catch myself being lame for a while, and i felt like i was wasting the lil time we had. How sad is that? And then i felt guilty for being a little different and bummed out.

But you know what, I think there's something tragically beautiful about being sad at the end of a vacation. It means you were having an amazing time and you don't want the memories to end, but it also means you're afraid of the future. I don't want to be scared that life will get worse or im bound to be just some fuck up.

And idk maybe we used eachother as a weekend escape from our lives, but holy shit PG i wish you knew your worth because you're incredible, and i regret not making it clear. I feel like you were a little anxious about showing us the best around vegas but cmon.. i loved your company when we werent doing anything. But why was i sad and fearful? Maybe i'm afraid that all we had was that short time limit, but if all we were was an expiration date, why did it feel you've belonged in a space near me as if you had it our whole lives? Maybe it was fate but I'll also choose not to believe that you were only worth a time limit. I am so tired of this looming shadow that someone else has created over me that people are temporary in my life until i screw things up. I hate how engrained these two have put it into my head that i dont deserve this. I dont want to believe that people who are making me happy in the present arent going to last. You know i'll take control of this part of my life. Yeah im sad im leaving but ive been creating this life for me where im so fortunate to have friends that are just the best. I shouldnt be afraid or sad that something like this wont happen again, because it will. Honestly, maybe i dont deserve them but i know one thing, is that i want to make them happy.

And B man you've had a tough month and you're staying really strong. I hope im doing something okay that helps you through these shitty times you're going through. You're an amazing friend and i wish you would find a happiness in yourself and your friends. I notice you've been trying to stay strong but i hope you're not letting it eat you away, im really happy you've been confiding ur feelings to me because i know it's tough. Stay strong bruther. It just breaks my heart seeing when you’re sad

#rambles

0 notes

annaxkeating · 6 years ago

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Increase Your Landing Page Speed (By Stealing Our Homework)

If you’ve read Unbounce’s 2019 Page Speed Report (and you really should), then you already know why speed is so important this year. Slow-loading landing pages have always been an obstacle to higher conversions, and now Google is punishing poor mobile load times in its search rankings. To be successful in 2019, we—marketers—need to be thinking fast. But are we?

To find out, we polled almost 400 marketers on their attitudes around page speed and asked what (if anything) they were doing to get faster.

Just 56% of marketers are happy with their mobile load times, according to the 2019 Page Speed Report.

Almost three of every four respondents said they had taken steps to improve their page speeds over the last year, and that’s pretty good. Alarmingly, though, only half of marketers we surveyed are satisfied with their load times on mobile.

So most marketers are trying to get faster, but many aren’t where they want to be. Which begs the question: what are people doing to speed up their landing page load times?

Computer, enhance!

Only 39% of marketers have bothered to find out how fast their pages are actually loading. Not great.

Here, we start to see why marketers are somewhat pessimistic about their page speed progress. Just over half have optimized their landing page images—ostensibly one of the simplest ways to speed up your load times—and even fewer have done any of the real technical-sounding things they need to get faster. (I mean, fair, they sound pretty boring to us, too.)

Here’s a doozy, though: just one in three marketers have run a website speed test to find out whether their load times are impacting their conversions. That’s the easiest one!

And hey, we get it. Marketers are being asked to do more than ever before, often with fewer resources. If you’re a small team (or a single person, the smallest of the teams), you might feel you don’t have the time or expertise to meaningfully improve your page speed.

But I’ve gone and done the hard work for you—me, a film school graduate who, until recently, believed that his Apple computer was impervious to viruses. (Hoo boy, it is not.) I’ve spent hours talking to Unbounce developers, reading how-to guides, and generally just bombarding my brain with the most dull, technical page speed information I could get ahold of. (Apologies to said developers.) And if I can get my head around it, there’s no excuse for the rest of you.

Below, I’ve simplified some of the most effective ways to increase your landing page loading times in a guide. For each fix, I’ve indicated the technical difficulty and the estimated time it’ll take, so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself in to. Use the table of contents below to jump to what’s relevant to you, or go ahead and do it all in order.

Jump to a Landing Page Speed Fix

How to Check Your Landing Page Speed

Run a Google Speed Test (5 Minutes)

Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer (5 Minutes)

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes

Reduce Your Page Content (15 Minutes)

Optimize Your Images (30 Minutes)

Host Your Videos Elsewhere (30 Minutes)

Audit Your Hosting Solution (30 Minutes)

Implement a CDN (30 Minutes)

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes

Minify HTML, JS, and CSS (15 Minutes)

Enable Browser Caching (15 Minutes)

Set Up GZIP Compression (15 Minutes)

Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins (30 Minutes)

Convert Images to Sprites (30 Minutes)

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes

Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS (45 Minutes)

Start Hand-Coding with AMP

Final note: If you’ve built your page with Unbounce, you can skip a lot of this stuff—we make many speed fixes on the back-end automatically. In this post, look for the ‘Building Pages in Unbounce?‘ callout boxes to see if a given fix is something you need to implement.

Look for these callout boxes throughout this post to get Unbounce-specific tips and learn how we automatically optimize your landing pages to make them load super fast.

How to Check Your Landing Page Speed

First things first.

Before you throw on your hard hat and start hitting things with a hammer (both figuratively and literally), it’s important to have some idea of what’s working—and what’s not—on your landing page. That means running a speed audit.

It’s important to point out that, regardless of which speed test you use, you don��t want to get too hung up on your score. Achieving a perfect score is not always technically possible (and it might not even be desirable). Instead, use your results as a general guideline to improve page speed and implement the fixes that make sense for you.

Okay—let’s test them pages.

Run a Google Speed Test

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes

There are a bunch of great tools for testing your page speed, but why not start with the big dog itself? Google’s PageSpeed Insights is an awesome way to do a quick performance check-up with at-a-glance recommendations. (Ryan Engley, Unbounce’s VP of Product Marketing, explains how to interpret and act on your PageSpeed Insights results in this must-read blog post.) Then there’s Lighthouse, a newer tool from Google that provides a comprehensive analysis of your how your page presents to end users.

You’ll also want to run your page through Google’s Test My Site tool, which will check your speed from a mobile perspective.

Clicking on individual results in PageSpeed Insights will reveal your problematic page elements.

Running a Google speed test should only take a couple of minutes, and the results will help you identify some of the top opportunities to boost your landing page load times.

Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes

Running a speed test with Google should be your top priority, but PageSpeed Insights doesn’t give results tailored to landing pages. For that, you’ll want to run your page through the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which not only provides feedback on page performance but includes a bunch of advice on creating more effective campaigns and kicking your conversions into overdrive.

Unbounce’s Landing Page Analyzer provides feedback on page speed, but also actionable advice on things like SEO, message match, and mobile-friendliness.

Building Pages in Unbounce? Then you’ll definitely want to give our Landing Page Analyzer a shot. Get best-practice recommendations for conversion optimization and see how your landing pages stack up against others in your industry.

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes

With your results from both Google and Unbounce, you’ll be well-equipped to move onto the actual work of making your page perform better. It’s time to pick up that hammer.

These fixes should be simple enough for anyone to tackle, regardless of their technical expertise.

Reduce Your Page Content

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

We’ve marked this as an easy opportunity to increase your page speed, but it probably won’t feel like that when you start thinking about which elements on your page you can junk. Marketers love big hero shots, beautiful supporting imagery, and fun, animated explainer videos. But how much of that content is actually helping you drive conversions?

Visual content accounts for a huge portion of the size of an average web page—images account for over 20% of web page weight, as pointed out by Kinsta—and each element creates an HTTP request. That’s when your visitor’s browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the elements of your page. Too many calls can be a serious drag on your load time, so one of the simplest ways to improve your page speed is cutting down the number of elements you include.

Look at each piece of content on your page critically, then ask yourself: “Does this spark joy?” “Does this increase conversions?” If you don’t think there are pieces you can toss, try running an A/B test with a slimmed-down version of the page. The results might surprise you.

Bottom line: stick to the fundamentals of good landing page design and try to keep the number of elements (and thus HTTP requests) to a minimum.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We recommend that you keep things pretty lean, but we’d never remove content from your landing page. (Must resist… desire… to do best practices…) This is one optimization that you’ll have to tackle on your own.

Optimize Your Images

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

Once you’ve trimmed some elements from your page, you’ll want to optimize the content that made the cut. Poor image optimization is the most common reason for slow page loads, especially for mobile visitors. Fortunately, it’s also one of the easiest issues to fix.

These are some quick tips for shrinking your images and improving your page speed. The goal here should be getting images at least under 800kb, but the smaller we can make them, the better.

Resize your images

It’s easy to chuck a larger image onto your page and rely on your content management system (CMS) to compress it to the appropriate size, but it’ll still be loading at least some of those extra pixels on the back end, and your visitors are going to feel it in the load. When you add an image, make sure it’s the same dimensions that your page will be rendering it.*

*This doesn’t necessarily apply to Unbounce’s retina image support—read up on that here.

Choose the right file type

Most people don’t think too much about the format of the image they’re uploading, but it can have a dramatic effect on page performance. The file types you’re probably most familiar with are JPEG and PNG—and, yes, there are differences.

JPEG is a ‘lossy’ format, which means it’ll lose some data during compression. That typically gives you a smaller file, but it can come at the expense of visual fidelity. Generally, images with significant color variation (say, photographs) perform better as JPEGs, and any dip in quality can usually go undetected.

PNG is ‘lossless,’ so the image’s appearance won’t change when resized, but it tends to make for larger files if there’s significant color variation. PNG is ideal for simple images with defined shapes, like those with text. Saving PNGs in 8-bit (rather than 24-bit, which has a broader color palette) can help shave off some extra bites.

Here are some optimization tips for JPEG and PNG (and GIF, that villain) from Google itself.

Use compression tools

Before your weigh-in, it’s good to run images through a final round of compression. There are plenty of image compression tools on WordPress, as well as some free, standalone ones like TinyPNG. These shrinky gizmos offer a simple way to cut down your image sizes without braving the cursed labyrinth that is Adobe’s export settings. (Hey, I’m a words guy.)

Your takeaways here are:

Ensure your image dimensions match how they’ll actually be displayed

Use JPEG when a slight dip in visual fidelity isn’t the end of the world (like photography), but PNG when it is (images with text and sharp lines)

Compress images to keep the file size as tiny as possible

If you want to take a deeper dive into image optimization, we recommend that you check out this post from Search Engine Land, which goes into detail on making images smaller while keeping them beautiful.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got you covered. Unbounce’s Auto Image Optimizer shrinks your images as soon as they’re uploaded so you can focus on making the best landing page possible.

Host Your Videos Elsewhere

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

Why carry something yourself when you can make someone else carry it for you? That’s my motto for landing pages and life, and it’s why I’m no longer welcome on Unbounce’s company hiking trips.

Hosting videos on your own domain can be great for SEO purposes, but that’s not usually our goal with landing pages. We want everything to load in a flash and give our visitors the best chance to convert. Depending on your hosting solution, though, your videos might be slowing down your page speed, suffering from playback issues, and taking up an uncomfortable amount of server space.

Done properly, transferring videos to a third-party platform can shed some extra load time and help your pages render faster. Consider moving video content to Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo, then using a light embed technique so that your videos only load heavier playback elements when your visitors actually click on them.

Building Pages in Unbounce? As a disclaimer: Using light embed codes with Unbounce (or any custom code, for that matter) will require some technical knowledge to implement and could, in rare cases, cause issues. Check out this Unbounce community post for more information.

Audit Your Hosting Solution

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

Loading speed isn’t just determined by what’s on your landing page. Your web host also has a major influence in how quickly your page rolls out to potential customers.

There are three common models for web hosting:

Shared hosting Generally the most affordable solution, shared hosting is when your website is hosted alongside other sites on a single web server. Everyone draws from common resources (like storage space and processing power), which means—you guessed it—you need to share.

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting This is essentially a mix of both shared and dedicated hosting. With VPS, your website still shares server space with others, but you’ll have dedicated resources that no one else can dip into. The result is more power and flexibility, but it tends to come with a higher price tag.

Dedicated hosting For those who’ve had a traumatic roommate experience (who hasn’t?), dedicated hosting means your website has the server all to itself. More resources, no sharing. That’s great if you’re heavy on digital content and get a ton of traffic, but dedicated hosting is also the most expensive option and requires the technical know-how to set up and maintain your server.

Low-volume websites can generally get by with the cost-effective shared solution, but once your traffic starts to rise, you might not be getting enough juice from your web host to deliver content quickly—and that’s when load times start to suffer. (Give this post from Search Engine Journal a read for a more comprehensive explanation.)

It’s also important to note that the whereabouts of your web server can have a significant impact on your page speed. If you’re not using a content delivery network (CDN; more on this below), you’ll want to make sure that traffic from foreign countries isn’t encountering too much latency.

Think your hosting solution might be impacting your page speed? Run your site through a server speed test like this one from Bitcatcha, and use WebPageTest or Pingdom to see how your quickly your landing page loads in other countries. Depending on the results, you might decide it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan (or change web hosts altogether).

Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to worry about this one—Unbounce’s global hosting solution boasts 99.95% uptime and ensures that your landing pages always have the necessary resources to load super fast.

Implement a CDN

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

When your landing page gets a visitor, their web browser pings your server to get the content necessary to build out the page. Simple, right? Everyone downloads your website information from the same place, regardless of their location around the world. Well, that’s usually fine if the visitor is in or close to the country that your web server is located, but when they’re halfway around the globe, chances are they’re going to encounter some latency.

To avoid that, you should look into deploying a CDN, which caches your website across a network of data centers and proxy servers all over the planet. Say your own server is in the United States and someone from Lithuania is trying to visit your landing page. Instead of downloading your content from across the Atlantic, that visitor can pull a cached version from a server nearby.

Setting your website up with a CDN is pretty straightforward and—depending on your traffic—generally affordable. Here’s a list of some popular CDN providers from Mashable.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got five global data centers supporting the Unbounce CDN, which means your landing pages will load in a flash regardless of where they’re being accessed from.

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes

These next speed fixes are a little trickier, but they should be manageable for marketers with a little technical know-how. Still, a mistake here could mean actual damage to your landing page.

Our recommendation? Do some research, make a backup, and—if you can—consult briefly with a developer on your team. It never hurts to have an experienced colleague to turn to if you get in over your head.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We talk a lot about WordPress through this next section. If you’re using our plugin to publish Unbounce landing pages to a WordPress domain, some of these recommended speed fixes can actually cause technical issues. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for clarification if you’re ever unsure.

Minify HTML, CSS, and JS

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

All those lines of HTML, CSS, and JS code that make up your landing page? They’re packed with spaces, line breaks, and other bits of formatting that make it more legible and easier for us to interpret, but each makes your load time just an eensy bit slower—and the web browsers your visitors are using to render your page don’t particularly need them.

With minification, the goal is to cut out all of that extra junk and condense your code so that browsers can read it faster. Here’s an example snippet of Javascript code from Wikipedia:

var array = []; for (var i = 0; i < 20; i++) { array[i] = i; }

After minifying, that code would look something like this:

for(var a=[i=0];++i<20;a[i]=i);

There are plenty of free online tools that will do this for your landing page, like Minify Code, as well as a bunch of WordPress plugins. Be sure to check out this post from Elegant Themes, which is an awesome resource that dives into the many options at your disposal.

Building Pages in Unbounce? Do we minify? We practically invented minifying. (Editor’s note: We did not.) Unbounce compresses all of your code automatically, making your landing page as slim as can be. No coding your pages from scratch and no minifying that code in the background? We’re making this too easy for you.

Enable Browser Caching

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

The goal with any landing page should be getting prospects to convert the first time they visit, but the reality is that not everyone will. Sometimes, visitors will need some time to think about it: they’ll bounce, do more research, check out some competitors, then come back to your original offer. Browser caching ensures that when they return, your page will load even faster—and that’ll make them more likely to convert.

Not sure if you’ve already got caching enabled? Before you start, run a quick caching check using a tool like this one from GiftOfSpeed.

If your site is built on WordPress, enabling caching is as easy as adding a plugin.* (WordPress is almost too easy, huh?) Check out this list of caching plugins, most of which include quick instructions for getting set up.

*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these caching recommendations could create big problems. Check with us first.

For those not on WordPress, enabling browser caching on your own is pretty simple if you’re willing to get your hands dirty. For example, on Apache web servers, it comes down to inserting a little bit of code into the .htaccess file on your web host or server: <IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year” ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month” ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year” ExpiresDefault “access 1 month” </IfModule>

This article from Varvy provides a great how-to, as does this one from WinningWP (which discusses enabling browser caching from a WordPress perspective but is applicable more broadly).

If all of this makes you nervous, there’s likely a simpler method for you to set up browser caching. Most web hosts will enable caching for you if you ask. Depending on your hosting solution, it might be as easy as making a phone call. (Although, now that I think about it, that might be more daunting for some of us.)

Building Pages in Unbounce? Seven-day browser caching is enabled on all Unbounce-built landing pages, so this is a speed fix you can comfortably skip. Maybe use this free time to treat yourself to some self-care? You’ve earned it.

Set Up GZIP Compression

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

When a visitor reaches your landing page, their browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the page and the server transmits them back. Naturally, that process moves faster if the information being sent is compressed to be as small as possible. Here’s where GZIP compression comes in.

(You’ll want to check to see if GZIP compression is already enabled before you get started.)

As with browser caching, the difficulty of setting up GZIP compression is going to be determined by how your website was built. If you use WordPress, you’re in luck: many WordPress plugins will enable GZIP compression for you almost automatically. If you don’t use WordPress, well, we’re headed back into your server.

This article from GTmetrix provides a quick overview of the importance of GZIP compression and how to enable it. With Apache web servers, you’ll need to add this chunk of code to your .htaccess file. <IfModule mod_deflate.c> # Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml

# Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers) BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html Header append Vary User-Agent </IfModule>

And again, if this is beyond your comfort zone, your web host will probably help you set up GZIP compression if you ask nicely.

Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to ask us nicely, because we’ve already done it. All Unbounce landing pages are automatically compressed during data transfer. (But be nice to us anyway, alright?)

Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

WordPress is wonderful in its simplicity. As we’ve seen throughout this article, page speed fixes that might require a front-end developer on a static website can often be achieved by simply installing a WordPress plugin. Want to enable browser caching? Boom, W3 Total Cache.* Need to minify your scripts? Pow, Autoptomize.* Developer, shmeveloper.

But because it’s so easy to add functionality through plugins, WordPress websites have a habit of collecting a lot of them—along with all the of the bits and bites of code that make them work. Those add up.

Take a look at the scripts and plugins you’ve added to your website and decide whether they’re essential to your visitor experience. If they’re not, junking them could help cut some extra seconds off of your load time. (And guess what? There’s a plugin for that.) You can also disable plugins one at a time, then retest your page speed to determine which ones are problematic.

*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these plugins in particular might start a fire.

Building Pages in Unbounce? This is more of WordPress fix, but it also applies to Unbounce customers that have inserted a bunch of custom scripts onto their landing pages. Learn how the Unbounce Script Manager helps you keep things tidy.

Convert Images to Sprites

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

If your landing page includes a series of similar-sized images (say, for a client logo bar), you can shorten your load time by combining them into an image sprite, then use CSS to display specific chunks of that sprite at a time. This post from WebFX provides a great step-by-step guide for creating CSS sprites.

Joining smaller images into a larger file might seem counterintuitive, but again, the idea here is to reduce the number of HTTP requests on your page and ultimately make it faster. Each individual image requires its own call—combining images into a single CSS sprite means your page only needs to make one.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We don’t build CSS sprites for you, but you can certainly use them on your Unbounce-built landing pages. Check out our documentation on custom JS and CSS with Unbounce.

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes

We’re into the scary stuff now.

These are fixes you should absolutely not attempt unless you know what you’re doing or you’ve consulted extensively with a front-end developer. (We even had one of the Unbounce devs fact-check this article, and we’ve never felt smaller.) Proceed with caution.

Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS

Difficulty: Hard / Estimated Time: 45 Minutes

Those CSS and JS scripts that make your landing page beautiful and enable cool, dynamic functionality? They could be one of the major reasons that your page is loading so slowly. (Bad news for my flashing, neon visitor counter.)

When a web browser runs into CSS or JS in the head of your document, it’ll wait to download and process that content before continuing to render your page’s HTML. That might sound like a good thing from a user experience perspective—after all, we want people to see our landing page as it was intended—but it actually means that visitors can be left waiting on a blank screen while everything loads in the background.

To avoid this, we need to implement techniques for preventing render-blocking CSS and JS on our landing page. (Refer back to your Google PageSpeed Insights results to check if any scripts are slowing down your page load.)

Reduce render-blocking CSS

There are a couple of ways that we can neutralize render-blocking CSS. One option is to defer all CSS until after the HTML has loaded. That’ll certainly improve page speed, but it will also present non-styled content when the visitor first reaches our page. Not ideal.

The other, more preferable option is to defer most style rules until the HTML has been rendered, but inline the CSS necessary to correctly display content above the fold within the HTML. That way, visitors will see the properly-styled content as soon as they hit the page while the rest will load out of view. Pretty sneaky. This is a great tutorial using a real-life example from codeburst.io.

Another page speed opportunity for you here is combining your CSS files. By moving your style rules from several files to just one (or maybe two, tops), you can reduce the number of times that visitors need to ping your web server and improve your landing page load time. Here’s a good resource from GiftOfSpeed on combining and compressing you CSS scripts.

Eliminate render-blocking JS

Like CSS, JS scripts can prevent your landing page from rendering as quickly as you might like. We can avoid that by deploying the defer and async attributes. The former tells the browser to wait until your HTML is rendered before it begins pulling in JS scripts, while the latter asks that JS be downloaded simultaneously without interrupting the HTML download.

An important note is that not all JS scripts are equal: some are critical to the rendering of your page and need to be addressed right out of the gate, so they’ll have to stay at the top. Dareboost does a good job of explaining how to distinguish between critical and non-critical JS, as well as how to implement deferred and asynchronous loading.

Building Pages in Unbounce? Unbounce optimizes for most Google PageSpeed Insights recommendations, including the removal of render-blocking elements. That means you can skip this one.

Start Hand-Coding with AMP

Difficulty: Very Hard / Estimated Time: ∞ Hours

Alright, “∞ hours” is an overstatement, but implementing AMP is no small task. Developed by Google, the AMP project is an entirely new framework with which to build your web pages. The goal? Dramatically improve page speed, especially for mobile users.

AMP is made up of three core components: AMP HTML, AMP JS, and AMP Cache. That means you’ll need to learn new markup, as well as understand the framework well enough to get your landing pages validated and make sure they actually work.

We won’t get into the nitty-gritty of building with AMP here, but the AMP website has a bunch of resources (including tutorials) to help you get started.

Building Pages in Unbounce? No hand-coding AMP pages for you—Unbounce makes it easy to drag and drop together AMP experiences. Choose one of our AMP-optimized templates, load your content, get validated, and start publishing lightning-fast landing pages right away.

Improving your landing page speed can sound intimidating, but even small tweaks will make a big difference for your load times. Tackle the easy stuff first, then move onto more challenging fixes as you get comfortable. And above all, keep testing: seeing your improved speed results after each undertaking will give you the confidence and motivation to move forward.

Or, you know, just build with Unbounce. We automatically handle most of the speed fixes listed (or at least makes them super easy), which saves a ton of time. That means you can focus on what matters: getting more conversions and improving ROI.

from Digital https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/increase-landing-page-speed/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#digital marketing

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mrstevenbushus · 6 years ago

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How to Choose a Smart Home Security System

The smart tech industry continues to grow, and now, like your lighting, heating and speakers, the burglar alarm has been given a modern update for the smartphone era.

Recent research has found that 71% of us do not feel our homes are secure enough and one in 50 British properties has suffered a break-in in the last 12 months.

Despite this, a full 85% of UK homeowners only install additional security features after their house has already been burgled.

It’s clear that it’s time to start thinking seriously about how we keep our abodes safe from intruders. Traditional CCTV setups can be expensive to run, and often feature grainy video quality, which makes it difficult to identify trespassers.

Fortunately, a wealth of smart tech options now exists to protect your property with just a few taps on a touchscreen. These devices give you the ability to lock your house remotely, receive real time updates on people leaving and entering and watch HD footage recorded from wherever you happen to be, at any time.

Most smart home hubs also provide integration with other tech you may already own, supercharging your setup with more helpful features.

The Loxone smartphone app offers precise control over your home’s security features

Fancy interacting with your home via Alexa? No problem. Want to set lighting and heating patterns in tandem with alarms and holiday modes? You’ve got it!

In theory, this should make it easier for you to find the best solution for your household – especially as these products are generally simple to customise.

But with so many different options out there, it’s worth weighing up your choice properly to maximise the effectiveness of your new setup. Here, I’ve broken down the primary considerations you should make in order to pick the right system.

What do you want to use it for?

Individual households will need different levels and methods of protection, depending on factors like the size and location of your home and how often you’ll be in the property.

Most burglars are opportunists, and if they see a visible security system, they’re likely to move on elsewhere.

If you’re just looking to cover the basics, your needs might be met by one of the starter kit options on the market.

These setups will generally include a combination of cameras, sirens, door locks, motion detectors and sensors that can spot when a door or a window has opened.

For instance, the Somfy starter pack includes a TaHoma Smart Home box, motion detector, opening sensor, siren and indoor camera that can be hooked up to a smartphone or tablet, so you can monitor your property and download recordings should an intruder be detected.

The Netatmo indoor camera sends an immediate alert to your phone when an intruder enters your home, complete with a picture of their face and a video recording. To avoid unnecessary alerts, you can train the device to identify loved ones with a single click during the initial setup

Nearly all brands will provide the chance to add on upgrades that are tailored to the bespoke needs of your household. For example, some companies offer baby monitoring facilities.

The Panasonic Smart Home system features a night vision camera with a two-way microphone and even comes with a selection of lullabies to soothe baby to sleep. And if you know only the kids are going to be in, Loxone’s setup is capable of disabling dangerous appliances, like the cooker, until you return.

For those who travel a lot, whole-house integrated systems, such as those available from Smarthomes, Moss Technical and Loxone, offer holiday modes that simulate occupancy.

Some can even learn last week’s activity and play it back – incorporating lights, curtains, TV use etc.

Moss Technical’s Niko Home Control systems can also trigger speakers to play a barking dog track and switch lights on when movement is detected outside.

If you have elderly relatives, opting for a solution with a motion sensor can alert you to any unusual activity – set your app to let you know if grandma has not entered the kitchen by 11:00AM, for instance.

Some offerings can even be programmed to ignore your pet’s movements so that they don’t set off the alarm. ADT can tailor its security setups to incorporate these features.

It’s also worth thinking about whether you can use the items included in your package creatively. For example, if you have set your lighting, heating and blinds to turn on automatically when you arrive home from work, perhaps through GPS proximity, you could have the system switch off the alarm.

If this level of integration appeals to you, opting for a solution that offers If This, Then That (IFTTT) compatibility could be a good option.

On the IFTTT website, you can search through thousands of automation recipes that can help make your tech work harder for you.

What’s your budget?

Some starter security packages might not be enough by themselves if you have a larger property. Shelling out for additional cameras and sensors can quickly add up, so make sure you’re considering the pay off when making your initial choice.

Remember that the cheapest all-in-one kit may not end up the most cost-effective solution if you need a lot of extras to ensure your home is fully secured.

A good budget option is the Samsung SmartThings Starter Kit, in which you get two multipurpose sensors, a motion detector, a hub and a power outlet for £200, with the option to feed in additional compatible items, ranging from security features through to voice assistants and even your washing machine.

Nest Cam Indoor has a built-in speaker and mic, so you can hear what’s happening at home and even speak to intruders (or the dog) over the microphone

At the top of the range, the likes of Loxone specialise in whole-house automation infrastructure. This can connect 150 different products to create a complete smart system, incorporating security, lighting, heating, blinds and multimedia functions.

It’s worth noting that if your setup includes cameras, many suppliers require you to pay a monthly subscription fee to keep the footage on their cloud-based storage.

While these generally aren’t too pricey, it adds another cost to your monthly outgoings. If this is a concern, look for a firm that will let you download your footage locally. Netatmo and Panasonic, for instance, do not charge a monthly fee.

How confident are you in installing a smart system yourself?

Many plug-and-play setups are solid on the basis of speed and ease of setup, with installation generally controlled directly from the smartphone app.

The Nuki smart lock, for example, can be fitted over your existing lock and securely installed within 90 seconds without the need for screws or drills. Similarly, the Ring smart doorbell comes with all you need to fit it on your own in just a few minutes.

But setting a system up yourself has its limitations.

For instance, if you aren’t familiar with a home’s typical weakest points, then you may not place your cameras or sensors in the most appropriate areas.

So, while you might want to save on costs, it is worth considering hiring a professional to carry out your installation.

This eliminates the risk that your system might be fitted inefficiently, which could mean the property still remains a viable target for thieves.

All the smart home offerings by Yale come with a free security survey of your abode, where a trained professional will assess the site’s vulnerabilities and inform you of any other weak points that could benefit from an upgrade.

You can then elect to have them carry out the fit for a £109.99 fee. Afterwards, the installer will test the new system and provide training on how to use it.

Closer Look

The CCTV setup in this listed home consists of 43 cameras, which includes static, PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) and dome units. The owners can view recordings on their smartphone or tablet, even when they aren’t at the house.

Contact and vibration detectors are embedded in every accessible window and door and PIR motion detection is used throughout the property as both perimeter and trap protection.

Read more: Smart CCTV Security in a Listed Home

Most security-specific solutions run off your Wi-Fi, meaning they won’t work outside of a certain range.

If you set this up DIY, you might place cameras outside of the signal boundary, or where walls or furniture may block the signal and prevent it from working properly. If you’re worried about the efficiency of your Wi-Fi, then consider commissioning a professional wired installation, or look for a system with GPRS.

Honeywell offers several GPRS smart alarm options that will still send notifications via email and SMS, even if your property suffers a power failure.

How tech-savvy are you?

Good smart home products should make your life easier, not add complication.

If you have brand loyalty, and opt to use your preferred company’s tech, then you should be able to feed the new security capabilities into your existing system quite easily.

If you elect to use different suppliers for the various smart features within your home, you may end up with multiple apps to control each element – so consider if this is something you’re happy to deal with.

Regardless of which system you opt for, be sure to take the time to fully test it once installed, so you know it’s working as it should. Seven homes a minute are burgled in the UK, so it’s worth making sure yours isn’t next.

The post How to Choose a Smart Home Security System appeared first on Build It.

Article reference How to Choose a Smart Home Security System

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allworldus · 6 years ago

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Grand Canal Mall, Bonifacio, Manila

Near the top of every traveler’s Bucket List is a trip to Venice, Italy’s majestic and unique city where water canals make up every one of the streets. In fact, Venice is a series of about 100 small islands on a lagoon in the Adriatic Sea, with boats on waterways the only method of transportation (aside from sidewalks and bridges, of course) between them. So, if you want to see Venice and take in its Renaissance and Gothic Palaces, the famed Central Square, and historic St. Mark’s Basilica – and much more – you only have to book a plane ticket then reserve a hotel and pay for your food and everything else. In all, that should “only” run you $5,000 or so for a week – for one person.

But there is another way to take in the splendor of Venice’s canals, snap a family photo on a bridge over Venice’s waterways, and even take a gondola ride with a boatman who dresses in traditional Italian garb and even sings: visit the Grand Canal Mall in the Philippines.

Mall? The Philippines? Have you finally lost it, Norm?

Well, yes, I have – about the exact time I agreed to start working for AllWorld, to be honest!

But that doesn’t mean what I said isn’t accurate – you can at least get a sample of Venice with a great likeness built into a mall in the Philippines.

And I have to admit that it’s super cheesy…but…pretty awesome!

It’s actually the signature attraction to the appropriately-named Venice Grand Canal Mall located in the McKinley Hill area of Taguig, an upscale neighborhood of call centers and international business spaces in Manila.

I’m definitely not a “mall person,” but I just moved to the neighborhood, so my apartment at Morgan Suites is only two blocks away. Inevitably, a lot of the shops, services, and restaurants I frequent are at this mall, so I’m walking through once or twice a day.

The outside of the mall is notable in its own right, as it’s designed in a traditional historical Italian style (I was going to say something like “Neo-Classical,” but that would be BS because we both know I have NO idea about ancient architectural styles!). The entrance ways outside look like an ornate old church or palace you might see in a postcard, but also have dazzling modern lighting and several big fountains. But once you walk inside the mall (through tight security which will check into every bag and give you a quick pat down), you see the real attraction.

The whole center of the mall is an outdoor plaza made to look EXACTLY like the canals of Venice, Italy! As I mentioned, I think this is cheesy as hell, BUT they did a really amazing job with it, and for the average middle-class Filipino who will NEVER get a chance to visit the real thing in Italy, it’s a fun and different attraction. It’s also one of the most hashtagged and “selfied” spots in Manila, for obvious reasons.

But this is no simple photo op, as the canal dominates the whole center of the mall running an entire city block or more, with pristine blue-green waters that meander in a slight crescent. Two or three bridges span the waterways, which are made to look like traditional bridges you’d see in Venice, as well as shaded outdoor plazas to walk or just hang out on either side. They have plenty of outdoor restaurants and cafes with umbrellas so you can sit there are take it all in, as watching the jubilant crowd is part of the fun. One of the best features is an “island” in this canal, which is a small bridge that takes you to a perfectly circular modern building suspended over the water, where you can sit and drink a beer at night. Since the mall is open from around 11 am to 10 or 11 pm, the whole thing is bustling at night, with plenty of light displays and music making it a festive atmosphere.

I almost forgot to mention the gondolas! Yes, there are a handful of full-sized gondolas that roam the canal, constructed as exact replicas of what you’d find in Italy. Even the drivers are dressed perfectly to the part, pushing their way through the water with long oars and sometimes singing as they go.

I’m usually extremely cynical when it comes to commercialization and gimmicks like this, but, I must say, it’s actually pretty damn impressive. Of course, staying right there and seeing the mall every day, the novelty fades. But the Grand Canal Mall does offer some great practical options for me.

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The Venice Grand Canal Mall in Manila. Cheesy? Gimmicky? In-authentic? Maybe, but it's also a pretty gorgeous setting and very fun!

A post shared by AllWorld.com (@allworldonline) on Jan 16, 2019 at 10:01am PST

So far, my favorites are:

Robinson Select grocery store The best option for buying food including fresh veggies – which are really hard to find – and other high quality and even western items. It certainly isn’t cheap, but just the presence of such a grocery store in walking distance is a godsend.

KarudaThe mall is big on fast food chains like Wendys, Jollibee, KFC, etc. and also plenty of low and medium-cost chains for Filipino food, but very few unique, tantalizing, and healthy restaurants. As far as I can see, the best bet is Karuda, which is an indoor-outdoor simple Japanese fusion restaurant. I get one of their bento box options, which is a ton of good food for about $6 and change – the best deal you’ll find! McKinley Hill Yoga Disclaimer: I’ve never actually been to a yoga class there, but I’ve made friends with one of the teachers and follow them every day online, and looks like a fantastic place for all skill levels and experience with yoga.

Big Boss Barber Shop A really cool gentlemen’s barber shop but with a more modern and open studio setting. It’s not cheap by Philippines standards (I’m like a broken record with that in Manila!) – about $7 just for a cut – but they do a wonderful job and take their time and really treat you like a superstar. FYI I asked if I get a discount for my bald spot but was DENIED!

Gold’s Gym Good gyms are hard to find here, and there tend to be only two kinds of gyms: the really simple, grimy, and pretty dirty local gyms (they’re cheap and full of amazing athletes but not very comfortable for westerners), and the higher-end chain gyms like Anytime Fitness and Gold’s here in Manila. Those tend to be a lot closer to the nice, airy, spacious, and clean gyms we’re used to back home – at least on face value. But they also can be really expensive – especially if you just drop in for a day or two. Either way, I thought Gold’s was my best option because it’s right at the Venice Grand Canal Mall and has a great layout. It’s on the third floor, so you’re looking out floor to ceiling windows on one whole wall at the canal and mall-goers walking around and having gun below.

DIY Moving into my little studio apartment two blocks away at Morgan Suites, I inevitably need A LOT of stuff to get settled in, including a fan, storage shelves, curtains, kitchen and bathroom stuff, and much more. There really aren’t Home Depots or that big U.S.-style hardware and home stores here in Manila that I’ve seen, so people rely on the little local hardware stores. DIY is like the equivalent to an ACE Hardware, and it’s right in the mall. Crazy expensive for a lot of things (like $40 for a shower rod!) because most of the stuff here is imported, but it’s better than nothing and super convenient.

Dental Hub I try to take good care of my choppers, and that means at least two visits to the dentist every year. I usually just found random dentists as I’ve traveled, which means some good ones (like in Angeles City) or some awful ones (like in Thailand). But, when I had a bad toothache and needed some real help, I was happy to see that there was a Dental Hub office right there in the mall – across from Gold’s Gym, actually! I found them to be super clean, modern with the latest tech, very professional and caring. So far, so good, and I’ll keep coming back for convenience and for that great service.

By the way, there are also several medical clinics located in the mall that look just as modern and nice, and, although I’ve been fortunate not to have to need one yet, it’s good to know it’s there!

Daiso This place is so cool – it’s a whole store dedicated to Japanese products for the home, from dishes and kitchenware to lighting, bedding, and tons of nick nacks and gadgets. Since they are Japanese (as opposed to Chinese), the stuff is good quality and works well, and priced surprisingly well. But it’s just fun to walk around and see their stuff that’s way different from items you’d find in the U.S.

Coffee lineup As a workaholic blogger and writer, I log A LOT of time sitting there with my laptop, hunting and pecking my way to a paycheck. I do work at home for a few hours every day but I definitely need two things:

A change of scenery with actual human beings around me, and COFFEE!

The fun part of the Venice Grand Canal Mall is that there are plenty of stores that are accessible from the street (outside the mall) or inside. In fact, on one whole side of the mall sit a lineup of coffee shops – Caffeine Row as I call it. There are literally five or six coffee places and cafes in a row, from Denny’s to UCC to Starbucks, Tim Hortons (my new favorite) and Coffee Bean. If I’m at risk for being over caffeinated and bopping my head to the music in my headphones to dramatically, I can just pick up and take my act to the next café!

There are also plenty of other events, concerts, and happenings at the mall – so visit Venice if you’re in the area!

The post Grand Canal Mall, Bonifacio, Manila appeared first on AllWorld.com.

source https://www.allworld.com/grand-canal-mall-bonifacio-manila/

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themoneybuff-blog · 6 years ago

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Which New Car Would You Buy?

Last week via email, reader David Hatch asked: If you were going to buy a new car, what would you get do you think? I wrote a short email replythen decide this topic is worth a deeper dive (of only for my own personal edification). You see, Kim and I have been talking about cars lately. Mine is fifteen years old and hers is over twenty. Although both are running fine, we realize that well have to replace one (or both) of them in the near future. When we do, what will we buy? What kind of new car is right for Kim? What kind of car is right for me? Lets start by looking at the cars Ive owned in the past. Every Car Ive Ever Owned I am not a car guy. Even though I can appreciate nice cars, I dont have any desire to own them. Im not sure why. Maybe its because my parents never had nice cars when I was a kid. They had practical, serviceable vehicles that got the job done. During my 33 years of driving, Ive owned five cars. In high school, I inherited my fathers 1980 Datsun 310 GX. I drove that little red beast until it died during my senior year of college. I had a lot of fun with the Datsun, but I treated it poorly. The best part about this car was that I could perform a lot of the maintenance myself even though I dont have much mechanical knowledge. (Driven from March 1985 to March 1991 six years.) After the Datsun died, Dad bought me a $1000 Ford Tempo as a college graduation present. It was a POS from the start. I drove it for less than six months before giving up on it. (Driven from March 1991 to September 1991 six months.) When I landed my first job (which turned out to be the worst job I ever had), I also bought my first new car: a 1992 Geo Storm. Naturally, I bought it on creditbefore Id even received a paycheck. I loved that $12,000 car the entire time I owned it. (Driven from September 1991 to December 2000 9.25 years.) On 01 December 2000, a semi sideswiped my Geo Storm on the freeway during morning traffic. The car spun 360+ degrees before striking an overpass guardrail, deploying the airbag. The car was totalled; fortunately, I wasnt hurt.

After the accident, I purchased a brand-new 2001 Ford Focus from a friend who worked at a local dealership. I paid $15,000. I hated that car from Day One. It was awful. (I should have read the Consumer Reports reviews before buying; I would have steered clear!) I bought that vehicle with a loan too. (Driven from December 2000 to April 2009 8.25 years.) In 2009, after years of dreaming about it, I realized I could afford to buy a used Mini Cooper. By this point, Id been writing GRS for three years, so I put my own advice into practice. I shopped around. I bought used. I paid $15,000 cash. Ive owned that 2004 Mini Cooper for more than nine years now. In fact, as of this month, its the car Ive owned longest in my lifetime.

As you can tell, when I buy a car, I tend to drive it for a long time. I rarely (if ever) get the new car itch. I wish I could say this was because Im rational about my car-buying decisions, but thats not it. Im just not a car guy. (Computers, though? Well, I want to upgrade my computer every year. I am a computer guy.) But David didnt ask about the cars Ive owned in the past. He asked what car Id buy new. What Kim and I Own Now Kim and I have been thinking about this question for a couple of years now. Neither of us is eager to buy a new vehicle, but from a pragmatic perspective, were both going to have to do so relatively soon. I currently own the afore-mentioned 2004 Mini Cooper (with roughly 150,000 miles) and a 2016 Harley-Davidson Street 750 motorcycle.Kim owns a 1997 Honda Accord (with roughly 240,000 miles) and a 2005 Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle. Both of our cars run about like youd expect. Kims is very reliable and never has major maintenance issues. It also has air conditioning that works. (The Mini has a coolant leak that Im unwilling to pay to have fixed, so we no longer use it for long summer trips.) Ive had to spend a few thousand to repair the Mini over the past couple of years, but its running fine at this moment. Ive been setting aside $600 per month in my car fund, Kim told me the other day. Before our RV trip, she was saving for a new car, but she cashed out that money to help pay for our travels. I have about $12,000 saved now. Thats not enough for a new car especially not for a Tesla Model 3 but its a start. You plan to sell your Honda to the girls at some point, right? I asked. We know two sisters who should be getting their licenses soon. Kim has promised them they can have her Honda for $500. Yep, Kim said. Thats the plan. But should I do that if I dont have enough saved to pay cash for a new car? Thats a tough question, I said. You could always drive my Mini Cooper to work. I dont use it much during the week. And for about half the year, I could ride my motorcycle instead. Im not sure what Id do during the winter. Well, are you still thinking about buying a beater pickup? Kim asked. Since moving to our country cottage last summer, weve come to realize that our lives would be much easier if we had something that would let us haul lumber and ladders and dirt and gravel and plants and furniture and so on. Im hoping to find a small pickup that runs well priced at a few thousand dollars. Yes, I still think the pickup is a good idea, I said. And that could certainly be my winter ride. I guess we dont have to make any decision yet, Kim said. We dont have to decide anything until one the girls learns how to drive. What Kind of Car Would I Buy? Although I spend most of my road time in vehicles that are fifteen or twenty years old, this year Ive had a lot of exposure to modern cars. During both my trip to Florida in January and my trip around the Southeast in April, I rented a car. Ive spent four weeks of 2018 essentially test-driving modern mid-sized sedans. They all feel like theyre from the future. (I think I had a Nissan Versa for one trip and a Hyundai Elantra for the other.) Ill admit: I like some of the new features. Back-up cameras are kind of cool. Sound systems that automatically pair with your phone are awesome. I like the whole keyless thing, too. (The other night, Kim pointed out that her car was so old that we still have to hand-crank the windows!) While visiting Nashville in April, a friend gave me a ride in his new $150,000 Mercedes. Holy cats! The interior of that thing was like the U.S.S. Enterprise (the fancy Picard-era Enterprise, not the utilitarian Kirk-era Enterprise). I have no desire to own a luxury automobile, but I can certainly appreciate the design touches. If Kim were to buy a new car, shed buy the Tesla Model 3. Shes a fan of electric vehicles. If she cant afford a Tesla when it comes time to buy a new car, I suspect shell end up with a Honda or Toyota hybrid. (Im not sure, though. I havent asked her.) She just wants a comfortable, reliable car to get to and from work, and for us to use on long road trips. Me? Well, Ive delayed answering this question for more than 1000 words because I dont really know which car Id buy if I had to buy a new car. Lets think it through together. I prefer smaller cars. I have zero desire to own a modern truck or SUV. I dont want a minivan. I dont want a large sedan. I like vehicles with small footprints. Theyre easier to park, fuel efficient, and generally more agile.I like something a little sporty. Im not a fast driver, but I do like to be able to accelerate now and then, either to overtake another car or to enjoy twisty country roads.I want a car with ample cargo space. As I mentioned earlier, I haul stuff all the time, so I want a vehicle that lets me carry stuff from the hardware store. Itd also be nice if I could transport a kayak or two. (Believe it or not the Mini has decent cargo room. It certainly has more usable cargo space than Kims Accord.) Based on this, Id focus my search on three classes of vehicles: compact pickup trucks, compact cars, and subcompact cars. Unfortunately, compact pickup trucks are a dying breed. Yes, Ford is bringing back the Ranger in a few months, but currently there are only five options in this category. The only one that gets good reviews is the Honda Ridgeline, and that costs $30,000 or more. There arent many options in the world of subcompact cars, either. Most of those options also get poor reviews (and low customer satisfaction scores). There are plenty of choices in the world of compact cars, however, and at prices that dont scare me. Both the Toyota Corolla and Toyota Prius are highly-rated and affordable. That said, if I bought a compact car, Id probably pursue a Mazda 3 or Hyundai Elantra. Plus, Id have to consider the modern Mini Cooper. (My ex-wifes boyfriend is a mechanic and fellow Mini fan. Hes warned me that newer Minis are both larger and less reliable, so Im skeptical that Id choose a Mini again. But I do love mine.)

The Bottom Line So, which new car would I purchase? Honestly, I dont know. I dont want to buy a new car, and I hope I dont have to make this sort of decision for many years. Having said that, I am absolutely in the market for a beat-up but reliable pickup preferably a compact pickup. Something like this seems perfect:

As a wildcard, I suppose a used Subaru Outback might be a smart choice for me also. (Actually, a Subaru Outback would be an excellent choice for our current lifestyle.) The older I get, the more I view vehicles as tools. Theyre not status symbols for me. I dont get an adrenaline rush from a souped-up sports car. Right now, I want a car that runs reliably, allows me to haul stuff, and doesnt take up a lot of space. Thats it. (Except when we take long road trips which happens two or three times each year I dont care about comfort.) Realistically speaking, heres what I expect will happen: One of the girls will get her license in the next year. Kim will sell the Honda to her for $500.Kim and I will pool money to buy her a new car. It wont be the Tesla Model 3 that she wants so badly. Itll be a Subaru Outback or a hybrid Toyota or Honda.I will continue to drive the Mini Cooper until it is well and truly dead. At that time or perhaps before Ill buy a beater pickup for use around the homestead. (Yes, we may end up having three cars at some point but only for a little while.) What about you? If you had to buy a new car, what would you buy? Why? What features are important to you? Are there certain makes or models that you prefer? Refuse to consider? And based on what Ive told you here, what kind of car would you recommend for me? https://www.getrichslowly.org/which-new-car/

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trendingnewsb · 8 years ago

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10 books every entrepreneur should read in 2017

Image: Mascha Tace/shutterstock

Entrepreneurship is a commitmentnot only to your venture or business, but also to a unique learning process. Where others seek guidance through big universities and established companies, I know many entrepreneurs like myself who have a desire to go their own way and learning becomes a self-guided experience. As a result, Ive gained a whole new dimension to my learning experience, having combined it with what I have chosen to read and what I have learned in the field.

Many entrepreneurs are avid readersnot just out of curiosity, but necessity. I love listening to podcasts and audiobooks because its something I can do while Im on the go whether that is traveling or exercising. Reading is one of the only ways you can learn from the worlds best and brightest, especially those who choose to share their thoughts on paper instead of through a weekly podcast.

Here is an entrepreneurs reading list for 2017 that include ten books that I have been motivating, insightful, and humbling for me. I hope that they leave a positive impression and assist you on your journey toward building something impactful in the world.

1. “All In” by Bill Green

This is a must read for any first-time entrepreneur who thinks building a business is an easy process. Author Bill Green uses “All In” to both inspire entrepreneurs on their quest for greatness and put things in perspective. Starting in a flea market and ending with a publicly traded company, Greens story demonstrates what it means to go all in on an ideaand not stop until the goal is achieved something that stands out for me in terms of the perspective that has helped me in bringing my own business ideas to fruition.

Greens company was Wilmar Industries, a corporation that ended up employing more than 2,300 people. When Wilmar went public in 1996, Fortune rated Wilmar as one of the best IPOs of the year. In 1999, Wilmar was named by Forbes as one of the top 200 Best Small Companies in America. “All In” describes Greens humble beginnings, his bootstrapping mindset and, ultimately, his rise to building a company that today is owned by Home Depot, with revenues topping $1.8 billion.

2. “Top of Mind” by John Hall

In a noisy world of digital marketers, how do you stand out? CEO of Influence & Co. and business thought leader John Hall has some valuable insights. After all, his recipe for staying top of mind with your consumers is the same step-by-step process he used to build Influence & Co to one of Forbes Most Promising Companies In America.

Top of Mind is full of tactics, with insights into how consumer needs and expectations have changed over the past few years; how you can build a brand that serves both your ideal customers and your own employees; and ways to use digital content to build lasting trust with your readers, followers and subscribers. I have put many of these tactics to work already with great success in my own business.

3. “The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs” by Hal Elrod and Cameron Herold

Consider this your wake-up call. Few books can change your daily habits as effectively as “The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs.” Author Hal Elrods original “The Miracle Morning” was a self-development crash course. In this follow-up page-turner, wisdom is added from Cameron Herold, a bestselling author and widely respected business coach, using the Miracle Morning framework as a foundation.

The book has given me six daily practices to create and sustain positive change in my lifepersonally and professionally. I have found that one of the most difficult challenges is to maintain a balance between building a successful business and taking care of myself. It has taught me that if Im off, then the whole picture is off. The principles in this book have put balance back in my life, which has benefitted my business, helped me feel better, and made my family a lot happier.

4. “Grit” by Angela Duckworth

Can success be reduced to a process? Pioneering psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Angela Duckworth thinks it can. She calls it grit. “Grit” does an incredible job of exploring what makes someone exceptionaland, as Duckworth has discovered, it certainly isnt talent or inherent intelligence.

She argues that the most successful people discover their own genius through the daily habit of persistence while always remembering to lead with what they are most passionate about. I thoroughly enjoyed the personal stories as well as interviews with peak performers and industry leaders, ranging from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll.

5. “A Paperboys Fable” by Deep Patel

This book struck me for its title because it made me think about my first job and the other ventures I tried when I was younger.

Part story, part riveting interviews with professors, entrepreneurs, CEOs and more, “A Paperboys Fable” creatively shares some of the most tried and true lessons learned in business. Like the Arbinger Institutes Leadership and Self-Deception, what makes “A Paperboys Fable” a worthwhile read is its ability to take high-level and timeless business lessons and make them both easy to understand for beginners and poignant reminders for us more seasoned entrepreneurs.

6. “Rich20Something” by Daniel DiPiazza

The brand, Rich20Something, was started by Daniel DiPiazza, a recognized digital marketer and influencer. A website, a massively popular Instagram page, and now a book packed with lessons, “Rich20Something” is DiPiazzas story of being a typical twenty-something, unsure of what to do in life, and how he built a brand around the hustling mentality that can turn any young entrepreneur into a success.

Unlike the conventional corporate ladder path, “Rich20Something” is essentially a guide to hacking your way to wherever you want to go. DiPiazza shares his own advice from the trenches along with anecdotes from other successful entrepreneurs and mentors and step-by-step techniques for building businesses around my personal skill set. Its helped me beyond the dream and make things happen.

7. “Managing the Mental Game” by Jeff Boss

Who better to learn mental fortitude from than a former Navy SEAL? In Managing the Mental Game,” Boss reflects on his experiences as a SEAL and walks readers through techniques that build self-confidence, mental endurance and positive habits.

The book is comprised of over 23 mental exercises, covering topics such as how to deal with stress, how to avoid common mental traps, how to handle uncertainty and even the neuroscience behind change. Ive used these in my daily work life to deal with those unexpected issues and barriers that seem to pop up with a startup, which has provided me with a much more measured and logical approach when these do happen.

8. “Disrupted” by Dan Lyons

What is Silicon Valley really like? After 25 years at Newsweek, journalist Dan Lyons lost his job to younger talent. Shortly thereafter, he found himself working for a famed Silicon Valley startup, Hubspot, which had over $100 million in venture capital. “Disrupted” is Lyons take on the idealized entrepreneurship scene in California. As a resident of Silicon Valley, this book hit home in terms of familiar situations and advice on how to navigate the territory here.

One part crash course on entrepreneurship, two parts humorous stories and unfortunate conclusions, this book shows that heavily funded startups arent all they seem to be from the outside. According to Lyons, Its a world where bad ideas are rewarded, where companies blow money on lavish perks, and where everyone is trying to hang on just long enough to reach an IPO and cash out.

9. “Be Obsessed or Be Average” by Grant Cardone

Grant Cardone is a success story, to say the least. In addition to having one of the strongest personal brands, Cardone has made a name for himself by building five successful companies and turning himself into a multimillionaire. “Be Obsessed or Be Average” is like his other NYT bestseller,The 10x Rule a humbling reminder of just how much you have to want success in order to e ventually have it. It reads just like Cardone sounds in his videos and on his podcastfull of energy and motivation. His quotes have stayed top of mind long after finishing the book, which have been inspirational when faced with some critical issues in my business.

From Cardones perspective, success ultimately comes down to three basic rules: first, be willing to set crazy goals, and aim to reach them, every single day; second, value your money and make it work for you; and, third, use your haters as fuel. These rules have worked for me and many colleagues, so they will work for you, too.

10. “The Fire Starter Sessions” by Danielle LaPorte

Theres a reason “The Fire Starter Sessions” has sold over a million copies. Author Danielle LaPorte explains that many of the things we believe about the road to success are actually wrong, and that we end up driving ourselves mad by searching for things that dont actually exist.

Some of the controversial topics covered in this book include the fact that life balance is a myth, that our principles and beliefs might be the very things holding us back, and that happiness has far more to do with how we feel while were working and not necessarily the achievement of our goals. “The Fire Starter Sessions” offers helpful reminders for any entrepreneur who wants to build a meaningful future. Its certainly given me a lot of food for thought on how Ive looked at my own business and leadership style.

John Rampton is serial entrepreneur who now focuses on helping people to build amazing products and services that scale. He is founder of the online payments company Due. If you’re looking for even more to read, check out his book: “Self Employed: 50 Signs That You Might Be an Entrepreneur.“

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John Rampton