#i mean. i guess idk if it will or not until I Ask About It. but ghjdk

[whentherewerebicycles]

ok and now some thoughts about my early experience of parenting.

it kinda rocks... i really like it. i will definitely have a second kid if finances and biology work out. my life is so much better with this little guy in it. the sacrifices so far are mostly minor and are much more logistical than personal. i have to work more hours than i'd ideally want to because there's only one paycheck. i have to try to cobble together more sleep than i used to because i am pretty tired at the end of the day. i can't go to the gym or run an errand or go write at a coffeeshop for a few hours without hiring a sitter or asking my friends to help out. but the tradeoff is i get to be this little kid's mom. he thinks i'm pretty funny and he's interested in everything i do and he calls to me to get me to come over to his mat and talk to him and he likes to grab my face and hold it still so he can study it real intently and when he's upset he wants me to snuggle him until he feels better. i would pick that over getting to run into a store without the stroller a million times over.

i remember reading this book years ago where someone (paulo freire? someone influenced by freire's pedagogy?) recommended that all teachers, no matter how long they'd been teaching, carve out time every six months to reflect on their teaching practices and consider whether those practices were aligned with their core/guiding values as educators. i obviously love this idea because i was born to engage in sustained reflective journaling about my values lol. but also: i do think there's value in setting aside time at regular intervals to check in with yourself about the way you are living, or about whatever you are practicing, whether it's teaching or your work with others or, in this case, parenting. so idk i might try using his birthday and half birthday as time to journal both about my kid and about my own practice of parenting.

do i have a practice of parenting?? that sounds too fancy for someone who is only six months in lol. but i do enjoy thinking about what i'm doing and i like trying to connect the day-to-day choices i'm making to larger principles. i have written about this before but idk i think i am somebody who derives a strong sense of security and groundedness from having a loose framework of guiding values i can refer to when making decisions. and i guess in this first round of reflective journaling i will try to articulate what some of those emerging values/principles are. here we go:

I am making a conscious effort to not sweat the small stuff. there are one million things you can be worried or stressed about in parenting. and there are one million ways you can fall into the trap of thinking that if you just control every single variable nothing bad will happen to your kid. i am trying, inasmuch as i can, to avoid at least a few ways of falling into that trap. i have worked really hard to choose flexibility instead of rigidity when it comes to, for instance, letting other people care for my kid. it's okay if people do things differently than i would - as long as he's safe, he can only benefit from being exposed to different caretaking styles and adapting to different people's ways of engaging with him. i also made a decision early on to not engage with any parenting content on social media (this means ignoring the dozens of insta reels my mom sends me every week lol) and that has been really healthy/good for me. there is TOO MUCH information out there. it is way too overwhelming. you could spend your whole life worrying and i want to spend my life doing other things, like funny accents and comedy bits for the baby.

i am working hard to not interpret other people's parenting choices as a judgment of my own. i really believe that there are lots of different ways to raise healthy, well-adjusted kids. we can make different choices (small and big choices!) and still arrive at the same outcomes. i just really don't want to be the kind of person who takes it personally when people do something differently than i would've! i want to be secure enough in my choices to be able to accept and appreciate a whole range of other parenting styles. i also want to be humble enough to realize that i don't have it all figured out and might learn something from reflecting on someone else's parenting choices. anyway this has been a challenging one as i sometimes DO feel quite judged or shamed by other people's choices. but i also think it's ok to feel that reaction as long as i can keep making space for myself to take a deep breath and think through why i feel like that. idk! work in progress but i've only had six months of practice lol.

i am also trying not to interpret other people's anxieties as anything other than them working through their own stuff. to give one example: i love my mom so much but she is just, like, vibrating out of her skin with anxiety at all times about literally everything. and she has really found an outlet for that anxiety in grandparenting. i get dozens of texts a week about what exercises i should be doing with him and what experiences i should be making sure he has and where i should be taking him and what i should be saying to him and what i should be asking the doctor about and so on and so forth. this obviously could be pretty stressful, and i know that my brother and SIL find it so stressful that it is kind of negatively impacting their relationship with her. but idk i feel like with my mom i spent a lot of my life taking her anxieties personally, thinking that she thought i was incompetent/incapable/irresponsible/whatever. and then at some point in the last few years i was just like oh... this isn't about me at all, is it? this has absolutely nothing to do with me. this is just her fear and her terror of doing things wrong and her overwhelming need to avoid shame, and all of that emotional stuff just happens to be playing out in this relationship because we are close enough that she can lets her emotional walls down and let me see the churning river of anxiety that runs through the heart of her life. i wish that she didn't feel like that. but it's also not something i can fix or change. the only thing that is within my control is the choice not to take it personally, which in turn helps me put some guardrails around it so that it doesn't impact our relationship. idk i think this will probably be an ongoing thing i have to sort through for myself. but also she is who she is and i love her and it is important to me that she be a big part of owen's life. so we will figure it out.

I refuse to optimize my parenting because i refuse to see my child as a thing that needs to be optimized. this is in some ways hard for me because in many respects i am all-in on the very american philosophy that everything can be improved endlessly, including yourself and your family, if you just work harder and care more and give endlessly of yourself to the work. but nope! nope. not for parenting. not for my kid. i want him to have experiences and be exposed to new things, but not so he can "get ahead" or excel in things. i want him to be curious, engaged, interested, flexible, alive to the world, open to new things. i do not care if he is bilingual by age four or has a STEM curriculum at his daycare or goes to a top college or whatever. and i want the choices i make about what we do together and how we spend our time to reflect that. idk he's still so little that this is not super relevant yet but i can feel some of it creeping in.

lastly: i am trying to approach all aspects of parenting with the fundamental belief that i am and will be a good parent. i feel like our culture wants women in particular to spend all their time feeling guilty and inadequate as mothers. we also don't get a lot of external feedback on whether or not we're doing a good job as parents, which i think can make us frantic for validation and riddled with self-doubt over whether we are doing Enough. but i want to just like, try to cut some of that out and just answer it for myself. i'm doing a great job. i'm a great mom. i love my kid and my kid loves me. as i learn more about my child and myself as a parent i will undoubtedly adjust my approach to parenting many times, but making adjustments doesn't mean i was doing something "wrong" or "bad" before. it just means i want to try something new or shift gears a little bit. idk maybe this sounds dumb but i actually think it is proving kind of powerful so far as a strategy for managing parenting anxiety. i just assume that my parenting instincts are reasonably good and will guide me to make reasonably good choices, and if something turns out not to work, i assume i am a good enough parent to figure it out and adapt accordingly.

ok!! good journaling session and now it's time for bed!!

[nocofamilyau]

not related to noco at all but what is katie and sadie’s relationship like now?

pretty good all things considered! while they're both married to two sweet guys and have separate families (none of their kids are other td characters, unfortunately...) they're still really close, and still live next to each other at that same beach town they grew up in, now both running that successful 80s themed ice cream business they've been dreaming of! its safe to say they probably suffered the least on Total Drama, only leaving with a couple of minor scars, good god were they lucky..

[the-golden-dragoness]

Does anyone know how to maneuver a relationship where they are interested in dating you but you were fine being old school acquaintances who don’t speak to each other

[transannabeth]

hi. for people who saw gatsby: an american myth. do you remember mckee asking nick for lunch. and then gatsby in like the next scene inviting nick for lunch. because i remember.

[maddy-ferguson]

talking to new people again is making me realize that (this is gonna sound dramatic) i haven't lived in five years but what i have done is watch a lot of movies and read a bunch of books and believe it or not that actually makes me an interesting conversationalist in some ways (?)

[cerealmonster15]

i dont think i ever felt more annoyed at commercials than when those mean girls walmart ads were playing a few months ago or whenever that was

[zackmartin]

omg i just check yr about (i was looking for yr resource blog hehe) and zeldas suchhhh a pretty name it suits u so well 💞💞💞💞💞 and i promise im not just saying that bc video games its srsly so good for you I LOVE YOUUUUU

asjddksjz THANK YOU, I LOVE YOUUUU 🥺🥺🥺💕💕💕

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[theresa-of-liechtenstein]

dreamed about [redacted] again :/

[icarusbuck]

something we don’t talk about much when it comes to recovery is that feeling when you’re first starting to get better that it won’t last. the fear that it’s temporary; that in a day, a week, or six months, the bubble is going to burst and you’ll be right back in the shit again.

it’s been a while since i felt that way. part of it was learning to embrace and celebrate the good moments when they happened, because i could never know when the next one would come along. i think for me part of living with my depression has been trusting that there will be good days again, settling for the okay days, and being constantly vigilant for any little light in the darkness.

i don’t find myself counting down the seconds anymore, holding my breath for the happy moments to end. i throw myself into them, soak up as much as i can, and when the time comes, i let it go.

[bsaka7]

Sorry if this is weird or anything but re:the post you rb'd abt fanfic... i adore all your writing - you're such a talent, thank you for sharing the things you write!

I really do think of your stories a lot - as slashfic it is wonderful and very much appreciated, but so much of it just leaves me with a lasting impression of a theme or feeling that I can't shake; beyond the story itself. You have an incredible way with words, managing to convey things wholly but without any exaggeration, which makes for a perfect and usually heart-rending read

Thank you again :)

definitely not weird!!! i appreciate and cherish what everyone says about my writing and i am always deeply grateful for your comments. i'm clutching this ask like when otters float on their backs with the clam pressed to their chest!!! i often think that i'm -- trying too hard with fic, or i think too hard about it. i'm very glad that themes and feelings stuck with you because that is so often what i am trying to impart. i think -- i have these questions that go round and round in my head (connection, meaning, misdirection, etc) and sometimes my fic is a way of trying to figure out one perspective or another on those things, or is responding to something i've read in a book (i swear i'm not that pretentious okay. a little. but not TOO bad i hope.), or is just. i think this would be cool (or hot) can i execute it!! and i throw this all out to you guys and you are always far too kind. anyway long story short i really appreciate u and appreciate everyone who likes my writing haha!! i've only ever written like...history papers for school so you guys have seen nearly all the creative writing i've done in my entire life so it's very nice that you enjoy! and it's such an honor that anything i write sticks with u <333333333333333

[queenerdloser]

one of my innate personality traits is that i can really only think big term about my future plans when it's like 1am on a random weekday. spent like two hours last night fighting with myself on if i really want to try applying to mfa grad programs this winter or not.

[mintflavoredfemurs]

i love chugging down 3/4 of a mug of coffee just to stay up until midnight to finish assignments because finishing them now and sleeping in the bus is better than sleeping now and not having enough time to finish them despite the full night's rest

[insanechayne]

~ ~ ~

[longagoitwastuesday]

I know Mai is sort of like the typical "kind of a bitch" female character that often has a lot of sexist tropes playing around, but for some reason... I actually like her?

[pirefyrelight]

Ive been at my new job for a couple weeks now and it's good I'm settling in right. At first my only complaint is my line lead is one of those 'I listen to anything' guys who controls the speaker and what that actually means is he plays country but doesn't seem to know who Marty Robinson is so yaknow it's whatever. ("I'm proud to be an American!" Oh man I wish I could be)

But now, it's clear he's a flat earth transphobe etc etc. Today he and the opening server had a way too long conversation about how Elon musk is an idiot, not for any of the reasons you would expect, but because 'he's trying to break the firmament and flood us all with the water held above it with his pointy spacex rocket' to paraphrase. He's also trying to use the bible as proof of these claims but also trying to say that all the religions that Christianity stole traditions from were the real ones? I don't fucking know.

Before he got into all that he started the conversation by going "whelp, I guess I'm not watching the Olympics anymore!"

And I got this dread feeling in my gut, because I don't know what happened but he's also said some mildly transphobic stuff before already, a la 'I don't care I just wish they wouldn't shove it down our throats' yaknow, tolerable. Not a statement I really agree with tonally, but tolerable. 'I have gay friends' etc.

So today I asked him, "Oh no, what happened?"

Then he goes on this fucking rant about men being allowed in women's sports, and how a male boxer was allowed to punch a female one who quit because it wasn't fair, and how all these guys are allowed to set all these records in girls sports, and so on and so forth. Full transphobia that I don't know how to actually start countering, so I just kinda nod along and say things like 'damn that's crazy. Yeah you know there's the idea that instead of being separated into male and female it should be sorted like weight classes. Or a third category for Trans people.' And he goes 'Yeah like for the mentally ill.' And I'm like ooh that is not what I meant but ok.

Well now that I'm home and I can look up what he was talking about, Imane Khelif is a cis female boxer, whose opponent dropped out after less than a minute in the ring with her. I don't know exactly where he got the idea she was trans but there is apparently established controversy about her gender. Which is just- wow. Can we stop being trasphobic as a whole but especially to the cis women? Can the transphobes at least Try to be coherent.

this was before the server came in and they went on about how it's impossible to go to space and we aren't spinning at millions of miles an hour, and the sun zooms out?? I don't even know what that last one is. Something about multiple portals? That the sun goes through? New flat earther model unlocked I guess.

Also apparently Russia's not socialist and because there's foreign involvement/corruption in Ukraine they deserve to be invaded. Anyone who supports Ukraine's sovereignty is suspicious. She asked me who Ukraine was with before now, and I said I know it wasn't always with the Soviet union/Russia as much as they want to say it was, and she kinda backpeddled? 'You know how many Labs are in Ukraine?' As if that erases their right to sovereignty.