#i am inept at some things

[flannelepicurean]

Yo listen I drop a lot of toothbrushes okay don't judge me

Just be knockin them shits on the bathroom floor by accident like fuuuuuuckkkk

And maybe I'ma hafta travel or smth there's no way my ADHD ass can be trusted to remove a toothbrush from my home and squire it about town and bring it back and remember my own name

Y'all lucky I ain't got a toothbrush in every pocket and bag and glove compartment and desk drawer like I do my lip balm

What is it about fics then, where characters always, ALWAYS, have a spare toothbrush conveniently just hanging about in bathroom cupboards for that time someone is, usually unexpectedly, staying the night?

I have lived a few decades now, and I have never known anyone who keeps spare toothbrushes. Is it really common??

[icewindandboringhorror]

I occasionally wish to reach out to old friends/acquaintances I haven't spoken to since high school/some other even earlier time in my life, but I have SOOO little social energy even for required tasks (like making dr phone calls or etc), I never have any leftover for extra ones, and it would be very odd to message someone I haven't spoken to in like 5 years out of the blue but then take 4 entire months to respond back lol.. My natural curiosity with nostalgia/collecting details of the past/etc. (literally if I were born a little earlier I would definitely do scrapbooking or something lol) is very strong, but, alas, not strong enough to beat out the Social Issues Demons apparently

[piplupod]

feels like the isolation is a gushing wound and going to the centre is just a small bandage. i think perhaps i am not really ever going to feel okay unless something miraculous happens. i am retaining some semblance of sanity now that I'm leaving the house and socializing with non-family more than once a week, but i am still hurting more than I can really tolerate and I don't know what to do about it. there doesn't seem to be a fix for this that I can enact.

[mezmer]

I just realized here in the early morning hours that in a straight couple, you are indubitably getting some kind of power struggle where both the man and the woman assume, maybe even subconsciously, that they’re respectively going to be the winners. You could say This is probably why 99% of non-marriage relationships end and 50% of all marriages end in straight folk. It isn’t that most couples HaTe EaCh OtHeR, it is that they have some competition going on in their minds that there exists no rules to.

[britneyshakespeare]

I feel like certain people on Tumblr have really been fighting for backwards progress when it comes to how we talk about mental illness and abuse. I see posts at least several times a week on my dash that seem to have the purpose of implying people with insert-mental-illness and/or insert-symptom are not abusive when they do insert-action-that-makes-people-uncomfortable, often times meaning to promote a more positive image of people with particularly stigmatized conditions, like personality disorders, mood disorders, psychosis, addiction, or neurodivergence. And I really really hate it because these posts almost always have the ultimate purpose of telling people not just "This thing is not inherently abusive," but often it comes across as "You were not abused."

I just find that to be really unhelpful and unintentionally hurtful, and for what? I believe that destigmatizing various mental conditions is a worthy cause, but at the same time this type of rhetoric seems to be so protective of people in whichever stigmatized group they're trying to advocate for, that it comes back around to a sort of respectability politics. Anybody can be an abuser. And someone's means and methods of abusing can very much be influenced by a condition they have. Why wouldn't it be? Their conditions will affect every aspect of their life and their interpersonal relationships. Especially if these issues are going untreated or being insufficiently managed. I don't understand why anyone would want to make it appear as if abusers are mostly neurotypical and mentally well people, or that if they aren't, then their conditions have nothing to do with it and the overlap is merely incidental. What? It makes it so hard for anyone who is a victim to come to terms and identify the dynamics of what they've gone through.

Addicts and mentally ill people don't have to be unproblematic in order to be humanized and accepted. And nobody profits from writing hard and fast rules about how abuse apparently works, drawing clear lines between which behaviors can, and cannot, ever be abuse.

[gynii]

If only I could get through a single social gathering without feeling like an absolute fucking child that would be great!

[netscapenavigaytor]

if i had a nickel for every time while headcanoning character dynamics that don't exist much in canon, i ended up making the fan-favorite yaoi pairing instead a worryingly toxic friendship that's only hanging on by a thread, i would have two nickels but it's weird that it happened twice

[b4kuch1n]

7; A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate. 19; Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.). 28; Any art events you have participated in the past (like zines)!

hiiii plaid 💕

ask game here

7. A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate

puppetry! and puppet-making, for that matter. miniature and diorama making as well. both requires delicate hands and patience I don't possess, but both are so magical to me that I really wanna try my hand at them anyway... I love illusions maintained with artistry and layers upon layers of mechanisms! I love artifice! show me fake things! it's so sexy when art commits to its bit!

feels like it goes without saying but I also immensely appreciate animation, of course. as a comic artist the process of animation makes me shudder, but also genuinely so many character designs would be nothing without the motions assigned to them in animation, doubly so with monsters.

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.)

shoes and glasses. glasses I can draw pretty much from memory in one go because I've had a pair sitting on my nose for almost two decades now, shoes treat me much more mercurially but they're always such a fun thing to coordinate in a character design that I brute force my way through drawing them anyway lol. books are another thing I love drawing, making up cover designs and putting jokes in the text/illustrations are my favourite thing in a piece whenever I get to do it :]

28. Any art events you have participated in the past (like zines)

I'm turns out not a huge event person haha, the more I do stuff nowadays the more I don't keep up with any of that anymore... I had two pieces in the Salt&Pepper TeruMob zine back in the days, I did a comic for the Wear the Mask ITSV zine, I completed witchsona week in... 2018? and the paint witch has been my little pocket rascal ever since... oh yeah! I did an all-comic JosuYasu week in 2017 I think, it's still my hardest play and biggest accomplishment commitment-wise. putting down the most colloquial of sketches for all the comics beforehand, inking and lettering every comic from 8PM to around 6-7AM next day, go to sleep, wake up at like 4PM to make dinner, rinse and repeat for a week except for day 5 I think where I had to re-sketch the whole thing. those comics are all under five pages and I basically cut out the second detail sketching step to ink right on top of the preliminary sketch, but it was still a huge sprint that I'm still pretty proud of. and will never, ever do again. it was not good for me. I do think it was kind of awesome that I managed that! but never again in my goddamn life

(more recently I put in a piece for a local ace community's contest and got a nifty price. it was fun! but that piece's not for this sphere I feel like. it was the first time I saw something I drew in a gallery tho, that was really nice)

[thewingedwolf]

sometimes i see a moot posting about something horrific happening in their city/state/country and it’s like ya kno maybe i lucked out with chicago actually at least our politics can be funny sometimes

[vse-kar-vem]

hihi vent post incoming (tldr im pretty sure everyone hates me and also im gonna fail all my exams)

[hydrasaura]

This is how I look at other people living their successful lives while mine races towards total annihilation

[mrfoox]

My boy... Fabian... Needs help im crying

[6ftslug]

would it be weird if i just started saying shit on here or

[afternines]

.

[heroesneedalancer]

Post by u/DJConvex to r/AskReddit on Nov 6, 2024:

People who work in DC for the government, what is the vibe?

Comment by u/Meduselde:

Resigned. We are generally very good about not discussing politics in the workplace but the vibe was obviously off. My more conservative colleagues who were happy Trump won were extremely respectful. There wasn't smug gloating and they were very obviously being cognizant of others' feelings even more than normal. It was extremely appreciated. Ultimately, we survived the first administration and will survive again. It's not necessarily Trump who was the problem last time, but his inexperienced senior appointees. The world isn't going to end nor do I feel democracy will crumble at his feet. It's just gonna be chaotic, and that's the worst part as a worker bee. At least with Biden we had consistent leadership and clear guidance, even if you didn't agree with it. Under Trump, your "yes man" says "no" and that's how you rotate through four SECDEFs. But as a sign of hope, it also means that even the most loyal DO say "no" sometimes, especially when businessmen are finally confronted with the realities of governance.

They chill out REAL quick on their dismantlement plans when they see the work these agencies do and what's at stake if they don't stand up for their people. It's easy to say you will dissolve or cut funding for something when you do not truly understand it. And as much as people say we can ALL be magically replaced with "yes men," even the most stone-hearted appointees recognize that the last thing you ever want is to lose the entirety of your skilled workforce. They learn it's best to get the skilled people to work towards their vision and not hire enthusiastic but stupid people to attempt the same. If they do, they risk looking inept themselves. You don't get skilled federal workers in a blue portion of the country to work for you by being a fucking Nazi. We're cranky and will make your life hell if you behave like that. I'm not talking about some sort of organized resistance movement because we feel like it. That's wrong. But just imagine hundreds of thousands pissed off at you. If that's the Deep State at work, then we aspire to be the quality of swampy Deep State your racist uncle thinks we are. If implementing dictatorship was that easy, Trump would have taken out every agency his last term and fired us all. I am actually extremely proud of the resiliency and checks and balances that the American federal government has in place to prevent most of the shit he says he can achieve by waving a magic executive wand. (He's done this once. He knows he can't. He just lets the majority of the population believe he can.) Us feds will make it, as we always have.

And we will live up to our oath to serve the Constitution, not a president. We serve every official of every party faithfully within the bounds of legalities and our oath. Working for administrations you may not like it's just a part of the job that we all recognize. Public servants at the federal level generally hold that extremely close to their heart. The ones that don't (I'm talking to YOU, WaPo "informants!") put us to shame. We're just tired, man. I can't believe it has already been four years since the last round. There's going to be some waves, no doubt, and some people definitely are going to be hurt at upper levels. But grab a Twisted Tea and buckle up. We'll at least pretend it's meant to be a roller coaster and ride it. TL;Dr Democracy is not going to die. But a drink and "thanks" would go a long way.

EDIT: Woah! I woke up this morning and am surprised by how much traction this got. I'm sad that this was the most positive thing some people had read. I'm sorry it's been that bad. I am not predicting outcomes. I have no idea how it's going to go. It's going to be bloody. But the hope I am trying to get across is that we are a resilient people and a group of (generally) good people. It will be okay, okay? The people that really make or break your daily life are those around you and your local government. Hold those around you close to your heart and always be kind. Everybody go outside, take a deep breath, eat something you love, and hug your grandma (even if she voted differently). The world is still turning and the sky is still blue. Being surrounded by spiraling anger on the internet only makes us the losers, not those we disagree with. The only thing we can do right now is wait. We have a few months to cool off! Enjoy your holidays!

EDIT 2: I think everybody has forgotten about this, but go check out the memorandum signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the end of Trump's first term after January 6. The feds basically said "fuck that" when people were scared that the government was going to turn the military on them to help Trump in some way. While it was specifically addressed to our armed forces members, it was spread throughout the DOD and beyond. Partially as a result of federal workers' fear (not actually ordered, to be crystal clear) that they would be asked to turn on citizens. This sentiment was echoed across the entire government via internal emails (from Trump appointees!) as well to the civilian workforce. That's one of my proudest moments as an American and why I know we will get through it.

Emphasis mine. Link to original Reddit Post. Link to an article about the aforementioned memorandum signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Don't give up. We will get through this.

[apoemaday]

I AM 17. I HAVE A LOT TO SAY.

by Jackson Holbert

My mother was around all the time back then, always walking in and out of rooms carrying stacks of  laptop computers. She spent most of  her daylight hours blowing dust out of circuits, fans, motherboards, daughterboards. Sometimes her little canister would die and she’d have to use her mouth. My father was gone all day every day getting repetitive stress injuries at the newspaper. He was a journalist and everyone hated him, even his friends. Nothing really happened during my entire childhood so he ended up spending most days shooting paper footballs through a miniature goal post he kept in the locked drawer of  his desk. He was rarely kind. And in the few, short instances he was, it still didn’t seem like it. Something about his mouth made everything he did seem either sinister or inept. He was completely inscrutable except for a period in the spring of 2004, when he was just sad. I was young that year and my sister was older. She came home from college for the whole summer of 2005. I was 14. She told me not to worry about other people, not to worry about war, not to worry about a thing. That was the greatest summer of my short life. I had no friends. Oh I had people I talked to at school but once summer hit it was like every school bus had crashed headfirst into a wall except the one that was carrying me and my silver trumpet. I had that tall kind of  joy that you can only feel when your bones still have another few inches left in them. My sister and I would watch three movies a day and never go to the lake. Everybody says it seems like summer never ends until it does. But that’s a lie. I knew so little back then but the one thing I did know was that all my friends were coming back and I would once more join them in the hallways, in the classrooms, once more join them for hours after school in the far part of  the parking lot and would continue to do so until I turned 16 and got a job cutting my fingers on the cheese grater at the Pizza Factory. After that everything was all work work work go home Jeremy get your feet off the sofa  Jeremy work work math homework band-aids and on a good day a little trumpet and on the best days all trumpet. I wanted my life to be about music but in the end it was about getting B’s in subjects such as Spanish. I don’t know, sometimes it feels like those summers really did never end, they went on forever and just got progressively worse. We like to pretend that one day we just walk into our adulthood like a congressman walking into the ocean, but we all know that’s not true. What really happens is we walk into the same building day after day, but every night some crew comes in and replaces something little — a lamp housing, the chair of a conference table — until nothing is the same, until the building is not as we remembered it at all, until the building is stronger, up to code but a lot less fun, and the lighting, the lighting is fluorescent and obscene.