#go learn to paint or some shit

[thatbadadvice]

Dear advisor,

(Apologies in advance, english is not my first language)

I made 2 friends in clg (K and P) i was especially close with K, talked and shared a lot with her. Suddenly she started being mean to me and it reached a point where we stopped talking. When i asked what her problem was, she basically said she prioritises P and i'm intruding their friendship, taking up all of P's time. And that hurt really bad, felt angry at them both. I gave them "space", stopped talking, it was more awkward because i didn't have friends other than them. Moving on, we got our finals result, K and P they both got second place and... i feel like shit. I really wanted to be better than them, show that i'm cool(ik its cringe) now i'm really insecure and feel so untalented. Every time i do something, i always think about how they would've done it much better. I'm on my final year, soon have to start applying for jobs and i don't want to be like this. I have already put them on a pedestal and can't stop comparing myself to them.

Readers sometimes send Bad Advisor their real-ass questions to answer, so the Bad Advisor is periodically going to try her hand at answering them. If you’d like to submit a question for a Good Advice Interlude, use the “ask” form!

Oh, friend! Thank you so much for sending in this question, and for having the bravery and aplomb to write it both elegantly and colloquially in a language that is not your original tongue.

Do you know what the Bad Advisor would have to do if she had to write an advice-seeking letter in another language? She would have to write to some French agony aunt and ask them where the bathroom is and if she can please have an Aperol spritz and do they like dancing? Because that is the extent of the Bad Advisor's ability to communicate in her non-native language! Please do not feel obligated to apologize for doing a brilliant and hard thing. For this reason alone, the Bad Advisor hopes you raise yourself in your own estimation, because the Bad Advisor is extremely the fuck impressed, and the Bad Advisor hopes her opinion counts for something. (After all, you asked!)

There is a saying in English: "Comparison is the thief of joy." This feels like a saying that should not be an English saying, because the English-speaking world, a world of colonizers and capitalists, is a world in which comparison is the foundation of all we do -- we compete, we contend, we dominate! (I, a professional writer with a better-than-average command of my native language, used a thesaurus to fill out that sentence!) But perhaps for this reason, we understand the trauma of comparison all the more deeply.

Comparison, that miserable poacher of happiness, robs us of our ability to appreciate so much: what we can do, what we enjoy doing, what we dream of doing. Cruelly, comparison hits us hardest in the parts of our lives we care most about. Would that it were otherwise! But it explains why I can thrill at watching the Olympics, or celebrate someone else's ability to change a car tire or swat a humongous bug without descending into despair. I have no expectation of myself that I will become an Olympic athlete (I simply could never), or change a tire (I can happily pay for this service), or deal with an insect intruder (only upon pain of death or the absence of my less-squeamish partner). But in my very worst and often even my entirely average moments? I sometimes squirm and froth upon reading a brilliant book, a thoughtful op-ed, or just an excellently executed sentence. Because those are things I believe I can, I must, I SHALL do! When I fail to do those things, or when I have not yet done those things -- things I believe myself to be capable of, things I believe I should be capable of -- I feel small and silly and worthless.

The only fix that I have found to those feelings of smallness and silliness is to acknowledge them and unpack them as signals that they are telling me something not about what I can't do, but about what I can do and deserve to do. These feelings come sometimes about people I deeply love and care about, and sometimes they come about strangers! But every time, they tell me something about myself that I have not tended and cared for and nourished and celebrated.

It is easy and satisfying and perhaps even motivating to be mad at and jealous of strangers; it is so much heavier and more shame-inducing to feel these feelings about people we know and love. And you were pushed aside by K and P, who you know and love(d), in ways that sound especially unfair and unkind. Which I expect makes this hurt all the more! I think you know you cannot fix whatever smallness and meanness made K and P sequester themselves and their relationship away from you; you're not asking about that. But you want to move beyond this feeling of having to win at life before or over them, and you recognize already that living in their shadow will only bring darkness to you.

Metaphorical solution: move out of the darkness by giving yourself a bigger world where there is more space to find sunlight. This world is waiting for you, because you are about to embark upon a post-college career that naturally lends itself to such! Perhaps you will see K and P's shadows for a while -- but as you move farther from their branches that shade your sunny picnic, you will find other, more welcoming spaces in which to enjoy your meal, and the tree at the other end of the park will seem less and less like it is threatening to ruin your good time.

Practical solution: indulge yourself in the things you love and care about most, honor and cultivate other people's interests in those same things, and find something wholly unrelated to fail at. To wit:

indulge yourself: someone will always be better, maybe even much better, at the thing you love and are best at. They might be first. They might, for now, be the only. That's inevitable. Work to do your best at what you love, and to be proud of what you're doing on your own terms. I can't think of a single discipline -- academic, arts, cultural, scientific, political, or otherwise -- in which any person on earth can claim to be the "first, last, and only." We all build on the work of others; the fact that someone did better than you or preceded you is only evidence that there is room for you to innovate, to change, to bring your own perspective. Internalizing this is really, really hard, and in my experience almost impossible to achieve if you resist the next bullet point.

support other people's interest in your field: this is different to "networking." I mean: find folks who you like and think are fun and interesting and maybe are a little newer to your thing than you are, and offer them guidance or just a place to commiserate and see where that takes you. The best cure for feeling bad about yourself is to do a good turn for someone else -- not out of pity or self-interest, but because helping other people lifts us up in immeasurable and intangible ways, sparks new ideas, and opens new venues for change and innovation.

fail at something: one of the best things you can learn to do is learn to be bad at shit. I'm bad at embroidery, and I do it a lot! I give my ugly embroidery things to friends and family members who appreciate the thought and the effort more than the execution! When I can't find anyone to give my bad embroidery to, I put it on the Bad Embroidery shelf in my office or pawn it off to my husband, who has his own Bad Advisor's Bad Embroidery Shelf in his office. I never get better at embroidery, but I keep doing it because: it's pretty enough even when it's bad, I don't need to succeed at it to enjoy it, and it calms my ADHD-addled mind even when I can't tell a tiger from a flower. I've learned to be bad at other stuff, too! I took up curling (the sport) and I love it and I fall the fuck over every time I try to deliver that ding-dang kettle. I have a bad knee and always have to use the newbie-balancing thing that first-timers train on. It's fine! And guess what? The people I curl with are really, really bad writers, and it makes me laugh and laugh to read their emails. And you know what? They don't care that I'm bad at curling and I don't care that their emails are poorly written.

the tl;dr: Earlier in my Bad Advice days, I advised letter-writers to go learn to paint or some shit when they were having a bad time with a fixation on a bad relationship or situation, and I stand by that advice. Learn something new because you deserve something new! You have a bright fucking future ahead of you that involves neither K nor P beyond the great gift they have given you of showing you that your people will always value your input, create space for you and your brilliance, and honor and respect your boundaries.

You can do this, because you already want to. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

[icarrymany]

mutual has me daydreaming abt happy future jam now rrrghhgg

[intotheelliwoods]

Gonna ask this to a few people that inspire me, but how do you take inspiration from things without feeling like whatever you make is just bad in comparison? Or like a downgraded version of the thing(s) that inspired you?

(If this is too negative feel free to delete/ignore, I'm sorry)

Oh gosh this is such an interesting question since, I dont think I really have feelings of thinking my version is bad? Or that I am just a copy?

I am honestly just grateful my work became as popular as it is in the first place haha- low expectations going in to begin with. That and, I am very aware my art style isnt as defined and polished as other peoples styles, but I have come to terms with this! And hey the improvement in my own artwork over the past year is a massive trip if you go back through some of my older stuff- I am improving, slowly.

I mean, 2AL started by complete accident, and was "inspired" from me wishing the Leos from OMO or MNMC would hug it out already- but if you were to compare 2AL to one of those, they are very different. Hell even comparing OMO and MNMC, same starting point, but still very different.

I think my only advice to other people trying to make an AU is to try and find some core theme/idea and work around that, rather than gather a bunch of little things from other sources you like into a big pile. Find some key message to start up a base with.

[blae-kitta]

Saw a fanart of Crocodile as, well, a crocodile, and was IMMEDIATELY then possessed by the need to create a small air-dry clay figure of crocodile as his namesake in his iconic outfit (nearly put a banana on his head like his beloved bananadiles and then didnt because I'm a coward). The clay I used (DAS air dry, paper based) isn't my favourite compared to other earthen based ones I've used before (critterclay...), but I still got the hang of using it anyhow. There's really something all consuming about sculpting things.

WIP pics below

[hballegro]

man if i get good at making silly video edits you'll all be sorry. then ill be able to paint, write, draw, animate, AND make silly videos. it'll be so over

now i need to finish learning juggling. it will complete my character development

[arolesbianism]

I've been thinking abt my critter dupes some more and it was all fun and games until I remembered that I made Mi-ma a beeta and hm. Whoops. Uh oh. (<- Considered the implications for more than 2 seconds)

[shmowder]

just need to vent about the Olympics

[mrfoox]

.... OK I really hope I can keep this dude ♥

[moshieee]

Ew, essays :[

I miss the old days of kindergarten when we attempted to color butterflies and ate erasers and glue

-🎁

I hated kindergarten

Essays may suck but at least now I'm not the weird kid in the corner wishing I had friends

However yes I absolutely despise essays with all my being... in fact!

Achievement unlocked: you somehow found a topic moshie hates enough and on a bad day to start them ranting in the tags...

Warning there are curse words, poor spelling, and caps locks

Sorry in advance

[seariii]

I wanna get better at drawing in digital... I see all this really cool fanart and I wanna be able to do that too....

Be patient and practice Seari... And watch tutorials

[laikinz]

guy who likes taking classes and learning new things but will never actually use it in any beneficial capacity.

[uselessnbee]

i want to see the progression of Will's art skills with all the drawings of Mike he's done in his life

from the little cartoonish drawing of little Mike he did when he was bored at six yo through the sketches of Mike's face he secretly did when in Cali and was missing him and just wanted to remember his face to the gorgeous portrait of Mike Wheeler he spent months painting in college

[crossbackpoke-check]

"This extra space next to me belongs to you. I know where I end now. I won't get lost." -- shoot me (metaphorically) and leave me for dead (metaphorically) why won't you. To make this about Dylan and maybe it's about Connor, maybe it's about Brinksy, maybe it's about any journeyman in the NHL. My brain screamed Chris Driedger and his memorable (to me) Players' Tribune article:

And how can you mention Dylan and Zach (Za-ach, the way Dylan says it) without me having a breakdown about them? You simply can't. And for the younger dudes, maybe it's a little Bords/Briss, not yet steady in The Show, a little bit of distance, a summer that tries to erase and make up all the memories they've made separately... and then a blurry insta story in Vegas. Just like old times but somewhere else. Maybe it's not the same bed, maybe it's not the same set of forks, but maybe it's the principle of the thing.

Anyway, goodbye. Sorry for this, your tag walls make me break out in imagined scenarios.

Much love. xxx

please never be sorry for sending me messages <3 i love reading them i love getting them i think they’re beautiful and i love them i’m!!!!! [🥹💕🦋🫧✨💘😭 <- the best approximation of what my heart is doing]

ok NOW i am taking this step by step because every narrative here kicked me straight in the knees (metaphorically) i am w e e p i n g (literally): i knew tangentially about chris driedger going to seattle but i had never read his players’ tribune love letter to seattle & all i can say is oh. oh. and with the part about trains delayed but still being right on time—

sometimes a dream is a truth your heart knows long before you do. the space that the city and the team made for him (“you’d be the only guy on the team”)🗣️🗣️🗣️ !!! but the way that chris talks about needing to put in the work & leo not letting him quit,,, that’s chris filling up the teakettle with twice as much water, crowding one side of the bed (falling asleep against a bus window dreaming), becoming unburdened by the idea of not being their guy, not having the fallback being their draft pick to content and settle himself with. that’s chris betting on a future. that’s the train coming down the tracks, right on time.

(i am feeling unhinged about it)

SECOND. i know i was the one that said zach and dylan to start so technically i brought this on myself but also i have been ktfo by the mere mention of the way that dylan says zach’s name different from everyone else, stealing an extra breath, stealing as much time as he can get with him, which reminded me of a poem i just read:

The Need Is So Great, Jim Moore

^^^dylan still in love with zach even as he’s leaving, can feel himself losing him, and taking every sliver of the love in his smile that he can get. even if he knows zach doesn’t still feel the same way he’s drawing out the long goodbye & saying i love you in a thousand ways without ever saying it out loud (“i have been asking for a time but in ways that have no words” because he doesn’t want to ask too much, to ask for love) in the hope that zach will say it back OKAY I’M LEAVING i can’t do this

that was a lie because THREE. “maybe it’s the principle of the thing” please insert the most ungodly screech how could you just (lovingly) come in straight with the steel chair and bean me upside the head with that l i n e i think this story has the potential for such tragedy in it but also the most tender domestic longing because bords & briss have known each other for a long time (i think) and guys do sometimes lose themselves when they first get to the nhl.

it’s a big scene, you’re with big name guys, you’re finally doing the thing you always dreamed about, you’re no longer necessarily the best because everyone’s the best, you’re not sure how you fit in, you can get lost in the glitz and the glamor of it but you can also literally get lost in it, the slog of the season and getting caught up and down between teams and leagues and endless airports and buses and travel and ice rinks, losing your phone (accidental) and having new people hound you for quotes and fame and connection so you lose your phone (on purpose) and i think where i’m trying to go is: this could play out as the tragedy of borde going to the california coastline and briss shipping off to the vegas strip and both of them getting a little lost.

maybe there’s someone else, maybe i am steadfastly not thinking about “a summer that tries to erase and make up all the memories they've made separately” as either a summer of them pretending things are ok after a year of barely speaking and now being completely different people they never were before OR a summer of them trying to pretend like they can forget about each other because maybe they didn’t think their relationship was the same thing, is all, when they were or weren’t together. maybe it’s nobody’s fault but for the fact that they were scared and tired and lonely trying to make it in the big times and didn’t know how to show it. and then borde shows up with takeout and plastic forks in vegas and it’s december and nothing like winter in ann arbor and still they fill up all the empty spaces in each other with the things they didn’t know they’d miss until they were gone and this is the real thing, not whatever they were trying too hard to be, to recreate their own nostalgia for the love in their memories. it’s the principle of the thing, is all, to always be true to the love they have right now & not what they think it should be.

sorry that i wrote you kind of an essay of an answer but i had so so so many thoughts because your ask was so lovely so thank you for sending it to me (you are always welcome to!! i love your imagined scenarios!!! cannot even explain how much!!!) & thank you for taking the time to read my walls of tags :))) <3

[wannabe-all]

God I can't believe this. Carnival is approaching here and of course kids dress up in costumes, guess what costume have the teachers picked this year. AFRICAN TRIBES. LIKE DUDE WHAT THE FUCK YOU PIECE OF SHIT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!?! Oh, and that's not the worst part, THEY ARE GOING TO MAKE THEM DANCE AND SING. Dance and sing african songs (I don't know which, I don't even know what tribe they want to use as a base but hell no) I can't believe it, well I can but it's still indignant. I am not black nor come from a tribe but I'm an immigrant in this country and I have faced my own little struggles regarding my cultural background and identity (obviously I can't compare with what POC have to face, this isn't about me) honestly if my culture was butchered and used like a costume I'd commit manslaughter

I just want this to be used as a reminder that culture, that traditional clothes from other places and cultures, that traditional dances and songs are NOT A COSTUME, THEY ARE NOT FOR FUN OR TO WEAR TO ONE EVENT AND EVEN LESS TO MOCK THEM.

People from all cultural backgrounds and races are more than invited to comment and state what they think (go ahead please). Make your own posts and revindicate this.

Carnival is coming

[limewatt]

hghghhh i did a bunch of shit today i’m tired. art stores are fun to look around in though

[koi-fish-boy]

My limbs were bandage city today y'all I kept gettin hurt 😭

First I accidentally burned my leg w a drill. I just finished using it and was checking the hole and accidentally brought it too close to my leg

Then I nicked my knuckle on some semi circle thing trynna get it off something else, forgot what it was called. But I bled a bunch and had to get a bandaid :P

After that I stabbed my finger with some wire on accident. It's like the cable thing that's made up of a bunch of tiny metal wire strung together I also forgot what that was called but I bled again!

Then I scratched my knee on the back of a hammer and, guess what? I bled again!

And when I got home the remains of a blister fell off and left me with just a hole in my heel so that kinda sucks :P