#i did not figure out his Whole Deal til session 2 or 3

[yunisverse]

reminiscing when i accidentally foreshadowed larry's Whole Deal session 1

[oliviastan17]

Just a dream 7/7

Warnings: 18+, language, fluff, poorly written smut

Length: 3.4k

A/n: It’s the last part of Just a Dream and that makes me a little sad but I’m excited about the new series! If you are on the JAD tag list and want to be on the permanent one, send me an ask. Please reblog and send comments because that makes me happy! DO NOT POST TO ANY OTHER WEBSITE! Gif is not mine.

You were standing with your hands on your hips staring at the 3 suitcases on the bed pondering.

“What?” Sebastian asked.

“Do we wear too much black?” you asked looking at the sea of black clothes with only a few hints of red and a little white.

“Probably.”

Sebastian was scheduled to appear at a fan convention in Boston. Initially you and Maverick were going to stay home but he worked his charm and convinced you to come with him.

“Come with me. Please? We could go to Atlanta after. See your family.”

You knew your mom was especially wanting to see you and the baby after she had asked you vlog a day in the life sort of video for her. She had been watching way too much YouTube.

“We are going to have to pack so much shit. Toys, diapers, baby food.”

“Is that a yes?”

“And you are probably going to have to deal with a cranky 4 month old and his even crankier mom.”

“How is that different from any other day?”

He narrowly dodged the pillow you threw at him and then tackled you onto the bed.

“Thank you,” he said after he kissed you.

 ————-

The short flight from New York to Boston was pretty easy. Mav slept most of the way there and was happy and laughing at the faces and noises Sebastian was making when he was awake. It couldn’t have gone smoother.

You didn’t really want to spend your whole day sitting in a room with your baby at a convention for hours while Sebastian did whatever it was he did at those things so you stayed back at the hotel but you did come to eat lunch with him. He sent his driver the convention provided to pick you up and a woman named Leslie met you at the back entrance.

“Hi there! I’m Leslie and I’ll be taking you back. If you need anything just let me know!” she said cheerfully. She was a little too cheerful for your taste but she was sweet.

She brought you back into an empty room with a couple couches and a table with chairs.

“Okay, Sebastian should be here in just a little while. Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you. We’re fine,” you said setting the car seat with Maverick inside down on the couch.

“Alrighty! Enjoy your lunch!”

You took Maverick out of the car seat and were holding him while he chewed on a teething ring as you scrolled through some emails on your phone and waited for Sebastian. He and Chris walked in soon after you arrived and the food was brought in with them.

“Hey, you,” Sebastian said as he took his hat off, leaned over and gave you a kiss.

“Hey babe,” you said as you reached up and pulled his face in for another kiss.

“Can I hold him?” Chris asked as you were handing Maverick over to Sebastian.

“Hello to you too,” you told Chris.

“Sorry, hi,” he said leaning in to kiss your cheek. “I don’t have that long til I’m back out there.”

Sebastian gave Maverick a kiss and then handed him over to Chris.

“Hey big guy! It’s your Uncle Chris!” Chris told your son. He was holding Maverick and blowing raspberries causing Maverick to giggle.

“Are you just the most handsome little guy? Yes you are!” Chris spoke in baby talk to Maverick. He held and played with Maverick for 15 minutes while you ate.

“Hey, I think he pooped,” Chris informed you.

“Diaper bag is over there. Go for it Uncle Chris.”

There was a knock on the door and someone came in and told Chris it was time for his autograph session.

“Perfect timing!” he said handing Maverick over to Sebastian. “I’ll see you later tonight!”

“You will?” you asked.

“Yeah, I figured we could go to dinner or something. We’ll talk later.”

“Dinner?” you asked Sebastian after Chris left.

“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“It might be nice. We haven’t eaten out in what, 4 months or so?”

Sebastian finished changing Maverick and then he told you about the sweet things and sometimes intense things fans had said to him that day. Being at these conventions and hearing someone say they wouldn’t be alive without him was a lot to take in.

“You are a wonderful man and all these people can see that,” you said placing you hand on his cheek and kissing him.

“It’s just a lot, you know?” he said and then kissed Maverick’s head.

“I know. Just try not to focus on the intense stuff. Just focus on the fact that you have had a positive effect on all these lives,” you said as you ran your fingers through his hair.

As Maverick started fussing you grabbed your diaper bag and pulled out a blanket.

“He’s probably hungry,” you said as you unbuttoned your top and then reached for him and began breastfeeding.

There was a knock on the door and Leslie came in.

“Oh! I’m so sorry! I’ll come back,” she said as she saw some of your breast was exposed.

“It’s okay hun. Once you shoot one of these things out you lose all sense of modesty,” you told her as you draped the blanket over your chest.

“Uh…okay. Sebastian, we’re ready for you if you are finished.”

“Yeah,” he said after taking a breath. He grabbed his black baseball hat from the table and slid it back on.

 “And Y/n I’ll be right back to walk you out to your car,” Leslie said.

“Thank you. Take your time,” you said.

“Love you,” Sebastian said and then kissed you. He lifted the blanket that was covering you and Maverick to give him a kiss.

“Love you. Have fun,” you told him.

You were looking through the diaper bag for your phone when you realized that you had forgotten your room key. Once you found your phone you called the hotel while Maverick ate but they said they could not issue you another key because your name was not on the registration.

“Perfect,” you mumbled under your breath.

Twenty minutes later there was a quiet knock at the door and then Leslie came in.

“Just let me know when you are ready to go,” she said.

 “Do you know how long it will be until Seb gets a break?” you asked as you were burping Maverick over your shoulder.

“Let’s see,” she said looking at her phone. “He’s in a meet and greet now and then pictures. Maybe 2 hours or so?”

“Okay, I’m going to need to interrupt that for just a minute. Can you take me to him?” you said.

“Of course!”

After Maverick burped you went to place him in the car seat but he began fussing. He liked to be held after he ate and wasn’t going to fall asleep unless you were holding him.

 “Would you mind carrying the car seat for me?” you asked Leslie.

“Oh yes! It’s no problem!” she said as she picked it up and led the way out the door and through the hall. Once out of the back area you entered the convention area and were shocked at the amount of people walking around.

“Wow. I had no idea this many people came to these things.”

“I think there are about 5,000 attending today. It’s a big event! And everyone here just loves Sebastian. He is one of the nicest people I have worked with here.”

“Yes, he is pretty great. But I may be a little biased.”

“He should be in the room here,” Leslie said as she opened the door and peaked in.

Maverick fussed as you stepped through the door Leslie was holding open for you. You were holding Maverick with your right hand under his butt and brought your left hand up to rub his back. That was something that almost always put him to sleep and he calmed immediately at your touch. Sebastian was sitting on a table in the front of the room with about 50 or so people hanging onto every word he said.

You stood there and were gently swaying back and forth while rubbing Maverick’s back lulling him to sleep while you waited for him to finish speaking.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked as he walked over to you.

“I’m sorry!” you apologized to the room for interrupting. “I think I left my room key in the room and the hotel won’t give me another one because my name is not on the registration. I need yours,” you told him quietly.

“Always so irresponsible,” he said jokingly as he reached for his wallet and pulled out his room key.

“Watch it buddy. Just put it in the diaper bag.”

A few girls in the room spoke up and said “Hi Y/n!”

“Hi! I’m sorry for interrupting! Please feel free to keep him though.”

“I was kidding!” he said as he leaned in to kiss your cheek.

“Okay. Have fun.”

You gave the room a small wave as you were walking out.

 ——————–

During Chris and Sebastian’s panel:

Fan: “Hi! Um, my question is for Sebastian but first I just wanted to say congratulations to you and Y/n on the birth of your baby.”

“Oh, thank you very much. He’s amazing. Thank you.”

Moderator: “What’s his name?”

“His name is Maverick and he’s just the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Audience awws.

“Why don’t you tell everybody his middle name?” Chris suggested.

“Well, okay we had to fill out all this paperwork for Mav’s social security number and insurance and everything. It had been like a week or something and he still didn’t have a middle name. We just couldn’t think of one so Y/n just said ‘Screw it, I’m putting down Christopher unless you can think of a better one’ and I couldn’t. So that’s how that happened.”

“I don’t even care about the circumstances causing it. All I care about is that he’s named after me!”

“Yeah, and couple weeks later Y/n was like ‘People go through life without a middle name all the time’ but we were so tired. We weren’t thinking straight.”

Fan: “I just recently got engaged and I was just wondering what is one thing you do that annoys your fiancé and what is one thing she does that annoys you and how you deal with that?”

“I can think of about 37 things Y/n does!” Chris said laughing. “No, I’m kidding. Sorry go ahead.”

Sebastian laughs. “Wait, hold up. What makes you say fiancé?”

Fan: “Um…when she came in to the meet and greet she had a ring on so I assumed…”

“God dammit,” he said lowering his head. “Okay, so I have to explain something here. Anytime something big like that happens my publicist always asks me if she should send out a press release and I always say no because you all find everything out anyways. And to make it a little more interesting for us, Y/N and I made a bet on how long it would take for the news to get out. She said less than 6 months and I said more than 6 months.”

“I found out from Y/n’s Instagram. They probably weren’t even going to tell me,” Chris offered.

“No, it had barely been 36 hours. We would have told you.”

Moderator: “So how long has it been?”

“Um…it’s been less than 6 months. Which sucks because I really wanted to win. You guys are gonna have to help me out here! No one post this, okay? For like at least another month.”

Moderator: “What was the wager? What were you betting on?”

“Uh, that would be so inappropriate to share right now,” he said laughing.  

Moderator: “Sorry I asked! Sorry I asked!”

“Yeah, maybe just use your imagination because I know I certainly did when I thought of what I wanted if I won! But I really want to win so please do not post this. If you love me then you won’t post this.”

Moderator: “Oh yeah, I’m sure no one is going to post this. Right guys?”

The crowd claps and cheers.

 “You are all a bunch of liars! And I do feel the need to disclose that I have been instructed by Y/n to inform her if I found out that everyone knew in case she misses it,” Chris said.

Moderator: “Chris do you know what the terms of the bet are?”

“No, and after that “use your imagination” comment, I never want to know!”

“You know what? I bet you she didn’t actually forget her room key and need mine. She just wanted to win and she saw an opportunity to flash that ring around you guys. Dammit, she’s good!”

Moderator: “It seems like you have a very fun relationship. Anything you two do to annoy each other?”

“Oh, I forgot there was a question. Sorry. I got lost thinking about the bet. Uh… I mean, yeah we annoy each other all the time, you know. It’s something that happens in every relationship, I think. You’re not always going to love everything about the other person but I think that’s how you know it’s really love though. When you can annoy the shit out of each other but still want to be together, you know. I know for a fact she is annoyed by me every single morning. Every single morning because she thinks I’m too happy when I wake up. She needs like 30 minutes before she can start speaking to anyone and I rarely give her those 30 minutes so that’s one annoying thing I do. I swear at least once a week she walks into the kitchen and I start talking so she just grabs her coffee, walks back into the bedroom and locks the door. At least once a week.”

Moderator: “You’re just excited to start your day! Who could blame you?”

“Uh, Y/n can. She can blame me. And she does!“ Sebastian said laughing.

Moderator: "Anything she does to annoy you?”

“And then Y/n, I don’t know. Uh…oh she just did this the other day. So we’ll be texting about something and she’ll start answering with gifs of me or Bucky. And I don’t know where she finds all these gifs but she has been known to have full conversations with me only using gifs. If she were to send like one or two it probably wouldn’t bother me but it’s never just one or two. And it kind of holds up the conversation if like, I don’t know, I ask her what day she wants to do a certain thing, she can take, you know 20 minutes to find a gif of me saying Friday. Does she do that to you?”

“No, but she still finds ways to annoy me,” Chris answered.

“You annoy her way more than she annoys you though.”

“That is probably accurate. But I haven’t scared her in a really long time so that’s progress.”

Moderator: “So are the gifs always of you?”

“Yeah it’s always me and it can really get on my nerves but listen, I will never be able to repay her for the gift she just gave me. I mean, our son is just so perfect and she was just so amazing and so strong through the whole pregnancy and birth and everything. I will just never be able to repay her so I will happily accept her annoying texts.”

 —————-

After dinner with Chris, you and Sebastian were back at the hotel, both sitting on the bed. You were feeding Maverick while watching tv and Sebastian was looking at something on his laptop.

“Here, take him,” you said handing Mav over to Sebastian, then you buttoned up you shirt.

“Oh shit,” Sebastian said suddenly jerking back and holding Mav up in the air. “You timed that perfectly buddy.”

You turned to see that Maverick had thrown up all over Sebastian’s shirt.

“Oh, oops,” you said laughing and handing Sebastian a blanket. “Did it get on the bed?”

“Nope, just me. He’s got good aim.”

“Thanks for not doing that on Mommy,” you said taking Maverick back.

“I’m getting in the shower,” he said as he leaned over to kiss the back of Mavericks head. As he showered you rocked Maverick to sleep and placed him in the crib you had set up across the room because the air vents blew too much air next to your bed.

Walking back towards the bed you stopped to check your phone that was sitting on the desk. Sebastian had put his gum in a folded up flyer from the convention and it was titled The Sebastian Stan Experience.

He came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel around his waist and was walking to his suitcase.

“So you’re out there all day giving these girls the Sebastian Stan experience huh?”

“And men. I don’t discriminate. Why? Would you like the Sebastian Stan experience?” he said as he turned to look at you.

You replied with a smile and a lift of your eyebrows.

He was across the room and kissing you in 2 seconds. When the kiss broke for him to remove your shirt you started pushing him into the bathroom. Even though your son was 4 months old, asleep and wouldn’t know what was going on, it made you feel better to have a door separating what you were doing and Maverick.

Sebastian immediately placed you up on the bathroom counter after you slid off your pants while you removed the towel around his waist and started stroking him. He moaned mid-kiss while he brought his hand between your legs and started to draw figure 8’s around your clit.

“You have to be quick,” you told him as he dropped to his knees. So far Maverick had woken up twice during sex and you didn’t want that to happen again.

You threw your head back with pleasure when he inserted his fingers into your core. Along with his talented tongue it took 5, maybe 6 curls of his fingers for you to come. After he helped you ride out your orgasm he stood up, grabbed your face and kissed you deeply.

He slid into you without any warning. Well, I did say be quick. He gave you a moment to adjust and gave himself some time to relish in how it felt to be in you again. With his forehead on yours he began pumping in and out of you. He realized very quickly that the height of the sink was not ideal. He needed you higher so he grabbed your legs and had you wrap them around his waist and turned so he was now holding you up against the wall.

Now that you were in the optimal position he was thrusting at a good pace. He was kissing your lips and kissing your neck while his hands were on your ass supporting your weight.  With each thrust your hold on the back of his neck grew tighter. He sped up knowing you were close. You had to break the kiss as your legs tightened around his waist and the orgasm spread all over you. He came almost immediately knowing you did.

He took a moment before setting you back on your feet. Once he did he wrapped his arms around your waist and kissed you for a good minute.

“Do you think-“ he started to speak as he stepped back but when he took that step, he slipped on the towel on the floor effectively bringing both of you down to the floor.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” he asked you after you fell on top of him because his arm was still around your waist.

You took a little while to answer because you were laughing so hard.

“I’m fine, you broke my fall. Are you okay?” you asked still lying on top of him.

“I think my ass might be bruised but I’m fine.”

You laughed again and kissed him before rolling to the side to lie next to him. It wasn’t the most comfortable place but you would lie in his arms anywhere.

After a glorious 30 seconds of after sex cuddling you heard Maverick cry.

“That’s my cue,” you said sitting up.

“No I’ve got him. Take a shower. Relax,” he said while standing up and then helping you up.

“You’re the best. Love you.”

He gave you a quick peck and then said, “Love you.”

Fin

Permanent tags

 @sideeffectsofyou​

 @thejemersoninferno​

@vania-marie​

@sophiesvalkyrie​

@swanlakemikey​

@hm-fck​

Just a dream tags

@jeremyrennermakesmesmile​

@stangirl-fangirl264​

@allsortsofinterests​

@superhero-missouri​                   

@stuckysbabe​

@juliijah​

@melannie77​

@farfromtommy​

[steviethechihuahuawrangler]

A Formal Welcome

So it occurred to me that I just hit the ground running. I didnt look back when I went forward and began posting intimate things onto this wonderful Tumblr. Now that I see I have a couple people following me, I figure I owe you a welcome and thank you for visiting my corner of the web, and I also owe you an introduction to who I am.

I am Stevie. There's the general business of stating that I love blogging about my transgender wife. I myself am non-binary born female and still uses she/her pronouns by default but accepts all of the pronouns...call me any of them but just keep calling me *wink* I also love blogging about mental health, human rights issues, and some spiritually inspiring nuggets I find as well as humor and my interests. I am trying to capture my spirit for you all to see.

I am a rather peace, love, and harmony kind of person. I'm a multicultural beautiful mutt of a human that loves people of all walks of the Earth. I was born into a family that always was just getting by with hand-me-downs and used cars only. We lived rather bare bones-humbly on a farm where my mom had a kaleidoscope of animals that us farm kids fed and took care of for her. I still remember wandering out in large snow drifts with buckets of hot water to thaw the ice bricks in the sheep and cow enclosures so that the poor dudes could have a drink twice a day before they froze in the Midwestern winters.

I was successful in school and graduated in the top ten of a tiny class of roughly 200 or so. I worked hard for it though and suffered a great deal. You see,

I was violently molested by a babysitter when I was in kindergarten. That mixed with my family's predisposition for kicking out babies with bipolar disorder and being the lucky winner of that lotto... made for an interesting dark cloud for a kid to compensate. The abuse I suffered at the hands of my sitter gave me PTSD and DID. Most people are familiar with PTSD, but as for DID...most only know it as multiple personalities. And no... its not like Split or even Sybil, at least not for me. I had an intricate system that worked quietly under the surface. Some of my personas my child-self made were so intricate they represented all the phoenixes that rose from the ashes of past failures. I had male personas, female personas, child personas and adult ones too, gay personas, straight personas.... I had emotions I bottled as personas as well. A total count of 16. 17 if you count the true me.

Wow this is hard to write. Hard to admit but I feel more people must talk about these things. Abuse has horrible outcomes for those who experience it. I feel I need to keep writing this because I need it off my chest and DID is a very real thing.

It had gotten so messy but I didnt even realize that it was abnormal to do it. I thought thats how everyone got through the day.... with 4+ trains of thought chattering at you, remembering things, and feeding your mind with the in formation you feel you need at the time. I didnt realize that it was abnormal at all. Its not something you talk about out of the blue with anyone either. So I had no clue I was a multiple til the ripe age of 33. And in 2 years time with mega therapy from many stellar therapists in Wisconsin, I was able to go through integration of all of my personas, making myself whole again. I essentially made myself my own program when we had the insurance great enough to cover all my treatment. I started with finding a therapist and a psychiatrist and then added DBT group therapy as my diagnoses kept changing as they struggled to find my Dissociative Identity Disorder. I added art therapy and that was the point I finally started making dramatic improvements.

They even recognized it making me a formal mentor of the therapy program I was in. I helped in IOP programs inspiring fellow addicts to get clean while working on mental health goals with them. I started helping others go to their sessions and AA meetings or CODA meetings.

My Lizzy was the one that pumped her blood sweat and tears into funding my nearly daily therapy regiment. Then when my excellent therapist.... DrTwin we will call her.... realized that I was switching personas. She argued with herself a bit on whether to tell me or just treat it without doing so but she told me DID and PTSD were the beasts causing my bipolar 2 to be unmanageable.

Truth be told I cracked down on the seriousness I put towards my therapy efforts because I could see that Lizzy, who then was living a depressed and rage filled male life as she struggled with work was having a hell of a time keeping up with which Stevie would be in the room when she came home. I could see that Lizzy couldn't keep fighting through her darkness alone either. time was ticking and I had to get to a stable place.

Thats when Lizzy's dad got diagnosed with early onset dementia. When I got stable enough I offered the jump to come back home to Illinois to help take care of him since my hernias from my botched surgeries make it hard to work. Lizzy's mom welcomed the help as we didnt find out about the dementia until Lizzy's dad already was in stage 4 of 7. now he is toward the middle of stage 5 but its usually a faster decline at this point. Though we moved quickly and helped for months his care needs began to exceed what 3 adults could do in a 24 hour period. He is now moved into a memory care apartment unit with several other people who he seems to get along with. This leads us up to present times

Where we are currently living as a tripod family with Lizzy's mom who doesn't want to live alone now that her spouse is in his new home. Its Lizzy's childhood home and one day may end up being ours.

As far as Lizzy and I, we've been courtin' since Spring of 2008. We were married in spring of 2010 and since day one Lizzy became my best friend. We met when we were in the throws of our alcoholism amongst other things I had problems with. But lets just say I would have gotten my 8 year chip on the 4th of July. SOBER 8 YEARS and feeling great. Lizzy loved me during all the high spirit days where we went to haunted hayrides and houses. Lizzy loved me when I was laying at the bottom of the tub crying and dissociating while screaming in PTSD attacks. Our life has a pulse not unlike Grey's Anatomy....which dramatic turn shall we take next? Terrible Misfortune or Blissed Out Humor? Only time will tell. But its a beautiful ride in the big picture.

I would love for you to ask any questions or leave any messages! If you want to know more I am an open book and thats why I am writing this blog. I want the world to see me. Welcome to my world! Enjoy.

*~*~*~*~*Stevie*~*~*~*~*

[mindfulnessdanmark]

mindfulness angst

Recently I have been reading concerning mindfulness, the act of quiting and focusing on the here and now. Throughout the act of quiting, we stop believing, lapse of memory and the strong emotions that rule us. When we are practicing mindful breathing, consuming, walking, filling the dishwasher, driving our automobile, grocery store purchasing etc. we are touching deeply the here and now minute and also valuing the well being that is currently present in our everyday lives.

Generally when I do any one of these activities I'm normally thinking of something that happened in the previous or intending the future, absolutely not concerning what I am actually doing or even where I am a lot of the time. The amount of times have I driven mostly all the method to work and also questioned how I arrived! What occurred to the last couple of miles of roadway?

So there I was, on a great summertime morning, remaining on the actions of my front veranda, mindfully consuming my breakfast. I was eating whole-wheat squares with blueberries on the top. I focused on the preference of the whole-wheat, the tartness of the blueberries. I did wonder if eating mindfully would make me really feel a lot more complete after a dish yet rather than home on that thought which would have led me on the steed of no return, I simply returned to my grain and the blueberries. Later as I was folding laundry, shed in thought, I asked myself, "What am I doing?" "I am folding laundry, bear in mind it", I responded and also brought myself back to the task available.

Throughout the day I exercised mindful walking, driving and listening. Each job, even if it was merely conscious breathing, ended up being the most vital work in my life at that moment.

We are all having a hard time to locate joy and also joy in our lives. Living mindfully suggests that it is appropriate before us each day in our common lives. Perhaps it is a blue sky on a summer day, a blossom that flowered over night in your garden, the noise of your kids's voices. My daddy, that just relocates with pain in his later years, would certainly state that delight is being able to relocate like he used to as a younger man. Did he worth this when he was younger? No, naturally not. We only pay attention to these things when they have been taken away from us. Focus on the now, technique living mindfully as well as find the delight that is ideal before you daily.

Mindfulness is finest called moment-by-moment awareness. There are four dimensions of conscious minutes. They are (1) present focused, (2) non-judgmental, (3) non-verbal, as well as (4) non-conceptual.

Conscious minutes constantly concentrate on the here and now, never ever the previous or the future. Many thoughts are one action removed from the present minute since they concentrate on the past or future. Conscious minutes always exist in today space and time, a context typically described as the "here and now." Mindfulness revolves around being completely involved in the here and now. Mindful moments are not assuming minutes where you attempt to figure something out or evaluate it. Mindful minutes are non-conceptual because throughout them you just keep in mind the incident of something as well as approve it for what it is. You do not evaluate what you are experiencing, you accept it. The talking that takes place during mindful minutes is self-talk. It is non-verbal as well as additionally referred to as sub-vocal speech. Essentially self-talk is what you say to yourself when believing or feeling something. When people describe or write down self-talk messages it adds an additional layer of interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?search=mindfulness and distance from them. Mindfulness is developed through casual and also formal training tasks.

Casual mindfulness training focuses on the application of mindful habits right into day-to-day experience. Casual mindfulness training entails learning exactly how to commit your complete focus to every task you are participated in. There are 2 dimensions of casual mindfulness training; (1) becoming a lot more mindful of your inner setting (ideas, feelings, psychological photos), and (2) becoming more knowledgeable about your external atmosphere (behavior and also immediate physical surroundings).

Coming to be more familiar with your inner environment is the first step in approving it and co-existing with it as you work towards completing jobs and satisfying your goals. Being much more conscious of the things taking place in your internal environment is different from evaluating or evaluating them. When you are really conscious of your thoughts you observe them without judgment. It is as if you have actually stepped beyond your very own mind and are taking a look at your thoughts as an outdoors onlooker of them. When you do this you'll possibly notice that a great deal of your ideas as well as sensations are not extremely helpful in satisfying your goals and also living a life based on your worths. One of the keys to stress management is living our lives according to our values as well as standards and the goals we established based upon these things. A crucial to doing this is understanding when our ideas are not handy because they are truly judgments as well as analyses as opposed to monitorings about the present moment.

Ending up being much more familiar with your exterior atmosphere revolves around increasing your recognition of your habits and also what's taking place in your immediate physical environments as you engage in this habits.

Conscious eating is usually used as a type of exterior mindfulness training. It focuses on your consuming behavior as well as the context in which it occurs, your prompt physical environment. Conscious eating is commonly shown to individuals with consuming disorders to help them come to be more conscious of their eating habits. When you practice conscious consuming you rest quietly at a table gradually pick up small items of food with your tools, progressively raise the food off your plate and also bring it to your mouth, as well as take slow attacks chewing completely. For those engaged in the practice, they experience consuming like never before. They are instructed to pay attention to the presentation of the food prior to eating it-the shade, form, placement, aromas, and so on. They start to marvel at things like just how the fingers, hands, and also arms work in consort with their brain to pick the food up as well as bring it right into the mouth, the procedure of chewing, the experience of tasting something anew.

Official mindfulness training is a structured program of everyday method of mindfulness reflection sessions. These sessions are in addition to continuing casual mindfulness training with conscious eating, strolling etc.

mindfulnesskursus - få fokus tilbage. Eat, pray, love: Find ind til dig selv med online mindfulnesskursus.

På dette mindfulnesskursus med mindfulnessinstruktør Andreas Sune Hansen lærer du bl.a de syv grundindstillinger i mindfulness, meditation, mindfulde øvelser, mindfulnesspraksis og mindful yoga.

[purralyth]

How have things been going with Chariot and crew? Maybe I missed some things, but it feels like it's been awhile since I last heard of their shenanigans! Has the gf been helping out? Any crisises? (In the world around them or emotional?) What is the DEALIO I am ready to hear it!

haHAHAHA i’ll be honest i don’t talk much about their emotional/world crises because they are happening All the time. our dm wants to see us suffer. but let’s have a small summary shall we, i’m actually going to put this one under a read more bc we’ve done That Much

so first things first, the gang got shunted into the feywild, i talked about that much. that’s where we picked up our lovely little tiefling monk Fuarthas (Silence, back then) from his awful hag grandmother rosie, found chariot’s masked mom, and then got taunted by a fey demigod in his Hell Maze and he proposed to fuarthas and now they’re engaged because he’s a warlock now it’s fun shit. anyway. we get back to toril with the crew (and chariot’s masked mom’s ship, lovingly dubbed Eri’s Chariot after her daughter and her dead boytoy, that we thought we might have to leave behind) and we find out that in the MAYBE month-long period we’ve been in the feywilds, 2.5 years have gone by on toril. meteors have fallen from the sky, which is now a permanent blood red, people are chanting at these meteors embedded in the city like possessed cultists who attack anyone that threatens to take them out, and the worms coming out of the meteors are like kind of sort of turning people undead?? it’s messed up. Cool Stuff. but chariot’s aunt mom Serenity and uncle dad Patience opened up an orphanage so that’s cool

So we got some magic tattoos in some downtime (Chariot got 2, one on the back of her neck that lets her understand Undercommon, and another on her chest that gives her a free use of Mage Armour per day) and met up with some new NPCs, one of  which is traveling with us now as our cleric-fighter and is dating(??) our big tiddy big heart half-orc barbarian Lockjaw, and left our aasimar monk’s kickass wife behind to run her tavern bc she’s expecting. we go to look at some funky stuff going down in the town cemetary. first thing we do is go see erran, our moon elf friend we took into the feywild and hates us now for it, and he takes us into this portal and shows us this weird temple thing his supervisor or something had just discovered. there’s these murals on the walls of meteors striking the earth, and a flood, and some figures sailing on a ship through the sky, and then 7(?) figures, that like kind of seem like Us but not quite on par, so fun stuff, and these two HUGE statues in the main chamber. somebody presses a button and this fantasy Alexa bitch floats down from the ceiling and is like oh shit presences detected. and starts listing these titles, like Sufferer, and Guardian, and Exceptional, and then locks onto jia and is like ABERRATION DETECTED FUCK THOSE SHITS and tries to kill her so she has to run. basically without making this too long we find out that we (chariot, frazier, lockjaw, fuarthas, and frazier’s daughter) are descendants of some ancient heroes that saved the world once, and we grave rob just a little and get some cool magic items, and there’s this prophecy that we’ll stop the apocalypse or something?????? shit’s wack. we go back out to see jia and chariot’s trying real hard to cover for her but she’s like well i cant rly hide it anymore. hey guys i have an illithid tadpole In my brain and it didn’t develop so now i’m also part of a separate prophecy that i’ll wipe out all the illithid. but look at this i can float but chariot and i did some research and the only way to not have it be a problem anymore is to destroy my skull and then resurrect me. so that’s a lot of fun!!!!!

still in that cemetary, we find a trail of meteor worms. follow them into a secret passage that leads to the lair of Sunshine, masked mom’s dead assistant that chariot one-shot, but it turns out she’s a necromancer! she kicks our asses to unconsciousness even after chariot polymorphed into a t-rex and sells us to Neogi in the underdark, which if you don’t know what they are, google them, they’re fucked up spider giraffe eels that are evil incarnate and basically were slave trading us & psychically torturing Jia the whole way!! which made chariot throw cantrip after cantrip at them to try to hurt them so they just mind-control enslaved her over and over so that’s fucked her up good :)

we get sold to some drow after a week. beefy boys were sent to work manual labour til they die, and the rest of us were set to be sacrificed to Lolth, so we go haha we have to get out of here asap. chariot disguise selfs into a drow guard (a man bc i was very stupid) and gets caught 2 seconds out the door by a cleric of lolth, who sets up some mix between a dick appointment and an ass kicking for later bc chariot didn’t like. idk acknowledge her. fuck drow. she and fuarthas (who she was pretending to transport) skedaddle into a side chamber and a drow guard captain comes in. she goes to beat up fuarthas so chariot attacks her and a wild magic pops off and they fall mutually head over heels in love and lust with each other, which is MESSY. chariot convinces her to help round the gang up, but everywhere they look everyone’s gone missing (frazier and lockjaw got into a fight down at the manual labour camp and jia turned into a fish and shrieked so she’s gone) so chariot ends up wined and dined and tries desperately not to let this drow captain Do Her and does not take a long rest bc she has to stay awake and make sure this woman doesn’t wake up and see she’s not actually Erran the Drow Guard. but when everyone wakes up a shadow dragon is attacking this drow camp. cool. yes. awesome. fantastic. hell breaks loose, chariot and zarra (the drow captain) find frazier and jia in a stairwell, zarra kisses chariot goodbye and runs off to do stuff after a hefty persuasion check, jia gets Understandably Angry, we run like hell to find our magic items they bought with us and get the hell out of dodge With Lockjaw’s new orc army he’s recruited and the drow dude we found that’s a part of Frazier’s old order. shadow dragon finds us, holy shit she’s frazier’s adopted mom, she offers us a ride back while chariot very desperately tries to tell jia she doesn’t know what’s going on and why zarra kissed her and why she feels like this (she didn’t know it was a charm !!) and generally feeling Very Shitty. we get to frazier’s old monastery and the charm wears off, chariot and jia have a very long talk and chariot breaks a couple times, chariot steals a bottle of wine to try and feel better, she gets in shit for it and frazier takes the fall, he gets whipped as a punishment which just breaks chariot even more, she puts herself on house arrest for a full week, jia finally starts talking to her again 3 days into that, they do some drugs, chariot makes a deal with shadow dragon mama to split the cost of a teleportation circle and the gang blows up at her but she’s like nah it’s cool. at this point she is using her +9 deception to pretend she didn’t just break for a whole week and nothing happened and she’s totally good now guys dont even worry about it.

side tangent from All That, we go to deal with a giant problem for the monastery and there’s corpses strung up with the symbols on chariot’s palm all over. lots of combat yadda yadda, trap one giant in a room and ask her questions through the door, get some cool insight on chariot’s magics that she still has no idea how it works. turns out there’s a third queen of the feywilds, the queen of night and magic if i remember correctly, and she was shunned for her beauty and her and all of her subjects were made to be ugly and misshapen or some messed up stuff. chariots like oh fuck we were just there and no one said shit about a queen that apparently everyone hates that she has the symbols for on her Hands and honestly on her cape as well half the time. but ok cool that’s some new info sweet.

jia’s still guilting chariot for kissing zarra (even though it was a CHEEK KISS and she didn’t do it) because chariot’s been feeling awful that jia got into a romantic relationship (WITH FRAZIER’S DAUGHTER WHO JOINED JIA’S CULT, FUNNY ENOUGH) on her like 10 month leave bc she assumed she’d never get to see chariot again, but that’s a whole can of worms. lots of emotional fuckage though, chariot feels even worse that that happened bc jia hadn’t even been charmed, etc etc etc. but she’s never gonna say any of it bc she’s terrified jia will leave a second time and bringing any of that up might be what triggers it So!

we get told the neogi are selling slaves to jia’s old god, Ool’zakgothool the Aboleth who has been the Big Bad since like session 3-5, so we need to go stop that shit so we can go take down this aboleth and get frazier’s daughter back. but first we have literally no money bc we got sold and had all our shit stolen so we have to sell the like 700lbs of elven armour and weaponry we stole from a navy outpost place thing in the feywild. so we get to solve a little murder mystery in a gnome town so that’s fun. go back to the monastery, pick up some stuff, get some cool magic items made by our new artificer friend Jokk who’s part of the same prophecy we are, and head out again to fuck up these neogi. but on the way jia suddenly sprints ahead and gets like hug tackled by 5 kids who she apparently raised in her cult, and we get lead back to the marketplace where we plan on staking out the neogi and following back to their camp, but uh oh there’s 100 cultists here who swarm us and there’s some midsommar shit and we just fight the neogi right then and there and that’s basically where we’re picking up now. they enslaved lockjaw who oneshot chariot bc she’s a weak little bitch so jia kicked him in the ribs it was fun. and now we’re holding the elf that threatened to cut chariot’s tail off from our Neogi Cage Days hostage to tell us where the shiny gold head hauncho went bc he dimension doored out while chariot was paralyzed and couldn’t counterspell and we want him Dead. to be continued

[therainshow]

I made a Taylor Swift Music Education Lesson that covers each album, in order, and my favorite songs from said album. I included bits of each album’s prologue and background information on each album, plus my personal opinions on each. I made this for some coworkers that want to learn more about Taylor, feel free to look it over and pass it on to anyone you’re trying to convert someone into a Swiftie :) There is a Spotify link for a playlist I made that has all these songs. You can find that at the bottom :)

Welcome to your Taylor Swift Music Education Lesson. Please read carefully.

 For your education and enjoyment (hopefully), I have included a detailed track-list of all the songs on your Spotify playlist. These songs appear in order of album, beginning with Fearless and ending with reputation. I did not include Taylor’s debut album in this lesson. It’s a great album, but has a heavy country influence and was written when she was 14, so it is difficult to relate to and/or isolating to those who do not appreciate country music. Within each album, there is no specific order. As I introduce a new album, I provide you with a bit of background information to give you a more thorough understanding. This background information begins with a blurb taken directly from the prologue that Taylor wrote for said album. With each track title I have included my favorite lyric from that song. You may also see some asterisks with notes scattered throughout. I couldn’t resist. The songs I chose are either a) my favorite, b) a fan favorite, c) generally iconic in nature, or c) songs I think, or hope, you will like. My favorite song off each album is indicated with multiple exclamation points. Let’s begin.

 FEARLESS: “To me, “FEARLESS” is not the absence of fear. It’s not being completely unafraid. To me, FEARLESS is having fears. FEARLESS is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, FEARLESS is living in spite of those things that scare you to death.”  Fearless is Taylor’s second album and was released in the fall of 2008 when Taylor was 18. It is actually the most highly-awarded country album of all time. Fearless won Album of the Year at the 2010 Grammy’s when Taylor was 20 years old. Taylor is the youngest person to ever win that award. There are 13 tracks on this album, and 8 were written solely by Taylor. This album cemented me as a stan, and the songs saved my life in high school. I have Fearless tattooed on my back, and I truly believe that I wouldn’t be who I am today without this album. I’d probably be dead in a gutter somewhere. Joking, but seriously, high school was rough. Thank God for Tswift.

1.      Forever & Always!!!!!!!!!!!: “It rains in your bedroom when everything’s wrong. It rains when you’re here and it rains when you’re gone.”

2.      Fifteen: “Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday, but I realized some bigger dreams of mine. And Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind, and we both cried. ‘Cause when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them.” *Abigail was Taylor’s best friend in high school, and they’re still friends today.*

3.      Love Story: “This love is difficult, but it’s real. Don’t be afraid, we’ll make it out of this mess.” *This is Taylor’s first #1 song. It went #1 on both country and pop radio. She attributes her career to this song. She wrote the song in 20 minutes solo on her bedroom floor after an argument with her parents over a boy.*

4.      The Best Day: “I’m thirteen now and don’t know how my friends could be so mean. I come home crying and you hold me tight and grab the keys. And we drive and drive until we find a town far enough away, and we talk and window shop ‘til I’ve forgotten all their names. I don’t know who I’m gonna talk to now at school, but I know I’m laughing on the car ride home with you. Don’t know how long it’s gonna take to feel okay, but I know I had the best day with you today. *Taylor wrote this song for her mom.*

5.      Breathe: “People are people, and sometimes it doesn’t work out. Nothing we say is gonna save us from the fall-out.”

6.      Fearless: “We’re drivin’ down the road, I wonder if you know I’m tryin’ so hard not to get caught up now. But you’re just so cool running your hands through your hair, absent mindedly making me want you.”

7.      Tell Me Why: “Why do you have to make me feel small so you can feel whole inside? Why do you have to put down my dreams so you’re the only thing on my mind?”

 SPEAK NOW: “What you say might be too much for some people. Maybe it will come out all wrong and you'll stutter and you'll walk away embarrassed, wincing as you play it all back in your head. But I think the words you stop yourself from saying are the ones that will haunt you the longest. So say it to them. Or say it to yourself in the mirror. Say it in a letter you'll never send or in a book millions might read someday. I think you deserve to look back on your life without a chorus of resounding voices saying 'I could've, but it's too late now.' There is a time for silence. There is a time for waiting your turn. But if you know how you feel, and you so clearly know what you need to say, you'll know it. I don't think you should wait. I think you should speak now.” Speak Now is Taylor’s third album and was released in the fall of 2010 when Taylor was 20. There are 14 tracks, all written solely by Taylor. There are no co-writers on this record. After Taylor won AOTY for Fearless, many of her critics said that it was impossible that she carried her weight in those writing sessions. Basically, the songs on Fearless were so good that a lot of people didn’t believe that she actually wrote them. To prove them wrong, she decided to write the album entirely by herself. This album is the fan favorite, and is my second favorite. I feel like this album was way ahead of its time. Speak Now is the kind of album I’d expect a musician to write towards the end of his/her career once they stop caring about crafting the perfect song, and start making great music for the hell of it. Most of the songs on Speak Now are over 5 minutes in length with many clocking in over 6 minutes. Definitely not suited for radio. Taylor is known for painting stories in her lyrics, and I’d say Speak Now does that the best. I met Taylor during the Speak Now Era, the most lauded of eras amongst fans. To have seen the Speak Now concert is a huge deal in the Swiftie fandom. The concert was absolutely magical. If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to come over and watch the live DVD. Most of the general public knows next to nothing about Speak Now because none of the songs really charted on radio. However, Speak Now is the first of her albums to sell a million or more copies in the first week (a pattern not broken thus far. #blessed). Speak Now Era was sort of the golden age because she had proved herself to be incredibly talented and cemented her place in the music industry, and yet her PR stunts were at a minimum. Nobody hated her yet, and she kind of went back under the radar despite being at her prime. It was downhill from there, but we were all oblivious to that fact. We were just so blissed out, we couldn’t see the impending doom on the horizon. I could honestly write an entire thesis on Speak Now. Anyway, it was a strange time, indeed.

8.      Mean: “You have pointed out my flaws again, as if I don’t already see them.” *Like I said above, the songs on Speak Now were not widely popular and didn’t chart on radio, with the exception of this one. ‘Mean’ won Country Song of the Year at the Grammy’s in 2012. Taylor wrote this song as a way to cope with relentless and over the top, mean-spirited criticism from a specific music critic named Bob Lefetsz. Suck it, Bob.

9.      Mine: “But we’ve got bills to pay, we’ve got nothin’ figured out. When it was hard to take, this is what I thought about.”

10.  Last Kiss: “How you’d kiss me when I was in the middle of sayin’ something, there’s not a day I don’t miss those rude interruptions.”

11.  Haunted: “Come on, don’t leave me like this. I thought I had you figured out.”

12.  Never Grow Up: “You’re in the car on the way to the movies, and you’re mortified your mom’s droppin’ you off. At fourteen there’s just so much you can’t do, and you can’t wait to move out someday and call your own shots. But don’t make her drop you off around the block, remember that she’s getting older too.” *Taylor wrote this the night she moved out of her parent’s house and into her first apartment in Nashville.*

13.  Sparks Fly: “You’re the kind of reckless that should send me runnin’, but I kinda know that I won’t get far.” *Taylor first performed this song back in 2006 at a random live show when she first started out. Fans recorded it and it went viral. For years fans begged her to record it for an album. She did! Thank you, Taylor! We are #blessed.*

14.  Enchanted!!!!!!!!!!!!: “The playful conversation starts, counter all your quick remarks like passing notes in secrecy.”

15.  Back to December: “It turns out freedom ain’t nothin’ but missin’ you.”

 RED: “My experiences in love have taught me difficult lessons, especially my experiences with crazy love. The red relationships. The ones that went from zero to a hundred miles per hour and then hit a wall and exploded. And it was awful. And ridiculous. And desperate. And thrilling. And when the dust settled, it was something I’d never take back. Because there is something to be said for being young and needing someone so badly, you jump in head first without looking. And there’s something to be learned from waiting all day for a train that’s never coming. And there’s something to be proud of about moving on and realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn’t fade or spontaneously combust. Maybe I’ll write a whole album about that kind of love if I ever find it. But this album is about the other kinds of love that I’ve recently fallen in and out of. Love that was treacherous, sad, beautiful, and tragic. But most of all, this record is about love that was red.” Oh, Red. I have so many thoughts about you. For starters, Red is Taylor’s fourth album and was released in the fall of 2012. Red is comprised of 16 tracks. Like I said previously, the Speak Now Era was such an incredible time, and Swifties didn’t want to let it go. We didn’t want things to change. I think the Red Era is the only era that Swifties didn’t welcome with open arms. We just didn’t know how to feel, and were afraid of things changing. But Taylor was headed in a more pop direction, and we could all sense it. Of course, Taylor had always been pop, or country pop, but that’s neither here nor there… And so, Red was Taylor’s “pop” debut, because she wrote three songs with pop hitmakers Max Martin and Yohan Shellback. But, it was also her rock debut if you ask me. Red was like a patchwork quilt of music: differently styles, production types, collaborators, producers. Taylor was trying new things and flapping her wings. And it worked. At first, I was hesitant to leave Speak Now behind, but Red quickly became my favorite album and still is. Taylor’s best songs are on Red. That is unanimously agreed upon in the fandom and throughout. Red is Taylor’s crown jewel, her zenith. Unfortunately, Taylor suffered a lot of hate and backlash for her dating life during 2012 and 2013, and that really clouded the success of Red. Like Taylor has said before, she was promoting a massively successful album and touring the world, and all people wanted to talk about was her personal life and it broke her heart. Well, Taylor, it broke mine too. Next to Fearless, Red is the album that helped me most in life. Red chronicles a disastrous heartbreak from beginning to end. The anger, the frustration, the sadness, the regret, the hopelessness, the pining away. You name it, she wrote about it. If you’re ever heartbroken, put on this album. (Except I hope that never happens to you!!) It’s interesting to me that she wrote the songs for Red while she was touring Speak Now, because we thought she was really happy at that time. But, what do we know? We never really know. Well, Red was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2014 Grammy’s and lost to Daft Punk. Whoever announced the winner that night really dragged out the R when he said “Random Access Memories Daft Punk”. So naturally, Taylor thought she had the award and her face lit up. Only to see that she did not, in fact, win. So, she stood up and clapped, although still looking a little miffed/embarrassed. Well, what do you know, the next day the internet is tearing her apart and making fun of the face she made when she thought she had it and then realized she didn’t. She became a gif, a meme, everything. I have seen the waves of irrational, baseless and crude hatred and bullying of her on the internet over the years and that, to me, was the worst. UNFORGIVABLE! So, anyway, it didn’t win the award, but fans and music critics unanimously agree that it should have. Speak Now might be the fan favorite album, due to the attachment to the Speak Now Era, but we all agree that Red is her best work. Alrighty, let’s dive in! Finally, right?!

 16.  I Knew You Were Trouble: “Flew me to places I’d never been,  ‘til you put me down.”

17.  Everything Has Changed ft. Ed Sheeran: “All I feel in my stomach is butterflies, the beautiful kind, makin’ up for lost time, taking flight making me feel like I just wanna know you better.” *Taylor and Ed are best friends in real life. They claim they wrote this song whilst having In n Out burgers on her trampoline in the backyard. I believe them.*

18.   Treacherous: “Nothing safe is worth the drive and I will follow you home.” *This song is cowritten and produced by Dan Wilson from Semisonic.*

19.  Sad Beautiful Tragic: “Distance, timing, breakdown, fighting, silence… the train runs off its tracks.”

20.  Red!!!!!!!!!: “Moving on from him is impossible when I still see it all in my head, in burning red.”

21.  Holy Ground: “We took off faster than a green light go, yeah you skip the conversation when you already know.”

22.  All Too Well: “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it.” *The original version of this song is over ten minutes long. This is, unanimously, Taylor’s best song of all time. Check any list by any critic and this song will be at the #1 spot. I think, for me, Red and All Too Well are tied for favorites.*

23.  Begin Again: “You throw your head back laughin’ like a little kid. I think it’s strange that you think I’m funny, ‘cause he never did.”

24.  The Last Time ft. Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol: “You wear your best apology, but I was there to watch you leave.”

 1989: “I wrote about moving to the loudest and brightest city in the world, the city I had always been overwhelmed by… until now. I think you have to know who you are and what you want in order to take on New York and all its blaring truth. I wrote about the thrill I got when I finally learned that love, to some extent, is just a game of cat and mouse. I wrote about looking back on a lost love and understanding that nothing good comes without loss and hardship and constant struggle. There is no ‘riding off into the sunset’, like I used to imagine. We are never out of the woods, because we are always going to be fighting for something. I wrote about love that comes back to you just when you thought it was lost forever, and some feelings never go out of style. I wrote about an important lesson I learned recently… that people can say whatever they want about me, but they can’t make me lose my mind. I’ve learned how to shake things off. I’ve told you my stories for years now. Some have been about coming of age, some have been about coming undone. This is a story about coming into your own, and as a result… coming alive.” Oh man. I have a lot of feelings about this one, too. And not the good kind. Let’s start with facts. 1989 is Taylor’s fifth album and was released in the fall of 2014. There are 13 songs. And that’s it for the facts, because now I’m going to dive into my feelings and opinions about this one. Which are basically facts, but anyway... So, like I said previously, Taylor did not win AOTY for Red and that bothered her. She went home to her hotel room, gorged herself on In n Out burgers, and cried (Dramatic much?!? It’s okay though ‘cause it was a rough night. And I’m not making this up, she really told us that’s how the night went down. POOR TAY!). Next thing you know, she wakes up in the middle of the night with an epiphany that she is going to make a sonically cohesive pop album. She said the problem with Red was that it wasn’t “sonically cohesive”. Swifties hate the word sonically cohesive. It hurts me that I am even typing it. If you are in my presence do not say the word sonically cohesive, okay? Moving on. In a way, she was right. Red WASN’T sonically cohesive, but that’s kind of what we loved about it. Every song on Red sounds exactly like the feeling the lyrics portray. We didn’t think it was an issue. But Taylor wanted to hone in on a specific sound and perfect that and keep things neat and clean. And, of course, that sound was going to be pop. EXCEPT SHE’S ALWAYS BEEN POP BUT SURE. So, Taylor decides to try 80s synth pop (I guess?) and go with that. And so 1989 is born. Look, I love the narrative and inspiration behind 1989. I am really inspired by the prologue I shared up there. It was all about independence and friendships and not needing a man because she had stopped dating. But she also said she had to stop dating because the hate got so bad. So, the whole single life thing was kind of forced on her, but whatever, she embraced it. Except we all know she wasn’t *really* single (Hello Karlie Kloss!!). When the first single from 1989, Shake It Off, came out, I cried incessantly. I was inconsolable, and my friend’s dad had to make us grilled cheeses to cope. Shake It Off never grew on me, and to this day it’s my least favorite Taylor song EVER (it’s borderline unbearable), but the rest of the album did grow on me. To a degree. The problem with 1989 is that a handful of the songs are incredible, and the rest feel incomplete/watered down/like filler. I feel like she really worked to perfect a few of the songs and geared them in a way to be popular on radio, and the rest were afterthoughts. 1989 is the only Taylor album where the best songs were chosen as singles (except for Shake It Off). With Taylor’s albums, usually the best songs feel like hidden gems because they’re never chosen for radio, and so the public doesn’t know about them. I’m happy that everyone got to enjoy her songs from 1989, but it also felt like there was nothing left over for the fans that felt special. The best songs on 1989 ended up overplayed and overdone. 1989 is the first tour I did not attend. I can be honest with you and say I regret that. 1989 isn’t a bad album, it’s a good album, but as far as Taylor’s work goes, it’s just not the best. But it did win Album of the Year in 2016, making her the first woman to win that award TWICE.  To go a little deeper, it wasn’t even so much the 1989 album that I disliked, I think it was more the Era/Taylor in general during 1989 that didn’t jive with me. She got obsessed with appearance, and status, and there were some strange business dealings that left fans feeling used and abused. Before 1989, Taylor felt like the “girl next door” (I do realize she’s a celebrity and not the girl next door at all, but her perfected relatability factor became part of her marketing image), but during 1989 Taylor threw that all away to be #squadgoals with the Victoria’s secret models. Whatever, it was a strange time. Glad that is over. ALSO, listen to Ryan Adams cover of this album. It’s better than the OG at times. Aight aight, let’s dig into these sick beats (ugh).

25.  Welcome to New York: “When we first dropped our bags on apartment floors, took our broken hearts, put them in a drawer. Everybody here was someone else before, and you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls.” *Taylor moved to NYC the summer gay marriage was legalized in New York. Thanks for the shoutout Tay.*

26.  I Know Places: “Just grab my hand and don’t ever drop it, my love. They are the hunters, we are the foxes, and we run.”

27.  Clean!!!!!!: “It was months and months of back and forth, you’re still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can’t wear anymore.” *Despite 1989 being my least favorite album, this song is one of my all-time favorites. It’s brilliant how she compares a relationship to an addiction. And Imogen Heap comes through for some dope ass background vocals.*

28.   Out of the Woods: “The monsters turned out to be just trees, when the sun came up you were looking at me.” *Ryan Adams cover is amazing, and so is an acoustic piano version Taylor did for the Grammy museum. Check youtube.*

29.  You Are In Love: “You keep his shirt, he keeps his word.”

30.  Style: “I say ‘I’ve heard that you’ve been out and about with some other girl. He said ‘What you heard is true, but I can’t stop thinkin’ ‘bout you.” I said ‘I’ve been there too, a few times.’”

31.  Wildest Dreams: “You see me in hindsight, tangled up with you all night, burning it down. Someday when you leave me I hope these memories follow you around.”

32.  This Love: “Tossing, turning, struggled through the night with someone knew… Lantern burning, flickered in my mind for only you, but you were still gone and gone, gone and gone.”

 Reputation: “We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us. We know our friend in a certain light, but we don't know them the way their lover does. Just the way their lover will never know them the same way that you do as their friend. Their mother knows them differently than their roommate, who knows them differently than their colleague. Their secret admirer looks at them and sees an elaborate sunset of brilliant color and dimension and spirit and pricelessness. And yet, a stranger will pass that person and see a faceless member of the crowd, nothing more. We may hear rumors about a person and believe those things to be true. We may one day meet that person and feel foolish for believing baseless gossip. This is the first generation that will be able to look back on their entire life story documented in pictures on the internet, and together we will all discover the after-effects of that. Ultimately, we post photos online to curate what strangers think of us. But then we wake up, look in the mirror at our faces and see the cracks and scars and blemishes, and cringe. We hope someday we'll meet someone who will see that same morning face and instead see their future, their partner, their forever. Someone who will still choose us even when they see all of the sides of the story, all the angles of the kaleidoscope that is you.” Last album?!? I can’t believe we’re here already! Reputation, Taylor’s 6th album, was released in the fall of 2017 and consists of 15 tracks. At the start, reputation was a wild ride. During the 1989 Era, Taylor managed to crawl out of the pit of hate and despair that the Red Era brought, and she soared to popularity. I’ve noticed this happens with Taylor, the love/hate comes in waves. One day everyone loves her again, and then the next they hate her. During 1989 Taylor was flying high. Highest grossing tour, AOTY, “dating” (I have to put that in quotes, but that’s a whole other can of worms) Calvin Harris… but, nothing good can last forever, and so literally everything fell apart. Messy break up with Calvin, even messier drama with Kimye (can’t even get into that). Things weren’t going so well. Taylor had reached overexposure and she went into hiding for almost a year. No performances, no candid shots, no interviews, no mags, nothing. She usually releases a new album like clockwork every two years, but she skipped her typical release season and tacked on another year to the wait. Well, while she was hiding, Taylor was doing what she does best.. making music. At some point during the summer Taylor put all of her music back on streaming accounts, and so I knew then that something was brewing. She finally announced the name of the album and released the first single, “Look What You Made Me Do”. The day she dropped “Look What You Made Me Do” was one of the craziest days for just about everyone, let alone Swifties. It felt like the world was literally collapsing over this song. The internet was breaking. A few people loved it right away, some people thought she had cracked and was finally losing her damn mind, and I was just confused and depressed. The day it was released I spent a large portion of the day crying. I cried and clutched onto my 1989 CD (but I never even liked 1989 that much… which shows how much I was worried….) But, before I knew it, I was bopping along to the song and loved it like the rest. And once the music video came out, I realized that everything was going to be okay. If you haven’t seen the music video, you need to. It’s iconic. It broke Youtube’s record for most views in 24 hrs. A few more songs came out before album release and I wasn’t *that* crazy about most of them. Turns out that reputation is like all of Taylor’s albums before 1989, the best songs were not released as singles. Back 2 Basics, guys. The fans get everything, and everyone else gets the scraps. When the album finally did come out I was overjoyed. Now let’s see why!

33.  Delicate: “Is it cool that I said all that? Is it chill that you’re in my head? ‘Cause I know that it’s delicate.”

34.  Getaway Car: “I wanted to leave him, I need a reason.” *Jack Antonoff produced this song and many others on reputation. We are #blessed. I recently read somebody say that Jack has a stranglehold on pop music. I WISH!!*

35.  Dancing With Our Hands Tied: “I loved you in spite of deep fears that the world would divide us.” *Beginning at some point in 2014, Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift entered a torrid love affair. It’s possible they are still together today. That’s a discussion for a later date. Anyway, this song is definitely about her. Funny how some people think Taylor hates gay people (why?) when really she writes songs for them. Thanks Tay.

36.  Dress: “I woke up just in time, now I wake up by your side.” *Also for Karlie.*

37.  Call It What You Want!!!!: “I brought a knife to a gun fight, they took the crown but it’s alright.”

38.  I Did Something Bad: “They’re burning all the witches, even if you aren’t one, so light me up.”

39.  Don’t Blame Me: “For you I would fall from grace just to touch your face. If you walk away, I’d beg you on my knees to stay.”

40.  King of My Heart: “I’m perfectly fine, I live on my own. I made up my mind, I’m betting off being alone. We met a few weeks ago, now you try on calling me baby like trying on clothes.”

41.  New Year’s Day: “You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi. I can tell that it’s gonna be a long road. I’ll be there if you’re the toast of the town babe, or if you strike out and you’re crawling home.”

Spotify link:  https://open.spotify.com/user/22xaifvaciqklwgcnidnxuuhq/playlist/7ssFqGusg3Sf1sPe5cS7hR