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frankiefellinlove · 5 months

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Bruce’s #1 Fan

By Stan Goldstein

Seven years ago today, May 1, 2017, Bruce Springsteen's "Fan No. 1" Obie passed away. If you don't know who Obie was, she was Bruce's most loyal, dedicated fan. She had the same seat/spot for every show she attended: front-row center (per Bruce's wishes). She closely followed his various bands starting with Child in the late 1960s, eventually becoming his cook and personal assistant (Steve Van Zandt's too) and, most famously, a lifetime front-row-center invitee. In a world in which "superfans" are often infamous, Obie was merely legendary.

There was a memorial service for Obie a few days after she passed at a funeral home in Asbury Park and Bruce gave one of the eulogies. Here's what he said:

Well I'm the guy that Obie spent a big part chunk of her life dedicated to. Being the focus of that attention was pretty challenging very often. Obie was quietly demanding. I didn't know I was going to speak today so I'll just give you some memories I have of O.

First time was at West End Park. We were playing next to Howard's movie theater, and one beautiful summer afternoon, I remember this girl sitting there with the flag around here. So right from the beginning she just looked different from everybody else. Obie was a misfit, outsider, a rebel and didn't look like nobody else, didn't talk like anybody else, didn't think like anybody else. She was just a unique character. And everything that the word fan connotes in all of its myriad, strange, bizarre and wonderful ways. She was a Fan-atic, she was Fan-tastic. She was deeply, deeply dedicated.

Obie's taking more than a few of my secrets with her right now. We lived very, very close to one another for a long time. And I had chicken and grapes! And I had chicken and bananas, chicken and peaches. She covered the fruits and the chicken completely.

What can I say, she was always a heartful soul. She was dedicated to me that if a bullet came my way she would be there to catch it. There was a deep, deep and very personal connection and love. I feel honored to have the seed. And what can I say, I loved Obie a lot. I'm going to miss her very badly when I get out there on the stage, that front and center spot will be empty. We love you O.

To read more about Obie, here's something I wrote that was posted on the Backstreets news page shortly after her death: (Sorry, this is another long post)

REMEMBERING OBIE DZIEDZIC, "FAN NUMBER ONE"

It was about 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, September 23, 2012 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's Saturday show had crept into Sunday morning due to delays from thunderstorms, giving the 55,000 fans a chance to celebrate Bruce's actual 63rd birthday with him. A giant birthday cake was brought out, everyone sang "Happy Birthday," and Bruce then cut the cake. He brought the first piece to Obie Dziedzic, who was in her normal spot, front and center.

"The first piece goes to Obie, our first fan, right there, " said Steven Van Zandt.

Bruce followed with, "Obie, we love you. Obie was following us when we were 16. We love you, O!"

It was a special moment, one of hundreds Obie shared with Bruce Springsteen for more than 45 years — actually starting when Bruce was 18, not 16, but it sure seemed that way. Bruce called her his "first fan" and "Fan No. 1."

Obie Dziedzic — pronounced "Je-zitz," to answer a question she was often asked — passed away early Monday morning after being ill for the past couple of months. She was a friend to not only Bruce and the E Street Band, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, but to musicians and music fans around the world.

Obie, known as "O" to her close friends, grew up in Long Branch, NJ and loved music. She attended tons of shows at Asbury Park's Convention Hall, seeing The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Who, and so many more in the 1960s. But it was one afternoon in 1969 at Long Branch's West End Park, which is still there today at the corner of Brighton and Ocean avenues, that she first saw the young musician who would change her life forever.

"There he was, this Adonis," Obie once told me. It was a then-18-year-old Bruce Springsteen leading the band Child.

Obie saw rock and roll future even before Jon Landau. Right away, she was drawn to this talented, handsome musician and made sure to see him perform anywhere and everywhere. Later when Bruce was in Steel Mill, Obie would bring pizzas to the surfboard factory in Ocean Township, NJ, where they were living. Yet she was too shy to stick around until she got to know Carl "Tinker" West, Steel Mill's manager, who befriended her. Soon she was friends with Springsteen, Van Zandt, Vini Lopez, Danny Federici, and many other musicians. She attended every Steel Mill show she could, standing in line for hours to make sure she was at the front of the stage.

Obie was a fixture at the Upstage in Asbury Park. She later saw Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom, and she was there the night Clarence Clemons walked into the Student Prince in Asbury Park to play with Bruce for the first time in 1971. She would drive Bruce to those Student Prince gigs too, although she said on Saturday nights she did have to watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show first.

Driving around the Jersey Shore with Obie was always a treat, as she had so many stories to share. "See that there? It used to be a Carvel," she said, pointing to a building on Ocean Avenue in Long Branch. "That's the place where Bruce told me he had his first album coming out. Garry Tallent used to live in those apartments right across the street." When Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. was released in January of 1973, Obie found an autographed copy left for her on her doorstep.

When Bruce started to tour with the E Street Band in the early 1970s, playing some theaters, Bruce made sure she was still always up front, promising her, "Obie, whenever and wherever I play, you will always have the two front-row center seats." It was a promise Bruce always honored, for more than 40 years. When Bruce and the E Street Band used a general admission setup on the floor, his security director made sure Obie was in her normal front-row spot. She always wanted to be on the same side as Bruce and Steve.

She had one firm rule. She did not want Bruce to know she was at a show. She wanted to surprise him when he took the stage. At the April 20, 2016 show in Baltimore that I was fortunate to attend with her, we made a little bet on how long it would take Bruce to see her. It was one of Obie's first show since that 2012 birthday show. I said second song; she said not until a few songs in. We were both wrong. When Bruce took the stage, he made eye contact with her immediately. A huge smile lit up his face. It was a thrill to watch this bond between the two of them. You can hear Bruce give many shout-outs to Obie on the live recordings from over the years.

Bruce's former tour manager Bob Chirmside shared this post on Facebook:

For the five years I worked on the road with Bruce Springsteen as his road manager we held two front row tickets for Obie at every show. And I mean every show! Promoters knew better than to screw this up. Everywhere from Philly to San Diego those two seats were held by Bruce according to his wishes and the band's rider. It was always good to see Obie in those seats, and it put a smile on Bruce's face having a special someone to play to. Bruce couldn't have asked for a more loving fan. But Obie was much, much more than a fan. During the time I lived with Bruce, Obie altered and sewed his clothes, did errands, and made Bruce his meals. Obie took incredible care of him. Obie loved Bruce and got to see a side of him that few of us rarely do. On a side note. If you're wondering what happened to the front row tickets if Obie didn't attend. Well, 15 minutes before the show began, I quickly exited the venue and gave the tickets to someone that wasn't able to buy tickets. Most people couldn't believe it was for real. It felt good to put smiles on faces. Thank you Obie for the good memories!

"She was hired by Steven first. He needed an assistant at Miami Productions, and he hired her in 1975 when the Jukes got signed and recorded their first LP," said Billy Smith, a historian and Obie's longtime friend. "Steve needed someone at home in Asbury Park to run things while he was touring with Bruce. While she followed Bruce's tours as a friend/fan from the beginning, she didn't work for Bruce until the Darkness tour in 1978. On the road she did everything: coordinated guest tickets, sewed their clothes, cooked, etc. Anything that needed doing, she did it. A personal assistant to everyone."

If you listen to Southside Johnny's live version of "Having a Party," you'll hear the line, "Obie's doing the twist."

Not only did Obie help out Bruce, Steven, and Southside, she was there for John Eddie, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band and others when they were first starting out. She was a fixture on the Jersey Shore bar scene in the 1970s and '80s and always, always friendly to fans. You could go right up to Obie and talk about music, Bruce, Southside. She was also close friends with Peter Wolf.

When the discussion comes up as to who has seen the most Bruce shows outside of Bruce himself, the answer is pretty easy: Obie. She was there for all 10 nights of the legendary Bottom Line shows in August of 1975. She even drove Bruce to some of those shows. "We hit traffic on Route 36 in Eatontown headed out toward the Parkway and I was a mess," Obie told me. "But Bruce was as calm as could be."

Obie, who lived for the past 16 years in Neptune, New Jersey, never gave an interview; her loyalty was 100 percent to Bruce. She was never, ever going to say anything which might upset him. She had, however, been working on a book, which sadly will never be written now. I was fortunate to have her read to me some of the stories that she was going to include. They were a delight to hear: How she and Bruce would go to the drive-in movie theater In Eatontown, New Jersey, and put a sofa in the back of his white pickup truck and sit back and enjoy the night. Another was when she was helping Bruce move into a house on Navesink River Road in Middletown in the early 1980s — she swears she saw and talked to a ghost!

Bruce mentioned Obie in his recent autobiography, Born to Run. He told the story how she was with him and Steve and Maureen Van Zandt when they weren't allowed in Disneyland or Knott's Berry Farm in the early 1980s because Bruce and Steve were wearing bandanas.

He also gave Obie credit for helping him select one of two versions he had of "Racing in the Street." Bruce told this story before playing it at the April 22, 2005 Devils & Dust show at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park:

I had two different endings. I'm going to dedicate this to you tonight, Obie. My oldest fan is here tonight and I love her very much. This is Obie Dziedzic — a round of applause, the woman's been around since forever.There were two people that actually helped me with writing the end of this song, and Obie was one of them. I had an ending where there's the two guys, but I had another ending where a woman enters the picture, and I played 'em both for Obie.Obie said, "I like the one with the girl." I said, "Okay, that's that." Then I played one for Steve, and Steve says, "Well, the one with the girl is what really happens. You got your pals and got the boys' club, and it lasts for a while, and you try to play down all the homoerotic stuff."I'm gonna do this tonight for Obie. I love you, and thanks for the help.

Bruce told a similar story in the 2010 documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, in which you can also spot Obie at the 58:49 mark.

There are so many good things to say and write about Obie — the tributes have been pouring in on social media — one of the best is from photographer Lynn Goldsmith. Obie told me this was the best description about her devotion to Bruce that she ever read about herself. To those who had the privilege to know her, it describes her perfectly:

"The girl with her head down is Obie," Goldsmith wrote, describing her 1978 photograph of Springsteen collapsing into an overjoyed crowd. "She was Bruce's biggest fan. She was there when they couldn't sell out a small club. She devoted herself free of charge to washing their clothes and doing whatever needed to be done. She did not get paid except with front row seats and the joy of knowing that she was making it easier for Bruce to be Bruce with her unconditional love. I wished I could have been like her. She inspired me because she was able to give with no strings attached. She gave freely because she believed in the power of love."

Obie was able to see several shows in the spring and summer of 2016. She was at both Brooklyn shows in April and attended all three MetLife Stadium shows in August. Her final show was on September 14, 2016 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Looking back, it may be fitting this was her last concert, as she told me, "That was the best Bruce Springsteen show I have ever seen."

The final time Obie got to see Bruce on stage was at his conversation with Bob Santelli at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey, on Jan. 10, 2017. After the talk, Obie saw that Bruce's coffee cup was still on the little table on the stage. She said to me, "Get that for me!" and I was able to have someone hand it to me. I gave it to Obie. She had one more souvenir. One of the organizers of the event later said to me, "We noticed one of the cups was missing!"

Soon after that, Obie started to not feel well, and she was in and out of the hospital for a couple of months. Bruce, Steve and Maureen, John Eddie and many others made sure to visit her. Once when I checked in at the desk to get a pass to see her at Jersey Shore University Hospital in Neptune, the guard asked me, "Are you famous? It seems everyone who has been going up to see this patient is famous."

He was wrong. It was Obie who was famous.

Right now she's sitting in the front row in heaven, watching Danny and Clarence play away.

#bruce springsteen #big man #Obie Dziedzic

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mizandria · 6 months

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hey everybody. just made the mistake of catching a midnight train back home and as i was standing on the station with a friend VERY SURPRISINGLY a 30 years old male characterized only by a predator aura and alcohol + piss combo stench came up to us, just stood there for some time next to us silently (by that point i was already squeezing my pepper spray), backed away for a moment, went back to us and started asking where we are going, what are we doing here, then asked if i was an artist because i had posters in my bag and when i said no he said his sister is an artist and she makes her own paper, mixes it with something and draws naked women on it. yeah. yeah i'm sure this sister exists. i'm sure she's not a cover up for your perversion you sick fuck talking about naked woman to young girls who are clearly uncomfortable and scared of you. thinks we don't know what the fuck he is doing. then he had the audacity to be like "haha yeah when a stranger approaches someone that person is usually always so confused" yes i fucking am. i don't know what you want and you shouldn't be talking to me. anyway. i sat by the conductor and ran so fast to the taxis when it was mine and his stop. overpaid for the taxi for sure but that's better than being assaulted or stalked by this fucking weirdo. anyway i hope he dies i hope he gets castrated i hope the next woman is less polite and cares less about her future and throws him under the train so it slices his dick off and he bleeds to death. anyway very thankful to be home i was literally shaking the entire train ride. i felt like a soldier in a life or die situation. sorry for wanting to enjoy a film with a friend i forgot i am a woman. anyway (for the third time) very grateful to be alive and unharmed. goodnight ladies. pray for his swift death if you're religious or do witchcraft for it if you practice please and thank you in advance.

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iminyournotis · 4 months

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I was thinking, "I don't even have any friends to be honest with, or tell my shit to, because everybody seems to have some kind of stake in my personal business," but then I remembered TUMBLR EXISTEDDD, so here I am.

1. Ended up snooping on my NINETEEN year old coworker last night because he skipped out on BK with me after work, and I got UNREASONABLY possessive, noticing that he was talking to the new girl at work, and I thought no WAY he's fucking her... She just started. (And he made a WHOOOLE thing to me abt how he doesn't want to hook up-- he just wants to find someone he loves and 'make love'. ((I was all, 'You're completely valid.' and then look at the camera like I'm in The Office then do the finger loop crazy sign at my head's temple, crossing my eyes. LOL.))) So I pulled back up after I finished getting BK alone because I was salty as hell and overly curious, and they were still there an hour and ten after close... I honestly scared them and embarrassed myself and I tore off.

2. Went to the gas station beforehand, because I had started smoking cigarettes again like a day or two ago, because I've been stressed about having Seb cock block his brother from me (and potentially for me. It's complicated.) and it lowkey feels like Caleb ALLLL over again, and it's making me lose my mind, so I'm back to stressedly chuffing.

Went to buy a pack, and this dude hollered in the gas station. I hollered back.

We were talking, I give him my phone number, I told him I'm willing to hook up, he's like 'alright, cool... Maybe pick me up later cause I need a whip,' I'm like, 'Okay.' Cue Burger King and checking where I shouldn't.

3. Go back to my parents' house and dude texts me asking if I was trying to link up... It's late, I tell him yeah anyway. I have work at 8:30, and it's already 11 or midnight by the time we're messaging each other. I end up pulling up to this bar I've never been to around midnight, and I end up taking him and his friend to get blazed out in a parking lot somewhere. Dude I was gonna hook up with doesn't smoke za, but his friend does. I get high and immediately get scared, because now I'm OVI, and I have two young Black men in my vehicle with me, and I get scared that some awful shit was fixing to happen, so I go, 'I'M GETTING YOU BOTH HOME SAFELY. I'm not pulling out until our seat belts are fastened, etc.' Went full mom mode. (Also, at this point, the young man I was with was 22, and his friend was 21. They thought I was younger than even them, which was hilarious. So another predatory woman moment for Mama.)

Drop 21 off. Go to drop 22 off next, but he takes me to this outfield out the way... We park, talk some; he hits it and as he's getting out of the backseat, I go, "Wait, did you finish?" He very non-chalantly said "Yeah," as he's putting his pants back on. I go, "... Did you cum inside me?" He responds pretty deadpan "Yeah." I'M LIKE "WHAT? Did you even plan on telling me???" He goes, "I mean, yeah." I was stunned. He's like, "I mean, you can take a Plan B if you don't feel safe." NFJSJFHJDN I was losing my mind. NOT the fucking point. He's like "Are you mad at me?" I'm like, "TO be honest, yeah."

I drive him back home, he forgets something in my car, I pull back around, he's tryna get me to stay at his mom's house with him for the night (which he pays rent at), I say no. I drive off. He goes, 'Actually, I forgot my hat, too.' I was like 10 minutes down the road and closer to home by the time I saw this message, so I'm like 'Man, I'm keeping it now. Sorry.' He's like, 'alright it's fine. lol.'

End scene. Oh, actually not, because by the time I get back into my city/town, it's like 3:30 AM. I didn't even wash my clothes, I still needed to shower, I haven't really been eating for the last week, so I thought, 'Fuck it. I'm calling off.'

Haven't called off a single time since starting, even through this lowkey nasty cold I had a few weeks ago. So my manager, who I'm WAY too involved with, was like 'wtf?? You're just not coming in?' I'm like yeah. She's like "What's your reason." All investigative. I'm like "Not been eating well. It's for my health." She goes, "Get well." I'm such a fucking loser.

So then I woke up like an hour ago at three PM, and here I am. ❤️ What the fuck is going on with my life, though.

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ievutebebe · 1 year

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FANGIRL PART 1

Summary: On your day off work, you spend the day at the park reading a book where you are pleasantly surprised to meet a playful puppy and its handsome owner. The only catch was the owner of that puppy was a famous actor who you were the biggest fan of.

Pairing: Javi Gutierrez x F! Reader

Warnings: 18+ MNI! Although this part is just fluff the next parts will contain smut. Javi is in his 30s. Reader is a student. Possessive thoughts. Slow burner?

Word count: 3,8k

A/N: Thanks to my besties for beta reading. First fanfic vibes, I loved writing this, it felt natural. I am also working on a Joel Miller and Javier Pena fics but I am kind of stuck with them as I can’t manage to go in detail enough to describe certain parts as I would like to.

As you indulge yourself in this fic, let go of your worries, what you are reading is real and it is written about you. Believe it’s real and be delusional!

First thing you do is look around admiring all the scenery, breathing in the fresh breeze as you glance over at ducks with baby ducklings and then turn your head some more and spot children playing in the park laughing making your heart feel full. You turn your head the other way and spot people your age with their friends doing exactly what you are but having way more fun as they had company and you did not. Your mind did linger for a moment wondering what it would be like to have someone to hang out with in the park, would you be comfortable in silence whilst reading books or would you have deep talks about life or philosophy. However, you quickly disregard those thoughts as you were not going to let your them ruin the peacefulness and gratefulness you felt in this moment.

You grab your phone to capture a few photos, video of what’s around you to post on your Instagram stories. You even manage to take a nice selfie of yourself. Once you’ve done that you open your book on the page that you left off last and completely let go of your worries. Whenever you read a book the whole world and surroundings around you stop for a little while. It is a nice little escape even if it’s for a short time, it’s just you and your book here right now. You were saddened by the thought that you are approaching the last few chapters of this book. It had quickly become your favourite as the story had deeply resonated with you.

A few hours later you perk up your head realising that everybody had left, and sun had started to set. You check the time on your phone, the time is quarter to 9. It’s just you in this park, as you look up at the pink sky and take a deep breath appreciating all the little things around you, birds chirping and the sound of water. You are exactly where you dreamt of being at the age of 16, now a university student doing your dream degree on your student exchange year in Majorca. Majorca was your first choice in hopes to bump into your favourite actor, like that was going to happen. Yeah, right silly you with your silly manifestations and delusions.

A wave of sadness floods your mind with realisation that you do have friends but no friend that you could hang out with daily or a significant other. You were all busy with your day to day lives. University, work, and personal problems, most of them were in relationships. You wonder what it would be like to sit here with someone you love and just to have them hold you in their lap.

You do have friends here in Majorca but most of them had went home during the spring break, but since you’ve paid an extortionate amount of money on rent you wanted to stay here for as long as you could. Being back home would only make it worse, realising that this fairy-tale dream that you are living right now is nothing, but a dream and a reality of family issues would soon burden on you. So here you are, alone in an empty park sat on your blanket with the book in your lap and warm wind gently blowing your hair.

Suddenly a puppy runs to you jumping up and down making you gasp in shock, but your expression instantly changes as this puppy is just too adorable and oh its small belly is so darn cute. It was puppy love at first sight, the sweet smell of the puppy took over all your senses. The tears of joy flood your eyes slightly because of how charming the puppy was, it made you feel excited and calm at the same time releasing your endorphin levels. This puppy was a golden retriever with soft and fluffy fur, resembling a teddy bear that you just wanted to squeeze. Its fur was golden in colour with some white on its belly and paws. Puppy had settled in your lap as you were playing with it making your heart full of warmth as its big round innocent eyes were staring at you.

You feel presence of someone standing over you, glancing at the puppy. You raise your head up to face the person, seeing the most handsome, tan, and tall man you’ve ever laid your eyes upon, he looked like he was sculptured by heavens and gods themselves. He wore black shorts and a tank top exposing his toned arms and biceps as the rest of his body and muscles strained against the fabric at his chest. As you move your gaze up to his face recognising nicely groomed facial hair, you realise it’s Javi Gutierrez, the one and only standing right in front of you. His hair was even better in person, effortlessly styled luxuriously thick and wavy. His locks frame his face gracefully contouring his features.

You were his biggest fan, you owned many things of his, merch your favourite being a t-shirt with his face on it of which you had different variations, even your room had posters of him. You even had a TikTok fan page where you posted edits of him. Although your edits weren’t getting much attention you liked it that way, you were doing them for yourself and appreciation for him.

“Are you Jav-”. you say but it was too quiet for him to hear.

“Come on Luna let’s go to the park sweetheart, I’m so sorry about that she’s just too playful and energetic at this age”. He says but Luna completely disobeys his order and continues playing with you.

“It’s okay no worries I love dogs, hi there Luna you are a beauty aren’t you, yes you are”. you give her kisses and wiggle her ears as you breath in her scent once more. You are still in disbelief that it was Javi standing right in front of you. What were the chances?

“Oh my, I love how dogs smell especially small puppies making me feel a way I can’t describe”. Luna smelt slightly sweet with a touch of honey and faintest whiff of milk.

“Yeah, it’s the best isn’t it”. he leans down and pets Luna.

“For sure”. you say, you were now blushing as he was so close to you making you feel nervous and shy. You stared at him and when he glanced back at you, you quickly turned your head the other way to avoid eye contact, like you were a teenager again. You could smell his cologne which had notes of musk, oak moss, and bergamot. This smell will forever remind you of him, fuck you might even go to the perfume shop to buy this cologne. Fuck your obsession with Javi is about to be elevated to a whole new level, you didn’t know was possible.

“Here Luna come on, come here querida, good girl”. Javi says as you give him Luna and when he takes her from you, your fingers brush against each other making you feel a tingling sensation of electricity pulsing through you.

“There you go Luna” you say.

“Thank you, we better get going whilst it’s still light out. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Luna say bye bye”.

“Bye Luna sweet pea” you wave to her. As Javi is about to walk away you say, “it was nice meeting you Javi”. “Bye” he says as he is walking away.

Fuck you realise, you didn’t even ask for a photo, no one is going to believe you that you just met Javi and played with his puppy. But it was too late as he turned his back to you and you didn’t want to be an annoying fan that he would remember you as, so you stayed put.

As he is about to walk away, he stops and turns around. “Hey me and Luna are headed to the puppy playground you are welcome to join us if you wanted to”.

“Of course, I would love to let me just grab my things” you can’t believe that this is happening right your favourite actor asking you to join him to play with his dog? What in the fanfiction is that.

“You guys go ahead I will come over”.

“Alright”.

You gather your things quickly stuffing them into your tote bag and making your way to the dog playground.

“Hi there” he says. “Hey” you reply. “What were you reading?”. You’re not sure what it was exactly, was it his gentle tone or gaze but you felt like telling him everything in this moment.

“A book called freckles, it’s really good. It’s about finding yourself and it has deeply resonated with me. Essentially it is about a girl who is a parking warden who had moved to Dublin in hopes to find her real mother and reconnect. One day she comes across this arrogant man well she thought he was, anyway, he owned a Lamborghini and was an influencer who played video games and posted playthroughs on a YouTube channel for a living. He doesn’t bother with paying for his parking ticket on multiple occasions and on all those occasions she issues him a fine. One day he manages to catch her as she is issuing him another fine, I guess he kind of had a bad day already that day and said a bunch of mean things to her. One of which stuck out to her and became the main plot of the story. He said something along the lines that 5 people in your life shape who you are and that you are what they are. So, she tries to find her five people that make her, her.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, you probably didn’t want to hear all that, I got carried away”. you apologize realising that you probably shouldn’t have shared that much detail.

“I do darling, continue”. he says as he gently pats your shoulder.

“Well, she thought she had five people at first but when she went home to visit her father, she realised she had 1 person out of 5 due to some drama with her bff and her ex. Later in the story she finds that her 5 people are her dad, her neighbour, work colleague and the guy that started it all for her, his name is Tristan. Well, that as far I got to in the story, I have last few chapters to read. I do hope her and Tristan end up together.” You try to summarise the whole story as quickly as you can.

“That is very interesting and really deep”.

“Yeah, I love that kind of thing and self-reflecting”.

You spent the rest of the hour playing with Luna and talking to Javi. Until the thought of wanting to ask him for a photo had come to mind. “I was wondering if I could take a picture with you, if not I completely understand. It’s just that I am a big fan of yours and I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t manage to capture a photo to remember this day”.

“Of course, we can no worries”. “Here let me grab your phone”. “Do you want one with Luna in it as well?” “Sure, that would be amazing” you say. “Come here Luna” Javi grabs Luna and says, “everybody say cheese”.

Once you were done taking photos and Javi handed your phone back, you checked the time, and it was nearly 10pm remembering that you needed to stop by the grocery store. “Oh, I guess, I better get going need to stop by the grocery store on the way home and it closes in an hour. It was lovely to meet you Javi, truly you are an amazing person you deserve all the success and recognition you are getting.”

“Thank you I really appreciate you saying that. Which store are you heading to if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Oh, the one next to the gym”.

“Look … I need to buy some food for Luna, so I don’t mind giving you a ride home, if you wanted too of course”. He says your name.

“That would be lovely but are you sure?”. “Yes, I am sure don’t be silly I wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t the case sweetheart”.

“Thank you, that is very kind of you”.

“I will get all of Luna’s toys and we can head to my car. Do you mind holding Luna?”.

“Yeah sure, no worries. Come here sweet angel”.

You walk towards the parking lot, holding Luna who had fallen asleep from exhaustion and all the playing she did. You see his car and it’s a burgundy Porsche Panamera. It fit him well as it was sporty, timeless, minimalist yet with a touch luxury. As you stand next to the car waiting for him to unlock the door a cold breeze makes you shiver.

“Are you cold sweetheart?”

“Yeah, it’s a bit chilly but I can manage”.

“Hold on let me take Luna off you I will put her in the back so she’s cosy”.

He opens the back door of his car, settling Luna down and as he gets out, he holds a hoodie. “Here you go darling, put this on it will keep you warm”.

“It’s not a big deal truly, you don’t have to-” he was so sweet and thoughtful in this moment making your cheeks turn rosy from shyness. Javi cut you off stopping you saying anything else.

“I want to darling, okay? so put this on right now”.

“Okay, as you wish sir” you say letting out a giggle, as you pull his hoodie over your head, you smell the aroma of his scent. His scent was now all over you, his hoodie was oversized on you it felt like a warm blanket hugging your body. This small gesture made you feel a tingling sensation in your stomach, was this the feeling your friends were all talking about when you asked them about their relationships or how they knew their partners were the ones. The butterflies in your stomach? You’ve never experienced anything like that not even with your ex’s.

You are now in the car, as he is driving on the main road headed to the supermarket. The ride is silent but no awkwardness it didn’t feel weird not saying anything, most of the time you felt like you didn’t speak enough so would always feel pressured to try to make meaningless conversations with people so that they didn’t think you were quite or weird. With Javi you felt like you didn’t need to say anything, the feeling of comfort as words were not needed right now. You were in the moment connected much deeper than any words could be spoken right now.

“Alrighty, here we are” he says as he pulls into the parking spot, clutching his car.

Luna stayed in the car whilst you and Javi went to the store. He did suggest getting a trolley to use for both of you, but you insisted on using a basket instead as you didn’t want to buy too much only what you had written on your list. You and Javi went to different aisles to get your essentials, you were now walking down the ice cream aisle where you had spotted your favourite ice cream which you didn’t end up getting.

Javier walks up to you “are you ready to head to the tills…?” “Yes, let’s go” “Actually you go ahead I need to grab one more thing will meet you at the exit” Javi says.

“Ok, I’m going to go pay for my things, will wait for you at the exit Javi”.

You both checkout at different tills, you had finished scanning your items and paid for them first. Now waiting at the exit, wondering why it is taking Javi so long to pay and why is he packing his groceries right at the till, when he could do it once he got to the car.

“We can head to the car, querida”. “Yeah, let’s go”.

You both walk back to the car, you glance through the window to see if Luna had woken up, but to your surprise she was still sleeping like an angel. “Look at her sleeping Javi, she is smiling in her sleep must be having a nice dream” “yeah, it really has been a long day for her bless her she didn’t get to sleep from all the playing she did all day”.

“Give me your shopping bags querida, I will put them in the trunk for you”. “Thanks, that is really sweet of you”.

You wait for Javi to load shopping bags into the trunk as you are seated in the passenger seat, when he gets into the car, he has something behind him. “Hey, guess what I got?” “Javi, what is that behind your back?” “I said guess darling” “Ummm… treats for Luna?” “What? No” he giggles “Surprise, there you go sweetheart thought you would like that” he pulls out a tub of chocolate ice cream that has small heart shaped macarons. “No way! you didn’t Javi, how did you know?” “I saw you in the aisle looking at it as you picked it up and placed in back into the freezer”.

“You are the sweetest man I have ever met; this is my favourite ice cream I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I eat the whole tub of it within 30 minutes of opening it”. All you could think about is how caring and thoughtful he was for noticing such small detail that meant so much to you. No guy has ever been this attentive to you, they only cared about one thing which was to get into your pants. Not that anyone succeeded but Javi is different he is kind-hearted with the purest soul.

“Nothing to be embarrassed of querida, you make me laugh. I guess it must be good ice cream”.

“Oh, it is amazing Javi trust me. You should try it sometime.”

“I believe you sol” Javi really wanted to say mi sol (my sunshine) but had to remind himself that you were not his, not yet anyway. He sure as hell wouldn’t let a girl like you slip away trough his fingers. He had to figure out a way to see you again and spend time with you without coming off as a weirdo. He was intrigued to learn more about you and grow a connection. Fuck he wanted to taste that ice cream from inside of your mouth.

Both of you put your seatbelts on and Javi starts the car. The ride home is silent again as both of you are deep inside your thoughts thinking of each other. How was it possible that two people who desire each other so much had no clue that they both wanted each other. All that you and Javi had to do was talk to one another but as both are afraid of making a wrong impression stayed put. Of course, both of you were single and were drawn to one another like magnets.

You wanted to invite him to your flat so he could try the ice cream, but it was too late, and he probably had errands in the morning. Anyways he probably wouldn’t be interested anyways, he was Javi Gutierrez after all he probably has somebody at home waiting for him. You would do anything just to be Javi’s girl.

A though lingered in Javi’s mind that what if you had a boyfriend or a girlfriend and that thought completely infuriated him because he wanted you all for himself. What person would let their beautiful girlfriend sit alone in a park on sunny day.

Now as you are approaching a residential area Javi breaks the silence. “Let me know where to turn querida” “Take a next left, right here yes” “Okay, now where?” “Keep going straight, that building in front” “This apartment complex?” “Yes”.

As Javi parks his car in a parking spot in front of your apartment you say “well thank you for everything Javi” you get out the car but so does Javi. “It’s my pleasure querida, hold on I will get your shopping bags out of the trunk”. “There you go …” “Thank you again Javi, wait I forgot about your hoodie here hold this” you smile at him. “No, you don’t need to give it back, keep it I’ve got plenty of them, not a big deal sweetheart”. “Okay well thank you, I better go inside” you say awkwardly as you swear you thanked him about 100 times, this man really knows how to treat a woman.

As Javi is about to get into the car, he slams the door and jogs to you as you are about to open the door to your apartment. “Hey, will you be at the park tomorrow?”. “Yeah, I’m there most of the time, I will be there at 6pm. Why did you ask?” “Just wanted to know, I guess I will see you tomorrow. Have a lovely night”. “You too, see you tomorrow”. He waits for you to go inside before starting the car engine.

Tomorrow? What does he mean by see you tomorrow. No way he wanted to see you again. There is no way this day is real; you must be daydreaming. You think to yourself as you head through the door of your flat. You felt like your heart was about to burst out your chest.

However, no matter how unrealistic and surreal this felt it was very much real. It had happened and you had real proof, the pictures that you took, you go through them finding one where you, Javi and Luna have tongues out making a silly pose, you scroll to the next photo to only realise it’s a short video of him at first and then turning the camera to you holding Luna and giving her kisses.

Now as you try to fall asleep, you are thinking of what to wear tomorrow and how to style your hair, whether you should wear makeup or not. If this is all just a dream you would rather never wake up from this dream.

Thoughts? Would anyone be interested in part 2? Thank you for taking your time to read this fic. LOL finally got the courage to post this.

TAGLIST: Lol just one my bestie @agnytute mwah ily.

#javi gutierrez x reader #javi gutierrez #javi g fanfiction #javi g fluff #javi gutierrez x f!reader #javi gutierrez imagine #the unbearable weight of massive talent #pedro pascal characters #javi gutierrez x you

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shefanispeculator · 6 months

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Blake Shelton knew exactly how to impress on the final night of his 2024 Back to the Honky Tonk Tour: lean into his roots and call up his friends. The Ada, Oklahoma, native’s Saturday night (March 30) performance at Tulsa’s BOK Center was brimming with guest performers, all fellow Okies. The special occasion was Oklahoma Is All for the Hall, a fundraiser for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s education programs. Even Gwen Stefani showed up to sing.

“Hey, everybody, say hello to my personal favorite new Oklahoman!” Shelton said to introduce his wife, the night’s only unannounced special guest. Stefani—lead singer of the band No Doubt, a solo artist, and, like Shelton, a former coach on the TV singing competition The Voice—joined her husband for a trio of songs midway through Shelton’s set. Together, they performed their two country radio chart-toppers, “Nobody But You” and “Happy Anywhere,” as well as “Purple Irises,” a recently released duet from Stefani’s next album.

“I don’t know if you guys have a clue what you bought a ticket for. Get comfortable—this is gonna take a while, okay?” Shelton told the crowd after opening his set with 2021’s “Come Back as a Country Boy.” “We’re here for one reason tonight. . . . That’s to celebrate country music like Okies do.”

Shelton’s fans were up to the task. They knew all the words to “Some Beach” and “Austin,” a pair of Shelton’s early-career #1s. They cheered at every mention of their home state. They even showed up with gifts.

“When something’s cool, it’s cool,” Shelton said as he showed off a flag held by a fan close to the stage, featuring one of Shelton’s high school photos on one side and one of Stefani’s on the other.

“We were meant to be—look at those mullets!” Shelton joked.

Shelton performed more than twenty of his songs during the course of the evening, interspersed with appearances from his special guests. In between Shelton’s performances, Kristin Chenoweth, Wade Hayes, the Swon Brothers, and Country Music Hall of Fame members Ronnie Dunn and Vince Gill—all introduced by radio host Storme Warren of TuneIn Radio’s The Big 615—each offered up two songs of their own. (Additionally, local country artist Justin Adams opened the show.) Dunn’s mini-set, in particular, was warmly received, with the Brooks & Dunn member sharing memories of local honky-tonks Duke’s Country and Tulsa City Limits. “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” had the crowd line dancing at their seats.

Despite being, as she acknowledged, the outlier of the bunch, Broadway star Chenoweth earned one of the biggest standing ovations of the night. Accompanied only by Shelton’s keyboard player, Philip de Steiguer, she performed a gorgeous cover of the Willie Nelson hit “Always on My Mind” and brought the house down with a rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

“This is for anybody out there who has dreams just like I did growing up in this town,” said Chenoweth, who is originally from the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow.

That theme emerged once more during Gill’s set, when he shared an unreleased song, “Heroes.” He and guitarist Jack Schneider also performed “Go Rest High on That Mountain,” dedicating the song to Shelton’s brother Richie, who died in a car accident in 1990, and fellow Oklahoman and Country Music Hall of Fame member-elect Toby Keith, who died of cancer in February.

Gill began the All for the Hall series of fundraising concerts in 2005 by suggesting that country music artists donate the proceeds from one annual performance to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Shelton’s Saturday show raised nearly $800,000 for the nonprofit museum’s education programs, making it the most successful All for the Hall benefit offered outside of Nashville to date. The museum’s educational offerings directly served more than 230,000 people last year though in-person and virtual programs.

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ryder-weston · 2 months

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[ michael evans behling, cis man, he/him ] — whoa! RYDER WESTON just stole my cab! not cool, but maybe they needed it more. they have lived in the city for 4 YEARS, working as a FIREFIGHTER. that can’t be easy, especially at only 30 YEARS OLD. some people say they can be a little bit DISOBEDIENT and SHORT-SIGHTED , but i know them to be FAITHFUL and NINBLE-FOOTED. whatever. i guess i’ll catch the next cab. hope they like the ride back to BROOKLYN! —

CHARACTER INFORMATION:

full name: ryder james weston

nickname(s): ry, rj

pronouns & gender: he/him & cis man

sexuality: pansexual

age: thirty

relationship status: single

birth date: december 31, 1993

birth place: savannah, georgia

hometown; savannah, georgia

time in town: since february 2020

occupation: firefighter

parents: selina & marianna weston

siblings: hudson weston, jayden weston, & finley weston

personality: disobedient, short-sighted, faithful, and nibble footed

pet: none

children: none

APPEARANCE:

celebrity doppelgänger: darren barnet

height: 5'10"

hair color: black

eye color: brown

FAVORITES:

color: hunter green

non-alcoholic beverage: vanilla milkshake

alcoholic beverage: any kind of beer

season: winter

candle scent: fresh bsalm

book: n/a

video game: gta 5

tv show: 911

animated tv show: big mouth

movie: mystic pizza

holiday movie: the polar express

disney movie: hercules

pixar movie: zootopia

disney original movie: the thirteenth year

candy: sweedish fish

chocolate candy: sno-caps

Fruit: orange's

Vegetable: celery

cuisine to eat: anything mexican

cuisine to make: anything frozen

genre of music: punk-pop

artist: charlotte sands

band: all time low & falling in reverse

song: getaway green by all time low

BIOGRAPHY:

tw; death

Even though Ryder could be seen blasting All Time Low or Falling In Reverse, he was a southern boy at heart. He still enjoyed the classics of Luke Bryan, Luke Combs, Travis Scott, and other country artists, you just wouldn’t know it from looking at him. He grew up with two beautiful moms who loved him dearly. They were both his biological parents as Ryder was conceived before one of his parents went through hormone treatment and transitioned from male to female. Of course his other mother was completely supportive and would love her life partner through anything.

Since his one mom had transitioned, they weren’t able to have kids that were both biologically theirs so instead of getting a donor, they decided to adopt because there were so many kids out there in the world who needed a home. When Ryder was four years old, they brought home a set of twins, a boy and a girl. Ryder loved being the older brother and was constantly protecting them like they were his own children. Then when Ryder was six and the twins were two, they decided to adopt one more child.

Even through his school years, he was protective of them and would always have their best interest at heart. Their parents both worked in the medical field and they wanted their kids to follow suit but knew that it was unrealistic as it was not something that everybody was good at. Ryder on one hand was exceptional when it came to numbers and calculations. Teachers would think that he was cheating on his tests because he wouldn’t have to show his work for his math problems, but he was able to solve a lot of problems in his head.

It was no surprise that when it came to graduate high school and go to college, Ryder has chosen accounting. He chose a school right near home so that he could still help his moms out with the other kids and be close to them because that’s how they all were. Of course he excelled in all of the accounting classes and he graduated at the top of his class. He had a beautiful girlfriend at the end of his college career and it seemed like the two of them were going to spend the rest of their lives together. He seemed like the superstar of them family.

Ryder got a job in an accounting firm where he was producing work of people who were there for fifteen years. They were really surprised and he moved up the corporate ladder quite fast. Ryder had moved out of his home and moved in with his girlfriend turned fiance and they were planning the wedding of their lives.

One night, Ryder was hanging out with his friend and there was a fire in their apartment complex. He freaked out and he unfortunately had to choose between saving his fiance or his best friend and he saved his fiance and his best friend passed away in the fire. Ryder fell into a dark pit to the point where he had to go to therapy. He did that for a few months before he dropped everything and decided he needed a fresh start. Of course he didn’t think that he could do it but he had to do it. He packed up his things and didn’t tell anyone where he was going but he moved to Brooklyn where he became a firefighter because he didn’t want something like this to ever happen to him again. He needed a complete change and he hates that he hurt and left the people behind but he didn’t tell anyone where he was going.

#boroughs.intro #introducing me #death tw #tw death

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lunarsilkscreen · 8 months

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The Problem with Fame (and money)

Have you ever been in a position where you were famous, and didn't know it? (BEFORE IT GOES TO MY HEAD.)

Imagine all of a sudden, a lot of theoretical dollars get sent to your YouTube bank account.

<aside>Theoretical Dollars is a South Park '08 reference, before YouTube and social media paid their users for good content, you could suddenly get famous. And people just assumed that meant you had $$. Despite being flat broke, and just having a lot of "Likes".

Even today, especially with the "Got paid by Musk on X" jokes; laymem assume that online persona's make *bank*. Who paid them? You?</aside>

That wasn't really an aside this time, it's kinda important.

Even today, you could have like 40k karma on Reddit, and all of a sudden; people think you can do whatever. You can pay for everything! Make everybody's troubles go away.

This gets even more problematic with the fact that people who can make a profit off of other people's fame (your tabloids, your TMZ, your X personalities who *do* make money from outrage content.)

And people who don't know they're famous get hurt for it. Or sometimes benefit from others starstuck-ness without knowing it.

Despite *only* having 40k reddit karma myself, I've had to tell people that no, I'm not internet famous. Not even Reddit Famous. I deleted my account because of old friends who thought I was a walking ATM machine (as opposed to atmospheric or "at the moment")

No bruh.

My own mother constantly asks for handouts. I can't call her a bad mother; but the only thing she sees me as is what she can get for free: bus driver, cigarettes, pocket change, and free home repair.

Despite only having enough to live off of.

And none of these people *fully* understand how money actually works, or how a paycheck works. Which is really sad for anybody above the age of 25. (And sometimes younger.)

If you need a couple thousand a month to make food and bills; you should understand its the *same* f* concept for anybody else you know. And despite being able to do math; they refuse to do that; think like a rational adult, that every person has monetary needs that need to be met. And just keep seeing people as a way to get their next fix. (That is; free stuff, not necessarily free drugs)

"I'm not looking to adopt a 30+ year old at the moment. You need to grow the duck up."

I've literally been harassed by people that I know for not spending money on them; and spending money to start a business. They see the *new* things they don't have.

Even if it just trinkets and collectibles from when you were young. (No I know why, they see graded Beta Magic Cards on pawn stars and they think *every single MTG card is $$*) f*ing commodification.

I seriously don't understand people's thoughts processes.

Well actually. I do.

See, Melin Shoot seems to be mediocritcally known in certain circles. (That's me, I'm Melin; everybody thinks its a stage name.that I use professionally. DESPITE ONLY EVER HAVING BEEN ENLISTED MILITARY PROFESSIONALLY FOR A DECADE.)

And I didn't know that. Cuz nobody told me. Even today people think their own weird thoughts. Like *how much money I must've made for showing up on somebody else's stream*

It sounds like I'm fluffing up my own fame. I'm talking about being a minor character, a very minor character, everywhere... And people *think* I have more pull than I do.

I don't. I absolutely don't.

And yet for some reason; there's this strange way people act around me. As if I *was* somebody famous.

If you can be harassed for being mildly associated with Fame. And people can make money off of you without you making any money for the same: I cannot imagine how awful it must be for those who are *actually* famous.

$*. Imagine being famous for giving the president a blowjob and then just not being able to get a regular job after that ...

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alexr-fightgames · 1 year

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Chicago's Famous Mystery Tournament

So overall, I had a great time at COMBO BREAKER in Chicagoland a couple of weekends ago! Lemme tell you about the MYSTERY TOURNAMENT and my experience playing in it!

MYSTERY GAME is an FGC tradition, specifically coming up out of Chicago (so you'll see it at Frosty Faustings and Combo Breaker especially!), but you'll see it run at other events too!

The premise is, at every stage of competition, you are faced with a different obscure game, given no instructions, and you have to play a set in that game right now! Figure it out, kid.

Generally everybody in a pool will play the same sequence of games, and it can vary, depending on whether you're on winners side or losers side -- but different pools will get different games if it's a big event.

So I signed up for this at Combo Breaker, because how could I not? It was initially full, but thankfully they raised the entry cap, so I got in there!

For my tournament run, my pool started off with Asura Blade, which I had never even heard of, but I got a moment to look at people playing it before my match, and it looked like a fairly normal 2D fighter. Unfortunately, my opponent didn't make it to the pool in time, so it looked like I would skip out on playing Asura Blade! OK, we take those, no worries.

For the next game on winner's side, we got the surprisingly familiar Art of Fighting 3, which I had played before, and has had a few videos made about it recently (this one is great, you should watch it), and I picked Robert and did some pretty Normal Shoto Zoning in the way a person who's been playing fighting games for 30-odd years might. It worked out, and I won!

But. While I was playing my second match, my opponent from the first match showed up, and the bracket runner decided to un-DQ him for some reason!! They were yelling "hey where's Alex R" while I was playing AOF3, and I was like "I'm right here, I'm playing, you putz!" ... the decision was made that I'd have to fight my first opponent in Asura Blade, and if I won that one, then my second match would count, and if I lost, then that match would be invalidated! I wasn't too upset, but I feel that was a bit unprofessional; they should have kept my opponent DQ'd.

On the other hand, I got a chance to try out Asura Blade, and I won my match in that game too -- I picked Rose Mary, the hot girl with purple hair and a floating sword and zoning strats. Can't go wrong with the purple hair girl. And it worked out! I found the good buttons (floating sword go brrrr) and figured out how to do supers when I had meter, and so my first two matches counted. On to the third match! Am I truly unstoppable at mystery? ...

For my third match (still on winners side!), we played SABER MARIONETTE J - BATTLE SABERS, which I had definitely never heard of before. I forget exactly which character I picked, but it might have been Bloodberry? I think if I knew the name, I would have picked Bloodberry. I found out how to block, and I found a good special move, and we were off to the races, won my set 2-0 again! Up three sets!!

For my fourth match, we played Battle Cross, which alert readers at home might know -- is a racing game, not a fighting game, and was never released outside of Japan. It was completely unlocalized, and the interface was inscrutable for those who cannot read Japanese.

So a second ridiculous thing happened here. I sit down next to my opponent. We fist-bump. The little race begins, and we intend to start guiding the little cars around the little track.

One of the cars -- the red car -- is moving around the track. The black car is remaining stationary, at the starting line. This is WINNERS FINALS of the pool, and the winner of this match is going to get out of the pool on winners side, SECURING A FREE BURRITO. I'm pretty sure that I'm driving the little red car, and my opponent's car is still remaining stationary. I'm not going to say anything about this, because This Is Tournament.

So in not too long, the little red car completes its tenth lap around the tiny track, and a little stats screen pops up. Race over! On to the next race! And my opponent says "OK, 1-0, let's go!" ... but I am sure that I was driving.

We call the judge over, and he fiddles with the controls and tells us that I was actually driving! (my opponent thought the same thing I thought, except I happened to be right!) The judge told my opponent which button was the gas pedal, and the match proceeds. With that knowledge in hand, he brought it back and won the next two races, sending me to losers. GGs and good racing, opponent.

On Losers Bracket, I then faced none other than PND Ketchup, one of my favorite Kommentators and video essayists about NRS games! (my other favorite is his brother Mustard). And we played Tobal 2, which I had never played before, but I vaguely knew about! I picked Ill Goga and Ketchup picked Hom the robot, and I pretty quickly found how to block, and how Ill had some good jab strings and a really nice ranged tail attack. To be totally honest, it's possible that the buttons were not configured right, because neither of us found any attacks that had to be guarded low, but... simple jab pressure and handling the frames well and spacing with the tail attack, and I beat one of my favorite YouTubers, FOR THE BURRITO!

He was very gracious afterwards.

I made it out of my pool, on to the second stage!

For the second stage, I played Slap Happy Rhythm Busters against a guy possibly even older than me, who I found out afterwards is an obscure fighting games enthusiast and variety FG streamer, and that is exactly the kind of person you don't want to face in mystery tournament. I picked Garia, recognizing her as a profile pic that @vice-s-assistant uses on Steam, and my opponent picked April the cowgirl. And uh... I didn't win.

But I had a great time! Out at 4-2. And I got a burrito credit to redeem later at Chipotle, and it tasted like victory.

Thanks for reading <3 Play fighting games.

#fgc #combo breaker 2023 #combo breaker

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julemmaes · 2 years

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Your on a year abroad?! That’s so cool which country is it in? I’m glad ur having a good time - i have a year abroad next yr I am TERRIFIED 😭😭 any tips???

You signed up for this, but I'm still sorry it came out this long, so... sorry:)

I'm actually doing Erasmus if you know what that is. If you don't, the quick explanation is "your home country and university pay you to study abroad for a period of time that goes from 5 months to 11".

I'm almost halfway through my stay in Valencia, Spain, and I've had my highs and lows. I'm very attached to my family and I have a very very V E R Y large and close group of friends that I used to spend my entire days with, so at the beginning of the stay all I wanted to do was go back to Italy. I went home for a couple of days at the end of October and it nearly destroyed me coming back here (I literally just got to my apartment after spending three weeks at home and I'm numb but in a good way), to the point where I was considering giving up on the scholarship and cut the lease. My friends were supportive as fuck in that decision and my family has no idea I was doing that bad, but then I booked a trip to Morocco for December and from there it was honestly like a smooth ride. My days started to look brighter (let me romanticize my life) and I had way more motivation that I could have hoped for in that period.

I'm so mentally unstable that many of my friends doubted I could make it out alive, but I'm handling myself and reminding myself every day I'm just a 20yo living on her own for the first time, 1500km from her home and family. Which might not be that weird for some, might look like the end of the world for others. I'm in between that.

I recognize the chance I was given and the fact that this opportunity is not something I should take for granted, hence why I decided to stay in the end. This isn't forever. It's just a couple of months where I can push my limits and see where I stand in the world and what I wanna do with my life.

I'm not gonna lie and say everything is perfect cause I fucking hate my roommates and the way uni things are handled and having to buy water and walk from the groceries to my house with a 30km pack in my arms every time. But it's worth it. It's so worth it.

The people you meet. The places you get to see. Nobody stops you. You're your own person. You get to really find out what free will is (and let me tell you I did some weird as fuck things since I have no one controlling what I do), (like eating mandarins and only mandarins for three days straight—do not reccomend), (eat consistently).

Tips I'd give out are:

1. Check free card or student discounts for transportation. I literally paid zero (0) euros since I got here for the metro, bus, tram cause Valencia is perfect and people under 30 don't pay shit.

2. Every event your school or university offers, go. It's the fastest and best way to meet new people without having to worry of strangers on the internet.

3. This is controversial and really personal, so I'll give you the tip everybody gets and then my personal experience. A) Make friends fast as soon as you get there cause otherwise groups will be formed and you'll be alone forever. B) Don't worry too much about that cause you're constantly meeting new people every single day. Some you will find lame, some you will want to strangle and some will become your lifelong friends.

4. Let yourself feel and don't neglect your body. It's easy to forget you're not on a very long holiday and sometimes I lose sight of that as well. You're tired? Sleep. Don't feel guilty for not going out with your friends for the fifth night on a row. You're angry cause your roommate didn't throw out the trash on his day? Send him that fucking text cursing him through the seven realms of hell (idek if they're seven). You miss you bed and your pillow? Cry.

Remember it's okay if you feel sad AND happy at the same time. Those two emotions being contraries to each other doesn't mean they can't coexist. I'm constantly feeling grateful for being here and homesick cause I wish I was in my parents bed gossiping with them. I'm always anxious I'm missing out on everything going on back home while signing my lungs out at a club with my friends. I've had two long months where I was guilty 24/7 cause I wouldn't let myself feel any of those emotions and end up depressed.

Just, feel.

5. If you'll live on your own, grocery shop smartly. Don't over buy. The food will still be there in the shop the next time you go. But it WILL get moldy and spoiled if you buy it and then don't have enough time to eat it.

6. If your program offers weekends trips (even daily trips) go on them cause it's the best choice ever. I took one on the third day I was here and I meet the one person that later became my very bestest friend ever. They might be pricey but it's worth it.

7. Be ready to be disappointed by many things. Not everything will go as planned and not everything will be as you imagined it. And that's okay. Brace yourself for failure and accept things as they come. If you have no control over it, it's useless to stress about it.

8. Idk which country you're going to, but make the most of it and travel around. Find some friends with the same will go explore and take trains, busses and cars to wherever. Even the city you live in might have some secret gems, you just need to look for them.

I'm literally sleepwalking at this point, so I think this is enough, but don't hesitate to send other asks or dm me directly if you ever need something❤❤

#i got an aask #personal #ire

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apesoformythoughts · 2 years

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Christmas Day [2003]

Up at 5:50, read my breviary with a flashlight. There’s an Italian water heater in the bathroom, but as there’s still no running water it’s useless. Bathing is unpleasant, but it’s the shaving in cold water I really detest. At breakfast, because it was Christmas, the sisters gave me a fried egg.

Christmas Mass at 9:30, Father Harvey presiding.

The temperature outside has risen to about 20°. I was surprised to see students arriving for class at the state-run school to the west of the sisters’ house, but was told that December 25 has no particular meaning for Armenians; New Year’s Day is the major holiday, and Christians celebrate the Epiphany as well.

That said, the sisters were not going to let the desperately poor go hungry on Christmas Day, and [Sister] Nishakant loaded the Land Rover with warm food, and Jevgenia and I rode along to help deliver it. We made fifteen stops or so, often feeding two or more households at a time. The sisters had prepared stewed chicken, boiled potatoes, and a salad of peas and grated carrot. There was also an apple and a tangerine for every person in the house. One complication—which, I’m ashamed to say, hadn’t occurred to me—was that food containers were scarce, and people sometimes brought out buckets and wash basins, into which Nishakant and Jevgenia carefully ladled the meal. I’d help carry it into the homes, say a blessing prayer with Nishakant, and sprinkle the room with Holy Water. Looking around for other food I usually saw nothing. Most people gave no sign of gratitude or resentment. One woman scolded Nishakant (“She asks for clothes, Father.”) Another woman wept.

Slowly it dawned on me that nearly all the most wretched folks we visited were mentally deficient, and that in addition to being destitute they were imperfectly capable of keeping house and taking care of themselves generally. I mentioned this to Nishakant and she nodded, and explained that depression was an even greater problem; sometimes the hardship became overwhelming and people just quit. She told me that “Ripsy” (Hripsime, one of their wards) was found as a baby, black with filth, lying in a dirty bed with her head crawling with lice.

Back at the compound, I followed the spry Father Harvey down a concrete conduit into a well pit to try to prime the pump that services his bungalow. Water flowed for five minutes and quit.

After lunch there was a Christmas pageant, which has been in rehearsal for several days. With the help of some creative gender-bending, everybody had a part. The infant Jesus was convincingly played by a 3-week-old girl whom the sisters laid in a bassinette. Those confined to wheelchairs, for the most part the most severely retarded, served as the angels, wearing white robes with tinsel haloes and cardboard wings fastened behind. As they slumped in their chairs, cross-eyed and drooling, it came home to me that few persons who played the part would be likely to pass more of their lives in the state of grace. A two-man pantomime donkey genuflected in the general direction of the manger, next to four of the Three Kings.

Afterward, Santa Claus made an appearance and gave each child a gift from his sack, for which the recipient performed a dance or sang a song. I sat on a folding chair helping with hard-to-open presents, etc., caught unawares several times by slobbery kisses on the temple and neck from overexcited children.

Vespers, a bowl of soup, and to bed before 9:00.

From Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ’s Armenia Diary, first published under the pseudonym Father X.

#christmas #paul v. mankowski sj

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jcdedmemories · 8 days

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CHARACTER INFORMATION:

full name: ryder james weston

nickname(s): ry, rj

pronouns & gender: he/him & cis man

sexuality: pansexual

age: thirty

relationship status: single

birth date: december 31, 1993

birth place: savannah, georgia

hometown; savannah, georgia

time in town: since february 2020

occupation: firefighter

parents: selina & marianna weston

siblings: hudson weston, jayden weston, & finley weston

personality: disobedient, short-sighted, faithful, and nibble footed

pet: none

children: none

APPEARANCE:

celebrity doppelgänger: darren barnet

height: 5'10"

hair color: black

eye color: brown

FAVORITES:

color: hunter green

non-alcoholic beverage: vanilla milkshake

alcoholic beverage: any kind of beer

season: winter

candle scent: fresh bsalm

book: n/a

video game: gta 5

tv show: 911

animated tv show: big mouth

movie: mystic pizza

holiday movie: the polar express

disney movie: hercules

pixar movie: zootopia

disney original movie: the thirteenth year

candy: sweedish fish

chocolate candy: sno-caps

Fruit: orange’s

Vegetable: celery

cuisine to eat: anything mexican

cuisine to make: anything frozen

genre of music: punk-pop

artist: charlotte sands

band: all time low & falling in reverse

song: getaway green by all time low

BIOGRAPHY:

tw; death

#ryder.bio

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lebihanto-universe-blog · 2 months

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Be Irresistible, Click Here Get my top tips for optimal health and vitality: Modern love comes with an unprecedented list of ... not all divorces or all breakups are synonymous with failure the longing for love for intimacy for connection doesn't really go away so we know that 50 percent of marriage is in divorce right and and people don't want to get divorced so why why did couples struggle like that and and what do they do wrong when trying to sort of fix conflicts in relationship well let me suggest maybe something first i would like us to imagine that not all divorces or all breakups are synonymous with failure when people have lived together for 20 30 years 15 whatever when people have buried parents together build homes together raise children together dealt with economic adversity together they have done a lot of what marriage or companionship or companionate coupled them is about i think it's unfair and inaccurate and shame inducing to think that the only marker of success or the main marker of success is longevity in this case you know some stories end because life changes because people have fundamentally different needs because there is a loss and they cannot overcome the grief together you know there are lots of reasons of why people divorce that doesn't mean it was a failed relationship yeah that said so this is the first thing i diverse means it's the end but sometimes it's the end of something that was limited maybe but still very good yeah i feel like that i feel like that was my last relationship that it was really this incredible gift and incredibly beautiful and perfect for both of us and what it was and had a chapter that needed to be written but then it was over right the next thing is that divorce rate increase when women have greater economic independence that's a very important thing you know in the soviet union 97 of divorces were initiated by women because there was economic equality everybody earned the same one dollar and so we were together for all the other emotional reasons and if those needs were not being met then there was no reason for her to wash his laundry right by definition divorce is off is initiated more often by women and the divorce rate goes up when women have an alternative that is a very important social factor to include in what we otherwise look more as relational factors social and economic factors and but that means that the reasons for staying together become more emotional yeah they become more about connection communication intimacy sharing thriving together and that when that disappears then the sense is for what now i would add to the conversation about divorce today is that you know it used to be that people divorced if they were really unhappy today people will divorce if they think that they can be happier and the happiness mandate is at the heart also of this you know is this good enough can it be better or the midlife question is this it will this be the next 25 years more of the same is there more life yeah so all of that are part of the modern questions of divorce which are very different from what it used to be totally and i think you know um i think people are are more willing to jump out of things that aren't working uh there's less reasons to stay together like you said and um and i think a lot of people try counseling and personally uh you know i've had a lot of success in my life and my career and business and in so many ways uh but relationships have been my holy grail i've had three marriages multiple relationships i just can't figure it out you know i was thinking about you know who i know has really healthy great relationships who i know is fulfilled and happy and satisfied who i know is like you know really alive and vibrant in their relationship and it's a source of happiness instead of stress or struggle and honestly i have a list but it's a very short list of people and and you know your work really is is uh talks about how you know yes relationships

can be a great source of happiness and fulfillment but they're also a source of stress so why are relationships so freaking hard but you know the thing that that you also said is you've had three marriages and many relationships but you also have other relationships with friends with your children with siblings you know and in that sense um i would say that friendships family relationships haven't really changed that much parent-children relationships have changed but there is one relationship that has really undergone an extreme makeover and that is our romantic relationships we expect more from them than we ever have it's an unprecedented set of expectations that we bring to modern love and that makes it much more complicated than the particular expectations that we used to have for long-term basically generally marital relationships and and those things that we expect are a lot we want people to be our best friend our lover our mother our our you know our companion our work partner you know right and we want companionship look marriage or romantic relationship well they were not called romantic relationships that's the first thing is that they were quite separate marriage was primarily a financial arrangement it was a companionship for life that gave you a family succession and social status we still want all those things too but now i also want you to be my intimate partner my erotic partner my trusted confidant my passionate lover all all in one and we live twice as long let's really add that since you are a longevity person you live twice as long and so we are asking one person basically to give us what once an entire village used to provide and we even have gone a step further you know the thing that many many people talk about today is the partner as a soul mate and that's a very new concept and one and only basically used to be god now we want it to be a person and we basically bring to this romantic love expectations for ecstasy and meaning and transcendence and wholeness things that people used to look for in the realm of the divine as the union analyst robert johnson says and then i want you to help me become the best version of myself it's like love as an identity project and you know elijah has a beautiful image it's a tall order for a party of two it's a new olympus and as he subscribes when people climb a mountain the view at the top of the mountain is spectacular but the air is also thinner and not everybody can reach the top those who reach the top have an amazing view better than all relationships in history but so many people don't get there why because this is part of your question you know why has this been so hard for me our childhood is often you know uh a few things that were done really really beautifully and riot well and then people who got either too much of something or too little of something right too much attention too much intrusion too much impermeation of boundaries or not enough attention neglect abandonment aloneness too much or too little basically is really what we can often summarize at some of the challenges of our childhood and we bring those developmental traumas into our adult love and really mark this is probably the most interesting thing people can sit in my office and say i don't have these issues with anybody else and i have long lasting friends and colleagues and students and mentors and i always say there's only two relationships that mirror each other and that is the one that you had with your original parental figures the ones who took care of you and the ones that you encounter in your romantic life that's where the antichamber the resonance in box is right there and that's where all the juicy stuff is right where you learn about yourself and where you discover the parts yourself that may have more darkness that you like or that are actually capable of great love i mean all of it is sort of in that crucible of relationship that shows up and it seems like the pressures of expectation

on relationships today are so high you know like you said to be soulmate lover partner or confidant you know just grocery shopper dishwasher you know bed maker or whatever it is and it takes us out of the sort of the story of actually how do we navigate this because because the needs that i have for the person with whom i want to renovate a house are not necessarily the same as what i want with the person with whom i raise children i'm not necessarily the same as the person with whom i would like to experience erotic intimacy and not necessarily the same with whom i want to travel are not necessarily and basically we have a model in which we really do expect that we can do all of those things and navigate these roles and flexibly move from one to the other from the mundane to the sublime from desire to love from security to freedom from togetherness to individuality from connection to independence and that all of this should seamlessly be you know handled by two people and that is a challenge relationships are complex social systems really they do and they involve a lot of complicated things you know about how we manage expectations how we communicate how we establish trust how we feel safe to be open and vulnerable how we apologize and take responsibility for the bad stuff we do and how we straddle some of these contradictory needs and emotions in one social relational system that is really the challenge but we don't give up we are tenacious we you're still looking for love you're still here i'm like i gotta figure out why i keep doing this and then you know just kind of figure it out yes that is true and you have said that before too but many of us continue to hope that we will have that relationship i mean the the longing for love for intimacy for connection doesn't really go away we may defend against it we may say i'm taking a break i'm being chased for a year i'm not doing anything i'm not dating but the need doesn't disappear it just is on hold yeah and now we often pick partners that um are reflections of our unconscious challenges that we haven't really thought of or worked through or dealt with and it seems like that's where a lot of us bump up against so we're picking people based on matching some type of dysfunction in us that it all comes out and and i wonder how you see that in relationships how you deal with that with your clients i was presenting you know uh an episode of of uh where should we begin this morning to a group of students and uh it was a really what i look for so much in that choice that you describe is what is the invisible complementarity right here is this one person and basically she is lives with a chorus of people that speak to her speak through her her mother her brother her grandmother i mean there's all these people for every decision she makes she has a greek chorus literally giving her input and she finds this man who basically at 13 lost his mother and father at the same time to through various issues of health and mental health and and divorce etc and he is all alone you know with no needs supposedly meeting a woman who has plenty of needs and never questions them and it's a perfect match until it is not until it is not right um and she you know is very happy that he doesn't say much because she has already enough people talking in her head all the time you have all these ways in which i seek you out sometimes for the very things that you're trying to get away from yeah and i can give you a few other steps to the dance of who chooses who chooses who for what at its best you kind of can say we reenact those things we replay we get this resonance so that we can finally work through some of these things and at other times you kind of say you know you were deprived and you systematically put yourself with people who are not particularly generous yeah and you love generosity i think that's something i would say to you you are a fundamentally generous person and you often find yourself with

people who um are more more in a scarcity mentality and at first you are loving these people because you love to give to them and then at some point you wonder and what about me yeah i mean yeah or the expectations get sort of endless and it's impossible to fulfill them because you can't ever fulfill that for somebody else and they're looking at you for all these things and instead of being self-contained they will often be looking to you for their fulfillment their happiness their meeting their expectations and that seems like a recipe for disaster uh but in the beginning it's great because you think i can do it and i am honored that you think i can do it and i love the fact that i can actually succeed at it that makes me feel so good that i can give you what you need and then slowly it becomes you know you need too much i don't get much myself do i really want to be in that room you know how much is love caregiver and at what point you know and so this is that you know the very things that are initially attractive often become the source of conflict later that's interesting but i think one of the challenges that i think for relationships is that there's a lack of ability for couples and people in general to have you know conscious communication that's not violent that that allows each person to share what their experience is without conflict and and that simple skill of communication is not something we learn and i think that's where a lot of relations break down and you want me to refund this yeah sure yeah i want to know what you think because uh that's my perspective but it may not be true so here's the thing you do counseling and so you find that you work with people and trying to actually help them talk and communicate and you see the challenges that people have in hearing and learning what each other are feeling or wanting or thinking or needing so you know i do couples therapy i have a real predilection for working with couples because i find it one of the most fascinating relational systems that we have at this moment this a couple can really induce bliss and hell in a level that is amazing so do families for that matter and i work with families as well here's the thing it used to be that when people came to couples therapy they came actually for their children they didn't come to couples therapy they came and slowly we would identify that there was something maybe in the relationship that also was at the was interacting with the challenges that the child was having couples therapy really became a discipline of its own in the center that it is today when the expectations around intimate relationships uh began to rise the more we expect from the couple and the more we need couples therapy to help us with those expectations when the couple was not the central unit of the family but because the family was more important than the couple and people stayed together for the family yeah today not the children and not the family it really will keep people together they may keep them a few more years but ultimately what keeps people together is the quality of the relationship between the two people yeah right so therefore couples therapy becomes a much more uh sought after practice i don't just do communication you know i was thinking and i i was editing another podcast session and it's an incredible session it's the first session of season five that i'm producing now and they come in and he says you know we are both people who like things to be done who like to do things our way and i said that's okay that's interesting but what is what i'm hearing also is that you are two people who like other people to do things your way yeah and that's what they meant right so then i asked you know on what how did you learn you know to say yes and how did you learn to say no and he begins to tell me a whole story of um of of how basically he his father would continuously um belittle him uh lecture to him be contemptuous it you know we would

start with the conversation son and then what followed was often you know berating him for all the things that he wasn't doing right and living up to expectations and she grows up with a drug addicted mother father who commits suicide and she is the adult in the house from that little tree she raises her two children they say to me at one point we fight about everything we don't communicate and i say i don't think you fight about everything at all actually i think you're fighting about the same thing all the time the moment he experiences you are saying to him you're incompetent you're not doing it well you're not doing it right he is in that original wound of him of his and the moment he says you're not going to tell me what to do you know i'm doing it i'm i'm out of here and he goes for a break you think i'm once again all alone with all the responsibilities and the four children on my shoulders and i will always be alone and i will never have anybody by my side and you fight about that original wound that's what every argument is actually about it's the same story over and over you know and that was so illuminating for them that it wasn't about the chore chart that they had she had made and it wasn't about the kids and it wasn't about he spared it was about you know i don't want to be inadequate and i don't want to be alone those were the themes that each one was really and then we started to work so that becomes different than just communicating how do you say things nicer yeah yeah and how do you how do you get people to kind of move past those really primordial conditionings of childhood that's that's the 64 000 question yes i think the most important thing is that you teach people two things or you when i say teach means you you help them see two things you help them separate the past from the present the fact that this brings back vividly the experience of back then doesn't mean that it is actually what used to happen back then the past and the present sometimes feel like they come together into one but they are not and the second thing is that you then say at seven you were helpless at seven you couldn't respond at seven you couldn't just leave the house and say this is dangerous for me to be here um you you you know um whereas now you are an adult and you have choices so and then you go and you basically help them first of all through the body to separate the past from the present in this moment i get that tension like i want to start fighting like this man was a master of defiance you know but he got all his confidence through defiance which means that it was pseudo-confident and when she would actually say go ahead and do things i'm with you i support you then he would start to talk about all his doubts he was always sure only when he was in opposition when he was in a fight and he knew what he wanted but when he had somebody who was actually loving and giving then he didn't know what to do with himself and you go through the body and you track the feeling because a feeling is also embodied you know then you articulate the experience and then you know what i really did with them i really had a lot of fun they had a lot of fun i said lay down flat on the floor and then i said now continue the do argument know that you can't fight when you're lying flat yeah or where if you take your clothes off i think that's another thing i've heard from couples everybody take their clothes off it's hard to have a fight you know it's like we are meant to fight in straight up position like you know yeah so then it opened up a completely different and it went from the fighting to the africa behind the fighting which is often the fear of loss which is often will you believe me which will you be there for me etc and then you go deeper deeper deeper and that takes some time that's so beautiful you know esther you've you've been at the front seat of literally probably hundreds if not thousands of relationships in ways that most people don't

ever have insight into by simply the virtue of your job just like i've seen so many people who've been sick you've seen so many people who've had relationship challenges so in that in that perspective looking you know back after decades of doing this you know what is what do you define as the success of relationships day-to-day like what are the keys to a successful relationship and what are the things that really destroy relationships yeah i i i will start with what destroys and i'm taking notes of taking notes i would really refer to the work of john gottman and john and julie gottman here on what destroys them you know they have a wonderful way of kind of separating between the masters and the disasters and they talk about the four horses of apocalypse yeah um and basically what will kill relationships is chronic criticism defensiveness stonewalling and the killer of them all is contempt because contempt and this we know also in large-scale traumas is contempt is the dehumanizing contempt is whatever you feel or think is irrelevant and doesn't matter you don't even reach me so that those those four horses of apocalypse i think kind of summarize things well and once you have a lot of things defensiveness criticism defensiveness and stonewalling basically shutting and shutting down right you're shutting people out yes yes and contempt which is basically the you know um shame is under shame is one side and contempt content shame is contempt for oneself and contempt for the other it goes in both directions yeah i think when when i once wanted to write a paper i wanted to write a paper about what are creative couples because we talk about lasting couples we talk about stable couples but we rarely talk about what is creative couples or what you may include in successful couples and what was fascinating is what you said before the majority of people when i said do you know couples who have a spark couples who inspire you and i and people would on occasion come up with one maybe two often none it was really scary to them because if i said can you come up with entrepreneurs with artists with writers with intellectuals people have lists of people that inspire of course but here is everybody wanting to be in a relationship and not many people you know uh can think about yeah i like that i want to do this i never wrote the people the paper because what people ended up saying seemed rather banal to me as in that's i know that but then i have been sitting on this thing for years thinking actually maybe it's not that known what they said was this and that was very interesting this is not in order one is admiration admiration for your partner it's not respect it's different admiration always implies a level of idealization is i look up to you i i admire you for who you are as a person as a human being more than just in your role as a partner as a parent as a you know well so that was one big one two the relationship is basically a foundation with wings uh meaning there's a solid anchor of trust and that solid anchor of trust interacts with the ability to take risks in the in life and in the relationship and to be playful it's what i often have looked at the combination between the integration between our need for security and safety and predictability and reliability and our need for change and novelty and exploration and discovery these two fundamental human needs um i think that the the best relationships have of nice balance between what is togetherness and what is separateness they have people have their own lives but before i even continue i think the best thing to say is this there is no one-size-fits-all it's all yeah yeah i can't tell you one it's like you with health it's not like you have a sense in health that it's an interaction of different parts of course but if it is more of this or more of that you know some couples have venn diagrams that are completely overlapping they do everything together they spend all their time together

and it works beautifully yeah and some other very creative and couples are much more differentiated and actually they have a strong core but with big individual lives you know separate so no there is no one-size-fits-all i really would love that to be actually my opening line to your question before i even say what makes for success people who feel free in a relationship that makes for success for sure people who feel oppressed or under surveillance or who have to constantly lie or hide or you know don't not say what they bought or what this you know that kind of stuff those are major differences that i would add to the to the to the gottman list you know it's a a degree of autonomy matched with a deep sense of belonging these two together is a beautiful dance it's beautiful but i think there's some really practical ways that you talk about for people to achieve whatever it is their best relationship is right boundaries routines rituals you know what are the kinds of things that you help people establish within the relationship to build that foundation that structure because it's not something we know automatically it's not something we we actually are taught how do you help people build those structures in those relationships that help them get to that so it's very interesting this couple that i was mentioning before where he kind of walled himself off with no needs because he was all alone and there was nobody who could help him anyway and she is like permeated by all these voices i thought that i had done a rather limited session with them i really thought um i didn't really reach them i didn't really go underneath the noise etc and then i get a letter to them [Music] that you never know you know you never know about how much some of the tiny things that i did that i thought were almost slightly you know they were not basically i would say it's one thing to say how about you tell ester about this versus shutting your partner up and talking for them of course you want to to bring something up but you also want to let them tell their own story yeah how about when you have a problem or a question about sex or about children you don't first go to your mother and grandmother but you also go first to your partner yeah and you set the boundary with all the people from your family so that you can create a more sacred space with your partner the boundary is not always inside the relationship it's between the relationship and the outside world how about you are able to make a request that isn't a protest so say what you need rather than what the other person is or is not doing just make a request and stick to that and adding up these things basically they write to me three weeks later and say there's been a fundamental shift we haven't had a single fight i was able to no longer go and talk to my mother about everything he feels much more open to me because i'm much less critical with him and i appreciate his openness and that makes me more fond of him and that makes him more asexual with me and more expressive of his desire for me and it becomes the opposite of the escalation in the negative direction is now a kind of escalating yeah the going up in the positive direction that's the work yeah it's so powerful it's so powerful one of the things that you've learned after decades of working with couples and relationships that that are sort of nuggets of wisdom that you would lead people with about that could help them with relationships that they may be struggling with you know what are the things that people should anchor to and of course there's your book made in captivity and the state of affairs and your podcasts uh and all that which is great people should dive into that and your ted talks but i'm just wondering if you can kind of distill down you know what you've really learned the first thing i would say and i think i have really really learned it from you know the millions of people that listen to where should we begin is that you're

not alone these days on the one hand we have unprecedented expectations of our couples lives but at the same time we are also in a machine of fake news on social media so people curate and posture and filter and you kind of don't know where is the truth you know when people lived in the village you he you heard the fights of the neighbors and you heard the frolics of the neighbors now your best friends can come and tell you that they're breaking up and you never saw it coming yeah right nobody tells you the truth about what goes on in the couple's relationships and yet and then your left thinking desire everybody is great right they're doing great and we are alone with our problems and so i think really where should we begin showed me that when you listen deeply to the stories of others you see yourself in front of your own mirror and you don't feel as alone and you get the tools for the conversations that you want to have i think that's the first thing i really realized that this is a unit that doesn't talk friends talk to friends couples often talk to nobody about what's really going on they may be struggling with infidelity they may be struggling with infertility they may be struggling with bipolarity and mental health issues they may be struggling with unresolved grief they may be struggling with economic hardships with unemployment with addictions and they won't talk about it to anybody because they have to present themselves a certain way and it breaks my heart sometimes to see how alone people are with some of these major major challenges so that's the first thing i've really learned is to make sure that that's part of the game too is to give people a tool to make hard conversations less difficult the second thing that i have really learned is this couple that i was describing where i thought oh my god this is you know they really came in to say we need you to tell us are we broken are we beyond repair and uh and i thought at the end of the session i thought i don't know where this is going and i have been so many times surprised by people where i think there's not much left here and then when you change one thing like this woman she stopped trying to change him and she went ahead and took responsibility for her contribution and she changed a few things about her own behavior and it just unleashed a cascade of changes for the pos for the better and that is a real important piece sometimes it looks like everything is over is interconnected and it's like impossible heap of of of nuisance and yet if you make one shift it has the power because systems are interdependent parts to activate everything else that's the second thing that is very important the third thing is that there is a big difference between what you feel inside and how what you experience inside affects the people around you you may be depressed and feel weak and hopeless and helpless and anedonic but when you are in relationship with those who love you you often wield all the power yeah because you activate everybody around you to try to make you feel better to give you advice to try to lift you up and in the end they feel defeated and deflated like you so power doesn't always come from the top down power off comes from the bottom up from places that are not nearly that obvious i think we really don't understand enough the complex you know interplay of power dynamics in relationships if you want to change the other change yourself and maybe the last thing i would say is beyond most issues that people argue about there generally are three themes control and power care and closeness and respect and recognition whose priorities matter who has the power here can i trust you do you have my back yeah and do you value me yeah those are huge these are these are the three major themes that many many couples basically struggle about but it comes in the forms of talks about sex and money and family and yeah but that's not the issue it's not the issue it's the emotional

crucible in which those issues play off yeah so it's the story under the story is essentially what you're talking about yeah what is really going on here that i don't see that is not being said what are they really fighting about like the couple where she fights about being alone and he fights about being inadequate that's you know caring closeness and power and control yeah incredible you you've created a really fun during cove but a really fun game that i love to do and share with everybody and i think it's just so fantastic and you know we've had all the stresses of quarantine isolation lack of travel our social circles are shrinking sometimes we need the most and our relationships are often you know challenged um but you you created this card game which just sort of came out of this isolation lockdown and it's a way for all of us to reconnect and i just love it because it's like sometimes you know it's heavy talking about relationships and love and lurking stuff out and it's like a lot but you created a fun playful way to enter into the space of intimacy and connection and relatedness that i think is just so beautiful so uh by the way everybody the game is called where should we begin the game and just go to estherprosdforall.com where should we begin the game with dashes in between each word uh and and you'll find it and it's it's just valuable so tell us a little bit what inspired it and and what it is and maybe we can play a little bit with it yes love to um let me show you the box so you have a sense of what it looked like you know i literally one day as i was working in the middle of the pandemic experiencing my own sense of isolation my my constant need to be in a vid in a state of vigilance in risk assessment rather than risk taking and lacking intimacy with my close circle i just thought i can't only you know talk about these things in in therapy or even in the podcast in the most heavy way you know that is permeated by this pandemic fear and i said one day i'm i'm talking about the importance of celebrating even at times like this and about the importance of self-care and about taking care of others and well-being and joy in the midst of tragedy you know and i did think about myself um it was there was a very personal connection as a child of two parents who were holocaust survivors and spent years in concentration camps in germany i i had heard a lot about lockdown and not two months or 15 months of lockdown but years and i remember my mother always saying to me honey there is laughter in hell you don't survive otherwise on occasion you have got to be able to look at the absurdity and the tragedy of your life and just you know become develop power over it and mastery over it through humor through play and it stayed with me and so and one day i just said i want to create a game i don't just want to talk about the experience of playfulness and remaining curious you know i want people to have the experience i felt that during the pandemic we lost touch with the erotic right the erotic is serendipity spontaneity improvisation curiosity everything that you go outside to discover you had to suddenly be much more shielded from and i thought i can create a game on the inside that people can play together i really will create an antidote to the seriousness and the heaviness of the moment it came out that at this moment there was the perfect timing that it became connected to this to the social reentry and to the anxiety of the re-entry and so the connecting and the reconnecting is even more timely i wanted it to be a game of stories because like my podcast where should we begin i believe that stories are the way we make sense of our lives stories are bridges to how we connect with people and so it's not just conversation starters and it's not just um you know icebreakers it's really storytelling that can be done between strangers on a first date between co-workers or between or between best friends basically and it has made

explain it to you actually three components three parts so it has the play cards which are really fun to hold in hand the play cards and play cards really have a whole variety you know a text message i fantasize receiving the best prank i've ever pulled off it is hard for me to say no to i'm surprised i'm still alive after an important object i have lost in my family my role is uh the most unexpected compliment i've ever received a friendship i need to end i mean i just took the first 10. it's incredible so it's a way for people to get intimate with each other and talk about things that they normally talk about and build deeper relationships with each other you know i had a dear friend this week we were playing together and you know the there is prompt cards so these blue cards are the prom cards and they say some share something that's changed your world view from your teenage point of view that you would never tell your mother that is taboo that that you would never tell your coworkers and so she gets a card and it says share something cringe-worthy and the next thing she receives is so all the people the players submit a story card to the storyteller and the storyteller gets to choose between the cards that were submitted including one that they choose themselves and on occasion peer pressure is done with those little tokens in which i put a token on your card because i wanted her to tell the card a person i unintentionally hurt that is cringeworthy you combine the story yeah yeah and she proceeds to tell us about this dear friend um and and basically she introduced that person to another friend and just said this friend is very rich very fat and very kind and sends it to the person in question and you know everybody's going cringe by accident send it to him by accident oh no oh no you know so it's multiple variations it's a multitude because you never get the same prompt cards with the stories the prompt cards give you the lens the vantage point to which to tell the story and um and the stories are just mind-blowing mind-blowing stories that i've been hearing i've been playing non-stop people i've never met and people that uh i i knew very well and during the pandemic it was all virtual so i couldn't hold the cards everything was on the screen you know that is the big transition is to finally actually have it as an object in your hands so can you actually um play this online as well as in person well that's what we and i are gonna try to do right okay all right let's do it let's do it let's do it so you know uh for example let's say that i give you the prompt card um share something that you've never told anyone okay and i would put in front of you different story cards right one that you would pick so this is different from the way we play normally you can play it in the committed version with all the rules and you can play it in the casual version where you just make up your own rules because the stories are the stories yeah so a rule that you secretly love to break a rule that i secretly love to break or my most irrational fear or i can't believe i got away with you want me to answer all three or just one no you pick one of them share something you've never told anyone a rule i secretly love to break my most irrational fear i can't believe i got away with gosh there's so many things in there i get to pick one um what did i really get away with what is my most irrational fear um or something that you can't believe you got away with you've done so many mischievous things um what if i can't believe i got away with um no you don't have to pick that one you pick whichever one you want i think uh my most irrational fear might be might be um like a fear of sharks i'm like i definitely get freaked out in the ocean i control it but i'm always like spinning in my head about being attacked by a shark quickly when i was in hawaii all winter and there were like three or four shark attacks and i was like you know just feeling and maybe

it's not irrational but it definitely it's probably not the likelihood of getting bit by shark is pretty low so i think i i kind of over over uh reaction what's the image what's the gory image what's the image this image is like you know shark coming and biting my leg off and just being bleeding all over just like all the images i've seen of shark attacks and oceans i think it was because of jaws when i was like 13 i saw jaws and it just ruined me for life right right right so that's a big one but it doesn't stop you it doesn't stop me but it no it doesn't stop me but i i definitely feel anxious and stressed um and what did i not get what did i get away with that i i don't care who i got away with uh i do the things i do that i love so much yeah like i can't i can't believe i actually get paid for doing what i do and and like actually you know get to have this blessed life that i did i mean i just it's like how do i get away with being so blessed it's like you know i i kind of try to receive it but i'm like wow like i i feel so blessed to have because i see people struggle with finding the meaning of life and being physically healthy and having meaningful you know relationships with their community and having you know just goodness in their life and i i just like can't believe i get all the magic that i get like i just i'm like so so it's i think it's you know someone said it's a reflection of how much you give in the world but i i don't know i just i always feel like over a bunch i was just gonna say the same thing i was gonna say the same thing i mean you are you are fundamentally a life lover yeah you know and you laugh you love to live life at its fullest and you give in that way but you don't feel that you're giving because you feel that you receive well you give yeah which by the way are two very very important verbs that i work with in my work with couples a lot give and receive yes well there's seven key verbs you know since i speak many languages what you were saying before i i've always really enjoyed looking at love as a vocabulary and a language and what are the key verbs that you need to be able to conjugate so that you can start to speak that language in every language there are a few basic verbs that become the structure of the language so in relationships it is to ask how do you feel about asking can you ask do you feel comfortable asking do you feel deserving of asking and therefore deserving of receiving because you asked do you never ask because you don't want to owe do you never ask because you don't know what you need i mean the whole exploration of the verb to ask do you enjoy giving do you find that you give in order to acquit yourself of a debt do you feel that you give in order to then be able to ask you know do you feel enriched by the giving do you feel depleted by it you calculate how much you give you know what is your experience of giving do you feel that you were given to what is your experience around receiving and you can use these verbs in the relational sense or even in the sexual sense right in my work around sexuality i use the same verbs how do you feel about receiving does it feel good does it feel deserving does it feel too passive too weak too at the mercy of too dependent to something or does it actually really you know feel like filling you up etc so to ask to give to receive to take um you know like little children it's mine it's mine might not seem like a good one no to take it so it is also a way of saying i you know i don't need to just never eat because i feel like other people are more hungry i can take a piece it's fine there is enough for everybody i don't stand out i don't i'm not greedy i'm not too much taking is a very important verb and certainly sexually taking is an important verb as well to share to imagine to play to want and to refuse because if you can't say no you don't really have a good experience of knowing how to say yes and so these verbs really kind of are they're

neutral they're rich they're deep everybody can interpret them in their own way they're a fantastic set of conversations they're all included in the cards but not like this but they are part of the questions that and the stories that are involved in the card game so beautiful and i think you know the the the ability for us to be present to listen to drop in has been so usurped by our crazy modern lives and technology and i think that's the beauty of covet for me personally was to sort of witness how much i was in a fast-forward way of living that wasn't allowing me to drop into the present in myself in relationships even in my work in the way that i wanted to and so you know having this game which is just so fun and easy and interesting it's sort of let me read you a few other questions yeah it takes us out of all that busy doing crazy stuff and drops us into relational i mean i've sat in groups mark you know of six to eight people where one round literally took two hours i mean it's just gripping stories uh and often people don't even know what they're gonna tell they start like you yeah i don't know nothing that's difficult and then suddenly the story presents itself you know a game is a container playing is the creation of a space in which people get permission to explore to be curious to ask questions to open up to divulge under the guise of the game and so it's a fantastic container for creativity um for imagination for surprise and um the storytelling is the oldest thing people do when they come together they tell stories so one guy last week he got a card gutsy was the prompt and then he got the question gutsy and then the prompt was something i need to work harder now that was the story card so basically you get everybody to submit your story cards and you get to choose one of them unless people put tokens in which they begin to put peer pressure and so he picked the one that said i have to work harder at and the next thing he starts to tell us is about how he's always been a conflict avoidant and he always you know makes everything look like it's fine everything is fine and and then what what that led him to and it was just like we had never met this person we were a few people who had never met this person and i'm telling you don't bother asking what do you do the guy runs a mega company of you know this and that and the other it's irrelevant this gave you an entry into this person's story their life yeah there's and it was like wow and that's the effect that you really want you leave and you remember exactly what people have told you i think i think that's so such a key point because i think most people are not really great at inquiry and curiosity and asking questions and relationships and what i find is when i meet someone if i just start to ask them questions and i start to ask their story and and pull it out of them and people are just so happy to share and they never get asked and it's such a powerful tool for building connection relationship intimacy and it's what your cards do which is what i love especially now you know people come to work and somebody says so how was the pandemic for you [Laughter] excuse me and you know do i want to answer i want to say something but at what level what can i say how interested are you really so to create these questions that are basically containers they have they provide a frame so that you can then improvise and be spontaneous so you get just about the right amount of both you know you get rules and then you get everything once you follow the rules you get this whole expansive space where you can ask loads of questions that are relevant in this moment you know one of the things that is keeping me up at night yeah well you know it's interesting you know what i found in my relationships is like when i take the time when we drop in and really get to the deeper layers of conversation of what's underneath in our stories and sharing it's really powerful and i i didn't do these

cards but i did another set with my wife and it was just such a beautiful way for us to learn about each other to understand what moves us and motivates us and what lifts us up what scares us what inspires us and i think uh you know we don't really have many of those opportunities in life and it's just such a beautiful it's like such a beautiful invitation that you've created so we have the safe version for work so that you can take out all the cards that have a pink triangle which are the ones that are for the date and for the sex so yes it you can so that it it has its multiple um settings where you can play um and what are the questions that are suitable here and maybe not suitable there so it's done for you so you don't have to constantly worry and fret can i ask this is this too personal is this okay you know you you get the permission because you've picked the colors that you're gonna be playing with but yes curiosity active listening asking for more my favorite question in therapy but also in the game is tell me more tell me more yeah that's the that's the joke of the therapist though it's like tell me more what do you think about that tell me more yeah there's always more yeah do you want to know my secrets for living a long and happy and healthy life well all you have to do is check out my weekly newsletter mark's picks where i share my favorite tips for health longevity well-being and lots more check it out and the link below thank you so much for everything you do and inspiring so many and helping people navigate a very tough landscape which is much harder than disease honestly i think you do as much harder than what i do to interconnect relational health and physical health i mean we didn't even touch on that how much these two are related you know stress at home domestic violence the pressures of caretaking go directly into your body yeah right i mean that's uh that's a whole other subject but we have cursors sometimes well the interesting thing about that just to finish is that women tend to live longer when they're alone and men tend to live longer when they're in marriages and relationships i don't know what that says about dynamics of relationship maybe you don't serve women as well as men sometimes that's an old old set of research you know that that the quality of life of a woman emotionally speaking is often diminished when she's in a marriage and the quality of health of a man in a relationship is increased and that has to do with the dynamics of power and caregiving and responsibility or what we call emotional labor for sure so much more things we could talk about but uh thank you [Music] hey youtube if you like this video you're gonna love the next one click on it to check it out today if if someone's listening their depression anxiety mental health issues what are the ways of eating that actually cause a problem and then when we'll get into one of the ways of eating that actually can fix the problem yeah then we'll get into the sun that's a great question ...

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