#i wrote this at a writing meetup yesterday and I need to share it with someone lol

[evergreen125]

It was a quiet night in a quiet neighborhood in a quiet town. I, a quiet kid with a loud mind, eased my bedroom window open, popping out the screen and setting it to the side. I perched on the window sill, toes brushing the rough shingles as I looked to the sky. I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for. A sign, maybe, to go or to stay. If I was less of a coward, I would have already jumped. If I was less of a coward, I wouldn’t be on the roof in the first place.

The wind whistled, bringing a flurry of leaves with it. It was October, and soon, I would be turning 15. Or at least, that was what everyone else thought. I did not intend to turn 15 the following week. I did not intend to turn 15 at all.

In addition to being quiet, the night was cold. Wearing nothing but shorts and a flimsy t-shirt, I sat shivering, bandaged arms crossed over my sunken stomach. Everything was in order. I had written a note. I had carefully made my bed, placing the folded paper in the center of the comforter. If I wanted, I could die tonight. I craved it like my lungs craved oxygen.

I hugged myself tighter, ignoring the stinging pain in my forearms. The sky was not offering any signs to speak of, so the decision was entirely my own. 

“You’ll regret this, you know,” said a soft, familiar voice. It was a voice I hated with every fiber of my being. “Everyone does. But once you jump, there’s no going back.”

I turned slowly. Behind me stood a young adult, perhaps in their mid-20s, hair shorn into a curly pixie cut and eyes bright with something that had long been missing from my own. Their cheeks were plumper, rosier, and their face was marked with smile lines rather than the wrinkle that had made itself at home between my brows, but it was undeniable. I was gazing at an older version of myself. They were simultaneously a stranger and someone I had always known. They were all the things I hated about myself as well as everything I wanted so desperately to be. 

I turned my back and rested my forehead on my knees. I was so, so tired.

“No one wants me here,” I replied, voice heavy with resignation. “It’ll be better this way.” My older self let out a soft sigh. That sound, at least, was familiar. As I sat with my sadness, I felt a small hand rest on my back. When I turned, a young girl sat beside me.

She wore my face as well, young and carefree, as well as a pair of purple striped pajamas.

“Look at the stars,” she said, pointing upwards with wonder in her eyes. “The Big Dipper, Orion, Andromeda,” she listed. “Did you know that the Big Dipper is also called Ursa Major? The Great Bear. Remember that bear we saw last summer?”

I did. She talked a mile a minute, and her excitement was palpable. Anyone who met her would see a child with a bright future ahead of her. When had I lost that light?

“The stars are beautiful tonight,” my older self agreed. “So many things are beautiful. You’re beautiful too. I just wish you could see it.”

“I’m far from beautiful,” I said. I was all acne spots and awkward smiles, stringy hair and bony knees. Thinner, but never thin enough.

“You won’t see it now,” they conceded. “But you’ll see it someday. All you have to do is get off the roof.” My three selves sat in silence for what felt like hours. The stars shone brightly. It was a gorgeous night.

The younger me pulled a small yellow legal pad out of thin air and drew a sparkly mechanical pencil from behind her ear. She began to scribble furiously, face scrunched up in concentration. The words were ephemeral, fading in and out of existence, shifting as quickly as a child’s thoughts. I didn’t know what they said, but I knew how they felt. They felt like hope. Freedom. I was young again, stealing pads of paper from my grandpa’s office and writing as if it was breathing. In, out, in, out. I craved it like oxygen.

“Do you want to read my book?” she asked, offering me the pad. “It’s about dragons.”

I took it. It felt foreign in my hands, and I was suddenly overcome with the urge to cry. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and when I opened them, the words on the page had shifted once again. You always wanted to be a writer, they read.

I had always wanted to be a writer. I still wanted it, if I was being honest with myself, but after months of staring at the blank page, the words had become less like an exhale and more like blood, congealing in my throat and filling my lungs. Everything was so heavy these days. Was this what Atlas felt like when he held the weight of the sky on his shoulders? Like he might buckle at any moment, taking the world down with him?

“You can still do it, you know,” my older self promised. “Things will get better. You’ll discover new things that you love. You’ll see the world. All you need to do is stick around a while longer.” Sticking around felt so simple. It felt like a crushing task. Could I do it? I didn’t know.

My younger self wrapped her purple-pajamad arms around my waist, holding on tight. “I’m proud of you,” she said. 

My older self placed a steady hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you want to know me?” they asked. The last of my resolve melted. I crumbled, allowing them to guide me off of the roof and back into my bedroom. Numb fingers fumbled with the window screen, attempting to fit it back into place. The older me gently pried it from my hands and replaced it, shutting and latching the window behind them.

As if in a trance, I walked to my bed, picking up the folded note and tucking it into a book on my nightstand. I would do away with it later, maybe burn it. It was late. I was exhausted, the most exhausted I’d ever been in my life. As I collapsed into bed, my other selves curled up next to me. I slept deeply, restfully. When I woke, they were gone.That morning, I rose, changed my bandages, and got ready for school. I will make her proud, I thought. I will live long enough to know them. The next week, I turned 15. I am so glad that I did.

[noble-michele]

Back@It Again

3 March 2019

This is my first time blogging this year and is actually the first time in a long time. I’m going to try to blog at least once a month. I want to share what’s going  on in my life and what’s not happening that I think should be and my thoughts about these things. Hopefully, writing, blogging regularly will help me to process and figure out if I’m still on the correct journey and how to continue to learn, grow and mature along the way; even if I’m not on the correct journey, it may help me to see where I got off and where to get back on.

Quite a few things have happened since I last blogged. I started taking voice and piano lessons, dropped the voice lessons but still taking piano lessons. It’s been mostly an up and down journey full excitement, self-doubt, and cautious hope. Wondering and even at times believing that I’ll never be able to play the piano any other way than I currently play. Not only was I having doubts about playing the piano but, also, about playing the guitar. Wanting to play better and not really believing that I could.

I wrote a few songs, as well, some with music, some without. I left the church group that I was going to and really lost some potential friendships, and while, in some ways, I’m still grieving their loss, Abba has been faithfully and patiently walking with me through this wilderness. Helping me and teaching me; instructing me. One of the things he said to me early on was to hold everyone loosely. This has to do with learning how to not form any detachments to people, places, things, even the people who I hold dear. When I allow attachments to form with people, places, or things, those people, places and things become potential idols in my heart and in my life and there’s a chance that I may begin to look to them to meet my needs instead of looking to God.

I’ve been battling loneliness, too. But, the thing that God has been trying to get me to see, to believe, to know is that I am NOT alone. I have him and he has given me some friends, brethren in my circle to walk with me and I need to be grateful and thankful for the ones that he’s given me and stop pining for the ones he hasn’t.

Although I’m still not sure about the playing (piano and guitar), God has opened a door for me to learn….songwriting, guitar, and theory. Yesterday, I went to a Songwriters’ Circle, my first one ever. I’ve been a part of a Songwriters’ Meetup for at least 2 years but didn’t have the courage to actually go to the meetup. Yesterday, through the encouragement of a couple of friends, thanks, Lolita and Monte, I decided to go and check it out. We all got to share at least one song, cover or original while the rest of the group learned to play along. It was so great and was absolutely amazing! I really, really loved it even though I felt and knew that I was out of my league as far as playing the guitar, but, there was no judgement and one person in particular was so very helpful with showing me how to play new chords and old chords new ways. I’m really looking forward to doing it again. They have the Songwriters’ Circle every first Saturday. Next Saturday, there will be a Songwriters’ Toolbox. I think that this will be geared more to actually songwriting although, I’m not sure how. I’m planning to check it out, which will be a stretch for me because it’s around 17 miles away in Rockville, MD. But the plan is to go and join in and be a part of, to learn and to grow, and to be inspired. 

One of the things that I was talking with Abba about this weekend was that I would like to write a non-Christian song, but still an inspirational one. I haven’t been able to do that yet. Right now, that seems to be a stretch for me, but I would like to do it. We’ll see what becomes of my next dream to write this song.

Well, that’s about it for now. Until next time! And hopefully, it won’t be as long as it was before.

[merigreenleaf]

Writing Update: May 4th

Project: Soulmate AU and 3rd draft of book 1 (Colorweaver)

Word count/time for yesterday: Something like 4 hours

Progress: I wrote words! New ones and everything! I'd been struggling to get back into writing and this chapter of the Soulmate AU was giving me problems, but yesterday I finally found Etri's voice again and made some good progress with it. Then at my writing meetup I edited a chapter or two of book 1. It's neat because right now the part I'm editing is the same time/event as the Soulmate AU chapter, so I get to see it from two POVs.

Today’s plan: I'm going to try to finish the AU chapter today and edit it this weekend so it's ready for Tuesday. I'd love to also write the next chapter because I missed sharing last week, but I don't know if I'll get two done by Tuesday or not. Depends on how simple Sol makes his chapter. I'm also going to answer asks for this ask game- super looking forward to that! (If you've asked me and I didn't ask you but you've reblogged it, please please let me know- my laptop is old and having trouble loading blogs today so I might have missed it. I keep getting weird black boxes blocking some of the screen. Sigh.)

Dork status: Okay, so in my last update I left Adair in a weird condition that made him stare at the wall as still as a statue, then he got up and walked away in a daze. Etri follows him out and figures out that he's probably sleepwalking- or something close to it, anyway- but he wants to see if where Adair's heading will give an answer as to why this is happening. This is all fine and good until Adair steps out into traffic and nearly gives Etri a heart attack. Etri grabs him, deposits him back on the sidewalk, and is now determined to wake him up because flattened Adairs are definitely not a good kind of Adair.

Favorite line/excerpt: 

Etri need not have hurried because Adair was in no hurry. He walked as though his legs were weighted, with slow steps heading for- “Atair! Watch out!”

Adair swerved at the last moment and just missed walking face first into the neighboring wagon. Etri’s hope that his warning had been heeded was crushed when Adair continued his slow, steady trudge westward with no reaction to the presence of Etri or anything smaller than a house.

[drybonesawaken]

A group of people wanted to share a journal together. So this week, I've been journaling (almost) every day, and tomorrow I'm gonna be passing it onto the next person.

It was kinda fun. Bit scary to put my thoughts out there - but not that bad tbh. I figured since I am not gonna keep the journal I should transcribe my thoughts somewhere, so here they are.

Yes, the math bits were included in the journal when I wrote. Just something fun I did. You can try to figure out if it means anything if you want :)

-

Maple 3.27.21

I don't like journaling .-. mah handwriting sucks, and pen ink takes too long to dry. Apologies If any of this page is smudged as a result ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And no, Maple does not use anything but pen. When mistakes are made, and trust they will definitely be made, you see a lot of bleh <- that. I also missed like three words in the previous sentence, but it's messy to try to go back and put them in :( this is the consequence of writing when brain is running at negative mph... This may be two paragraphs of nothing, but honestly that's how my day goes, usually. Right now I'm listening to this audiobook to fill up my brain and stop it from thinking. It's quite interesting. I read the book back in middle school, and it's taking me on a trip down memory lane. I was listening to this earlier while playing tetris, too. I'm joining a tetris tournament tomorrow, so I've been grinding this week. Hopefully it goes well! It's funny how I spend so much time playing this game which means so little - but somehow, I find fulfillment in the emptiness that it brings me. Breaking personal records is such a meaningless ordeal, but somehow it's something I strive so hard to do. These days, PBs come once every couple of months. It's not worth it.

-

Maple 3.28.21

Today felt like I did everything and nothing all at the same time. I found out I don't like tetris tournaments. I hung out with some friends. I ate a big dinner. I made some choices I highkey regretted, yet couldn't stop myself from making in the moment. I spent some time sulking over said mistakes by cuddling with roommate. Very thankful for him - I definitely make him so uncomfortable LOL but he puts up with it because he knows touch is my love language. I was debating for awhile today over what I should eat for dinner (or breakfast or lunch or whatever you want to call it :') ) and I realized what I wanted to eat most was my own cooking. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling like cooking, so I had to settle for something else, but this was kind of a wake up call: when's the last time I cooked for myself? hmmm... It's also at the same time pretty cool because less than a year ago, I was still at a place where I strongly disliked my cooking and only ate it because I had to. Crazy how things can change in just a year - my culinary skills must have improved a lot over last summer... I really need to get my car tires fixed tomorrow. I have time tomorrow. I had better go. If I don't, my car is gonna break.

How does one stop beating themselves up for their mistakes? I don't struggle with forgiveness, but oh how I struggle with forgiving myself...

1 + 2 = 4 = 2

-

Maple 3.30.21

Yesterday, we had to record something for Easter that took forever. It was not fun. I kept messing up. And my perfectionist self kept blabbering about wanting to redo certain things. Everyone was tired - it went so long - some people had exams; I can only imagine how annoying it must have been to hear me complaining about doing things again, and yet - and I hate myself for this - I couldn't help but keep bringing it up. Of course, being unsatisfied with the way I played, I volunteered to patch things up in post production. *sigh*, what a mistake that ended up being. Afterwards, I was tired and wanted to go home. Yet, because someone asked, and I guess I was a bit hungry, I decided to go get food with Junshik and Bryan. My ulterior motive was to talk to Bryan about buying cars, so I guess that worked out. But yikes, I only got 7 hours of sleep last night. - Today sucked. I'm realizing more and more that part of depression is the complete dependence on sleep. When I get not enough sleep, I'm not just fatigued: my life is just hell. I straight up no-showed to a meeting and apologized for it 8 hours after the fact (my excuse was that I feel asleep. Wow, something so embarrassing most people would find an excuse for it has now become my go to excuse. Rip). Went to a meetup because I didn't want to cancel - again - so that was fun (sorry if you're reading this. I lied when I said that I was ok :/). Life group was great I wanted to die but I was leading worship so I couldn't just leave. And oh yeah I just spent the last 4 hours after life group mixing that audio clip because stupid ol' me volunteered to do it asap yesterday. Tomorrow will be fun. I have 7 meetings/meetups from 9am to 8pm. I wonder how many I'll cancel last minute, or straight up skip...? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I hate ______.

-

Maple 3.31.21

9am to 8pm today was rough. It's kinda crazy - when I wake up, I knew it wasn't gonna be a good day...but I really needed it to be at least an okay day. And I think I somehow willed that into existence :O I need to try this again sometime. Didn't cancel or skip a single thing today! (Praise God!!!) After my meetings all ended, I had to tutor for another 3 hours until 11:30, too. That was draining. I also pranked a friend today - told her I was dating right after midnight. Oh I love April Fools. She's the only one I can consistently troll year after year. I also spent a considerable amount of time after midnight trying to figure out how to script Audacity in Python. Useless, sure, but it could save us sound people a couple of minutes every Sunday if I figure it out. This is what my degree is for :') Sleep is going to feel so good tonight.

5 + 4 - 7 = 2 + 1 11 + 1 + 1 - 1 = 6 4 + 2 = 3 5 = 2 + 2 - 3 5 = 4 - 1 - 2

-

Maple 4.2.21

I think my handwriting is getting better with this almost-daily practice =) This whole week has been busy-ness from when I wake up to when I go to bed. Hung out with people yesterday for the first time this week, and it was pretty tiring. I can't say I regret it though; I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about certain people. Recently, I've been noticing that people can tell when I'm tired a lot more obviously - someone on worship team who I only interact with on Sundays literally called me out for it. I'm finding that it just sort of slips onto my face, in such a way that I don't notice and can't even recognize it: I'm shocked every time it happens. Maybe it's because I've lost the will to live, so the lack of will to hide it came alongside as well. I accidentally let it slip that I've been brain empty to worship team today, and now there are even more people worried for me, some of whom I barely know. I'm such a burden :( Brain empty is honestly such a mood though. I have too many problems and not enough will to confront them. Better to just avoid. Yeah yeah yeah this is not healthy I know. I'll save doing things the healthy way for tomorrow :')

1 + 1 = 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 8 = 7 6 - 5 = 10 + 1 1 + 2 = 1 - 1

-

Maple 4.3.21

Today was supposed to be a more chill day, but it really wasn't... Forced myself to get out of bed for a meetup rather than cancel it. I think if I had cancelled it, everything else I had to do today would have followed suit shortly after.... It ended up being a 2-hour meetup, straight into 2.5 hours of tutoring. As much as they might have been pretty ok tbh, I can't say I enjoyed it. I was so dead afterwards. I wanted to cancel my dinner meetup so bad. But I had already gone shopping earlier today (during the first meetup) so that I could cook for him. And I knew if I cancelled it'd be another week before I'd have a chance. The food would have gone bad. So following 2 tilt-inducing matches of tetris which were supposed to be stress relieving (they were not), commenced 2 hours of cooking, followed by a 3.5 hr meetup. It was... haha... Did I enjoy it? Yup. Did I have a hella-thick mask on the whole time? Also yup. I'm so ready for a long hot shower and an early bedtime. Tomorrow is Easter. I'm not feeling very victorious...

1 + 2 = 4 - 1 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 = 1 1 + 2 + 3 - 4 = 4 - 1 - 2 + 1

[kdulgar-blog]

An Open Letter to Elisa Steele EVP & Chief Marketing Officer, Yahoo Inc. on the New “The Internet is You,” Yahoo Marketing Campaign

Dear Elisa:

Last month when you announced Yahoo! Inc’s new multi-million dollar ad campaign including the tagline, "the internet’s under new management yours," I wrote you an open letter. While admittedly the letter was critical and even a bit sarcastic at times regarding censorship on Yahoo’s photo sharing site Flickr, I nonetheless was hopeful that perhaps Yahoo was sincere in your latest marketing message. I thought the statement was much better than the last big Yahoo marketing campaign about everybody needing to wear purple clothes or whatever, and as someone who values customer service oriented companies, I thought it was a positive statement for Yahoo to make.

Unfortunately, at this point, however, I am going to have to call bullshit on your new campaign. I assume it’s ok with you that I’m using such strong language to describe your campaign. Your boss Carol Bartz has built a big reputation as a tough talker with salty language so I’m hoping you’ll understand.

You see Elisa, despite the fact that seemingly everywhere I turn in San Francisco I see another one of your new ads on a bus shelter somewhere, the message rings hollow. It’s doublespeak. It’s inauthentic.

Yesterday, your Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ destroyed a community on Flickr that was home to over 3,000 hard-core Yahoo users. It was a community of photographers, many of whom have spent years on Yahoo in a group that was rich and vibrant. The group had over 5,000 ongoing conversations in it. It’s where many of us lived on Yahoo. The group was in part dedicated to free speech, but it was so much more than that. The group was a place where we talked about music. Where we shared tips on photography. Where we debated about film vs. digital. Where we went to ask each other for advice on what lens we ought to purchase next. It was a place where many of us went to meet each day. It was a place where offline photography meetups were organized. We actually published a magazine together. Many of us became good friends in real life.

But yesterday, while we were conversing there, and without any warning or opportunity to take any sort of self-corrective action, your Community Manager went nuclear and destroyed all of that user data. All of it. Every last thread. With a push of a button. Threads that were meaningful and important to us.

This was data that did not belong to Yahoo! Elisa. You destroyed something that did not belong to you. You destroyed hours and hours of peoples hard work maliciously and callously. You destroyed a group dedicated to free speech, but more significantly you destroyed a group that thousands of people had put significant emotional energy into.

And do you know what your Community Manager was tweeting mere seconds before she nuked this very popular group Elisa? She was tweeting "I hate your freedom."

That’s right Elisa I, hate, your, freedom. That’s the image that I chose to go with this letter to you. A screenshot of her freedom hating tweet.

While I’m sure your representative got a good laugh out of that tweet, personally I found it as offensive as the fact that so much user data was destroyed so callously in the first place. You see Elisa, Yahoo already has a problem with people thinking that you hate freedom. Remember when Jerry Yang got called before the U.S. Congress and was brow beaten after you all released private emails to the Chinese Govt which resulted in a Chinese journalist’s imprisonment to this day? Remember just last week when rumors (very unfounded rumors I might add) were flying that Yahoo! had released private information on thousands of freedom seeking dissidents to the Iranian Govt?

"I hate your freedom?" Really Elisa? This is the marketing message that you as Yahoo’s Chief Marketing Officer want to send out to the world as you rip apart an online community dedicated to free speech. It’s distasteful and it’s offensive.

You see Elisa, all the money spent in the world on bus stop billboards cannot make your marketing message ring true when the real voices, real human authentic voices online, ring out that the internet (at least at Yahoo!) is in fact very much not under our management at all. In fact our feelings are not taken into consideration one iota. We, thousands of us, are tossed aside, thrown out like garbage. Our hard work destroyed by you. Not only do actions like this invalidate your message, they create enormous ill will against Yahoo that will stand for many years going forward.

A number of help forum threads (now all conveniently locked down by your staff) were created over the destruction of this group. I will quote you the official Yahoo! statement, again from Ms. Champ stated in one of those locked threads:

"Flickr is a community with fences. If you want the open range, then unfortunately, what you want to do is beyond what we allow."

You see how that reads Elisa? It does not read that Yahoo is all about "you" at all. It’s a patronizing statement that says Yahoo is not about what "you" want. It’s about what "we" want. I hope you can see how this statement directly contradicts your current marketing slogan that the internet is under new management, you.

I’m sure you are familiar with John Gilmore, Elisa, a well respected thinker who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a quite respected organization that fights for freedom online. John Gilmore once said, "the Internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it." And that’s what many of us have now done. Many of us in the community that was destroyed have now decided that we will no longer use Yahoo for our community experience. Yahoo simply cannot be trusted to not destroy thousands of hours of our work in the future. Instead we will be using community space hosted by one of your competitors, FriendFeed, a site owned by Facebook.

You see, despite not having a large glitzy "the internet’s about you," campaign, to my knowledge FriendFeed has never censored anyone. They have this really cool feature allowing users to block somebody if you don’t like what they have to say instead. It’s great. When you do that they just disappear entirely on the site for you. Poof. Magic. Rather than pay for salaries and benefits for a team of censors, they just let their users block content that they don’t like and let me tell you, it works *alot* better that way.

Interestingly enough Elisa, FriendFeed was founded in part by the very guy who came up with the Google (another one of your competitors) slogan, "don’t be evil," — as a marketing exec I’m sure you realize how powerful of a corporate message that has turned out to be, much more powerful than everybody needs to wear purple.

I’d hope that you could see how nuking an entire group over what was a skirmish between maybe two members in the group might not make sense. You used a shotgun to kill a gnat.

Many things could have been done to more responsibly address the Yahoo concern in question. Admins of the group could have been warned and given an opportunity to take corrective action on their own, the single offending post could have been deleted rather than destroying thousands of posts 99.9% of which were entirely unoffensive, you could have simply removed what you found offensive and locked the group down, leaving a rich collection of user data to at least exist in an archive format for future reference for those who had created it.

It did not need to be nuked.

I do hope you take a moment out of your busy day to address this situation personally Elisa because it is damaging to both Yahoo’s brand and your own campaign that you are spending significant shareholder money on.

And as long as these are the types of actions that you and your management stand behind then your current campaign is very much meaningless indeed. I do also hope that you do not allow your staff to personally retaliate against me by nuking my own flickr photostream for writing to you what is in fact a very respectful letter.

Thomas Hawk

Posted by Thomas Hawk on 2009-10-13 17:46:23

Tagged: , censorship , flickr , Yahoo , Elisa Steele , Heather Champ , DMU , Freedom , fav10 , 10 , screenshot , Twitter , superfave , fav25 , FriendFeed , citizen photography , fake , false , censorshit , freedomofspeech , tesetingnipsa44 , fav20 , fav30 , fav40 , fav50 , fav60 , fav70

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