#i’m so happy to be in a healthy workplace that encourages me to take days off

[hjarta]

i just realized that i only have to work three days next week :’)

[recurring-polynya]

What’s your opinion on pre-canon Renruki?

I think that they already had a romantic or almost romantic relationship back in the Academy, maybe even back in Rukongai, and the reason it wasn’t explicit is because firstly it would have spoiled the endgame couples, and secondly it’s a shonen, so it’s implied.

I think they fooled around when they were orphans in Inuzuri. They grew up together, they were always together in their “teenage” years (however adolescence works for souls😅), I think it’s not impossible that they had their first experience, if just their first kiss and make out session, with each other. When they joined the Academy, they spent less time together due to their different courses, and I think Rukia’s sad expression when Renji leaves for the mission in the real world depicts that (along with worry for him, and maybe even jealousy for his achievements compared to hers). By then I think they were quite intimate, they fooled around sometimes (with the little time they had) and knew the other’s and their own feelings, but never said anything like “I love you”, or talked seriously about the depth of their relationship. If they were “just friends”, as some antis like to claim, they wouldn’t have been so heartbroken, have so many regrets and felt so guilty during their separation. And why that separation in the first place? It’s not a matter of class difference, because Rukia did talk to people of inferior status, like her Squad mates. What’s actually forbidden to people from different classes is relationships. If Renruki was just a friendship, there would have been no problem, but their bond was beyond that. Rukia wanted Renji to tell her to stay with him, but his feelings of inferiority and belief that Rukia deserved better (maybe even better than him) prevented him to do it. Their separation doesn’t feel like an end to a friendship to me, it feels like a breakup. They avoided each other because it hurt so much, and they couldn’t bear to have any relationship other than a romantic one, which was impossible once she became a Kuchiki.

After the Soul Society arc, they got back together. They were physically too comfortable around each other to be just friends, like when he basically hugged her to encourage her to go back to Soul Society when Orihime is kidnapped (and maybe he was also comforting her), or when, during the fight with the Fullbringers, he casually placed her head resting on his thigh. By then they were secretly dating, in my opinion. In the last arc they were always together, it’s so easy imagining them as a couple.

What do you think? Is my interpretation far fetched? I’d like to hear your theories about their feelings, when they blossomed, when they confessed, if they had something going on during their Academy years…

Thank you if you decide to answer!🤍

Well, as you say, Bleach is a shounen, and also I don’t think Kubo was particularly interested in including romance in the story, so I don’t think there is a correct or incorrect interpretation. It’s left to the reader to imagine what they like. I don’t think “spoiling the endgame” has anything to do with anything.

I don’t think your interpretation is “too far-fetched,” although I don’t happen to agree with it. There’s very little to go on in canon, people can fill in the gaps in whatever way makes them happy/makes sense to them. I have exactly 0 interest in arguing with people on the internet about stuff like this. I enjoy reading fanfiction that has wildly different interpretations from my own, I generally love to hear a variety of ideas, although I generally prefer the format of a narrative over Tumblr posts (funny, since I do seem to write a lot of them).

Anyway, here are a bunch of opinions. This is way, way too long, so I'm gonna throw it under a cut.

That being said, you have some really amatonormative ideas in there that I do take issue with. Friendships absolutely can be as deep and important as romantic relationships. I categorically reject the idea that a romantic bond is stronger than a friendship one or that acts of physical affection necessarily imply a romantic relationship. I actually have no beef at all with people who want to read Rukia and Renji’s story as a very strong friendship. I do think it was still reasonable for Renji to avoid her during their separation, even if his goal wasn’t romance. He wanted to see her live a better life, and didn’t want to drag her down. Yeah, sure, if he just wanted to be a casual workplace friend, he probably could have joined Squad 13 and seen her once in a while. But, especially in the early days, it would have been a bad look for Rukia to continue socializing with people deeply below her station, and I feel in my heart that Byakuya would have forbidden her from seeing Renji if he found out she was hanging out with someone from her Inuzuri days, even if it was just casual. Yeah, there exist people who say Rukia and Renji are "just friends" for the sake of other preferred ships, but also, like, so what? Who cares? That’s a lot better than making Renji out to be a bad person or trashing his character. To be honest, I am generally happy to read a fanfic that had some other Renji or Rukia pairing if it actually contained some solid Renruki best friend content (I have found a few 369 fics that do this, and maybe also in the little bit of RenIchi content I have read, so, uh, good job, my gays. This is sometimes touched on in ByaRen fics, but usually not as much as I want, althought I also tend to hold these to a high bar, because if I have to deal with Byakuya in my fanfics, they should have to deal with the Rukia-Renji friendship 😂)

Anyway, you asked for my interpretation, so here it is . These are all just, like, my opinions, man:

Life in Inuzuri just really, really, really sucks, and Rukia and Renji both have a lot of trauma and emotional hang-ups from that time. I think they forged a deep emotional connection during this time that was probably a little too codependent to actually be healthy. They had no models of healthy families or relationships. I also think they were incredibly close to Fujimaru, Kosaburou, and Mameji, and that even if they wanted to have a romantic relationship, they wouldn’t have, at the risk of ruining the more important bonds of the larger group.

In my fanfic, in their last days in Inuzuri, I do have them fool around for a brief period. It coincides with the deterioration of the bond with their last surviving friend, leading to his death. I did this for trauma reasons, because that’s how writers are.

“Communication” is probably the most important theme in my writing, and a thing I bring up all the time is that young Rukia and Renji had a thousand ways of communicating survival-based things between each other, and 0 ways of communicating how they felt about each other.

I did a post on this recently, but their whole gang was incredibly powerless in Inuzuri. They lived on the fringes of society and stole scraps to survive. I think that their number one duty to one another was to survive. In the anime, Rukia swears that she will never leave Inuzuri, that she will always stay with her friends. I think the reason she does an about-face is not just because their friends are gone, but because she realizes that she will lose Renji next, and the only way to prevent that is for both of them to get stronger. Neither of them actually wants to become a soul reaper. They do it for each other.

I think that Renji would have remained in Inuzuri and tried to make a life as best they could, but Rukia knew this was futile, and where Rukia goes, Renji follows.

I think they purposely maintained distance at the Academy. Just as in Inuzuri, their primary duty to one another is to survive and thrive. They were rejected and mocked for their low origins, and hanging out together would have made this worse. I think it hurt Rukia that Renji made new friends, but on the other hand, they were exactly the sort of people who would help him get a leg up in the Gotei. Rukia’s Academy days were very painful because she saw Renji succeeding, just as she wanted, but leaving her behind in the process. Conversely, Renji got super focused on doing well, with the idea that he could pull Rukia up behind him, except for the part where he never actually told her that.

I feel like I’m in the minority here, but so much fanfic focuses on Rukia and/or Renji being “wrong” in the scene where he tells her to go to the Kuchiki, but I disagree! Everything they have done is in order to get to a better life! It is Renji’s duty to encourage her to leave him behind. He doesn’t want to be an anchor holding her down. Likewise, Rukia knows that if she doesn’t go, she’s just gonna be a burden on him. Their relationship has always been about each of them surviving separately over having happiness together. Up to now, they’ve always managed to find each other again, although this kinda looks like it might be it for them. Do these kids need to go to therapy? Yes! Did they do anything wrong? No!

I think about this a lot, but even if Rukia had turned down the adoption (which… I’m not actually sure she could have), even the offer would have ruined their relationship. Imagine that Renji asks her to stay, and she does. Maybe they even get together at this point. Every rough patch, every time there’s money troubles, this spectre of “Rukia could have been a Kuchiki” is going to hang over them. In fiction, there is often an idea of sacrifice being a one-time romantic gesture, but in my real life experience, this sort of thing hangs around like an unwanted ghost. I can, in fact, envision a scenario where this is exactly how Aizen manages to get his hooks in Renji, by offering Rukia an unseated spot in Squad 5, even though she “isn’t really good enough to deserve it” and “taking care of them.”

I am really fascinated with Rukia’s crush on Kaien/Miyako. Bold proclamation here, but I think there is something developmentally healthy about young people having crushes on the older people in their lives, provided that said older people treat them with respect and dignity and don’t take advantage of it in any way. Crushes are, by their nature of being unreciprocated, a safe way for young folks to imagine the sort of people and relationships they want to have in their lives. I headcanon Rukia as bisexual, and maybe also a little bit genderfluid, and she had these two extremely cool people in her life, whom she maybe wanted to be and maybe wanted to kiss and maybe to have a marriage like that some day. I… like to think that their role in her life healed some of her trauma before their death caused even more.

Fully into headcanons now, but I like to think that Renji had a parallel experience, with, of all people, Ikkaku and Yumichika. Like him, they came from the ass-end of Rukongai, but they stuck together instead of bowing to the social mores of the Seireitei. It is critical to note that they were able to do this through strength. This is literally not a thing that Renji and Rukia could have done, but at the same time, Renji sees this as the kind of relationship he wants to have with a partner. He doesn’t want to look after Rukia and protect her, he wants to fight back-to-back with her and then make out afterwards. He’s still convinced that he needs to go through the proper class channels to see Rukia again, but without their influence, I don’t think he ever would have been able to say “fuck it” and turn on his captain during the Soul Society Arc.

Meeting Ichigo and dealing with his unreasonable need to protect everyone he cares about, personally, was also a huge blow to Rukia and Renji’s “I cannot allow the other person to take any risks for my sake” hang-up. Ichigo has his own traumas, which are entirely different from Renruki’s, but the one thing he had was growing up in a loving family. (Isshin has his problems, but I feel strongly that he always made his kids feel like his love was unconditional). I’m not saying that making friends with a shounen protagonist is a good replacement for therapy, but it does have healing properties.

Entirely off-topic, but I feel like Ichigo is incredibly selfish in the way of Terry Pratchett’s witches: “All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!

Where were we? Oh, yeah. I honestly think that it is unknowable when in canon Rukia and Renji confessed. I already covered this pretty thoroughly in this post. I hate the idea that they were secretly dating. Renji worked incredibly hard to get his post and I think that both his job and Byakuya’s respect are very important to him. I do not think he would put either of those things at risk like that, nor would Rukia want him to. I tend to prefer a slow-burn approached, and I honestly think they got together during the 17-mo timeskip at the earliest, and more likely post-canon entirely, although I think them confessing in the Royal Realm is the spiciest possible outcome, so that’s what most of my fanfic cleaves to.

[sweetjekyll]

Under The Same Roof, part 2 — BBH

pairing: Byun Baekhyun x Reader

genre: Roommate / Flatmate AU, one-shot, friends to lovers, mutual pining, fluff, blind date rating: teen and up warnings: tiniest and slightest bit of angst and jealousy, slightly suggestive towards the end word count: 5.2k

summary: Baekhyun and Y/N have been flatmates for a while and romance is in the air.

Requested: Part 2 was highly requested by both known readers and anons, so I hope you all enjoy the continuation of the first part! (keyword “roof” + sentence “Oh my God. You’re in love with her.” from this writing game post.)

Masterlist — PART 1

A/N: aaaaah it’s finally here! Merry Christmas everyone and happy holidays. I hope you’re healthy and surrounded with love, and I hope all of you are having a good time even if you don’t celebrate Christmas. Thank you to everyone who supported the first part of this story and patiently waited for the second part, I hope you will like this one as much as the first if not more! I made it way longer than the first part and added a bonus ending. Have fun reading! stay safe ❤

⟶ To my dear readers: feedback is highly encouraged and important! as it gives me motivation to write with more passion, knowing that you like what you are reading. Please LIKE and REBLOG so more people can find this and read it. ❤ My askbox is always open for questions or to chat ❤

Enjoy! ❤

The guys could’ve spent practically all night playing games, but Chanyeol had other plans in mind after the short chat he had with Sehun and Baekhyun about the latter’s crush on his roommate. Sehun was never one to turn down an invite to drink with his friends no matter the day of the week, so the fact that he agreed immediately to Chanyeol’s suggestion when he asked the two if they wanted to go have a drink at the bar Y/N and Baekhyun worked, it was an easy “yes”. You would’ve had about an hour and a half until it was closing time at 11PM, as it was a Thursday anyway.

Baekhyun on the other hand wasn’t that easy to convince. He was supposed to work the following morning and be at his best to serve freshly brewed coffee to university students, professors and other customers who liked to linger in the early hours of daylight. Also, Thursday nights were one of the few times he got to relax after working shifts from morning to late afternoon.

“I know you two,” Baekhyun scowled at his friends, who were waiting in the doorway to his bedroom while he pushed one of his legs in a pair of old black jeans. “It’s never just one drink with you… I’ll end up wasted under one of the tables and then Y/N will have to carry me home.”

“For someone so eager to get dressed and walk out of the house, you’re complaining too much.” Sehun smirked as he nudged Chanyeol with his elbow.

“Don’t worry, it’s just one drink,” Chanyeol reassured him as Baekhyun was finally done getting dressed. “Besides, you literally live a couple of blocks from your job and neither of us has to drive. We’ll call a taxi.” There was a faint yet lingering smile of satisfaction on the taller man’s face. He wasn’t really a patient guy and his mind was still in a frenzy after coming up with a plan to get Baekhyun and his flatmate to go out on a date.

Baekhyun threw on a leather jacket and brushed back his bangs with his fingers, ready to step out of the apartment. He was about to lock the door after switching off the lights but then stopped as he thought about something for a brief moment. “Hang on, I forgot something.” He let his friends know as he hurried back inside and into the bathroom.

Once he was back and finally locked the door, both Chanyeol and Sehun got a whiff of something in the air. “Is that… Perfume?” They asked inquisitive.

Baekhyun furrowed his brows as he walked past them down the corridor. “And what about it? Y/N gifted it to me for my birthday.”

“This is going to be easier than I thought,” Chanyeol hummed as they headed towards your workplace at last.

The cafe turned into bar during evenings looked cozy in autumns and winters; some Halloween decorations lingered here and there although it was past October and halfway through into November, but the fake vine leaves painted red, yellow and orange warmed up the walls nicely. You liked the fall decorations, but you loved even more winter and Christmas decorations, although it was a hassle to take everything down and put new things up, it was still satisfying as the end result.

You spotted Baekhyun, Chanyeol and Sehun out of the corner of your eye as soon as they entered the bar thanks to the bell ringing on top of the door. “There you go, Lucas,” you placed a glass of cold beer on top of a napkin in front of one of your regular customers and looked around, quickly facing the three new friendly faces once you made sure that no one else needed your services. “Good evening guys!” You said cheerfully, a warm feeling spreading through your chest to see Baekhyun keeping his promise to come pick you up after work, even more so considering he was rather early for it.

“Ah, my favorite bartender!” Sehun mused as he leaned against the counter with a smirk on his expression. ”You look a bit overworked although there aren’t many customers.”

Baekhyun noticed it as well and looked behind the counter and around the familiar workplace. “Where’s Minseok? Weren’t you two supposed to work tonight’s shift together?”

You inhaled a long breath as you glanced down with busy eyes to grab a rag from a hidden surface on your workspace, then picked it up and cleaned the countertop in front of the three men. “I think he had something for dinner that upset his stomach to the point where he was nauseated.” You winced as you explained to them without much detail as you didn’t know how your coworker was doing after he left. “I told him to go home and rest just in case… But anyway,” you smiled once again. “What can I get you guys to drink?” You asked as you returned the rag in its previous spot and placed three napkins on the counter.

“For starters, I’d say shots of soju and then beers?” Chanyeol looked at his friends but Baekhyun shook his head when he heard the doorbell signal the arrival of more customers.

“I’ll help Y/N,” he said and promptly walked behind the counter to join you. He picked up one of the aprons matching yours from a hanger on the wall and put it on after he took off his jacket.

“Don’t worry Baek, it’s your night off,” you tried to persuade him to just enjoy the night with his friends but he just gave you his usual warm and reassuring smile that made your heart flutter with content.

“Nonsense,” he shrugged as he spun around to softly bump his shoulder into yours and looked into your eyes, “I’m happy to work with you.” You felt your cheeks heat up at his words and you could barely hide the smile that graced your lips once your coworker welcomed the new customers with a loud and cheerful tone.

Your reaction didn’t go unnoticed to the two friends sitting on the other side of the counter, across from you. Chanyeol nudged Sehun with his elbow and whispered to just play along, after he made sure that Baekhyun’s ears were out of reach for what he was about to say. You placed two shots of soju on the napkins and turned around to fill two glasses with beer. “So, Y/N,” you looked over your shoulder for a brief second at Chanyeol, “are you single?”

The question wasn’t new to your ears, especially after working as a bartender, but it still caught you off guard coming from him. “I did not expect you to ask me something like this, Mr. Park.” You confessed with a chuckle while walking back to take away the empty shot glasses and placed two glasses filled to the brim with foaming beer. “Why do you want to know?”

“Well, are you?” Sehun questioned with a raised eyebrow, carefully picking up the glass to take a sip from it while holding your suspicious gaze.

You let your shoulders slump with a sigh as you averted their eyes and, without meaning to, you looked in Baekhyun’s direction. “Yes, I’m single.” You nodded as your smile faltered, you looked around at the other customers while feeling a bit nervous.

“Perfect!” Chanyeol beamed as he clapped his hands once and leaned closer to the counter, you just eyed him with suspicion. “There’s this very nice guy, he’s a bit talkative and playful,” he began explaining but kept it quite mysterious, “A friend of ours, you know… I would like you do go on a blind date with him.”

“I’m sorry… What now?” You were taken aback by his sudden request that you didn’t know how else to react. It was a nice gesture, sure… but you already had feelings for someone else and weren’t sure if a blind date would be a good idea, not at the moment at least.

“I promise he’s a very friendly and good guy,” Sehun added, playing along to Chanyeol’s plan although they didn’t even talk about it beforehand. He licked his lips to get the residue of the beer foam and arched his brows at you. “Unless you like somebody else already.” Blood rushed to your face and you felt hot under your clothes, hesitant about answering your foot started bouncing nervously and you crossed your arms. Should you be honest and tell them or should you keep it for yourself? Well… “There is someone I like.” You confessed, but it just made you sad to say it so you continued before they could ask anything else about this crush of yours. “But I don’t think it’ll work out so I might as well go on a blind date with your friend.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Baekhyun’s curious voice made you slightly jolt on your feet and you flashed him a nervous smile. “Are you going on a date?” You tilted your head unsure of what to say since he was the one person you didn’t want to find out about this blind date, at least not like this… or ever. You thought you could maybe just go at the date and never call back Chanyeol and Sehun’s friend, but then another question popped in your head. Does Baekhyun know this friend of theirs? Would he mind? It’s not like he had feelings for you, so why were you so worried about it?

Thankfully, you heard the voice of one of your customers call for you and used it as an excuse to leave. “This is a discussion for another time, I gotta go back to work!” And just like that you were gone in an instant, meanwhile Baekhyun faced Chanyeol and Sehun with a half disappointed and half irritated expression.

“A blind date?!” He hissed under his breath.

They both nodded with pleased smirks. “She said yes, so you better make this work, otherwise you’re truly hopeless.” Chanyeol replied and finally let himself taste the beer that’s been sitting in front of him on the counter for a while.

Baekhyun’s anger dissipated immediately, his eyes widened in surprise and his mouth fell agape. “You set us up on a blind date?” He whispered while stealing glances in your direction. His heart rate began speeding up while he watched you smile politely at a couple who were paying for their drinks, getting ready to leave.

“Although…” Sehun inhaled a long breath as he looked down at his drink, his smile faded. Baekhyun’s attention was immediately on him, feeling his heart drop at the man’s words. “She did say she likes someone.” Chanyeol gave him a hard nudge with his elbow, eliciting a pained groan from the man sitting next to him. “What?! I’m just saying, she didn’t say who… Y/N thinks it’s not going to work out so you don’t have to worry.”

Baekhyun sighed and scratched his head, too many thoughts were running through his head in that moment and he didn’t know how to process the fact that there indeed was someone you liked… You’ve been friends for a few years and were roommates as well, so why did you not talk to him about this person you seem to like so much?

He became rather quiet that night and even the following days, he was practically sulking since he was stuck with the thought that the blind date was going to be a disaster. That didn’t stop Chanyeol from insisting on taking care of all the details about the date, he went as far as borrowing both yours and Baekhyun’s work schedules to set up a perfect timing for you to meet. You noticed immediately the change in his behavior, he wasn’t avoiding you, he would never do that, but he was acting too distant. You tried asking but didn’t push further because maybe he needed some time for himself, otherwise he would have opened up to you, at least you hoped.

It went on like that for a couple of days until you couldn’t take it anymore, you missed Baekhyun being his usual playful and loud self, he was the source of your serotonin and it affected your mood as well. It was the last few days of November, the shop was closed for the day due to the fact that you needed to take down the autumnal decorations and brighten up the place with Christmas ones.

“Baekhyun, we really need to talk.” You told him with a preoccupied tone, hoping he wouldn’t try and dodge the conversation as he had been doing for nearly half of November. He didn’t look at you from his high place on the ladder, instead, his pupils were fixed on his fingers unrolling the fairy lights and hanging them on the wall, supported by nails that had been stuck into the bricks for who knows how many years.

“Alright, alright,” he nodded and hummed for a moment, pausing his work to look down; your hands were securely holding onto the ladder for him and keeping it in place so he felt safe to be up there, occasionally passing him Christmas decorations from the boxes piled up next to your feet. “I’ll clean and decorate the bathrooms.”

You scoffed, incredulous that he actually managed to talk about anything else but his feelings. “I’m not talking about the bathroom, but since you said you’re going to do it, I won’t stop you.”

“Damn!” He chuckled with a shake of his head and went back to fixing the lights. “Okay, let’s talk, but I warn you, if this is about me—“

“It’s precisely about you! You’ve been avoiding my questions, I’m concerned about you. Something happened and you haven’t openly spoken to me ever since that night at the bar.” You interjected and heard him complain with a groan of your name, to which you let go of the ladder, making the man almost scream in fear.

“What are you doing—“ High pitched words reached your ears as you crossed your arms and just gazed up at him with arched brows, feeling so done with his behavior. He dropped the fairy lights without meaning to and wrapped his hands on both sides of the ladder, holding on for dear life. “No, no, no— Okay, fine! I’ll tell you, just please don’t let go of the ladder.” You held onto the ladder once more and watched him climb down until he was finally to your eye level. “There’s this girl I like, I’ve liked her for a while now actually.” Baekhyun let out a long, defeated sigh. “Turns out she likes some other person and I don’t know why I thought I could—“ He stopped himself from saying anything else as he ran one of his hand over his face, frustrated that he was confessing to you how he felt, except he was still hiding the actual truth. What a coward, he thought. He was convinced now more than ever that the blind date was truly a bad idea, he just didn’t know how to tell Chanyeol that he didn’t have the balls to go through with it and accept your rejection once you found out he was your secret date. “I like her a lot.” He added.

You felt you heart fasten at his words, it was drumming so hard that the pulse in your ears felt deafening… Baekhyun liked another girl, you repeated to yourself in your head. For a short moment and in a totally awkward silence you felt like an idiot; an idiot for feeling jealousy when he mentioned another girl, when you should’ve said something to comfort him. You were frowning, unable to move or say anything coherent until you forced yourself to say: “I’m sorry.” You bit your lip and looked down at your hands. “She’s an idiot.” You spit out with slight anger lacing your words.

“Why do you say so?” His tone softened when he noticed how upset you were over what he told you, he didn’t think you would care that much about a girl not liking him back… and the worst part was that you were that girl. “She’s allowed to like someone else, it’s just that I’m a coward and I didn’t tell her that I like her because I’m afraid of her rejecting me.” It felt so surreal that he was running his mouth like that, actually confessing the truth to you but you still had no idea.

Your head head snapped up towards him with your lips parted, ready to fight back his insecurities, except you didn’t realize what you were saying until it was already too late. “Well, she’s still dumb! Because what other girl wouldn’t like you? I like you!"

"You do?" He whispered almost breathless, too stunned to say anything else as soon as he processed your words; the corners of his lips curved up in a genuine and shy smile, yet you barely saw it since you looked down and bent you body forward to pick up a box with decorations and left him standing there. Your face was burning so hot with embarrassment it almost felt like you were going to combust. "Y/N, hang on, let’s talk it out—“ He tried to go after you, but you walked past the counter and entered the women’s bathroom, closing the door behind you. You dropped the box on the counter by the sink and looked at yourself in the mirror, cursing under your breath ad at yourself for being so careless with your words.

“Wait, hold on…” One of your friends, Hana, laughed at you on the phone for the second time that night, after you explained to her what happened at the coffee shop.

“I swear to God, Hana, there’s nothing to laugh about.” You mumbled, holding your phone against your ear with you shoulder; your hands were too busy going through the clothes in your wardrobe, searching for anything remotely cute and appropriate for a blind date.

“There actually is,” she continued laughing at your misery. “You confessed to Baekhyun that you actually like him, that’s a good thing isn’t it? I mean, he didn’t have a bad reaction, so where’s the problem, Y/N?” You groaned as you threw a pair of torn up jeans on the floor of your bedroom and took your phone in your hands.

“That’s the point, I chickened out!” You walked to the foot of the bed and let yourself fall on your back, bouncing on the mattress. “He tried to talk to me about it but I just couldn’t do it, so I locked myself in the bathroom. I’m the clown of the month!”

“Oh my God, Y/N, you’re unbelievable.” Hana’s laughter rung in your ear with disbelief for the situation you got yourself into, but soon quieted down to a serious tone. “Listen, you have to face him at some point. You can’t just avoid him forever.”

You sat up on the bed and thought about what she said, your eyes burning holes into the door leading to the living room of your shared apartment. Baekhyun wasn’t home yet, he was still setting up decorations at the bar with Minseok and going over December’s inventory. “What about this girl he said he likes?” A pout formed on your lips, like a child whining to their parent.

“You won’t know until you talk to him.” You sighed out loud and eyed the mess on your bedroom floor, clothes lying on top of each other as if your wardrobe got stormed by a hurricane. “Earth to Y/N, are you there? Promise you’ll talk to him?”

You snapped out of your daze and rubbed your eyes as you replied to her. “Yeah, sure, I’ll talk to him,” you replied in defeat. “But it’ll have to wait until after this stupid blind date. It’s tonight and I don’t even know what to wear…” You heard a noise come from the living room and gasped out loud, jiggling of keys made you jump on your feat and run towards the door until you pressed your side against it. “He’s here, I gotta go. Bye Hana!” You whispered with your heart drumming in your chest and said goodbye to your friend, before hanging up the call. “Baekhyun?” You carefully called out his name and waited impatiently for a reply.

His muffled voice came from the other side of the door, and as careful as you had been, he called out your name. “Are you okay? Can I come in?” He was right outside of your bedroom, your nerves were killing you and you didn’t know what to do, yet against your better judgement, you moved away from the door and opened it. You bit your tongue as you met Baekhyun’s reassuring smile, somehow eliciting a smile from your lips as well. Seeing as you had not replied to his questions, Baekhyun let his eyes look past you and onto the pile of clothing on the floor. “Getting ready for the blind date?”

You looked in the same direction his pupils did and chuckled with a slow nod. “Yeah, I just don’t know what to wear yet…”

“Don’t worry, you’ll look beautiful no matter what you choose to wear.” The sweetness of his words made you hyper aware of the way he was looking at you now, and you weren’t sure why it seemed… different.

“Thank you…” You almost stuttered. Your heart was ramming against your ribcage so hard you could have passed out from the lightheadedness it caused you, but you forced yourself to break the eye contact and walked further inside your bedroom. You picked up two dresses from the wardrobe, one filled with cute floral patterns and the other was a solid dark blue color. “Which one looks better for a fancy dinner?” You asked him, unsure whether it was a good idea but Baekhyun actually pointed at the dark blue dress with a cheerful smile. It was weird to say the least, he appeared to be more excited for your blind date than you were, and you didn’t even know who Chanyeol was trying to set you up with. “Okay, this dress it is then.”

“By the way, I need to go out in a bit.” Baekhyun caught you off guard and you just stared at him with slightly widened eyed. “Is there anything that you need before I leave?”

“Mmmh, no… No.” You show your head and flashed him a reassuring smile even though you were still nervous. “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, see you later, Y/N.” He reached out for the handle and closed the door after himself.

As soon as you heard the lock click, you exhaled a long, shaky breath and dropped the dresses on the bed. “And there he goes…” You whispered, choosing to replace the deafening silence with some music from your phone.

Baekhyun stood in the hallways while holding onto his breath, ears listening to you shuffling around your bedroom before any other sound was drowned out by you favorite playlist. He had been dreading this blind date for so many days and now that it was happening — especially after he found out he was the person you liked and not some other guy — Baekhyun felt elated. He was ready to get dressed and run out of the door to get you flowers, unfortunately not your favorite ones because they were out of season, but he was still gonna get something pretty. He couldn’t stop thinking about how you were going to react once you met him at the restaurant as your date. Too much energy was coursing through his veins in that moment, he could barely contain himself.

Everything was perfect. Baekhyun had to remember to thank Chanyeol for taking care of the reservation, the restaurant was truly lovely and felt intimate, soft fairy lights were hanging from the red brick walls, adding to the romantic atmosphere of slightly dimmed lighting, a small candle was illuminating the table at which Baekhyun sat. A bouquet of pink and white chrysanthemums rested on his right side as he, on the other hand, couldn’t help but nervously fiddle with his fingers under the tablecloth. A shy smile graced his joyful expression while his eyes darted to the watch on his left wrist, growing restless as you were late to your date.

Baekhyun’s smile faltered when he felt his phone vibrating in the pocket of his elegant blazer, he shut his eyes tightly and prayed that it wasn’t Chanyeol the one calling him with bad news, saying you stood up on the blind date at the last possible moment. You wouldn’t do that, would you? “Hello?” He answered his phone still keeping his eyes shut, but they immediately shot open once he heard your voice greet him on the other side of the line. “Y/N? What’s wrong? Where are you? Shouldn’t you be at the date?” He showered you with questions to which you didn’t know what to answer.

“Uuh—“ You hesitated for a long moment, unsure of what to say. “I’m outside of the restaurant, I’ve been for the past 5 minutes. I don’t want to go inside and meet some guy that I don’t know.” He listened to you talk really fast, almost tripping on your words as your tone dripped with nervousness and regret. “I just don’t want to meet a new guy and I’m so sorry to Chanyeol, cause I said I would do this—”

“Hey, hey, calm down,” He tried to help you calm down over the phone, resisting the urge to just stand up from the table and run to meet you outside. “Everything’s gonna be alright, okay? Do you trust me?”

Baekhyun listened to you on the other side of the line as you tried to get through your panicked state, quietly repeating short and reassuring “okays”. You released a deep breath and finally replied to him. “I trust you. Will you come pick me up, please?”

He almost chuckled at the softness of your voice, instead a warm smile returned on his face as he told you what to do. “I will, but first I need you to walk into the restaurant, it’s cold outside and you’re wearing a dress.” You agreed to do it and his eyes quickly moved towards the door, as he was sat on the opposite side of the restaurant.

Baekhyun watched as the door opened and you stepped inside, brows furrowed with worry yet you still managed to look effortlessly beautiful; long black coat shielding your body from the cold of the last weeks of autumn. He could see the dark blue of your knee length dress peeking under the coat, a small purse swaying by your side from a long chain on your left shoulder as you glanced around and were greeted by a waiter. “I’m in.” You mumbled as your eyes looked frantically around.

“Look to your right, other side of the room.” And you did, you looked towards him and nearly dropped your phone, your jaw went numb for a moment as your lips parted in disbelief. One of the waiters helped you remove your coat and accompanied you towards Baekhyun, to your table. “You’re beautiful,” the words rolled off his tongue almost like a foreign sound, he couldn’t believe that you two were actually on a date, even if he had to keep it a secret for such a long time.

You were at a loss for words, yet your chest was flooded with immense happiness. “The girl you like a lot…” You began saying and he nodded before you could finish your sentence. “A very nice guy, a bit talkative and playful,” you giggled as you quoted Chanyeol’s words when he spoke about the friend he wanted you to meet.

“Yep, that would be me.” Baekhyun picked up the flowers and slowly stepped closer to you. “I know they’re not daffodils, but I hope you like chrysanthemums too.”

“You know what I like more than flowers?” You stepped even closer to him until you could feel his hot breath on your skin, completely forgetting the rest of the world as you felt a rush of bravery while gazing into his eyes. “You.”

When Baekhyun leaned forward to steal a kiss it felt like the most natural thing in the world, as if he had done it so many times before and you were out tonight celebrating an anniversary rather than a first date. The gentlest of touches left a lingering sensation of his lips on yours. The red of your lipstick transferred slightly on his lips and if you focused hard enough, you could see that his cheeks turned the same shade out of shyness and adoration.

“Hmm, what do you think?” You asked, tilting your head to the side while staring very hard at the Christmas tree.

You were currently in your new apartment with Baekhyun standing by your side, eyes focused ahead of you. “It’s crooked on one side.” The living room was bare of furniture except for a coffee table, the tv stand with the television on top of it and the Christmas tree you spent at least three hours on decorating with your boyfriend. Moving boxes were scattered all around the place.

“I think if we spin it around towards the corner of the room none of the guests will notice.” You suggested and Baekhyun hoped quickly towards the tree, being careful to avoid any boxes and discarded ornaments still lying on the floor. He crouched on his kneed and wrapped his fingers around the base of the fake pine tree, rotating the crooked side towards the corner of the room.

“What about now?” He asked as he looked up at the tree for a moment and back at you.

“Light it up.” Baekhyun took the end of a cable beneath the branches of the tree and struggled to plug it into the wall for a moment, making you giggle, but as soon as the tree was lit up, he stood up and walked back to stand by you. “Now it’s perfect!” You beamed while he wrapped one of his arms around your shoulders and brought you closer to kiss your cheek.

“Merry Christmas, baby,” Baekhyun whispered in your ear, your smile became bigger and brighter when you looked into his loving eyes.

You pecked his lips with a soft kiss and wrapped your arms around his neck. “Merry Christmas to you too, Baek—”

You didn’t even have time to finish saying his name because all of a sudden he snaked his arms around your waist, making you screech in surprise when he tried to lift you up from the floor and yelled at the top of his lungs: “To the bedroom, now!”

Loud giggles escaped you as you struggled to stay serious, but it was impossible when he was in a playful mood like this. “But we don’t have a bed frame yet—“

“We have a mattress and that’s enough for me!”

[mellometal]

Hey, everyone.

I've tried to compose myself before making this post. This is a subject that I've touched on a little bit in posts, but I've never done a deep dive into JUST this topic. I was going to make a post solely about this subject sooner, but this one in particular is really hard for me to talk about without getting emotional...and yet Dhar Mann has talked about this on quite a few occasions in the most insincere, toxic ways. I'll do my best to discuss this topic without getting too emotional.

It's about a serious subject that people still are ignorant about and don't take seriously. Even to this day, with the body positivity and body neutrality movements. (I don't know of a better way to describe just being neutral about your body. Sorry if it sounds weird.)

For anyone who doesn't know what I'm referring to (honestly, I don't blame you, as this is a subject that's often seen as normal and is encouraged in society for the most part), I'm talking about fatphobia. Hating on people for being fat. Discriminating people because of their weight in the workplace, at the doctor's office, just in general. Not many stores having inclusive sizes. People being treated like they're subhuman because they're fat.

I want to say this first, before I bash on Dhar Mann again: I'm a plus-size young woman. This is something that I have personal experience with. Your weight has no significance to your worth as a person. If you do happen to be overweight, obese, whatever, you're not subhuman. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You're worthy of being loved, listened to, treated with kindness, and respected, just like anyone else who isn't fat.

If you treat people like utter shit for their weight, get some help. Why do you care about somebody else's weight? Obviously there's an exception to this, like if they're so big they can't move or they're so skinny their organs are showing....because those are causes for concern, but other than that, mind your own business. Even if they are in those extremities, unless you're their doctor and/or their family, STILL mind your own business. How the fuck does a fat person simply breathing and existing affect you in any way? News flash: there will always be fat people.

Before I get to the weekly ritual of tearing TWO of Dhar Mann's videos apart (the next one will be in another post or I'll reblog this post and continue on there), here's an obligatory trigger warning for the video analysis itself and my response: The following post contains fatphobia, fat shaming, a man being super fucking misogynistic and treating women like they're objects, and there's even a touch of some racial aggression. How shocking. Because Dhar Mann really seems to get a kick out of writing about racism to make it all cute. Oh yeah, you're totally solving racism, Dhar Mann. /s

My response contains my experience with fatphobia, relationships with food, mentioned/implied thoughts of s3lf h@rm, feeling like I'm unworthy of being treated like an actual person because of my weight, and absolute rage. Like usual. My responses are very heated. This one especially. It's LONG. Buckle up.

With all this out of the way, let's get to the first video that I want to tear apart. This one is about the auditions for a record deal. I will get to the video about a kid wanting to be a host of a radio show later.

To sum up the first video, a plus-size white woman (Krissy Elliot) is singing for an agent (Isaac) and his assistant (Evette) so she can follow her dream to become a singer. Isaac cuts Krissy off to viciously bash her for being a plus-size woman. Evette stands up for this woman, and says she sounded fine and to let her finish. Isaac doesn't listen to Evette, let alone take what she said into consideration. He continues to ridicule Krissy for her appearance, that she'll "never make it in the music industry" (WRONG, do you know how many plus-size people are in the fucking music industry? There are A LOT more now than when I was growing up and it honestly makes me so happy. There were more plus-size people in the entertainment industry than in the music industry back then.), suggested that she "become a chef or a food critic" because she apparently loves being around food (being a chef or a food critic are noble professions, but NEVER fucking assume ANYONE'S relationships with food), to the point where Krissy left the room in tears.

Here are a few screenshots for context:

When this skinny, conventionally attractive woman (Jesse) comes in, Isaac's mood does a COMPLETE 180° and he's all sunshine and rainbows. Then right as soon as Jesse did her audition, Isaac is over the fucking moon, complimenting her physical appearance, treating her like an object, and signs her up for a record deal RIGHT AWAY. Pay attention to Isaac's facial expressions in one of these screenshots.

Evette suggests that they sign Krissy for a record deal instead. Because she was "the best singer they've had all day". Isaac, still all hot and bothered by a skinny, conventionally attractive woman that he's treating like an object, tells Evette that people like Krissy don't make it in the music industry because they're "overweight and unattractive", and is verbally aggressive towards her when she does nothing but explain her stance. Isaac sees this as Evette "talking back" (remember how I mentioned that there's racial aggression? He says that Evette is "talking back" because she happens to be a black woman) and fires her. He signs Jesse a record deal and has a blast with her.

The award ceremony comes around, and they're picking a winner for Best New Artist. They pick the winner, and it's....guess what? You'll never get it! It's Krissy Elliot! Why? Because Evette became her agent after Isaac fired her. Krissy goes into her whole story about how she was laughed out of every single agency and that she worked hard. Good for her. Jesse is obviously very happy for Krissy. We gotta love women supporting women.

This video was again another dumpster fire. As usual. Like I said, with this video in particular, I couldn't get through the first thirty seconds the first time around. Because I've dealt with shit like this. Obviously not with the music industry because I don't even think I'd be good enough to step into an agency...but I mean in my personal life.

Being told by my own dad that he was "tired of buying bigger clothes for me" when I was a young teenager, despite him buying almost nothing but "junk food".

Having my abuser make comments about my weight and talking about diets while I'm trying to eat my food, despite her being overweight.

Having someone I know (not anyone I'm friends with) make a comment about me eating a few things (ONE small piece of broccoli, two baby carrots, a small handful of chips, and ONE small piece of pineapple) and said to "save some for everyone else", even though I was saving food for everyone else, which is why I took so little. She tried to justify it with the fact nobody was there yet (why do you think I took very little food?), and she "was saying that to everyone" (why did she look at ME when she said that instead of making it clear that she was talking to everyone [saying "Hey, everyone" before the comment about saving some for everyone else IS NOT HARD]?), even though I know it was just to save her own ass. I knew she said that to me because I'm plus-size. She didn't say anything to anyone else, nor did she make it clear that she was talking to everyone.

Another person I know (not a person I'm friends with) saying that I overreacted (I did not overreact; SOMEONE TRIGGERED ME and you did NOTHING about it) even though they all KNEW my relationship with food is complicated. They KNEW that I don't really like eating in front of other people. I was upset that someone MADE A FUCKING DISGUSTING, TRIGGERING COMMENT ABOUT ME EATING VERY FEW FOOD ITEMS, ALMOST ALL WERE HEALTHY, DESPITE OTHER PEOPLE EATING A LOT MORE THAN I DID AND PICKING AT EVERYTHING. That day, I was begging one of my friends (one of the people I trust to eat around) to PLEASE take me home because I didn't want to be there (never wanted to be there in the first place), I was tired (I worked all night the night before and was forced to go to a meeting before all this happened), I didn't feel comfortable there anymore, there were way too many people (four individuals plus all their staff from another house were in the house I work in), I couldn't breathe (I was either about to pass out, have a panic attack, or just start crying), but nobody listened to me. I ended up getting a bus to go home.

(Sorry about all that. I was trying not to get emotional in this post. I just needed to share how this can affect people.)

Onto my response, which is all in the screenshots below.

ETA: I know the screenshots for my response are very jumbled right now and it’s difficult to read. I apologize to anyone who’s unable to fully read it! Because this is part one of this whole subject of fatphobia (I’m making a post about the boy wanting to become a radio host very soon), my response here will tie into that post. My response to that video is vastly the same, despite not making a comment on that video as of right now (the radio host one). 

I’ll be typing out my full response here. I apologize for weird formatting. Instagram wouldn’t let me break up my response into paragraphs. I’ll break them up into paragraphs here instead.

CC (Combination of the first, second, and third screenshots, aka, the first part of my response):

 I have a few questions before I get into my thoughts on this video. One, how the hell does your weight have any significance on your worth as a person, and if you do think this way, why would you think that? Two, do you know that fatphobia is a lot more than just judging a person for being fat? Three, why do you feel like you can speak for fat people like myself with this piss poor excuse for a video that I could barely get through the first thirty seconds of the first time? 

You can’t speak for any of us. I can’t speak for every fat person because not everyone has the same experiences as me. 

I’ve been bullied for my weight in real life as well as online. People have called me ugly just because of my weight. By the way, your weight doesn’t equal beauty, and that’s what I’m still learning. Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. 

On quite a few occasions, I have actually thought about doing dangerous things to my body that I don’t feel comfortable going into here. All because I had people try to boil me down to my weight, call me ugly, and destroy whatever self-esteem I had left. You don’t know what fat people go through, so don’t act like you do. 

There are many factors that go into why a person may be fat, including medical conditions, mental illness, trauma, genetics, etc. All of those things are none of your business unless those people decide to be open about it. 

No, it’s not always healthy to be fat (obviously there are extremities on both sides of the spectrum of weight that are extremely unhealthy), but it doesn’t make a person any less of a human being. Fat people are human too. Quit treating us like we’re not. We deserve to be treated like everyone else who isn’t fat. I’m not saying put all fat people on a pedestal. I’m saying treat us like human beings.

CC (Combination of the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh screenshots, aka, the second part of my response):

Remember how I said that fatphobia isn’t just about judging people for being fat? Well, there’s the “fat tax” on plus-size clothing (even though it maybe only costs a little bit more in fabric, if there’s any difference in making clothes for people who aren’t fat), limited styles for fat people in stores (making a lot of us have to buy fast fashion or have to spend a fortune on clothes that actually flatter us), not very many stores have inclusive sizes still (if you don’t at least carry max 5XL or a size 38/40 in pants size, you cannot call yourself inclusive), and a lot of other things.

Many fat people, myself included, are afraid to seek medical attention for anything (even checkups) because of doctors who only focus on our weight and not on what we came in to see them for. They write it off as if our weight is the sole cause of our problems, which isn’t always the case.

How about we talk about how expensive it is to eat healthy in a lot of places? Not everyone can afford to make fresh meals every day, let alone once a week. Maybe they were never taught how to due to their upbringing. You don’t know.

I’ve had people comment on my weight, what I’m eating (even if I’m eating something healthy like fruits and veggies), talk about my weight or diets EVEN WHILE I’M TRYING TO EAT, and it’s caused me to wait until I’m alone or around someone I trust to eat anything. As a result, I have a complicated relationship with food now.

Telling someone they’re fat doesn’t help them. They know that. They see themselves every day. People may want to change, but they either are afraid to ask for help, or they don’t know where to start. Some may not want to change. It’s up to them, honestly. If you want to help them lose weight, maybe suggest any physical activity they’d have fun doing and do them with them? I dance for fun. Also, you could help set up meal plans with them. 

If you’re not going to at least try to help them lose weight if you’re so concerned about them (this is all if they actually want to change things and don’t know where to start), I cannot say this in a sweeter way: shut your mouth and mind your own business. Because you’re just being a cunt at that point.

CC (eighth screenshot, aka, the third and final part to my response):

There are quite a few plus-size people in the entertainment industry as a whole who are/were very successful. Remember the late Chris Farley and Aretha Franklin? Chris Farley was big, but that didn’t change how great of an actor he was, how funny he was, or how much of an impact he made in the entertainment industry. Aretha Franklin was a plus-size black woman in the music industry, but she’s inspired SO MANY artists we have today! There are many plus-size men, women, and I believe even nonbinary people in the public eye in general. Like I’ve said, beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. That’s why the body positivity and body neutrality movements are a thing.

(I know I implied that I thought about sh here in my response, but please don't worry about me as far as that goes. I'm fine now. I would never go through with anything like that.)

In the last part of my response where I mentioned some plus-size people in the entertainment industry as well as the music industry (the late Chris Farley and the late Aretha Franklin), I was going to name more people, but my comments were getting too long. I'll name some more here off the top of my head:

Lizzo (rapper), the Piggy Dolls (the first K-Pop girl group made up of actual plus-size women), K*v*n Sp*c*y (I don't feel comfortable saying his name because he's a disgusting person, but he's another plus-size man...he was in King of Queens and in A LOT of movies), PSY, Greyson Gritt (a genderqueer person in the music industry), Elle King, Produce Pandas (the first music group in China full of plus-size men), Martha Wash, Chubby Checker, Fats Domino, Big Angel (a J-Pop group of all plus-size women), Chubbiness (another J-Pop group of all plus-size women), Pottya (another J-Pop group of all plus-size women)...there are so many that I found, but if you want to add more plus-size artists, plus-size actors, plus-size comedians/comediennes, feel free to add them in the comments!

Dhar Mann, you'll never know what plus-size people go through. You don't know what we go through. You have NO IDEA what we go through on a daily basis. Stop acting like you do. Because you don't, and you never will.

By the way, Dhar Mann, this will NOT be the last post I'll make about you or your videos. The more you make fucking deplorable, poorly written bullshit, the more posts I'll make! Teehee!

If you got this far, thank you so much. The next part of this is coming very soon. I'm sorry for not posting too many screenshots from the video. I wanted to fit in my response because it's important for people to see.

Have a good day/afternoon/night, y'all. Love you!

[thirty-three-peonies]

The Battle is Won: Part Two

When tragedy meets healing...

In my first post in this mini series, I shared how I ended up leaving my former employer. I was feeling miserable and exhausted from having to endure such a toxic workplace for over 6 months.

To be honest, looking back, I didn’t even realize that I had become so sick. When I say sick, I am referring to the mental and emotional state of helplessness.

In psychology, there is a famous study on depression where an animal was hurt by waves of electricity in an enclosed space. At first, the animal screams and yelps and tries to get out but after realizing there’s no escape and not having control of the situation, the animal gives up and submits to the terrible pain out of complete helplessness.

This also happens to humans. We can fight and try to escape from our tragedies but when we can’t get away from constant pain, we give up.

This is a terrible sickness. It goes by the clinical name of depression. It kills every ounce of life and motivation. It makes joy dissipate and negatively affects others.

In my Hmong culture, depression is not ever discussed in the family unit and it is not well understood by the first generation who migrated to the US. So after sharing with my parents that I had chosen to resign from my job due to my anxiety and depression, I couldn’t help but feel even worse after hearing criticisms from my own family that it was a mistake in their minds. There was truly no comfort offered either in the workplace nor in my home.

For two months after my last day of work, I remember feeling frozen and unable to comprehend what was happening to my life. I had friends who absolutely fought to keep me sane and healthy and I had “friends” who turned a blind eye to my obvious suffering. I had family who understood and encouraged me to get help and I had family who belittled my symptoms as selfish or immature.

Finally, after getting the help I needed from my doctor and my closest friends, I decided that I was going to live for something greater than a paycheck. Thankfully, I had enough savings to help me look for another job even if it took the rest of 2020. So I started allowing myself to heal and I spent my days with a new purpose: Create and find peace and joy.

It took me weeks to stop feeling guilty for resigning from my job but eventually I forgave myself for choosing my health over a paycheck. I gave myself permission to wake up late every morning and have breakfast with my dogs. I made a video blog series of my raw feelings about loss and turned it into a Bible study challenge for myself. I started an Instagram for my puppy and a TikTok account. I painted, traveled, and shopped for all of my wishes. I dyed my hair! I updated my wardrobe. I spent every summer hour I could basking in sunset and playing in water.

It was healing and rejuvenating to say the least, but sadly, it wasn’t the silver bullet solution to my tragedy. During my 2020 year, I was also interviewing with several companies. I had interviewed with so many that I started preparing for rejection even before applying to jobs. My amazing network of friends and mentors helped me find employment prospects but nothing ever led to an actual offer. By December, I had interviewed with 8 companies, all resulting in a pass. Multiply 8 with 3-4 one hour interviews each and you’ll get a sense of how tiring the process was. Not to mention that more than half of those interviews occurred when I was handicapped from breaking my ankle and having surgery (a whole different story)!

It’s interesting to look back because I remember trying to convince myself after every interview that I could go back to work and that I was ready to serve people again. I remember telling my husband that I could work even if I was still walking in a handicapped boot for my ankle! 😂 I was needing to be busy again and I was tired of being home alone, but what I didn’t realize at the time, was that my healing wasn’t complete. God was still working to transform my body, soul and mind.

I had been so deeply hurt by my tragedy that God needed time to make me whole again. I found myself questioning my faith and clinging to God’s promises more and more as the 2020 year ended with me still feeling helpless. By December, I had no job, I had recovered from a broken ankle costing over $20,000 in medical bills and I had no savings. But I had healing. I had found peace and joy. Helplessness was no longer resulting in anxiety and depression.

By January 2021, I had finally made peace with my story. I had fallen in love with my true identity and allowed myself to live for peace and joy. I had so little left from my tangible accomplishments in years prior, (we even ended up selling our house) but I also felt incredibly fulfilled by the new faith, genuine relationships and life passions that God had given me.

And then, a miracle happened. When I least expected it, and I least desired it, in the first few days of March, I was given a job offer. In a matter of 6 days from the start of the recruitment process to the day of the verbal offer, I had miraculously found a unicorn company and a team excited to bring me along with their journey and they were offering me more pay than any other employer I had interviewed with prior. This job will be taking me and my family back to my home state of Texas this year!!

Our mighty God saves and when he does, he amazes. God truly saves the best fruits in the harvest for the most faithful.

I didn’t do anything to earn or deserve this offer. I honestly didn’t even think that I would be the right candidate.

But here I am today, about a week away from restarting my career and I couldn’t be more whole. I’m truly happy, grateful, confident, and most importantly, I am completely renewed in my walk with God.

This miracle is a wonderful testament to the mighty power of faith in an awesome and loving God. In my next and final post in this mini-series, I will write about the amazing way this new job offer came about.

For now, I hope my story inspires you to get up and live for peace and joy. No matter your circumstances, there are still opportunities to usher in love, hope and healing through Jesus Christ. As a Christian, I truly believe in the miraculous power of God and the truth that everything is according to God’s greater plans and purposes. We can experience miracles if we just hold on and believe through our storms.

[revangerang]

Oh boy I really got in my feelings and wrote way too much lmao

Tagged by: @edithpattou86

Tags your friends to do their own lists: @chierafied @mother-ishvara @doughygraduatestudent @kazoomajor @pagan-assassin

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Top 5 animated movies:

1. Whisper of the Heart - Such a cute and whimsical slice-of-life coming of age story, and so inspiring for creative types! I love how Shizuku sees her fantasies come to life in the world around her, and how she just follows her whims to wander the city and treats each day like an adventure. I see a lot of myself in her. The grandpa and his shop are so cool! I want to find a place like that in my city! I love how she and Seiji inspire and encourage each other to improve themselves. Even though they’re so young and I usually hate that kind of thing, I think it’s a very realistic portrayal of what true love and a healthy relationship should be. The way her writing is treated as a creative process and something she can polish with hard work is just such a wonderful message and so inspiring to me.

2. Spirited Away - I love the Japanese culture and mythology, and the serene, still tone of the film. Truly beautiful. The way it doesn’t paint the spirits and gods in a bad light is good and correct: they were the careless humans who went into their world and took what they shouldn’t have. But it still focuses on the supernatural and eerie elements, often without even explaining anything, which I love. And the bathhouse feels like a real functioning place with workplace culture and all. And of course it’s great that Chihiro steps up and learns to be strong. I just love it.

3. Howl’s Moving Castle - I love all the characters so much, and all the magic and whimsy. The fantasy European setting is so charming, and they did a good job depicting Western magic. Ghibli movies really have such mundane magic, and they make me feel like my life is magic too. Sophie is so good and strong and I love seeing her come into her own. And Howl is hot. lmao

4. My Neighbor Totoro - I had the original Fox dub of this on a bootleg VHS my grandma made us when I was literally like an infant. My parents threw it away when I was still young- like no older than 5- because it “has Eastern religion in it” 🙄 Too bad for them the damage was already done lmfao. It was definitely one of the biggest influences of my formative years, I loved it so much and I’m so grateful to it. That mundane magic I talked about before, and just introducing me to a totally different worldview from my sheltered white American Christian bubble. I was fascinated by every single aspect from the traditional Japanese-style home to the bentos to the shrines... I really admired Satsuki and how grown up she was, taking care of her little sister like she did, making the lunches, all that. It’s really such a charming movie with great music and such a realistic depiction of childhood. Plus who doesn’t love Totoro himself?? And catbus! Iconicccc. I still look for little portholes in bushes and trees to this day lmao

5. Mulan - My little 8-year-old enby ass crying in the living room and repeatedly playing the Reflections scene over and over makes so much more sense now 😂 But really it’s just such a great film with a unique art style, fun characters, and great music. I love how Mulan fights for what she believes is right, and wants to protect her father. And I think it’s great how she also fights to find her own place in the world. I like how they don’t make it a “not like other girls” thing, but just that she personally somehow doesn’t feel comfortable in her own skin with the makeup and all that. Between her living as a man and the clear romantic relationship between “Ping” and Shang, it’s pretty good queer representation for a 2000s Disney movie lol. Also Mulan and Shang can both get it I mean what.

Honorable Mention: Prince of Egypt - That animation tho! So fucking cinematic!! And the music and everything just ugh so good! The characters are really compelling too and you can totally feel the brotherly love and familial issues.

Top 5 live action movies:

1. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day - This is a movie where you can’t look away for a moment or you’ll miss something important. It really is just one entire heck of a day for the main character like howwww does so much happen. It’s really just written so well honestly that they manage to pack so much into a single movie and a single day. I aspire to that level. The 30s setting is so great with the costumes and set and music ahh I get so much inspiration from it. Every single character (and actor for that matter) is just fantastic. It’s super funny- that situational comedy is my jam. And there are touching moments that give me inspiration for my own life. I relate to Miss Pettigrew with her clear social anxiety, and perhaps neurodivergency? But I love how the events of the film bring out the best in her. And Delysia is just so charming! I want her confidence

2. La La Land - Such a fun and whimsical musical about life for creatives in Los Angeles~ It makes me feel nostalgic and proud to live here. I love all the different homages to classic Hollywood, and the music is so good!! The love story feels realistic and I actually really like that they don’t end up together in the end. They just encourage each other to be better, and if that means being apart, they’re willing to do it. It is another one that gives me inspiration for my life and creative endeavors, especially The Fools Who Dream 😭 Gets me every time.

3. Mamma Mia - This is my shameless feel-good movie. I love just putting it on in the background as I clean or whatever. It’s just so upbeat and fun!! I love Amanda Seyfried and Meryl Streep especially. And I like that the main character learns what she wants (and doesn’t want) out of life right now. And I love that they depict older characters and women!! having full and rich lives including romance and sex. The message that it’s never too late for love is so great! And also just like please communicate and you will probably save yourself so much heartache lmao.

4. Across the Universe - I have an affinity for the 60s and 70s, and I love how this movie kind of takes you through that era with the various characters. It’s such a fun movie with great costumes, cinematography, and music! I just love all the covers of the Beatles songs!! I honestly like them just as much as I like the originals. This is one of the first things I ever saw with positive/neutral queer representation?? Like Sadie is presented just as she is, without it being like WHAT SHE LIKES WOMEN?????? I”MPOSSIBLE !! Or making it all about sex or whatever. It’s literally just like “I want to hold your hand.” Also the whole bit with Eddie Izzard is just incredible lmfao

5. LOTR - My first fandom~ I love these movies so much ughhh. The music! The costumes! The characters! The world! The high fantasy!! I think PJ was so true to the books, or at least as much as he was able in just 10-ish hours. I love that they just went for it and filmed all three in one go, and made them over 3 hours long, which was basically unheard of at the time for blockbuster films. They did so good fully representing the different races through costume, language, culture, and the music too. I literally used to just lay on my bed for hours at a time in junior high, listening to the soundtracks and being immersed in the world. My friends and I would often play pretend that we were in Middle Earth (so lame for middle schoolers lmaooo). I love every single (not-evil) character and I will fight for them. I will especially fight Denethor I don’t even cARE !

Honorable mention: A Little Princess - Sooo whimsical and lovely, even when the girls are going through hardship! I love Sarah and how she literally does magic and even puts a curse on what’s her face omgg. She’s so charming and a genuinely good person too, even though she could have been a spoiled brat. The big climactic scene is so !! Omg I still get the adrenaline when she’s crossing the board and then hiding from the police even though I’ve seen this countless times since I was a small child. And it’s so wonderful that she’s reunited with her father, and they adopt the other girl. It taught me at a young age that the world isn’t fair and people will be nasty and abusive for no reason, but that you can still believe in magic and “fancy yourself a princess.” And the neighbor guy taught me that strangers will step in to help out of the goodness of their heart.

Top 5 TV shows:

1. ATLA - One of the best series of all time. The worldbuilding, lore, storyline, character development, animation, music, etc, are all incredible. If they had gone with the original intention of making Zutara canon it would have been literally perfect and so subversive and innovative! As it is it is still nearly perfect and they still did an amazing job with Zuko’s redemption arc. I just ignore that very last scene tbh. In my mind, it didn’t happen. The series addresses so many issues like imperialism, sexism, abuse, family, disability, war, etc, in a very realistic way. Uncle Iroh is literally a treasure.

2. Steven Universe - So charming and wonderful!! I just love it so much!! It is so goddamn queer, it makes me so happy. Stevonnie is the nonbinary representation we don’t even deserve!! I love every single character. I love the animation and the music too! The bgm is so bubbly and glitchy and cool, super on point for trends these days. And the original songs are so charming~ It also deals with a ton of important issues like imperialism, interpersonal relationships, oppression, self-identity, abuse, leadership, mental health, boundaries, consent, brain-washing, unlearning unhealthy behavior, etc. I love that every single character, even minor ones, get character development and a chance to be strong and improve themselves. And it shows that even the ones we initially think are super strong and have it all together, actually have their own issues that they struggle with too.

3. Yuuri!!! On Ice - This show!!!! Oh my goddddddd. Literally perfect. I love that it just subverts every single trope???? Especially with the events at the beginning and the big spoiler in episode 10. Simply incredible. I love every single character so much??? Even ones I was expecting to hate, like how Yurio is a little shit at the beginning, and then when Lilia is introduced as this super severe tyrant, but she ends up just being a good, yet strict coach because she really wants Yurio to succeed. It’s honestly just so wholesome! The music is so amazing and the ice skating is really realistic too! It really shows that they had an actual skating choreographer and worked off video of him performing. I love how realistic the whole show is like with lots of social media, youtube, instagram, etc. And it does a queer romance without it being a gimmick. It’s just a sports anime with a side plot of a romance but it just happens to be gay. And Kubo-sensei has stated that homophobia doesn’t exist at all in their world which makes me so happy. It’s honestly so queer and I adore how all three main characters are genderfucks a bit. I also love how realistically Yuuri’s anxiety and depression are portrayed. I relate so much to him, especially because mine exhibit in the exact same ways as his. It’s another one that inspires me to fight to be better and live the life I want to live.

4. OTGW - So charming. A perfect addition to the canon of New England fairy tales. The music is great, the animation is wonderful and nostalgic, the characters are fun and interesting and spooky. I love how liminal it is and you aren’t really sure where they are or what’s going on for the majority of the episodes. Greg is the most realistic depiction of a small child and the brothers’ relationship is the most realistic I think I’ve ever seen in my life lmao. He’s just so random and weird and has such Little Kid Logic I love it so much lmao. The story is perfectly contained in its 10 short episodes, and it gives a very satisfying ending. I still can’t get over how many huge stars were in it too?? Like fucking Tim Curry as Auntie Whispers???? I can not believe.

5. Inuyasha - I’m weeb trash and this show is also trash but I love it so much okay. As a big fan I hold so much against the anime for changing things from the manga, but even so I love it. Overall I think the animation, music, and voice acting is perfect. It’s so cool with all the mythos of youkai and the shikon jewel, plus I love traditional Japanese culture stuff. And isekai type stuff is my jam. If I found a portal to another world or to the past you bet your ass I’d go through it. I totally don’t still look for portals as a 30 year old adult, I don’t know what you’re talking about 😂 Kagome is such a great mc tbh like she’s so smart and strong and talented and kind I just love her so much??? I want to be more like her. And I love all the characters honestly. I have to overlook some questionable 90s anime tropes for certain ones, but I still love them. As much as we rag on the constant upgrades thing, the battles and stuff are pretty thrilling, and overall the series is good fun. And yes Sesshoumaru is my husbando, next question.

Honorable Mention: Doctor Who - I love how this show manages to be like every single genre?? SciFi, historical, comedy, thriller, mystery, slice of life, etc. I love all of the Doctors, and all of their companions. I just love how much the Doctor loves humans, and how much faith they have in humanity. And again it’s that whole isekai, time travel, normal modern human goes on magical adventures thing. I would go with the Doctor in a heartbeat. I still cry over Donna 😭

[riderdrauggrim]

Theatre Tips and Tricks: Sleep.

The header is a bit misleading.

So you want to be in live theatre/concert tours/film and tv?

Do yourself a favour.

Take your circadian rhythm.

Gather it up in your arms.

Now carry it out back.

Give it one last, tender hug.

Put it down.

Tell it what a good sub-conscious control system it's been.

Now shoot it.

Or if you're Canadian and don't have a gun, use a rock, I don't know.

Just.

Put it out of its misery.

You'll be doing it a favour, I promise.

Because if you don't do this,

It is going to die a long, suffering, trembling death.

And it's going to take you with it.

Okay, joking aside, our 'time off' varies from month to month, week to week, even day to day. It's difficult to work in 'normal life' things such as shopping, banking, raising children, and sleeping. Fortunately, with 24 hour stores, online banking, and internet shopping, some things are easier than others.

Sleep is not one of those things.

One day you might be an afternoon matinee, the next day a morning work call, the afternoon off, and an evening show. Right into another morning call followed immediately by a matinee. Then you're off until the next evening. Then an afternoon and an evening. Finally an afternoon. And then your day off.

That's your week. But the next week is totally different. And the next.

Okay so that's an example of Repertory theatre like the Shaw Festival or Stratford (Ontario).

Back at Aquarius, 'stock' theatre, one show at a time, it wasn't uncommon to have twelve to sixteen hour days during tech weeks, setting up the lights and set, programming, actors onstage. And then it opens and you're just in for evenings and two matinees a week, for three weeks, and then do it all over again.

Or you're on a film shoot, and one day you start at 6am, go for twelve hours, then break. But because of turn-around stipulations, you can't start the next day until 8am. And the next day until 10am. So you begin the week up early and out in time for supper, but you end the week starting in the late afternoon and there until the sun rises.

Or you're a road crew touring the globe. You pull in at 7am, direct the local crew on how to put everything together, make sure everything works, trouble shoot, maybe rehearse a song or two. Catch a nap if you can, then it's concert time, immediately followed by directing the local crew how to take everything apart, shove it back in the truck, grab a shower, and it's 2am, back on the bus and off to the next town to start again in four or five hours.

That's not counting things like commuting to and from your job. Or the getting up and getting dressed, or the unwinding after you get home. Just because you have eight hours between calls doesn't mean you get eight hours sleep.

Sure, there are 'laws' against pushing people like that, or bonus time pay penalties to employers who make their workers keep such hours. But this industry also pushes people hard, and burns them out quickly. There's tons of unscrupulous bosses all too ready to take advantage of an earnest technician. Having the weight of a Union backing you up at times like that can certainly help to keep things legal, but not every venue has one. So then there's the boss saying something like "oh but this has to be done by tomorrow, I thought you cared about the arts..." These people don't care about the arts, and they certainly don't care about you. Look after yourselves.

Driving fatigued kills tons of technicians yearly. It's not "on site" so it doesn't count as a workplace concern. But it should.

The machismo attitude of "yah well, I did all that on only two hours sleep and twenty bottles of jolt!" feeds into this terrible cycle, encouraging people to push themselves harder and longer to get the show up.

And that's why this whole thing is absolutely terrible on our bodies.

Even if you're happy where you work, and love putting in that over time, our bodies need to rest, and our brains need to shut down. It will be incredibly hard to keep any sort of normal sleep cycle with standard working conditions.

As long as you're aware this is going to be part of your life in this industry.

And that there will be health repercussions down the line.

So how do I cope?

I keep odd hours. I'm usually up noon to 2am. Thick curtains can help keep the room dark to simulate night for dozing during the daytime.

I catch naps whenever I can. Back to back shows? An hour meal break in between. I'll curl up on a couch and close my eyes for fifty minutes. Sometimes I manage to doze off. Generally it's just nice to zone out and unwind. 'But that's your MEAL break!' Trick is... There's usually time preshow, or even during, where I'm sitting around bored. I can eat then. Eating on the clock is okay, sleeping generally isn't. Weird.

I try not to ride fatigued, but it's unavoidable. Leave yourself plenty of time, and plenty of space between other vehicles. Your reaction time is horrible when you're drowsy, so having that extra buffer helps.

Other common sense things include "eat healthy, avoid drugs and alcohol, exercise" and so on, but let's be honest, what we 'should' do and what we 'do' do often don't mesh.

Caffeine and stimulants might keep you awake, but at what cost 'later'. Tired bodies have weaker immune systems, but we don't have time to be sick. Take some pills and push on. -Also unhealthy.

At the end of it all, I have no "life hack" for sleeping and working in the entertainment industry. I don't know that there is one.

I love my job, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. And part of my job is being up at all hours, which means squeezing sleep in as best I can during the off hours. I'm okay with it, but I also don't have a social life.

Someone with a family, or friends, of whom keep 'normal' person timetables, trying to squeeze them in around rehearsals and runs, more power to them. And often times it just doesn't work. Which isn't me saying "you can't have friends or kids". It just takes more... effort? Or there are times you just have to miss important moments because time tables don't mesh?

It can be a tough career, and a tough way to live, but it's also the best jobs in the world.

Just make sure you're going into it eyes open.

[autisticadventurer]

Flu Musings

I’ve had the flu for nearly a week now. I’ve missed two days of work and have had to do two short days. It really sucks because aside from getting financially caught up after all the recent challenges, I’ve got a two week break, the car needs work again and we are bringing miss puppy home this week. It’ll be okay but we’re in for another month of tight budgeting. We’ve both gotten through worse.  

I’ve been able to obtain a few new apps and services that should be able to help me streamline my habits, shopping, and finances. I’m happy that the Mint app is fixed because I absolutely love it. I created an account with Brandless and cancelled my Amora coffee (OMG THE PRICES) but I’m sticking with Graze for now. I got Habits (loop habit tracker?), redownloaded Insight Timer (great for meditation practitioners of all skill and experience levels), Cozi to help my SO manage schedules and lists with me, Mimo and Khan Academy to get me where I need to be so that I can get that Microsoft Certificate, and I’m doing my best to keep up with Lose It! in spite of the fact that I’ve eaten very little over the past week. Smart News came with my phone and I’ve made a point to look for unbiased news sources and read the articles every few days. So all that jazz is under control and I feel organized even if there are still a few things that we need to take care of to get caught up in the physical world.

While I’ve been down and out with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company, I’ve thought a lot about my past and the history of my family. There are some things that I know, some things I don’t, and some things that I have been given more than one account of. I know a great deal about my mother’s side of the family. Her mother comes from way back in American history - they were members of the Pennsylvania Dutch, that is, Germans seeking religious freedom as Catholics. I know that my great grandmother was a tap dancer and her husband was an actor, though I couldn’t say who because my mother and grandmother called him Bumpy. My mother’s dad is a first or second generation descendant of Ukrainian origin. They fled to escape the pogroms despite the fact that my Zeda had served as a soldier in the first world war on the Russian side. Because of the political climate in western Europe, they had to travel across Siberia and came to America on the west coast. They settled in Minnesota. Both families somehow migrated to Iowa and that is where my maternal grandparents met. While Bubby was the most loving lady on earth, my other great grandmother rejected both of her daughters; one for becoming pregnant (with my mother) out of wedlock, the other for being a lesbian (she went on a music adventure and was a house drummer, backing up such famous names as Jimi Hendrix and others but I love that. She’s a really cool lady). Their brother inherited all the money. On my dad’s side I know less. I know that they lived in Ohio and that nearly all of that side of the family now lives in Florida. My paternal grandmother came from an upper middle class family - her dad being an engineer. I have no idea when they immigrated or from where - I’ve heard they may have been Irish or Scottish and probably Welsh. My paternal grandfather had a Finish mother. She came here with her daughters and was pregnant to boot. After having my grandpa, she put all her kids up for adoption. He was adopted by a filthy rich family and considering that it was in Ohio where the rivers catch on fire, I can only guess that his parents were some kind of industry moguls. (He grew up to be homophobic and racist and turns out two of his biological sisters are also gay.) My dad has told me that as a child, his grandparents would take him to restaurants that didn’t even have prices on the menus and how his grandmother got away with drunk driving on a regular basis. I’ve heard that a great deal of their money was stolen, and also that my grandfather has problems with money management and so what was his is also gone. My dad’s sister got pregnant at an early age and left home young from what I know. I know that my grandma left my grandpa the day after my dad’s graduation, him being the youngest. 

I have been assumed to be a rich girl more than once in my life, but while my family once had money, I’d never enjoyed the benefit of it and neither did my parents. I was a military brat and nothing more. I think the reason behind it is that I took my education seriously and my speech can be a little overly formal  because of my desire to communicate clearly. Despite the fact that I did well in school, most of the schools I attended lacked scholarships for outstanding academic performance and economic hardship. The what ifs: If I had the parental support and encouragement to stay at the first school I went to and finish my bachelor’s degree in Biology, I would’ve finished with less than $10,000 worth of debt and I’d be set up to pursue something I loved. But as usual, Biology was unacceptable, I was unacceptable, etcetera. My parents were too caught up in who they believed they needed to be to listen to anyone or to ask questions or to accept reality as it is instead of as they believed it was, or as they believed it should be.

So it comes now to this: my final point. There is still this constant waging of war against differences, sometimes due to prejudice and sometimes due to the belief that rudeness is unacceptable. I was on my way to work last week and the car was doing its little chugalug deal as I’m trying to accelerate after the light turned green. They person behind me decided to honk. Yes, yes. How dare I be so rude as to have transmission problems while you are behind me? Your honking has fixed our car, thank you. I mean, there are countless examples of people treating each other like shit because of their impatience, some kind of internalized prejudice, how they believe the world “should” be, and all other forms of miscommunication. If nobody is being hurt, these things objectively do not matter. What’s difficult is that people often perceive injury where none was intended (in the case of most of my miscommunications) or they imagine injury where none has occurred (in the case of businesses claiming natural african hair on employees to be unacceptable). There are countless other examples in the day to day motion of the cultural machine. The issue that I have identified is that most unAutistic people don’t like to stand out or be the first to do something because humans have evolved to believe in their cultures. Brave and virtuous is the business owner who allows for differences among their staff. From a permaculture perspective, diversity leads to resilience, but your average rich lady consumer doesn’t give a shit about permaculture principles; she gives a shit about feeling “comfortable” in her shopping surroundings and misunderstandings or appearances can shake that precarious foundation that culture has laid for her. I think in many ways, consumer culture is one of the primary barriers to creating acceptance and inclusion in the workplace. 

Lao Tzu said it is better to retreat a foot than to advance an inch. I think his reasoning behind all of that deals with the fact that he probably witnessed things just like this happening regularly. He was an imperial record keeper during a time when China took itself very seriously and struggled with xenophobia. If you personally perceive an injury where none was intended, then you might be apt to retaliate, making you the true initiator of conflict. If you perceive and injury where none was intended and you retreat, then you have simply enforced a boundary, perhaps even, “I know that she didn’t mean to be unkind, but I will disengage from this situation in order to preserve my own energy,” or even, “I may be late due to the driver in front of me, but I have no control over this situation and a difference of two minutes does not damage the productivity of my place of employment from an objective perspective,” or, “If that bitch of a customer has a problem with how you care for your hair or yourself, then we don’t need their business anyway.”

The only way to truly create change in our world is to change from the inside. Waging war on rudeness or appearances makes you an asshole. Having healthy boundaries protects you. Learning to be okay with the world as it is prevents escalation of problems and allows us to solve them while they are small. 

[okayto]

Hi Im about to graduate and since you seem to be doing pretty well at this adulting thing, any words of encouragement for a terrified senior who feels like the world is ending?

You will almost definitely survive!

Graduation is terrifying! It is scary and it sucks when your day-to-day life is about to be altered so much. And it also sucks that it’s hard to address this because everyone wants to talk about what you’re doing next and is acting excited for you. 

“Welcome to the real world!” they cry. The real world looks like a pit filled with jagged spikes and sharks and somehow you are not supposed to mention this. “Haha, you can’t stay in college forever,” they say as you try to explain that spiky shark pits are intimidating.

The first thing to know about adulting is that almost no one actually knows what they’re doing. Basically everyone is muddling their way through, supplemented by friends, family, google, and Hints from Heloise books. Sometimes this is a terrifying thought, but sometimes it’s encouraging to remember that everyone else is doing the same thing: presenting one face to the world and almost certainly covering up, to some extent, all the things they don’t know or are scared of.

The second thing to know about adulting is that everyone does it differently. I have friends who graduated, found a job in their field right away, and are still there. They are rare. The majority of people I know got a job in the first year after graduation, but usually not close to their goal. Most people’s living situation after college was either moving back home, or having roommates with hand-me-down furnishings.

Let me tell you a little about myself:

The job I got first after college was full-time, paid $9.50 an hour for something that ostensibly required a degree, was horrible for my mental and physical health and was what I now consider spiritually abusive.

Almost no one I know got a job in a field they actually wanted in the first year (at least) after college.

I lived in a tiny, crappy, literally-falling-apart 2-bedroom with 3 other people.

3.5 years later I found my current job, get paid more, feel respected and enjoy my workplace. I moved several more times–always with roommates–and am now living in my fourth place since graduating. Each place got a little better as I had more time to look, plan, and figure out what I could reasonably afford.

I was at least 25 before I actually started thinking of myself as an adult. At least.

I currently have a job that works with my nocturnal tendencies. One reason I seem to adult well is that I’m content, not often sleep-deprived and my job is fairly low-stress. I am extremely lucky and cannot emphasize this enough. 

Almost all the household stuff I had for several years after graduation was hand-me-down, from thrift stores/freecycling, or cheapo things that fell apart fairly quickly. It wasn’t until at least 3-4 years after graduation (fairly recently) that I was able to think about buying nicer, longer-lasting things, or think about matching furniture, or basically doing anything that looks nicer and/or requires more planning that what you’d expect to find in a college apartment.

Some of the best advice I was given (and actually followed) was to save if you can spare the money. Even if it’s only $5 a month, if you can do it, do it. A financial counselor (if you can meet one for free via your school or bank, do it) recommended I have separate savings accounts for things such as an emergency fund, something like car maintenance, and whatever other project I’m saving for, so those monies are separate from each other. I have the savings taken out of my checking account automatically on payday. Saving is much easier if you don’t have to do anything, and several years on, I have a couple months of expenses saved. It’s comforting to know it’s there. It took forever to build up.

Socializing semi-frequently takes much more effort than in college, but is very helpful (even if I always feel like staying in). Loneliness is real. It helps to talk to friends, commiserate or celebrate, vent, and generally just chill. I see several friends at church and invite them/others to events (library events, area festivals, whatever). Others I know take sports/dance classes, join running groups, Bible studies, board game groups, or use Meetup.com.

I did not start tumblring until I was in my current job–therefore fairly mentally healthy, happy, with somewhat stable finances, and with several years of adulting experience. And I’m still filtering what I post, to some degree.

Adulting is terrifying and weird. So far the only way I’ve found to make it less terrifying is experience supplemented by research (and frequent calls to adultier adults, mostly my parents), and to complain/snark about it online.

Finally, you didn’t mention anything about jobs, but I’m reading through Ask A Manager (to learn how to be a better supervisor) and if you’re job hunting, you might also find some good stuff there.

[caseycardwell]

Coming out at work

Our stories of what makes a great workplace for LGBTQIA+ people

With thanks to: 

Chloe | Social Media Manager | She/her

Stuart | Senior Clinical Support Worker | He/him

Eliza | Freelance Content Creator | They/them

Linnea | Art Director and Visual Designer | She/her

At SH:24, we are all about sexual health. Sexual health isn’t just about getting tested for STIs or using contraception, it’s also about feeling happy and comfortable with your sexuality so that sex is always a healthy, safe and joyful experience. We have lots of fantastic LGBTQIA+ colleagues, and we want to make sure that they are supported at work. 

To celebrate Pride 2021 (and to get some useful tips on how to improve), we asked some of our LGBTQIA+ colleagues about their experiences in the workplace.

How can workplaces better support and attract LGBTQIA+ employees?

“Be open and actively work to help the community and make it very clear that you support them.” Eliza, Freelance Content Creator

“Don’t just support your staff during Pride month! Support them 365 days a year,” said Stuart, our Senior Clinical Support worker. This was echoed by Eliza, a freelance Content Creator, who added, “Just changing a logo to rainbow during June isn’t enough. Companies should be actively looking to hire us.”

Stuart felt that workplaces have come a long way, with some larger companies having LGBTQ+  networks to offer support, raise awareness and communicate that intolerant behaviour is not acceptable. “But we still have a long way to go, for example, in supporting staff who are Trans and encouraging the use of pronouns.” He felt that training and better awareness of LGBTQ+ issues can help to make better working environments.

Linnea, our Art Director and Visual Designer, made the point that understanding LGBTQ+ issues and needs should be the responsibility of the employer, not the employees. “As a queer person it’s easy to become the only one repeatedly pointing out the presence of cis- and heteronormativity. It becomes a heavy burden to always be the one challenging things. It can make you feel invisible. What sets a workplace apart is if they can listen and take on suggestions about how to make it more inclusive, then build on that themselves, rather than relying on queer employees to point it out every time.”

Chloe, our Social Media manager, agreed. “It’s great when companies actively acknowledge LGBTQIA+ issues and are openly putting actions in place to check complicity or unconscious bias.”

At SH:24, we’ve started to encourage colleagues to add their pronouns to their comms profiles. “Joining teams who automatically put pronouns in their bio is a great way for me to feel seen,” said Eliza. “It’s not common practice yet but I think we’re getting there.”

Can you tell us about coming out at work?

“I felt like I had to make a decision about my sexuality to stop people prodding around my personal life, before I even understood it myself!” Chloe, Social Media Manager

“I very quietly put my pronouns in my social media bio and email sign off,” said Eliza. “People slowly started to notice that I’m using they/them. Once I felt more comfortable I came out ‘officially’ online and in the workplace. I was met with great support. A few people didn’t understand it but they were open to learning.” 

As a Freelancer, Eliza moves between workplaces, which presents its own challenges. “I don’t always feel comfortable coming out with new clients,” they said, “but overall I feel very supported.”

Stuart said he’d never had a big coming out at any workplace. “It’s partly because I’ve worked in places where I felt safe or was aware of other LGBTQ+ employees and could see how they interacted with other staff.” He usually just drops it into a conversation: “I talk about my husband and what we did over the weekend.”

Chloe shared a different perspective. Before joining SH:24, she’d worked as an artist in the music industry. “I was very young when I started. I hadn’t had the experience or time to understand my own sexuality, but people were making assumptions and constantly questioning who I was attracted to and making jokes about it and my appearance.” 

Her management didn’t give her much protection, and Chloe felt they actually played on her sexuality to add some ‘mystique’ to her image. “I didn’t realise at the time, but this robbed me of the opportunity to really understand who I was. I felt like I had to make a decision about my sexuality to stop people prodding around my personal life, before I even understood it myself!”

How important is it for you to be able to be open about your sexuality in the workplace?

“Feeling like the exception to the rule can be uncomfortable, especially if you are recently coming to terms with your identity.” Chloe, Social Media Manager

Sexuality is often presented as something secondary, that’s part of your ‘personal life’ but not part of the workplace. But our business is sexual health, so we’re well aware of the importance of sexuality in all aspects of a person’s life.The workplace is where a lot of people spend most of their time. So we want to know, how important is it for our colleagues to be able to be open about their sexuality at work? 

Stuart hit the nail on the head. “It’s part of who I am and not something I should have to hide. Being happy in the workplace allows me to be more productive.” 

Eliza agreed. “It’s important for me to be myself in the workplace. You spend a lot of time with your colleagues and it’s important to feel safe and to feel and be yourself.”

Chloe talked about active inclusivity. “It’s important to not have your sexuality/gender ‘othered’ in the workplace. Workplaces shouldn’t assume ‘cishet’ identities as the default. You shouldn’t feel like you’re deviating from the status quo.”

“Working for companies where other queer people are visible is really imporant,” she went on. “It’s not always possible, but being in a team with other LGBTQIA+ people makes it a lot easier to feel comfortable about being open about your sexuality. It can make it a more joyful, celebratory experience!”

What do you wish you had known before coming out?

“Coming out is an ongoing process. Each time you start a new job, meet new people.” Stuart, Senior Clinical Support Worker

Eliza was surprised at the ‘outpouring of love’ they received after coming out. “I wish I’d known how scary it can be to come out. I also wish I’d know that more people would support me than I thought.”

Coming out isn’t usually a one-off event. You might come out in different ways to different people all the time, especially in the workplace. “It gets easier over time, as you become more comfortable in yourself,” said Stuart. 

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Eliza often has to ‘come out’ to voice their pronouns. “As a non-binary person who presents very femme,” said Eliza, “I still struggle to correct people when they accidentally use the wrong pronoun.”

“It’s ok for your understanding of your sexuality to change all the time!” Chloe, Social Media Manager

Chloe reminds us that coming out should be totally up to you. “What do I wish I’d known before coming out?” she said. “That you don’t have to. For me, ‘coming out’ felt quite intimidating, like I had to know absolutely everything about my sexuality before I did it. I realise now that’s not true! In the end, I just started exploring my bisexuality, being more open about my experiences, and let others catch up!” 

What advice would you give someone wanting to be out (in the workplace)?

“If your identity makes someone uncomfortable, you are not the problem.” Chloe, Social Media Manager

“It’s your decision to come out at work if you choose,” said Stuart. “Some people come out with a bang, others don’t. Only you know what is the best way to be you. Each place I’ve worked, I usually come out to the people I’ll be working closely with to start with, then let it happen naturally from there.”

Eliza had similar advice. “Take your time, only come out when you feel ready and safe to do so,” they said. “Most people will love and support you. If they don’t, it’s their loss.”

Linnea said she’d had positive experiences coming out in the workplace. “Most people have been really friendly and open about me having a girlfriend. My negative experiences have been structural (like lesbian erasure) and unconscious biases, where some people have made assumptions about me or my relationship purely because it’s same sex.”

Her advice is to go for it. “Try not to take ignorance personally. People might not know anything about it. I like to assume that people mean well (unless they prove otherwise) and I remind myself that we live in a homophobic society, where everyone learns those narratives and internalises them to some degree. Some people will have had the opportunity to have those views challenged, and some not. Sometimes ignorance is just that: learned behaviour that hasn’t been questioned. There will always be some people who don’t want to or think they don’t need to challenge those internalised narratives, but I like to think they’re in the minority.” 

Can you share an experience when you felt your sexuality was recognised in a positive way?

“When I moved to Margate!” said Chloe, enthusiastically. “It was the first time in my LIFE that people didn’t assume my sexuality, despite me moving with a male partner.” Chloe felt able to be herself right from the start. “I feel part of the queer community there, regardless of my heterosexual-presenting relationship. It’s helped me to work through internalised biophobia - it’s tough to feel like you’re not making the whole thing up when people don’t see you. I feel much MUCH more confident coming out to new people with pride, rather than anxiety that I’ll have to defend myself.”

Linnea had a recent experience with some kids on the street. “These cool kids asked me to take their photo. They chatted to me about queer stuff and I was like, ‘Wow! Maybe they saw me and realised I was gay too!’ That’s never really happened to me before! I was happy to be read that way which I’m always nervous about not being.”

Thanks to Linnea, Chloe, Stuart and Eliza for sharing their experiences. We hope this will be an ongoing conversation. If you’d like to tell us about your experience of coming out at work, find us on Instagram @sh24_nhs. We’d love to hear from you.

published first on https://spanishflyhealth.blogspot.com/

[whosthecaptainnow]

KING GEORGE

I PUT GEORGE THROUGH A PERSONALITY TEST AND THIS IS SO IMPORTANT TO WHO HE IS AS A CHARACTER. I’M POSTING NOT ONLY THE RESULTS BUT WHAT THEY MEAN.

THESE ARE THE RESULTS GEORGE RECEIVED FROM THE 16PERSONALITIES TEST, WHICH CAN BE FOUND HERE AND I ENCOURAGE OTHERS WHO WANT FURTHER INSIGHT AND/OR A CONCISE PERSONALITY DESCRIPTION TO TAKE THIS. IT IS VERY WELL DONE.

RESULTS

ENFP-A:  EXTRAVERTED INTUITIVE FEELING PROSPECTING–ASSERTIVE ( THE CAMPAIGNER )

[ MORE DETAILS BELOW THE CUT. ]

Introduction

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for – and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool – for love – for your dreams – for the adventure of being alive.

The Campaigner personality is a true free spirit. They are often the life of the party, but unlike types in the Explorer Role group, Campaigners are less interested in the sheer excitement and pleasure of the moment than they are in enjoying the social and emotional connections they make with others. Charming, independent, energetic and compassionate, the 7% of the population that they comprise can certainly be felt in any crowd.

You Can Change the World With Just an Idea

More than just sociable people-pleasers though, Campaigners, like all their Diplomat cousins, are shaped by their Intuitive (N) quality, allowing them to read between the lines with curiosity and energy. They tend to see life as a big, complex puzzle where everything is connected – but unlike Analyst personality types, who tend to see that puzzle as a series of systemic machinations, Campaigners see it through a prism of emotion, compassion and mysticism, and are always looking for a deeper meaning.

Campaigners are fiercely independent, and much more than stability and security, they crave creativity and freedom.

Many other types are likely to find these qualities irresistible, and if they’ve found a cause that sparks their imagination, Campaigners will bring an energy that oftentimes thrusts them into the spotlight, held up by their peers as a leader and a guru – but this isn’t always where independence-loving Campaigners want to be. Worse still if they find themselves beset by the administrative tasks and routine maintenance that can accompany a leadership position. Campaigners’ self-esteem is dependent on their ability to come up with original solutions, and they need to know that they have the freedom to be innovative – they can quickly lose patience or become dejected if they get trapped in a boring role.

Don’t Lose That ’Little Spark of Madness’

Luckily, Campaigners know how to relax, and they are perfectly capable of switching from a passionate, driven idealist in the workplace to that imaginative and enthusiastic free spirit on the dance floor, often with a suddenness that can surprise even their closest friends. Being in the mix also gives them a chance to connect emotionally with others, giving them cherished insight into what motivates their friends and colleagues. They believe that everyone should take the time to recognize and express their feelings, and their empathy and sociability make that a natural conversation topic.

The Campaigner personality type needs to be careful, however – if they rely too much on their intuition, assume or anticipate too much about a friend’s motivations, they can misread the signals and frustrate plans that a more straightforward approach would have made simple. This kind of social stress is the bugbear that keeps harmony-focused Diplomats awake at night. Campaigners are very emotional and sensitive, and when they step on someone’s toes, they both feel it.

Campaigners will spend a lot of time exploring social relationships, feelings and ideas before they find something that really rings true. But when they finally do find their place in the world, their imagination, empathy and courage are likely to produce incredible results.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Campaigner Strengths

Curious – When it comes to new ideas, Campaigners aren’t interested in brooding – they want to go out and experience things, and don’t hesitate to step out of their comfort zones to do so. Campaigners are imaginative and open-minded, seeing all things as part of a big, mysterious puzzle called life.

Observant – Campaigners believe that there are no irrelevant actions, that every shift in sentiment, every move and every idea is part of something bigger. To satisfy their curiosity, Campaigners try to notice all of these things, and to never miss a moment.

Energetic and Enthusiastic – As they observe, forming new connections and ideas, Campaigners won’t hold their tongues – they’re excited about their findings, and share them with anyone who’ll listen. This infectious enthusiasm has the dual benefit of giving Campaigners a chance to make more social connections, and of giving them a new source of information and experience, as they fit their new friends’ opinions into their existing ideas.

Excellent Communicators – It’s a good thing that Campaigners have such strong people skills, or they’d never express these ideas. Campaigners enjoy both small talk and deep, meaningful conversations, which are just two sides of the same coin for them, and are adept at steering conversations towards their desired subjects in ways that feel completely natural and unforced.

Know How to Relax – It’s not all “nature of the cosmos” discussions with Campaigners – people with this personality type know that sometimes, nothing is as important as simply having fun and experiencing life’s joys. That Intuitive trait lets Campaigners know that it’s time to shake things up, and these wild bursts of enthusiastic energy can surprise even their closest friends.

Very Popular and Friendly – All this adaptability and spontaneity comes together to form a person who is approachable, interesting and exciting, with a cooperative and altruistic spirit and friendly, empathetic disposition. Campaigners get along with pretty much everyone, and their circles of friends stretch far and wide.

Campaigner Weaknesses

Poor Practical Skills – When it comes to conceiving ideas and starting projects, especially involving other people, Campaigners have exceptional talent. Unfortunately their skill with upkeep, administration, and follow-through on those projects struggles. Without more hands-on people to help push day-to-day things along, Campaigners’ ideas are likely to remain just that – ideas.

Find it Difficult to Focus – Campaigners are natural explorers of interpersonal connections and philosophy, but this backfires when what needs to be done is that TPS report sitting right in front of them. It’s hard for Campaigners to maintain interest as tasks drift towards routine, administrative matters, and away from broader concepts.

Overthink Things – Campaigners don’t take things at face value – they look for underlying motives in even the simplest things. It’s not uncommon for Campaigners to lose a bit of sleep asking themselves why someone did what they did, what it might mean, and what to do about it.

Get Stressed Easily – All this overthinking isn’t just for their own benefit – Campaigners, especially Turbulent ones, are very sensitive, and care deeply about others’ feelings. A consequence of their popularity is that others often look to them for guidance and help, which takes time, and it’s easy to see why Campaigners sometimes get overwhelmed, especially when they can’t say yes to every request.

Highly Emotional – While emotional expression is healthy and natural, with Campaigners even viewing it as a core part of their identity, it can come out strongly enough to cause problems for this personality type. Particularly when under stress, criticism or conflict, Campaigners can experience emotional bursts that are counter-productive at best.

Independent to a Fault – Campaigners loathe being micromanaged and restrained by heavy-handed rules – they want to be seen as highly independent masters of their own fates, even possessors of an altruistic wisdom that goes beyond draconian law. The challenge for Campaigners is that they live in a world of checks and balances, a pill they are not happy to swallow.

Romantic Relationships

When it comes to relationships, there’s hardly anyone around who is more excited than Campaigners to share with their partners the bounty of ideas and eye-opening experiences that life has to offer. For people with the Campaigner personality type, relationships are a joyous process of mutual exploration and imagination, a chance to connect with another soul. Campaigners take their relationships seriously, and are known for their uninhibited and unshakeable devotion to the people to whom they’ve committed their hearts.

Campaigners have the advantage of irresistible charm when it comes to attracting a partner – Campaigners’ warmth, excitement and passion are simply alluring.

In the dating phase, if Campaigners can be said to tolerate such a formal process to begin with, they will show these qualities by showering their new flames with affection, and will do everything they can to build a strong relationship by demonstrating their devotion and reliability by whatever means available.

You Cannot Live Without a Fire

Long-distance relationships are quite common among Campaigners, as they view physical distance as just another idea, no match for concepts like love. This gives them the chance to demonstrate their commitment, both by staying true despite the physical separation, and with overtures of effort to surprise their partners, crossing that distance on a whim. These are demonstrations of Campaigners’ mystery, idealism and deep emotion, and such efforts often keep the flames of a relationship burning bright.

People with the Campaigner personality type express these ideals sexually as well, exploring the physical with imagination and passion, viewing these times together as a chance to let their feelings for each other shine, sharing their love and affection. Campaigners will willingly experiment with their partners, even early in a relationship, but they can also be oddly perfectionistic, believing that these physical acts are a representation of their deeper love, and as such should not be performed carelessly. This perfectionism is also a reflection of their sensitivity, their desire to not disappoint, and Campaigners appreciate a well-placed compliment.

Not everyone can handle the excitement, occasional neediness, and emotional ups and downs that this philosophy entails, whether long-distance or long-term, mystical or physical. Campaigners constantly explore new ideas and improvements, fantasize about future possibilities – in dating, this tendency to look at potential rather than the present can be self-defeating, and their spontaneity makes it harder to stay focused on their end goal of a long-term relationship. If their partners aren’t able to reciprocate these acts of excitement and devotion, Campaigners will likely end up feeling unhappy and misunderstood.

So, You Think You Know the Real Me?

Campaigners go all-in with their relationships, and if they fall apart despite their efforts, they can end up plagued with questions about why the relationship failed and what they could have done differently – without a buoy, these thoughts can crush Campaigners’ self-esteem as they sink into depression. It’s important for Campaigner personalities, as with anyone, to remember that relationships are in all ways mutual – mutual interest, mutual growth, and mutual responsibility – and they can’t be solely accountable.

After a trial like this, Campaigners may be reluctant to open up and commit, and it can take years for a partner to navigate their bewildering depth and intensity, falsely believing that Campaigners’ enthusiasm and apparent openness means that they wear everything on their sleeves. The reality is that Campaigners’ spontaneity, the seeming inconsistency and erraticism the untrained eye sees, isn’t a product of flightiness or lack of depth, but the opposite – it is a drive to express ideas about a mystical, all-encompassing energy, in the confines of a physical world, and underlying it all is the uniting principle of love, expressed in many different ways, but unshakeable and infinite at its core.

Friendships

As friends, Campaigners are cheerful and supportive, always sharing and developing ideas, and staying open-minded, taking in others’ thoughts and feelings. This warmth and sincerity makes people with the Campaigner personality type masters of drawing people out of their shells, and as a result they tend to have a huge circle of friends.

As with other relationships, Campaigners view their friendships as opportunities to experience another angle of the universe, and tend to imbue potential friendships with that weighty and idealistic quality.

An Exciting Adventure

More outgoing types will naturally gravitate towards them, but Campaigners will also go to great lengths and be surprisingly persistent in their efforts to get to know more reserved personalities. Their ability to tune into others and speak their language with that characteristic infectious enthusiasm helps them in this endeavor, and the allure of mystery that reserved types, especially Introverted Intuitives, bring to the table will keep Campaigners intrigued for years. These personality types may never be able to reciprocate the breadth of human interest that Campaigners present, but they do appreciate Campaigners’ efforts.

But Campaigners’ interest in others can be a double-edged sword – this pure idealism comes with certain expectations, and too often Campaigners hold their friends in an unrealistic light, expecting them to keep up with the constant flow of ideas and experiences that they consider integral to life. Campaigners put their whole hearts into their friendships, and it can come as a shock for them to find that their friends aren’t the flawless Titans that they believed them to be. Whether it’s simple social fatigue or a focus on the physical and the practical instead of the mystical, people with the Campaigner personality type can find themselves disappointed by what they see as a lack of substance beneath the surface.

Campaigners tend to get deeply involved in others’ lives, going to great lengths and efforts to be the selfless, caring and supportive people they are, and all the while forget to take care of themselves. Both in terms of basic needs like financial stability and rest, as well as more emotional needs like mutual understanding and reciprocation, Campaigner personalities tend to give much more of themselves than most are even capable of giving back. This sort of imbalance isn’t sustainable, as (seemingly) one-sided generosity often leads to criticism and resentment on both sides.

Making Life Spectacular

Luckily, Campaigners are open-minded and sincere enough in their friendships, and connect with and understand even their acquaintances well enough, that they recognize that not everyone expresses themselves in the same ways, and that that’s okay. Their sensitivity may make it too challenging to play with more critical and argumentative personalities, such as strongly expressed Thinking (T) and Judging (J) types, but they do appreciate, even cherish, the company of most anyone who appreciates theirs, and the adventures and experiences they have together are the stuff a good life is made of.

Parenthood

If there is anything that makes Campaigners great parents, it’s the sense of wonder they have for all things new and beautiful, a sense that they will be able to share with their children every day as they learn and grow. Throughout their children’s lives, Campaigners provide a combination of almost overwhelming love and support, and an unstructured environment revolving around freedom and creativity. This in no way means that people with the Campaigner personality type will simply leave their children to their own devices without guidance – rather, Campaigner parents want to share in their children’s perspective, share in a world without bounds.

Campaigner parents are playful and warm, and love to see their children excited, playing in and experimenting with the world around them. It is likely that Campaigner parents will encourage this play and growth by suggesting activities and lessons.

Campaigners will embrace and encourage productive interests as they arise, sweeping away dolls and dinosaurs when interests shift to the oceans, and sweeping away the fish when tastes change again, to the stars.

While they often enough recognize the value of structure and predictability, Campaigner parents are unlikely to have the heart (or as they may see it, the lack of heart) to establish these limitations themselves. They may need to depend on their partners to provide some necessary guidelines and discipline from time to time, but Campaigner parents will always have the advantage of their open-minded and empathetic nature, making them not just parents, but friends who their children feel comfortable confiding in. They needn’t always depend on their children broaching the subject either, as Campaigners have a natural skill in spotting emotional disharmony or physical discomfort in others.

Go On, Spread Your Wings

As their children approach the teenage years, all this emotion and attention can start to cloy, and their children may seek a more private independence. This can be a challenge for people with the Campaigner personality type – they have strong emotions, and invest those emotions heavily in the things and people they care about. While they may not be big on using proven ideas, Campaigners do like to see whether or not their ideas work, and this applies to their thoughts on parenting, too. As their adolescent children withdraw, they leave an unsolved mystery that can last for years, leaving their Campaigner parents wondering if their ideas on raising their children actually work, actually result in happy, independent and creative adults.

Luckily for them, so long as they raise their children with a sense of productive independence, rather than an aimless, against-the-grain antipathy, Campaigners will find that their children have developed a strong sense of self and self-worth, going confidently out into the big, wide world at their own pace and in their own style, knowing that they have both themselves and their Campaigner parents to depend on.

Career Paths

“Can’t I fly helicopters AND be an oceanographer who writes songs and cooks?” It’s a big world out there – perhaps even a little too big. Campaigners are fascinated by new ideas, both in terms of developments in fields they are already familiar with, and when new subjects come along. The trick for people with the Campaigner personality type is to take advantage of this quality, this wonder with the magnificent breadth and detail in the world, and to use it to propel themselves further and deeper than others are willing or able to go.

If there’s a challenge Campaigners face when selecting a career, it isn’t that they lack talent or options or drive, it’s that there are so many things out there that are just cool.

The Opening of a Door Can Be a Wonderfully Joyous Moment

Chief among Campaigners’ talents is their people skills, a quality that is even more valuable now than ever. Even in traditional Analyst strongholds like engineering, systems analysis and the sciences, Campaigners’ ability to network and match the communication styles of their audience means that even as they explore new challenges on their own, they will be able to work with others, explore others’ perspectives and glean new insights into their projects. Much of modern progress stems from incorporating other studies into typically disassociated fields, and no one is better equipped to merge broad interests than talented, energetic and future-minded Campaigners.

And while Thinking types may be better at applying logic to systems and machines, people with the Campaigner personality type are able to apply that same logic to human interactions and networks, using their exceptional social perception to find out what makes people tick. This lends Campaigners a solid foothold in any human science or service, from psychology, counseling and teaching to politics, diplomacy and detective work. All of these fields have another important similarity: they are in constant development, shifting, presenting new angles and new approaches. It’s simply not possible to be good in these fields and content with the way things are, and this is where Campaigners truly shine.

Too Many Bosses, Too Few Workers

Where Campaigners do not shine is in systems of strict regimentation and hierarchy, such as military service. Campaigners thrive on the ability to question the status quo and explore the alternatives, and if this is a quality that is not just unappreciated but actually frowned upon, this will not only make them unhappy, but it may even threaten their emotional stability. Repetition, predictability, boredom… while some Sentinel types may appreciate predictability and clear hierarchies, these are not selling points for Campaigners. People with the Campaigner personality type need to feel like they’re pushing boundaries and exploring ideas, and should focus on interests and careers that encourage that.

Many more career options satisfy these needs, and not just the scientific ones – writing, journalism, acting and TV reporting all give Campaigners a chance to explore something new every day and stir the pot a little while they’re at it. It may come to pass though, that the best way forward for Campaigner personalities is to establish themselves as entrepreneurs and consultants, blazing their own trails and taking on whatever project is most fascinating. So long as they get to use their people skills, identify and achieve their own goals and inspire their colleagues and followers, Campaigners will be happy.

Workplace Habits

There are two basic things that Campaigners seek most in the workplace: The chance to explore new ideas, and the chance to conduct that exploration alongside other people who share their excitement. These qualities show through at all levels of hierarchy, though much like other Diplomat personality types, Campaigners would prefer that there be hardly a hierarchy at all. People with the Campaigner personality type possess warmth, creativity, and an open-mindedness that makes them excellent listeners. If these qualities are recognized by their employers, they will always be able to count on their Campaigner employees to innovate and boost morale.

Campaigner Subordinates

Campaigners are growth-oriented, and as subordinates they’ll impress their managers with their creativity and adaptability. People with the Campaigner personality type are excellent listeners, able to analyze and understand others’ perspectives effortlessly. It’s perhaps this quality that most makes Campaigners intolerant of micromanagement – the way they see it, they understand what’s been asked of them, and all they require is the freedom to accomplish their task. If this need isn’t met, managers may find a quickly stressed Campaigner subordinate.

To a certain extent though, some direct management is often necessary, as Campaigners are notorious for letting their attention slip from one project to the next before they’ve dotted their I’s and crossed their T’s. Campaigners love exploring new ideas and learning new things, and once something becomes familiar, its allure starts to fade. But, if managers are able to maintain a spirit of guidance and camaraderie instead of "bossiness", they will find loyal and devoted contributors in their Campaigner subordinates.

Campaigner Colleagues

Campaigners are people-people, and as far as the workplace is concerned, this quality shows through best among colleagues. More than just coworkers, Campaigners view their colleagues as friends, people who they take a genuine interest in, providing support and cheer when they’re down or stressed. People with the Campaigner personality type are warm and optimistic, always searching for and usually finding win-win situations for everyone.

Brainstorms among equals are Campaigners’ forte, and they listen to different viewpoints and suggestions not just with tolerance, but genuine excitement. Their ability to relax and have fun will always make them popular around the water cooler, but what sets Campaigners apart is that they can transition that popularity into natural leadership, instinctively picking up on colleagues’ motivations and pulling their teams together, pushing them forward towards whatever truth they’ve been tasked to find.

Campaigner Managers

Campaigners are not great fans of heavy hierarchy and bureaucracy, and this is most evident when they take on the role of manager. As managers, Campaigner personalities behave much like they do as colleagues – they establish real friendships, and use their broad popularity to inspire and motivate, taking on the role of leader, working alongside their subordinates, rather than shouting from behind their desks. Campaigners will tend to believe in the concept of intrinsic motivation, the idea that things are worth doing for their own sake, not because of some convoluted system of punishments and rewards.

Unfortunately, not everyone buys into this philosophy – challenges arise when faced with subordinates who actually prefer to be closely directed, with clearly defined objectives and timetables, people who are just doing their jobs. More challenging still are those rare moments when a reprimand is simply necessary – while Campaigners prefer to meet dissent with an open ear, and to use their excellent capacity for sensing mood and morale to preempt such an act to begin with, sometimes the carrot and the stick are necessary, and using them is the biggest challenge for the Campaigner personality type. But Campaigners’ capacity for adjusting their communication to most any style will always shine through, helping to smooth things over and adapt to the needs of their team.

Conclusion

Few personality types are as creative and charismatic as Campaigners. Known for their idealism and enthusiasm, Campaigners are good at dealing with unexpected challenges and brightening the lives of those around them. Campaigners’ imagination is invaluable in many areas, including their own personal growth.

[onlylifeordeath]

LORENZO VEGA –– “THE CHARGER”

I PUT LORENZO THROUGH A PERSONALITY TEST AND THIS IS SO IMPORTANT TO WHO HE IS AS A CHARACTER. I’M POSTING NOT ONLY THE RESULTS BUT WHAT THEY MEAN.

THESE ARE THE RESULTS LORENZO RECEIVED FROM THE 16PERSONALITIES TEST, WHICH CAN BE FOUND HERE AND I ENCOURAGE OTHERS WHO WANT FURTHER INSIGHT AND/OR A CONCISE PERSONALITY DESCRIPTION TO TAKE THIS. IT IS VERY WELL DONE.

RESULTS

ENFP-A:  EXTRAVERTED INTUITIVE FEELING PROSPECTING–ASSERTIVE ( THE CAMPAIGNER )

[ MORE DETAILS BELOW THE CUT. ]

Introduction

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for – and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool – for love – for your dreams – for the adventure of being alive.

The Campaigner personality is a true free spirit. They are often the life of the party, but unlike types in the Explorer Role group, Campaigners are less interested in the sheer excitement and pleasure of the moment than they are in enjoying the social and emotional connections they make with others. Charming, independent, energetic and compassionate, the 7% of the population that they comprise can certainly be felt in any crowd.

You Can Change the World With Just an Idea

More than just sociable people-pleasers though, Campaigners, like all their Diplomat cousins, are shaped by their Intuitive (N) quality, allowing them to read between the lines with curiosity and energy. They tend to see life as a big, complex puzzle where everything is connected – but unlike Analyst personality types, who tend to see that puzzle as a series of systemic machinations, Campaigners see it through a prism of emotion, compassion and mysticism, and are always looking for a deeper meaning.

Campaigners are fiercely independent, and much more than stability and security, they crave creativity and freedom.

Many other types are likely to find these qualities irresistible, and if they’ve found a cause that sparks their imagination, Campaigners will bring an energy that oftentimes thrusts them into the spotlight, held up by their peers as a leader and a guru – but this isn’t always where independence-loving Campaigners want to be. Worse still if they find themselves beset by the administrative tasks and routine maintenance that can accompany a leadership position. Campaigners’ self-esteem is dependent on their ability to come up with original solutions, and they need to know that they have the freedom to be innovative – they can quickly lose patience or become dejected if they get trapped in a boring role.

Don’t Lose That ’Little Spark of Madness’

Luckily, Campaigners know how to relax, and they are perfectly capable of switching from a passionate, driven idealist in the workplace to that imaginative and enthusiastic free spirit on the dance floor, often with a suddenness that can surprise even their closest friends. Being in the mix also gives them a chance to connect emotionally with others, giving them cherished insight into what motivates their friends and colleagues. They believe that everyone should take the time to recognize and express their feelings, and their empathy and sociability make that a natural conversation topic.

The Campaigner personality type needs to be careful, however – if they rely too much on their intuition, assume or anticipate too much about a friend’s motivations, they can misread the signals and frustrate plans that a more straightforward approach would have made simple. This kind of social stress is the bugbear that keeps harmony-focused Diplomats awake at night. Campaigners are very emotional and sensitive, and when they step on someone’s toes, they both feel it.

Campaigners will spend a lot of time exploring social relationships, feelings and ideas before they find something that really rings true. But when they finally do find their place in the world, their imagination, empathy and courage are likely to produce incredible results.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Campaigner Strengths

Curious – When it comes to new ideas, Campaigners aren’t interested in brooding – they want to go out and experience things, and don’t hesitate to step out of their comfort zones to do so. Campaigners are imaginative and open-minded, seeing all things as part of a big, mysterious puzzle called life.

Observant – Campaigners believe that there are no irrelevant actions, that every shift in sentiment, every move and every idea is part of something bigger. To satisfy their curiosity, Campaigners try to notice all of these things, and to never miss a moment.

Energetic and Enthusiastic – As they observe, forming new connections and ideas, Campaigners won’t hold their tongues – they’re excited about their findings, and share them with anyone who’ll listen. This infectious enthusiasm has the dual benefit of giving Campaigners a chance to make more social connections, and of giving them a new source of information and experience, as they fit their new friends’ opinions into their existing ideas.

Excellent Communicators – It’s a good thing that Campaigners have such strong people skills, or they’d never express these ideas. Campaigners enjoy both small talk and deep, meaningful conversations, which are just two sides of the same coin for them, and are adept at steering conversations towards their desired subjects in ways that feel completely natural and unforced.

Know How to Relax – It’s not all “nature of the cosmos” discussions with Campaigners – people with this personality type know that sometimes, nothing is as important as simply having fun and experiencing life’s joys. That Intuitive trait lets Campaigners know that it’s time to shake things up, and these wild bursts of enthusiastic energy can surprise even their closest friends.

Very Popular and Friendly – All this adaptability and spontaneity comes together to form a person who is approachable, interesting and exciting, with a cooperative and altruistic spirit and friendly, empathetic disposition. Campaigners get along with pretty much everyone, and their circles of friends stretch far and wide.

Campaigner Weaknesses

Poor Practical Skills – When it comes to conceiving ideas and starting projects, especially involving other people, Campaigners have exceptional talent. Unfortunately their skill with upkeep, administration, and follow-through on those projects struggles. Without more hands-on people to help push day-to-day things along, Campaigners’ ideas are likely to remain just that – ideas.

Find it Difficult to Focus – Campaigners are natural explorers of interpersonal connections and philosophy, but this backfires when what needs to be done is that TPS report sitting right in front of them. It’s hard for Campaigners to maintain interest as tasks drift towards routine, administrative matters, and away from broader concepts.

Overthink Things – Campaigners don’t take things at face value – they look for underlying motives in even the simplest things. It’s not uncommon for Campaigners to lose a bit of sleep asking themselves why someone did what they did, what it might mean, and what to do about it.

Get Stressed Easily – All this overthinking isn’t just for their own benefit – Campaigners, especially Turbulent ones, are very sensitive, and care deeply about others’ feelings. A consequence of their popularity is that others often look to them for guidance and help, which takes time, and it’s easy to see why Campaigners sometimes get overwhelmed, especially when they can’t say yes to every request.

Highly Emotional – While emotional expression is healthy and natural, with Campaigners even viewing it as a core part of their identity, it can come out strongly enough to cause problems for this personality type. Particularly when under stress, criticism or conflict, Campaigners can experience emotional bursts that are counter-productive at best.

Independent to a Fault – Campaigners loathe being micromanaged and restrained by heavy-handed rules – they want to be seen as highly independent masters of their own fates, even possessors of an altruistic wisdom that goes beyond draconian law. The challenge for Campaigners is that they live in a world of checks and balances, a pill they are not happy to swallow.

Romantic Relationships

When it comes to relationships, there’s hardly anyone around who is more excited than Campaigners to share with their partners the bounty of ideas and eye-opening experiences that life has to offer. For people with the Campaigner personality type, relationships are a joyous process of mutual exploration and imagination, a chance to connect with another soul. Campaigners take their relationships seriously, and are known for their uninhibited and unshakeable devotion to the people to whom they’ve committed their hearts.

Campaigners have the advantage of irresistible charm when it comes to attracting a partner – Campaigners’ warmth, excitement and passion are simply alluring.

In the dating phase, if Campaigners can be said to tolerate such a formal process to begin with, they will show these qualities by showering their new flames with affection, and will do everything they can to build a strong relationship by demonstrating their devotion and reliability by whatever means available.

You Cannot Live Without a Fire

Long-distance relationships are quite common among Campaigners, as they view physical distance as just another idea, no match for concepts like love. This gives them the chance to demonstrate their commitment, both by staying true despite the physical separation, and with overtures of effort to surprise their partners, crossing that distance on a whim. These are demonstrations of Campaigners’ mystery, idealism and deep emotion, and such efforts often keep the flames of a relationship burning bright.

People with the Campaigner personality type express these ideals sexually as well, exploring the physical with imagination and passion, viewing these times together as a chance to let their feelings for each other shine, sharing their love and affection. Campaigners will willingly experiment with their partners, even early in a relationship, but they can also be oddly perfectionistic, believing that these physical acts are a representation of their deeper love, and as such should not be performed carelessly. This perfectionism is also a reflection of their sensitivity, their desire to not disappoint, and Campaigners appreciate a well-placed compliment.

Not everyone can handle the excitement, occasional neediness, and emotional ups and downs that this philosophy entails, whether long-distance or long-term, mystical or physical. Campaigners constantly explore new ideas and improvements, fantasize about future possibilities – in dating, this tendency to look at potential rather than the present can be self-defeating, and their spontaneity makes it harder to stay focused on their end goal of a long-term relationship. If their partners aren’t able to reciprocate these acts of excitement and devotion, Campaigners will likely end up feeling unhappy and misunderstood.

So, You Think You Know the Real Me?

Campaigners go all-in with their relationships, and if they fall apart despite their efforts, they can end up plagued with questions about why the relationship failed and what they could have done differently – without a buoy, these thoughts can crush Campaigners’ self-esteem as they sink into depression. It’s important for Campaigner personalities, as with anyone, to remember that relationships are in all ways mutual – mutual interest, mutual growth, and mutual responsibility – and they can’t be solely accountable.

After a trial like this, Campaigners may be reluctant to open up and commit, and it can take years for a partner to navigate their bewildering depth and intensity, falsely believing that Campaigners’ enthusiasm and apparent openness means that they wear everything on their sleeves. The reality is that Campaigners’ spontaneity, the seeming inconsistency and erraticism the untrained eye sees, isn’t a product of flightiness or lack of depth, but the opposite – it is a drive to express ideas about a mystical, all-encompassing energy, in the confines of a physical world, and underlying it all is the uniting principle of love, expressed in many different ways, but unshakeable and infinite at its core.

Friendships

As friends, Campaigners are cheerful and supportive, always sharing and developing ideas, and staying open-minded, taking in others’ thoughts and feelings. This warmth and sincerity makes people with the Campaigner personality type masters of drawing people out of their shells, and as a result they tend to have a huge circle of friends.

As with other relationships, Campaigners view their friendships as opportunities to experience another angle of the universe, and tend to imbue potential friendships with that weighty and idealistic quality.

An Exciting Adventure

More outgoing types will naturally gravitate towards them, but Campaigners will also go to great lengths and be surprisingly persistent in their efforts to get to know more reserved personalities. Their ability to tune into others and speak their language with that characteristic infectious enthusiasm helps them in this endeavor, and the allure of mystery that reserved types, especially Introverted Intuitives, bring to the table will keep Campaigners intrigued for years. These personality types may never be able to reciprocate the breadth of human interest that Campaigners present, but they do appreciate Campaigners’ efforts.

But Campaigners’ interest in others can be a double-edged sword – this pure idealism comes with certain expectations, and too often Campaigners hold their friends in an unrealistic light, expecting them to keep up with the constant flow of ideas and experiences that they consider integral to life. Campaigners put their whole hearts into their friendships, and it can come as a shock for them to find that their friends aren’t the flawless Titans that they believed them to be. Whether it’s simple social fatigue or a focus on the physical and the practical instead of the mystical, people with the Campaigner personality type can find themselves disappointed by what they see as a lack of substance beneath the surface.

Campaigners tend to get deeply involved in others’ lives, going to great lengths and efforts to be the selfless, caring and supportive people they are, and all the while forget to take care of themselves. Both in terms of basic needs like financial stability and rest, as well as more emotional needs like mutual understanding and reciprocation, Campaigner personalities tend to give much more of themselves than most are even capable of giving back. This sort of imbalance isn’t sustainable, as (seemingly) one-sided generosity often leads to criticism and resentment on both sides.

Making Life Spectacular

Luckily, Campaigners are open-minded and sincere enough in their friendships, and connect with and understand even their acquaintances well enough, that they recognize that not everyone expresses themselves in the same ways, and that that’s okay. Their sensitivity may make it too challenging to play with more critical and argumentative personalities, such as strongly expressed Thinking (T) and Judging (J) types, but they do appreciate, even cherish, the company of most anyone who appreciates theirs, and the adventures and experiences they have together are the stuff a good life is made of.

Parenthood

If there is anything that makes Campaigners great parents, it’s the sense of wonder they have for all things new and beautiful, a sense that they will be able to share with their children every day as they learn and grow. Throughout their children’s lives, Campaigners provide a combination of almost overwhelming love and support, and an unstructured environment revolving around freedom and creativity. This in no way means that people with the Campaigner personality type will simply leave their children to their own devices without guidance – rather, Campaigner parents want to share in their children’s perspective, share in a world without bounds.

Campaigner parents are playful and warm, and love to see their children excited, playing in and experimenting with the world around them. It is likely that Campaigner parents will encourage this play and growth by suggesting activities and lessons.

Campaigners will embrace and encourage productive interests as they arise, sweeping away dolls and dinosaurs when interests shift to the oceans, and sweeping away the fish when tastes change again, to the stars.

While they often enough recognize the value of structure and predictability, Campaigner parents are unlikely to have the heart (or as they may see it, the lack of heart) to establish these limitations themselves. They may need to depend on their partners to provide some necessary guidelines and discipline from time to time, but Campaigner parents will always have the advantage of their open-minded and empathetic nature, making them not just parents, but friends who their children feel comfortable confiding in. They needn’t always depend on their children broaching the subject either, as Campaigners have a natural skill in spotting emotional disharmony or physical discomfort in others.

Go On, Spread Your Wings

As their children approach the teenage years, all this emotion and attention can start to cloy, and their children may seek a more private independence. This can be a challenge for people with the Campaigner personality type – they have strong emotions, and invest those emotions heavily in the things and people they care about. While they may not be big on using proven ideas, Campaigners do like to see whether or not their ideas work, and this applies to their thoughts on parenting, too. As their adolescent children withdraw, they leave an unsolved mystery that can last for years, leaving their Campaigner parents wondering if their ideas on raising their children actually work, actually result in happy, independent and creative adults.

Luckily for them, so long as they raise their children with a sense of productive independence, rather than an aimless, against-the-grain antipathy, Campaigners will find that their children have developed a strong sense of self and self-worth, going confidently out into the big, wide world at their own pace and in their own style, knowing that they have both themselves and their Campaigner parents to depend on.

Career Paths

“Can’t I fly helicopters AND be an oceanographer who writes songs and cooks?” It’s a big world out there – perhaps even a little too big. Campaigners are fascinated by new ideas, both in terms of developments in fields they are already familiar with, and when new subjects come along. The trick for people with the Campaigner personality type is to take advantage of this quality, this wonder with the magnificent breadth and detail in the world, and to use it to propel themselves further and deeper than others are willing or able to go.

If there’s a challenge Campaigners face when selecting a career, it isn’t that they lack talent or options or drive, it’s that there are so many things out there that are just cool.

The Opening of a Door Can Be a Wonderfully Joyous Moment

Chief among Campaigners’ talents is their people skills, a quality that is even more valuable now than ever. Even in traditional Analyst strongholds like engineering, systems analysis and the sciences, Campaigners’ ability to network and match the communication styles of their audience means that even as they explore new challenges on their own, they will be able to work with others, explore others’ perspectives and glean new insights into their projects. Much of modern progress stems from incorporating other studies into typically disassociated fields, and no one is better equipped to merge broad interests than talented, energetic and future-minded Campaigners.

And while Thinking types may be better at applying logic to systems and machines, people with the Campaigner personality type are able to apply that same logic to human interactions and networks, using their exceptional social perception to find out what makes people tick. This lends Campaigners a solid foothold in any human science or service, from psychology, counseling and teaching to politics, diplomacy and detective work. All of these fields have another important similarity: they are in constant development, shifting, presenting new angles and new approaches. It’s simply not possible to be good in these fields and content with the way things are, and this is where Campaigners truly shine.

Too Many Bosses, Too Few Workers

Where Campaigners do not shine is in systems of strict regimentation and hierarchy, such as military service. Campaigners thrive on the ability to question the status quo and explore the alternatives, and if this is a quality that is not just unappreciated but actually frowned upon, this will not only make them unhappy, but it may even threaten their emotional stability. Repetition, predictability, boredom… while some Sentinel types may appreciate predictability and clear hierarchies, these are not selling points for Campaigners. People with the Campaigner personality type need to feel like they’re pushing boundaries and exploring ideas, and should focus on interests and careers that encourage that.

Many more career options satisfy these needs, and not just the scientific ones – writing, journalism, acting and TV reporting all give Campaigners a chance to explore something new every day and stir the pot a little while they’re at it. It may come to pass though, that the best way forward for Campaigner personalities is to establish themselves as entrepreneurs and consultants, blazing their own trails and taking on whatever project is most fascinating. So long as they get to use their people skills, identify and achieve their own goals and inspire their colleagues and followers, Campaigners will be happy.

Workplace Habits

There are two basic things that Campaigners seek most in the workplace: The chance to explore new ideas, and the chance to conduct that exploration alongside other people who share their excitement. These qualities show through at all levels of hierarchy, though much like other Diplomat personality types, Campaigners would prefer that there be hardly a hierarchy at all. People with the Campaigner personality type possess warmth, creativity, and an open-mindedness that makes them excellent listeners. If these qualities are recognized by their employers, they will always be able to count on their Campaigner employees to innovate and boost morale.

Campaigner Subordinates

Campaigners are growth-oriented, and as subordinates they’ll impress their managers with their creativity and adaptability. People with the Campaigner personality type are excellent listeners, able to analyze and understand others’ perspectives effortlessly. It’s perhaps this quality that most makes Campaigners intolerant of micromanagement – the way they see it, they understand what’s been asked of them, and all they require is the freedom to accomplish their task. If this need isn’t met, managers may find a quickly stressed Campaigner subordinate.

To a certain extent though, some direct management is often necessary, as Campaigners are notorious for letting their attention slip from one project to the next before they’ve dotted their I’s and crossed their T’s. Campaigners love exploring new ideas and learning new things, and once something becomes familiar, its allure starts to fade. But, if managers are able to maintain a spirit of guidance and camaraderie instead of "bossiness", they will find loyal and devoted contributors in their Campaigner subordinates.

Campaigner Colleagues

Campaigners are people-people, and as far as the workplace is concerned, this quality shows through best among colleagues. More than just coworkers, Campaigners view their colleagues as friends, people who they take a genuine interest in, providing support and cheer when they’re down or stressed. People with the Campaigner personality type are warm and optimistic, always searching for and usually finding win-win situations for everyone.

Brainstorms among equals are Campaigners’ forte, and they listen to different viewpoints and suggestions not just with tolerance, but genuine excitement. Their ability to relax and have fun will always make them popular around the water cooler, but what sets Campaigners apart is that they can transition that popularity into natural leadership, instinctively picking up on colleagues’ motivations and pulling their teams together, pushing them forward towards whatever truth they’ve been tasked to find.

Campaigner Managers

Campaigners are not great fans of heavy hierarchy and bureaucracy, and this is most evident when they take on the role of manager. As managers, Campaigner personalities behave much like they do as colleagues – they establish real friendships, and use their broad popularity to inspire and motivate, taking on the role of leader, working alongside their subordinates, rather than shouting from behind their desks. Campaigners will tend to believe in the concept of intrinsic motivation, the idea that things are worth doing for their own sake, not because of some convoluted system of punishments and rewards.

Unfortunately, not everyone buys into this philosophy – challenges arise when faced with subordinates who actually prefer to be closely directed, with clearly defined objectives and timetables, people who are just doing their jobs. More challenging still are those rare moments when a reprimand is simply necessary – while Campaigners prefer to meet dissent with an open ear, and to use their excellent capacity for sensing mood and morale to preempt such an act to begin with, sometimes the carrot and the stick are necessary, and using them is the biggest challenge for the Campaigner personality type. But Campaigners’ capacity for adjusting their communication to most any style will always shine through, helping to smooth things over and adapt to the needs of their team.

Conclusion

Few personality types are as creative and charismatic as Campaigners. Known for their idealism and enthusiasm, Campaigners are good at dealing with unexpected challenges and brightening the lives of those around them. Campaigners’ imagination is invaluable in many areas, including their own personal growth.

Yet Campaigners can be easily tripped up in areas where idealism and kindness are more of a liability than an asset. Whether it is finding (or keeping) a partner, staying calm under pressure, reaching dazzling heights on the career ladder or making difficult decisions, Campaigners need to put in a conscious effort to develop their weaker traits and additional skills.

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(Photo comes from Dale Carnegie) Managers can agree that employee engagement and retention are at the top of their priority list. Many have found that an employee recognition platform, like NectarHR, helps to keep both in-house and remote employees engaged regardless of proximity. Every company wants to attract and keep the best talent. The problem? Many employees in today’s job market quickly feel uninspired by their work, get bored after 2 years and start job hunting for something new. Quick turnover drains companies, both financially and creatively. Quantifying exactly how much it costs businesses to replace every employee who leaves is a challenge, but estimates are out there. Here are some highlights from a collection of estimates on the costs of employee turnover: 6 to 9 months salary. (That’s well over half what you pay an employee in a year. For an employee making $100,000 a year, the cost of turnover could be as high as roughly $75,000. Ouch.) 16% of annual salary for jobs with traditionally high turnover, such as entry-level media jobs 20% of annual salary for jobs requiring mid-level experience 213% (not a typo!) of annual salary for top-level executive positions, including CEOs All these numbers point to the same basic conclusion: employee turnover is expensive. Outside of financial burdens, employee turnover puts a ceiling on the quality of a team or individual’s work. The reason? Companies with high turnover have fewer employees with a high degree of institutional knowledge. If most employees leave a company after just a few years, then the company never benefits from that golden combination of skills, talent, and critical institutional knowledge that helps business thrive. So we decided to speak with some of the best HR professionals and business leaders around the country to find the strategies and employee engagement best practices that they recommend. There are also some tips and employee engagement ideas that work for our company. Top 10 Best Employee Engagement Ideas & Activities: 1. Promote transparency and collaboration The modern workplace is evolving quickly as office locations expand and work-from-home becomes more normal. With this, organizations are met with the increasing challenge of maintaining transparency and team collaboration while working on projects together remotely. Using a software like monday.com allows for your virtual team to stay connected and fully engaged on projects regardless of physical proximity. Make it your own: When you are collaborating at the highest level with your co-workers you feel the most engaged with your work. Think of monday.com as your company culture platform that acts as collaboration work operating system. This work OS helps you manage your available capabilities and resources, directing them to complete tasks as efficiently as possible with your team. Employee Engagement Idea: Promote transparency and collaboration Click To Tweet 2. Have more fun Take a half day Friday to do something fun together. Go on a scavenger hunt, play sports outdoors, go paint-balling or bowling. These social events help people bond with others on the team who they don’t interact with on a daily basis and builds a better sense of community within your organization. Working remotely? No problem! Here are some of our favorite virtual ways to have fun worth checking out: Happy Hour Box – virtual happy hour Go Game – virtual game show  City Brew Tours – virtual beer & cheese tasting Let’s Roam –  virtual team trivia event The Escape Game – virtual escape room Outback Team Building – virtual murder mystery Pro-tip: Make virtual feel more personal with Hoppier virtual gift cards. Drive employee engagement with Hoppier virtual spending cards that enable your participants to order breakfast, drinks, or lunch at your next virtual event. Make it your own: Choose a curated employee care package to send out for an unforgettable company outing that everyone on your team will rave about for years. 3. Value-based employee recognition While most companies have core values, few can make the claim they actually live by them. If you want to be the exception, create an employee recognition program aligned with your company core values so peers can celebrate each other for living up to them. Platforms like Fond make it easy to design a custom recognition program centered around your unique core values. When you launch a value-based recognition program, ensure everyone on your team knows what your company core values look like in practice by pointing to specific examples of behaviors that exemplify them. This makes it easier for employees to know what to recognize each other for in the future. Recognition is a powerful tool for building culture because it capitalizes on positive reinforcement to encourage more of the behaviors you choose to recognize. So you can imagine, when recognition is used to support company core values, those values become deeply ingrained in company culture. 4. Measure real-time employee engagement The most important part of your efforts to improve employee engagement this year needs to start by measuring it. That said, measuring what matters – looking beyond the ‘noise’ of data the enterprise systems throw at you, is essential to focus on your organization’s core engagement drivers. This is when research-based survey tools like that of Xoxoday Empuls’ help you accurately gauge the effectiveness of your engagement efforts. With eNPS, pulse and customizable pre-built templates, this tool helps you feel on the employee pulse. Empuls also offers heat maps, key drivers and KPI linkage analytics that help you turn employee feedback into actionable insights. The built-in survey features of Empuls help you capture the effectiveness of your employee engagement program and plan future activities on an easy-to-use dashboard. 5. Show employees how their job advances the company’s vision Your company has undoubtedly recorded its vision and goals for the year. Why not show employees exactly how their jobs advance the vision? This will boost each employee’s investment in the success of the company instead of just feeling like a cog in the wheel. Here are some ideas for showing employees how they contribute to the company vision: Sit down with a list of a specific employee’s responsibilities. Create a flowchart that demonstrates how those duties ultimately lead to fulfilling the company vision. For example, if the responsibility is “managing Instagram” and your company vision is “changing the way the world purchases homes,” then highlight how Instagram engagement creates long-term brand recognition and has the potential to influence the way a younger generation purchases homes, especially when they’re ready to take the plunge in a few years. Ask your CEO for a quote that explains how the particular employee’s role contributes to the company vision. Have the quote printed in a postcard format. The employee can pin the postcard on the wall as a constant reminder and motivator. 6. Emphasize work-life balance Work-life balance often seems like an impossible struggle. It’s difficult to find that right balance between work and personal life to feel good that both areas are receiving enough attention. Blake McCammon of Blogging4Jobs, a popular blog focused on HR and the workplace, had this to say about work-life balance’s role in employee engagement: “Work-life balance is one of the most important things employers can do to help employees not only stay healthy and fit, but keep them engaged day by day. Provide a work from home scenario and flexible hours where employees with children or adults with hobbies are allowed the freedom to enjoy life to the fullest, but still get their work done.” Work-life balance is going to mean something different for each employee, so speak with your team to see what you can be doing better as an organization to enhance it. Often times you’ll find that a flexible work schedule will be the easiest way to help people feel more balanced between work and leisure. Employee Engagement Tip: Emphasize work-life balance Click To Tweet 7. Send gifts that show you care with Caroo Engage your employees with tangible tokens of your appreciation using the Caroo employee care platform. Caroo’s expertly curated items are more than just cool gifts; they’re symbols of your regard, items that help employees, including those in the growing remote workforce, feel more connected to their teams and their missions. Get your employees inspired and connected with a Mindfulness Box, nourish their productive spirits with a Snacks + Coffee Box, or even talk to a gift expert to get recommendations that cater to your team’s unique interests and needs. 8. Allow employees to move laterally within the organization There are times when employees (especially the younger ones) are still figuring out their career paths. If a member of your team finds something else at your company that they’re passionate about and want to pursue, create a roadmap to get them there. This will help you retain some of your young talent when they might have otherwise abandoned ship. 9. Give your employees more responsibility, not just more tasks to do Working at a company that highly values morale has given me some interesting insight on how to engage employees. I’ve noticed that the times my coworkers are incredibly devoted to our work, where states of “flow” seem to be abundant, are when they are given real responsibility. This shouldn’t be confused with giving your team more things or tasks to do. I’m talking about giving them important projects and initiatives to take ownership of and knock out of the park. Humans are inherently goal-oriented, so when you give them something worth achieving, I believe you’ll be amazed at how much purpose and drive it gives them. If you’re a manager, give one of your direct reports an important project to be the lead on. On the flip side, ask your manager to take on a project that you think will help you grow and learn something new. Even if it’s something you have no experience doing – when you see your goal as being important to the success of the company you’ll find a way to get it done. And I promise you’ll feel more purpose from your work than ever. Employee Engagement Tip: Give your employees more responsibility, not just more tasks to do Click To Tweet 10. Get your health and wellness program in order Kevin Sheridan, New York Times best-selling Author of Building a Magnetic Culture, has helped some of the world’s largest corporations improve their culture and foster productive engagement. When we asked him what companies should be doing better to improve workplace engagement, he offered us this wisdom: “The bottom line is that anyone who knows about employee engagement is also a firm believer in instituting health and wellness programs. There have been multiple scientific studies proving that health and wellness efforts not only yield higher productivity and engagement in the workplace but will also help reduce turnover as job stress is the #1 reason people quit (along with a lack of work-life balance which is related to wellness as well).” Make it your own: Pick and choose from wellness program ideas that suit your team. If your office is full of natural foodies, then you might consider regular market excursions. If fitness is your team’s thing, then you can hold a fitness challenge. If your employees want to create custom challenges with topics and incentives that are relevant/meaningful to them, we recommend checking out a wellness initiative platform like Bonusly. 11. Give your people “inside” information Want to know some great team engagement ideas to get your staff more involved and committed? Keep them up to date with “inside” information. These are things like the direction of the company and the challenges that the Leadership Team is facing. Tim Sackett, HR Pro and President at HRU Technical Resources, explains this important part of your employee engagement strategy: “The one true fact in all workplaces is your people want to be in the know, they want to be in the circle of trust.  HR and leadership, in general, do a crappy job at this, and it has a huge impact to engagement. Find ways to make this happen and let your people know that it’s “inside” information. Trusting your employees can handle it raises engagement.” Employee Engagement Tip: Give your people inside information Click To Tweet 12. Bring in an in-office motivational speaker To shake up the workday, or start Monday off with some inspiration, Cooleaf recommends hiring a motivational speaker to come into the office. Maybe your team would benefit from a creativity workshop or team-building seminar to improve in-office relationships. Employees will be grateful for the opportunity to grow and learn from experts and will come out of these experiences more energized and focused. 13. Stand for something your team can be proud of Irene Becker, voted as one of the Top 100 Employee Engagement Experts Online, answers the questions of how companies can drive and sustain staff engagement activities at a time when engagement is at an all time low: “By showing our employees that we care, that we stand for something they can be proud of, and that we offer them meaningful, purposeful work and an opportunity to grow, learn, contribute and succeed because we know that success is a me to WE equation that starts with: 1.  Personal, professional development and a structure for growth, recognition and are alive in the organization. 2.  Managers, mentors and trainers that are equipped to coach, inspire and bring out the best in their people. 3.  Communities of purpose; groups that are centered around a purpose driven business, CSR or community activity are alive, aligning shared values and mission with collaboration. 4.  Transparency of communication and the integrity of the organizations commitment to growth, recognition and the optimization of individual and collective potential is mirrored in new ways of developing team spirit and vertical/horizontal collaboration. 5.  Human interaction, social activities that engage our people as human beings in the human side of being part of a vibrant, growing, thriving culture.” Employee Engagement Idea: Stand for something your team can be proud of Click To Tweet 14. Prevent the “Sunday Scaries” with Monday trivia It’s no secret that the Sunday scaries strike many employees before they head back to work on Monday morning. The best way to prevent them? Give employees an engaging activity on Monday mornings. The automated weekly trivia contests from Water Cooler Trivia can be scheduled for Monday mornings. Participants submit their responses at any point during the day and then the results are delivered right to the inbox the next morning. “70% of HR leaders recently reported employee morale as their top challenge and we’ve heard this directly from folks managing teams while they transition to remote work. Our goal at Water Cooler Trivia is to build culture with a simple, low-stakes weekly trivia contest . They spark conversation around the proverbial water cooler in a low-stakes, low-cost way. As the CEO of a major consulting firm told us recently… ‘this is always something I look forward to during the week, and as many work from home an important source of diversion for a mental health break!’ –Collin Waldoch, Co-Founder at Water Cooler Trivia The trivia is super-customizable so you can choose the categories and difficulty that work for your team. You can even choose a “personalized” category like Coffee, NYC, or Tech that their professional question-writers will write just for you. It’s like all the fun of pub trivia but without the logistics of coming up with questions or getting everyone together in the same room at the same time. Plus the first four weeks are totally free and easy to get started. 15. Find out what your team members are passionate about Are they into mountain biking? Do they write a personal blog? Do they want to backpack around Southeast Asia next summer? Know what your team is passionate about. It’ll help you connect with them and show them that you actually care about their interests. Frequently ask teammates about their passions and even try to find ways to integrate their interests into the workplace. For example, if someone does the job of an accountant by day but harbors a passion for art by night, then suggest that he or she shadows someone in the Art Department for a day. If an employee loves to play badminton and complains that she never has anyone to play with, consider forming a casual company league. 16. Promote perks that boost mental and physical wellbeing Perks can help make your office a more fun place to work. JellyVision Interactive Marketing offers these awesome unique perks to their employees: Unlimited vacation days (with the assumption this privilege won’t be abused) The ability to work from home whenever necessary or work out an unconventional schedule On-site yoga and a free healthy catered lunches every week (Pro Tip: Check out ezCater for your office catering needs. Like their name implies, they making ordering food for your team super simple!) Refrigerators and cupboards stocked with fruit and healthy snacks for the entire office A yearly Wellness Day featuring free 15-minute back massages for every employee and a taste test of unusual, healthy juices Mustache Day (a sort of mustache-themed Halloween that culminates in a fancy lunch out) Frequent company-wide involvement in charity fun runs Beyond all these employee benefits, JellyVision also told us that they reduce work anxiety for their employees by 1) hiring nice, funny, talented people who become the sort of colleagues who make the day more enjoyable and 2) by nurturing a culture of transparency, humor and kindness—a way of being that is modeled by their founder, Harry, and CEO, Amanda. Check out our list of corporate wellness ideas to give your wellness program some new life. Employee Engagement Idea: Promote perks that boost mental and physical wellbeing Click To Tweet 17. Hand out limited edition swag Try celebrating work anniversaries, performance achievements, and company events by offering limited edition swag. (The scarcity could make your giveaways more desirable and enhance employees’ motivation to reach goals and benchmarks.) Swag.com offers customizable products in tons of categories, making it easy for you to create “limited edition” items by simply swapping out designs on apparel, electronics, fitness gear, and more.  Here are some ideas: Get hoodies with a “new employees of 2021” design  Order duffels printed with a design reflective of your annual retreat theme  Make yoga mats featuring your favorite motivational quote for the upcoming business quarter  If you have employees that work remotely, send them a customizable Work From Home Swag Kit for them to rock their limited edition swag around town.   Make it your own: Focus your limited edition swag on events and achievements unique to your company. You’ll love watching employees gawk enviously at a veteran employee’s 2010 crepe-and-karaoke night hat or share an inside joke when they accidentally wear the same 2020 annual sock-puppet freestyle T-shirt. 18. Provide ongoing coaching and employee training Coaching and mentoring shouldn’t stop after an employee’s initial on-boarding process. A study done by Deloitte in 2012 found that retention is 25% higher for employees who have engaged in company-sponsored mentorship. Some people in your organization will proactively seek mentors and training, while others will need it to come directly from their manager. Offer an optional weekly coaching session to discuss strategies and tactics that can help each member of the department improve in their role, and make them fun! For more tactics for creating a world-class Employee Experience, listen to culture expert Kelly Keegan on the Brand Builder podcast: 19. Open consistent lines of communication Ask the managers of your organization to setup a weekly meeting to see where their direct reports need resources, any new ideas they have, and how things are going in their role. You’ll find that both managers and direct reports will look forward to these meetings and use them like a strategy session to improve their department on a weekly basis. Engaged companies rely on open internal communications and remote work softwares to drive performance within teams. If you’re looking for growth ideas for employees then a DR meeting would be at the top of the list. Make it your own: There are plenty of ways to communicate in the workplace. Check out these strategies to find a method that excites you. 20. Capture the magic of your team’s “I’s” “To improve employee engagement, capture the magic of the I’s in team: integrity, initiative, individual talents, and invaluable diversity. Highlight each individual’s talents and how they contribute to the whole.” –Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™ Employee Engagement Idea: Capture the magic of your team's I's Click To Tweet 21. Make sure new hires get to know the whole team An employee who feels cared for and is surrounded by people who bond with them is much more likely to feel happy and engaged at work. We all get to know our bosses and direct reports pretty well, but it’s also important for new team members to build relationships with the rest of the staff. UserVoice demonstrates this point well – they invite the whole staff to a game night whenever someone new joins the company. The company offers free beer, a game (think board games or pool/ping-pond/darts) and a “ridiculous sort of quiz” they invented. 22. Praise your co-workers It shouldn’t only be left to managers to praise good work. When you hear about someone’s achievement, go over and personally congratulate them. It’ll mean a lot to that person and they’ll likely do the same for you when your big wins come through. If part of your team is remote, activating an employee recognition software can drastically improve virtual employee engagement and make praising your co-workers a breeze to do when you can’t physically congratulate them at their desk! Make it your own: Find a way of offering recognition that works for your personality and your schedule. This will make your intentions easier to deliver on. If you like using digital tools to make your life easier, then employee recognition platforms like Bonusly have everything you need – we’ve used Bonusly at SnackNation for years and love it. Bonusly makes it incredibly fun and easy for you to recognize coworkers. (And fun + easy = a sustainable long-term employee engagement strategy!) Choosing to write a heartfelt letter once a month to the members of your team is also another surefire way to show your co-workers that you care and know them on a personal level. This feeling of connection has a profound effect on work productivity and remote company culture. 23. Ditch the Cubicles Whether you’ve seen them in employee engagement films like Office Space, or experienced them yourself, cubicles are quickly dying out. Today, the most engaged companies opt for office decor and cool office supplies that promote comfort and collaboration, not seclusion. So cut out the cubicles and replace them with spacious, open desks. The possibilities for creating an open air office environment are endless, so be creative, and have fun with it! 24. Know your company culture and hire by it If you know your company culture and hire by it, you’ll continue onboarding employees who want to work with the person next to them. A positive corporate culture starts with the relationships between co-workers as well as collaborative dynamics in addition to consistent messages about values and the company mission. If you haven’t already, take some time to brainstorm your company’s cultural vision and even get it down in writing. Spend some time with co-workers and pinpoint the key attributes everyone seems to have in common. Once you’ve established a list of qualities, it will be easier to determine if an interviewee will fit into your culture. Keep the qualities specific to find the best fits. Almost anyone will be “nice” and “personable” during an interview, so it’s important to quickly go beyond the surface level with candidates in the hiring process.  There’s a simple, three-word phrase to help you develop a deep understanding of the character and motivations of any candidate you’re interviewing – “and then what.” Constantly pushing an interviewee to provide more depth will help you quickly get to the root of his or her point of view, and help you determine if he or she possesses those attributes you identified as core to your company culture. 25. Encourage volunteering Show your commitment to community and social responsibility by giving your employees a couple of hours each month to get out of the office and participate in community service. Make it your own: Have different employees choose a cause to support every month. This helps ensure that… Everyone can volunteer for causes they’re passionate about Everyone can share that passion with their co-workers The SnackNation team volunteering at Feeding America 26. Hold office hours This is one of the most significant employee engagement programs for upper management. Holding office hours is a great way to make yourself more approachable to the entire company. Allow people to come in for office hours to give feedback, talk concerns, and explore new ideas. 27. Build more trust  An overbearing boss who is constantly micromanaging might just be the fastest way to create disengagement. Trust your employees to accomplish the work you give them without checking up on them 4 times a day. Plus, other insights suggest that trust doesn’t just inspire employees to do their jobs; it might actually encourage employees to go above and beyond their assignments. Trusted employees collaborate better together, and because they’re empowered, they might seek opportunities to take on even more responsibility. 28. Send out some Monday Motivation Find an inspirational quote or page from a book and send it out to your team on Monday mornings. It’s a super easy way to get people motivated and inspired and a day that’s typically slow to start. Photo belongs to QuotesEverlasting via Flickr’s Creative Commons License 29. Create a roadmap to achieve professional goals Find out what your employees’ professional goals are and make sure they’re on a track to achieve those goals. Managers should sit down with their direct reports and plan the roadmap to get them to that next promotion or to acquire the skills they desire. Employee Engagement Idea: Create a roadmap to achieve professional goals Click To Tweet 30. Incentivize goals Create some healthy competition and reward excellent performance with incentives for successful goal achievement. Tickets to a game, dinner for two or are inexpensive ideas that can help people feel more invested in their work. Make it your own: Your incentive options are as diverse and varied as the employees you’re rewarding. Experiment with different reward ideas and see what really gets that glowing reaction you’re looking for. 31. Have a weekly food day Pick a day of the week where one employee brings in treats to share with the team. Eventually, looking forward to food day will be a major bonding moment for the whole team. Not to mention some employees will even love the chance to show off their baking prowess. Pro-tip: When it is not super convenient to assign treats for someone to bring, it may make sense to investigate your local eateries and see if any of them make food ordering easy. An office catered lunch can be an excellent way to support a local business while encouraging everyone to socialize during a team lunch! 32. Take weekly song requests It’s Friday afternoon and your whole office is united by one thought: going home. Reinvigorate the team by taking song requests to blast over the PA system in the final hour of the workweek. Employees will love sharing their favorite songs to boost morale. 33. Let someone else lead weekly meetings If you’re a leader at your organization, your team probably get to hear you talk…a lot. Share your responsibilities and increase engagement by asking a different person lead your meetings every week. 34. Start a learning club Get your employees more engaged in their work by asking them to think big. Start a learning club where employees select books or videos related to your work for everyone to enjoy. Pick a day where everyone piles into a conference room to discuss the item and its implications for your work. Make it your own: Change up the location of your meetings, offer different snacks, or even make group T-shirts. There are so many ways to make your learning club unique to your team. You can even give yourselves a name based on an inside joke only people on your team would understand. (Next step: Secret knocks and secret handshakes.) 35. Start a newsletter But instead of having the “head honchos” or even Human Resources send it, form a committee of employees who want to coordinate it. The volunteers will love the chance to share what they find important and the readers will love getting company news from their peers. Make it your own: Company newsletters don’t have to be boring emails. Make the newsletter your own. Do a comical video blog or maybe an old-fashioned take on a vintage newspaper, complete with cheesy headlines. Check out our guide to company newsletters to get started. 36. Ban emails for a day Pick one day every month to ban emailing. If someone has a question, they’ll have to go talk to their coworkers in person. Even if they only talk for a few seconds, that face-to-face interaction with coworkers makes priceless employee engagement moments. 37. Show them the “people” results of their work If you send recaps of company progress to your employees, don’t just tell them your customers are happy, show them. Add a glowing testimonial from your customer base, clients or nonprofit constituency to the email so your employees can see how their work impacts real people. 38. Always act on feedback Let’s say you survey your employees monthly to find out how they’re feeling. While some of their desires and wishes might be difficult to act on, send them updates explaining the progress you’ve made towards addressing their concerns, even if it’s just scheduling a meeting with your CEO. Not acting on employees’ valuable feedback will kill employee engagement. 39. Consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Dust off that old triangle chart we all know and love from Psychology 101, because Maslow’s hierarchy might have implications for employee engagement. Beyond the salary and the benefits, employees want to know that their work matters. Try working the implications of their efforts into annual reviews instead of just focusing on their performance. While it’s wonderful they completed a special project on time and within budget, go a step further and explain the project’s greater impact on the company. 40. Use Glassdoor to your advantage Glassdoor offers a raw source of employee feedback that might be incredibly valuable if you’re brave enough to dig into it. Even if the comments seem negative, they could give you insight into how your employees really feel. As you sort through comments, revealing patterns should emerge to spotlight areas of employee relations you need to improve. 41. Let them experience a day in the life of… Send out an Excel sheet with a list of positions in your company or department and have employees vote for a position they would like to do for a day. Let the person currently in that position give them a day of training before they launch into their day on the job. Make it your own: Your “day in the life” can be as structured or as open-ended as you like. You could include a presentation portion where people shared what they learned with the entire group. You could have employees complete a no-pressure assignment to “test” (all in good fun) how much they really learned. You could even stage a little improv show where employees pretend to be the person they shadowed. 42. Bring in a specialist With research showing a large chunk of the workforce does not feel engaged at work (see the featured image at the top of this post), the availability of employee engagement tools and services has skyrocketed. For you, that means you can find help if you’re completely lost. For example, some companies have brought in something called a corporate anthropologist who will study your company and your employees with the end goal of improving the overall business. 43. Engage employees through gamification Some people invest more in the games they play after work than they do in their actual work…the work that pays the bills. Why is that? Games leverage instant feedback and compelling goals to keep players coming back for more. Now, companies like Bunchball hope to bring these elements into workplaces to engage employees in ways that go beyond a regular paycheck and benefits. 44. Let them ditch a task Ask your employees which tasks they hate above all others. Sometimes, even one dreaded task might create the feeling of on-the-job misery. Look at the list carefully and consider how you can juggle some responsibilities to make everyone happier. One employee’s most hated task could be another’s favorite. 45. Stop before you start This post from the Talent Space Blog says the first step in any employee engagement initiatives is to stop. This stop gives you time to consider why you’re starting the initiative in the first place and to think about barriers to success. Condense your reason for starting the initiative into a mission statement that you can use to guide you through every move, so you don’t get bogged down with unnecessary initiatives. 46. Demonstrate genuine care The Disney Institute believes consistently demonstrating genuine care makes employees feel happy and engaged. You can demonstrate genuine care in endless ways. One of the institute’s ideas involves finding out what’s bugging your team. Maybe they hate their office chair or would love to have some upbeat music playing while they work. In this case, it’s the little things that go a long way in showing you care. Make it your own: Think about moments in your life when you felt truly cared for. Have you had any co-workers that truly warmed your heart with their kindness? Channel these memories into recreating warm experiences for your employees or co-workers. 47. Have completely open brainstorms Image belongs to Juhan Sonin Throw away that meeting rule book and schedule meetings without agendas or target outcomes. Have completely open brainstorm meetings where you throw away limitations and volley around some big ideas. Guide the discussion by throwing out an area of your business you would like to improve. Keep these brainstorms positive by creating a few ground rules. Ask employees to keep their minds open and to avoid shutting down others’ ideas with mocking laughter, negative automatic responses, and skeptical questions that could block the flow of ideas. Remind them to focus not on the how, but the what and why. Why is it so important to keep the brainstorms open? According to LinkedIn’s Inside the Mind of Today’s Candidate report, 51% of employees say “having opportunities to freely express themselves” makes them feel a sense of belonging at work. 48. Have problem-solving meetings Everyone takes a different approach to problem-solving. Schedule meetings where you reveal a big problem facing the company with complete transparency. Let employees take a crack at explaining how they would solve it. Employees will feel more engaged in company outcomes and they might just solve a few problems while they’re at it. Make it your own: These meetings can be any format you like. You can have off-site jam sessions or in-office power lunches. You can keep it structured by outlining the entire event or jump in to see what happens. Choose a structure that mimics how your team likes to work. If you’re not sure how your team likes to work, then simply ask yourself this question: Is your team full of mostly planners or pantsers (people who fly by the seat of their pants)? 49. Give them ownership of event planning Who has a better handle on the events your employees will love than your employees themselves? Instead of trying to think of company outings that your whole team will love, get your team involved in the planning process. Ask for event ideas and seek out volunteers who want to coordinate regular outings. 50. Start an office design committee While it might seem superficial at first glance, giving your employees a chance to be more invested in what they look at everyday could do wonders for engagement. Start an employee design committee to let your employees take some ownership in the place they work. Plus, the personal touches will make the office feel like home. 51. Define what employee engagement means for your company If you’re struggling to come up with good employee engagement activities, it might be time to take a step back. The word “employee engagement” alone doesn’t give you anything you can visualize. Try considering what it means for your own employees to be engaged specifically. Once you figure out what employee engagement looks like in your company, you can set your sights on achieving it. Here are some employee engagement examples of definitions: Engaged employees always ask what else they can do to improve the company. Engaged employees ask questions during meetings and show up to work on time every day. Engaged employees meet their deadlines. Engaged employees spend half the day at their desks and half the day communicating with co-workers Engaged employees frequently share exciting new ideas with their bosses. Engaged employees request opportunities for personal development. 52. Put someone in the hot seat Engage your employees with a quick bonding event at the beginning of your weekly meetings. Pick one employee and tape a “hot seat” sign to their chair. For the first minute of the meeting, other employees will shout out their favorite things about the person in the hot seat. 53. Have show and tell Your employees probably have tons of ideas that could help the company. However, they might not have anywhere to share them. Have a quarterly show and tell where employees can present tools, information and ideas they believe might do the company good. 54. Get employees involved in long-term projects Organize employees from different departments into teams to tackle long-term projects that involve responsibilities outside of their typical scope of work. Not only will they get to know people they don’t work with on a day-to-day basis, they’ll pick up skills from one another as they work on important projects. 55. Set ground rules for emotional intelligence It’s not just company policies that make people disengaged at work. It might also be close-minded coworkers that shut down their ideas. Set an expectation that your employees follow a “yes and…” mindset. This simply means creating a culture where everyone’s ideas are met with open minds, and not negativity. 56. Talk to them about their schedules Your employees might seem distracted or disengaged, but maybe it has nothing to do with work. Let’s say Karen’s daughter has a piano recital every Wednesday at 4 PM and she’s distant at that time, wishing she could be there. Find out what outside events might be keeping your employees distracted and work with them to adjust their schedules to accommodate their busy lives. 57. Believe in the power of explanation When you send an employee work with changes or request a re-do, make sure those requests come along with a detailed explanation. Employees who always see their worked rejected or marked up will become frustrated and disengaged. Explaining the changes helps them understand your thought process and increases their desire to improve. 58. Offer points for taking work-related open source courses The internet is exploding with a selection of free, open source courses from major universities. Many of your employees would probably love to take one, but simply don’t have the free time. Come up with a points system in your office that offers employees incentives for taking work-related courses. Maybe they get bonus points if they give a presentation on what they learned. Make it your own: You might list a “course of the week” based on the skills your team needs to succeed. You could also keep it completely open-ended. Will you offer to subsidize employees who want to take courses that involve certificates? Or would you rather offer your own branded certificates of completion to create a sense of ceremony? You decide. 59. Start a “distracted” jar There will be times when your team feels like they can’t possibly focus. Show them that you understand (and have a sense of humor about it) by creating a “distracted jar.” Fill it with activities, jokes and even things to Google when they feel like they can’t work for another minute. Help them get the distractions out of their system so they can continue on with an engaged workday. Want even more ideas to improve employee engagement? Here are 12 bonus ideas! 60. Form a Culture Committee This has been one of the best ideas we’ve implemented at SnackNation to make sure we stay on top of doing fun things together as a company. Here’s how one of our Committee members describes it: Culture Committee is comprised of individuals from each department who act as ambassadors. These ambassadors model our core values, and ensure the culture is steadily moving in the right direction. Whether Communication/Hype, Events, Wellness, Philanthropy, and day to day celebrations we have a sub committee dedicated to setting up and executing events, all while tackling our ultimate goal of breaking silos between departments. Making our office more like a home. We strive to create the “weather” of the company. Bringing the sunshine even when/if someone feels like they are in a thunderstorm of stress. 61. Epic new-hire intros At SnackNation, we take new hire intros very seriously. Rather than explain with words, here’s a video that shows how we do it: 62. Give people a chance to set their own goals Create a goal setting system that gives team members the opportunity to set their own goals. People are more likely to be motivated by a project or goal that they set for themselves, versus one that was set for them by their manager. A good starting point is to allow your team to create a list of goals/projects they want to complete for the upcoming goal period. Here’s an example from a member of our Marketing Team: Managers should then work with their direct reports to refine that list into goals/projects that align with the department’s (and company’s) goals. Depending on your organization, this could be monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, or annually. Once goals have been set, employees break those bigger goals into smaller ones each week. We use a system called Crucial Results to do just that. Here’s how it works. 63. Offer to pay for professional development Is there an industry conference that someone on your team would love to attend? Perhaps your HR professional would love to go to one of the top HR conferences. Or maybe an online course that they’ve been dying to get their hands on? Maybe your marketing team would love to learn email marketing from the newest and hottest course. Invest in your team’s growth is one of the best you can make as a manager. It’s a win-win because they get to improve on a skill, and in turn, they help your organization improve. 64. Write a hand-written note to recognize exceptional work When was the last time you got a hand-written note? With a world that is constantly wrapped up in digital communication, doing something “old school” like a hand-written note stands out to people. Bonus points for cards written by someone like the CEO or President. 65. Create a team mascot Meet Rudy, our Member Success Team’s mascot: What mascot best represents your team? 66. Team lunches We break bread with each other to bond. To share stories, relate to one another, and pass the salad. Break bread as a team and watch the relationships blossom. 67. Team walks Like team lunches, taking a walk together gives your team the chance to take a rejuvenating break from work while connecting with their colleagues. And in case you hadn’t heard, people with a best friend at work are 7x more likely to engage fully in their work. 68. Have your CEO and/or President host a monthly Q&A Monthly Q&A has been another hit at SnackNation HQ. Our CEO (Sean Kelly) and President (Ryan Schneider) take 1 company all-hands meeting each month and use it to field any questions people have about the company. Our team can submit questions via an anonymous Google form, or they can ask live during the 30-minute Q&A. We really value these Q&A’s because it gives our leaders the opportunity to be fully transparent with the team. 69. Lunch & Learns (hosted by employees) This is another SnackNation favorite. Once or twice a month, we let a member of the SN team host a lunch and learn on any subject they’re passionate about. Prior topics have been wide ranging – from personal finance to cryptocurrencies to persuasion. 70. Play “musical chairs” In many modern offices, employees don’t technically need a permanent place to sit. Sure, everyone needs a home base when they come into work each day, but do they really need to sit in the same space for years? Consider moving employees around on a comfortable, regular basis so everyone gets the chance to sit in different parts of the office and truly get to know all their coworkers. (Let’s face it: a few kitchen interactions will not bring employees closer, but six months as desk neighbors can solidify lasting bonds.) In addition to exposing employees to people, they may not have worked with before, playing “musical chairs” also keeps employees engaged and excited for work simply by introducing change. By shaking things up, you just might give employees the shake-up they need to think of a new idea or solve a problem they’ve been chipping at for months. 71. Start a “vent” box A vent box is the evil twin of the suggestion box. Encourage employees to fill the box with their complaints, but be sure to keep anonymity sacred. Your employees’ deepest frustrations might also be excellent opportunities for learning. 72. Offer lifestyle spending accounts as a perk A perk that has quickly become mainstream for its flexibility, personalization, and cost and time-saving benefits for HR, a Lifestyle Spending Account is an employer-funded account for employees to spend on perks. With Lifestyle Spending Accounts, HR experts create a perk budget for their team and each employee gets the power to use that money to pick exactly what perk s/he/they want and need most. By personalizing your perks, you actively support your employees’ individual needs which demonstrates you care and want to help them reach their full potential. And that will always increase their happiness and engagement at work! “While employees are asking for more personalized rewards, only 8% of companies report that their rewards program is ‘very effective’ at creating that personalized solution (according to Deloitte HCM Trends 2018). This is where Lifestyle Spending Accounts come in. LSAs are a way for companies to address each employee’s individual need, in a cost-effective and meaningful way. And our customers are seeing the positive impacts of personalization as many of their employee monthly perk participation have increased from just 10% to 80%+ on average after implementing LSAs through Compt.” -Amy Spurling, Co-founder & CEO of Compt Make it your own: Through Compt, there are 14 different categories of perk stipends that you can choose from to best align with your company’s mission, values, and culture. This way, if you want to give your employees a “Health and Wellness” stipend, you can rest assured that the perk they will spend their money on is related to the category you want your team to focus on. Plus, you’ll be certain each person is getting what they need to be their healthiest self, whether it be a gym membership, yoga classes at a boutique studio, health tracker like a Fitbit, hiking boots, or a fitness app. You get all of the benefits of personalization without any of the complexity. 73. Celebrate your team Make your team members feel special on their birthdays, work anniversaries, their first day of work, etc. Or even better, make it completely random so it’s unexpected. When you focus more attention on engaging employees, the results are higher productivity, better retention rates and improvements in organizational success across the board. Now it’s your turn to take these simple ideas and put them into practice at your office. 74. Send out an employee survey to get honest feedback Sometimes it’s a lot easier for employees to say how they really feel in an anonymous survey. Actually, it’s always easier when it’s anonymous. Use an employee engagement software like Culture Amp, TINYpulse or SurveyMonkey to create a survey and send it out to your team. Surveys are one of the few ways to actually measure and track engagement, so definitely make this part of your efforts. Ask questions like: How are you feeling? What’s the morale you see around you? Good Idea (what one thing will make the biggest improvement in your job, your team or the organization?) How satisfied are you with your opportunities for professional growth? Do you have a good working relationship with your manager? Are you satisfied with your overall compensation? Q: What is employee engagement? A: Employee engagement is the emotional attachment that employees feel towards their place of work, job role, and team. This is not limited to employee satisfaction, but also recognizes their commitment to quality performance and collaboration with their peers. Are you looking to start your own employee engagement program? Q: Why is employee engagement important?  A: Even focusing on two or three activities to implement in your office can help to engage employees and contribute to a positive workplace experience. After making this a priority, businesses start to observe higher productivity, better retention rates, and improvements in organizational success across the board. Q: What are some employee engagement ideas?  A: We interviewed the best HR professionals and business leaders around the country to find the strategies and employee engagement best practices that they recommend. Check out 59 ideas in our curated list of the top Employee Engagement Ideas & Activities for 2021! Q: What are employee engagement activities?  A: Employee engagement activities aim to boost participation, strengthen relationships, and help employees feel more comfortable communicating with their teammates. These can range from wellness events, team building games, collaborative brainstorms, and professional development courses. Learn more here!  Q: How do you improve employee engagement? A: There is no one-time quick fix, but steps can be taken at any time to strengthen the relationship between employees and their work. Hiring individuals who fit your culture, listening to feedback, and taking real-steps to recognize employees are all strategies in the employee life cycle that can benefit from a coordinated effort.  Q: How do I measure employee engagement?  A: Measuring employee engagement becomes easier with a plan. It is important to set clearly defined goals and success metrics so that you know if what you implement is working. Tracking the progress over time will help you identify both roadblocks and victories. We can help you get started with our list of 59 Employee Engagement Ideas & Activities! Q: Who benefits from employee engagement?  A: Managers and employees will benefit directly from an engagement program through the increased communication and collaboration between coworkers. The company as a whole is also rewarded by growing talent within the organization and avoiding expensive employee turnover. What activities has your company used to increase employee engagement? Let us know in the comments below. Free bonus: Download this entire list as a PDF. Easily save it on your computer for quick reference or print it for future company meetings. Employee Engagement Resources: What is Employee Engagement? How Do You Measure Employee Engagement? How to Improve Employee Engagement?

[master-of-the-boot-blog]

Lars’ Cornhole Christmas Catastrophe

Author’s note: This story is graphic as fuck. It features Lars from Steven Universe being sexually assaulted by a homicidally insane vampire from the Hellsing franchise. Reader perversion is encouraged. 

Lars Barriga was jerking off when he heard his phone ring. Normally he would have ignored this because the porn video was getting to the good part, however this was Sadie’s ringtone and there was a very good chance that Sadie was going to be able to give him sex. So very reluctantly and with much anger, Lars took his hands away from squeezing his dick and answered his phone with sticky hands. “Yeah!” he said in a voice that was angrier than he meant it to be.

“Hey, Lars,” said Sadie Miller, Lars’s long suffering girlfriend. “I was wondering if you were good for tonight?”

Lars panted and took a drink from the energy drink next to his laptop. “Uh, yeah, sure I’m good,” he wiped the sweat from his brow and glanced at the paused image on the computer screen. He licked his lips and was nearly tempted to hang up on Sadie; but then he remembered that sex was better than five finger shuffle.

“Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?” Sadie sounded disappointed and miffed over the phone; more than she usually was.

“Uh, sure, I do,” Lars tried to bullshit his way through this conversation. “It was all about the . . . thing tonight. Okay what the hell was going on tonight?”

“I asked you if you’d come to Christmas dinner with me and my mom,” she said with her usual sense of trademark defeat and exhaustion. She became more hopeful for a moment, “Mom made your favourite, pizza rolls.”

Lars had a real dilemma. If Sadie’s mom was going to be home then there was a reduced chance she’d be comfortable enough to give him sex, but then again the prospect of pizza rolls was very tempting. “Uh, yeah sure I can try and be there, just make sure your mom doesn’t embarrass me.” He scratched the back of his neck.

“Yeah, fine,” said Sadie in a very resigned, defeated voice. She hung up and Lars was left nude and reminded about his throbbing boner. Frowning, the boy’s stretched ears flopped about as he sat back at the computer desk. On the computer was a video of a young, slender man being mercilessly pounded by a much larger, harrier man was paused in doggy style. The uncreative title of the video said everything; it wasn’t like Lars watched these things for the story.

Lars grinned as he began to start up the video again, his hands going back to squeezing his pickle. His pulse began to quicken and the climax of the video was nearing. He’d seen this video before; he knew where and how the money shot went. Still, there was a problem that was preventing Lars from enjoying his porn video.

The young man with stretched ears and stylized Mohawk hair glanced over at the picture of him and Sadie at last year’s Video Game Convention. It was one of their few happy moments, unmarred by couples fighting and a severe inability to communicate or express feelings in a healthy way. Lars knew that he’d fucked up, just forgetting his promise to Sadie like that. He knew that her mom was a big, loud, weird woman who embarrassed them both; but Sadie cared about her a lot. Lars wasn’t nearly kind or thoughtful enough to straight up apologize to Sadie and make it up to her; but he definitely could still show up and kind of save Christmas.

The young man shut the laptop. He would spank it to porn later; his boner was already dying from his conflicting and confusing teenager emotions. Throwing on his pants, coat and Jacket, Lars opted to go commando this cold December day in case Sadie gave him a blowjob or something.

Winter in Delmarva was crisp, clean and magical. Something in the air was sweet and the winter air felt invigorating. Lars of course hated everything about this day. The cold weather made his metal ear plugs freeze up and the shaved sides of his head were vulnerable to the freezing winds. He fucking hated winter and thought it was shit. Old man winter could suck on his uncut cock for all he cared.

It was halfway to Sadie’s house that Lars realized something. “Oh shit!” he cried in these empty streets on the night before the night before Christmas. “My charger!” He cried as he searched the pockets of his jacket and pants. The jacket, embroidered with the logo The Big Donut should have had his phone charger. He reacted with horror as he realized that the power bar on his phone was turning into a red sliver. He had to do something about this!  

Lucky for Lars, the Big Donut was halfway between his house and Sadie’s house. He could sprint over there, grab the phone charger from the office and be at the Miller house in time for Pizza rolls and a blowjob and/or hand-job.  

Deserted and cold were the best words for the old donut place. Part of a larger chain of donut places, there was something about the workplace that rubbed Lars the wrong way. He wasn’t sure what the hell it was, but it wasn’t going to fucking stop him. Looking at it a certain way, Lars figured he’d just run in and take what he needed; maybe even grab a few unsold donuts destined for the garbage bins. Frost coated the stairs leading up to the back door. Lars cried out as he nearly fell.  

Turning his employee key, he quickly disarmed the building alarm. He laughed as he locked the door behind him in the pitch black donut shop. He figured he had the cat in the bag when he slipped from the snow collected in the treads of his shoes. Screaming, Lars went down like a felled tree and banged his head against the floor.

He saw and felt no more . . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

Until—

Head head hurt like a mother fucker! “Oh Jesus Christ!” Lars shouted as he put a hand to the bump on his forehead. He groaned and swore. There was no way he could go to Sadie’s now. He’d be too embarrassed to be seen in public with such a big, angry, red lump on his head.  

Stumbling like a zombie, Lars shakily got to his feet. Groaning and cursing, he ambled over to the staff lounge. There it was, his phone charger Soon, no longer would he live in fear of the dreaded low red bar. There was something rotten in the state of Denmark. Or in the State of Delmarva. Or Delaware. Or whatever.  

Somebody was in the donut shop with Lars. He could hear them talking through the rusted metal door that led to the front area. Lars wasn’t sure who it could be, maybe burglars or homeless people; but he knew that the only way out was past that door.

Treading quietly, Lars didn’t want to alert the potential thieves. He could overhear what sounded like two of them arguing. “Come on Luke, you gotta let me fuck the bitch!” the first voice was nasal and reedy, like a crackhead.  

“Jan, you’re such a disgusting sack of shit,” said a more refined, erudite voice, “For starters I don’t want to see my brother on the job.  

Tiptoeing, Lars made his way towards the exit. His heart pounded and his palms grew sweaty. He was only a few steps away from leaving.

“Come on Luke!” begged this character, Jan, “The bitch is dead, she wont’ raise any noise! Nobody will know!”

The other one, Luke groaned, “I swear, this is why I bought you that flesh light. If you can just wait, we can head to Empire city and just grab a random tourist if it’s so bad for you.”

Lars was halfway through the mudroom when he felt a tickle in his sinuses and a sneeze that he couldn’t stop.  

Achoo!

And just like that, Lars’s perfect escape was fucked.

It was like a light switch, the two burglar/break in guys were on to him. The door to the front area opened up and Lars got a good look at two of the weirdest guys he’d ever seen. One man, dark skinned with multiple piercings looked at him with an evil expression. The other, pale and dressed all in white just frowned at him, while also carrying the dead body of the district manager for The Big Donut.  

Like a rabbit before a snake, Lars froze; his expression filled with horror as he started into the dead, cold eyes of Ms. Palahniuk. True she was always a cunt and a corporate tool, but seeing her limp and with multiple holes in her neck just did something to him.

The pale one, Luke narrowed his eyes at Lars. “So how much did you hear?” he spoke, drawing attention to the stream of blood running down his chin; as if he wasn’t holding a dead, pale body.

The darker one, Jan burst out into laughter, “Well fuck my ass and call me Britney! Spider just caught himself a fly, Zed!”  

Trying to speak for himself, Lars began to slowly back up. “I-uh-I swear I didn’t see anything. You guys were never here.”

He bumped into something and a strong arm held him around the waist. Jan yelled into his ear, as if he’d run across the room so fast that Lars’s eyes hadn’t been able to see it. “You got a nice little ass, nigga!” He laughed most unpleasantly, “Be a shame if somebody were to fuck you!” Jan laughed even louder, his breath reeking of rotting meta and fangs peeking from his upper jaw.  

Luke dropped the dead body of the district manager and zoomed in, too fast for the human eye. With one gloved hand he took Lars’s chin, who whimpered with fear as he stared into Luke’s red, inhuman eyes. “Well obviously we have a witness and we can’t let him but; but I think you’re onto something for once, Jan.”  

The dark skinned man whooped with glee, “Alright! We’ll double team this little bitch and then drink all his fucking blood!”

Luke blanched even more than he already did, his red eyes flashing with irritation. “Jan, that’s absolutely disgusting. There’s now way I’m sharing with you or risking touching your sloppy seconds. Hold him down so that I can go first.”

Lars began to cry as the gravity and horror of his situation began to sink in. “Please,” he whimpered, “I have a family, I have girlfriend. You don’t have to do this.”

Disdainfully, Luke slapped Lars across the face, earning howls of laughter from Jan and comments about slapping bitches. “We have to kill you to prevent the truth of vampires from coming out,” Luke pontificated, “However, taking out our frustrations on your still warm body is purely optional and you have nothing to offer us to change our minds.”

One of Jan’s rough, calloused hands caressed Lars’s neck; pinching him and feeling him up like a farmer picking out a suckling pig for supper. When Jan turned and licked over Lars’s major arteries, the boy shuddered as he felt like his soul wanted to leave his body from revulsion.

Once more the dark skinned vampire laughed, “Boy tastes like donuts! For fucking real, Luke! Whoa! It’ll be like fucking and eating a mega sugar maple sprinkle donut!”

His brother rolled his eyes, “Shut up, Jan, just hold him down so that I can fuck him. After that you can do whatever you want to him.”

There was no warning as Jan pushed Lars forward onto his face. As he tried to run away, he felt a boot come down onto the small of his back. Limbs thrashing, Lars was powerless against the inhuman power of the two vampires. Like a fly in a web, there was no escape for Lars; though this fate was infinitely more cruel.  

He shrieked when he felt a pair of rough hands grab his loose jeans and start to pull them down. Full on crying, the humiliation was more than he could bear. He bleat like a lamb at the slaughter, “No! No! Please!” One last attempt at seeking humanity in those who had none.  

He felt a cold breeze over his bottom and he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about what was going to happen next. For the first time since he was a little boy, Lars prayed to God and asked to be saved, the hot tears dripping down his face.

Somebody was listening.

“Do you boys like Rick and Morty?” asked a deep, musical voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Jan and Luke spun around, hissing and baring their fangs. In their ensuing panic, they let go of Lars, who began to crawl as best he could along the cold tile floor; one of of his hands frantically struggling to pull up his pants and cover himself best he could.  

Then he showed up.  

The cackling, maniacal, joker laughter preceded him as he entered the mortal plane. To Lars it looked like Slender Man’s mental cousin jumped out of the shadows to go completely ape shit on these vampire thugs.

His long, red coat billowed out behind him like bat wings, his long black hair moved like a living thing and his inhumanly long limbs were extended like a grabbing predator.

The newcomer didn’t waste time as he kicked Luke in the balls as hard as he could with his fine leather boots. He laughed like maniac possessed, spraying snot and saliva everywhere. His big, wide, red hat fell off as he punched Jan in the face; a dozen bloody teeth flying out of his mouth in a horizontal line.

The psycho stranger grinned from ear to ear, flashing not fangs but rows and rows of shark like teeth. Overfilled with glee, he grabbed Jan by the shirt collar and started pummelling him like he was starting a chainsaw without gas.

Luke charged at the inhumanly tall stranger with that vampire speed, but the newcomer was faster. His body dissolved into shadows and reformed behind Luke. Whooping and hollering, the man put Luke into a choke hold and began raining blows into the pale vampire’s torso.

Brass coloured claws sprouted from the tips of his white, mickey mouse gloves and he slashed across Jan’s face when he tried to defend his brother. Not pausing for once second, took a gigantic, hungry bite out of Luke’s head. Luke screamed in agony as the man in red ate part of his skull like a fucking apple.

It was like watching a train wreck, seeing bit of bone, blood and skull fly everywhere. Lars shivered and watched, even when he should have run like hell. Maybe it was because he knew that he’d never really outrun these two legged crimes against God.

Luke shrieked in violation as the tall, non-human shoved a finger into his brain and started feeling around. “How’s this, fuck-o!” he laughed as the pale vampire screamed for mercy.

Throwing Luke over him in a judo through, the man used his insanely long legs to lunge at Jan. Grabbing Jan’s crotch in a testicle popping grip, he just looked so damn pleased with himself. “There’s never been a vampire sexier than me!” he bellowed ecstatically. Thrusting his knee up, he hit Jan on the chin and sent him flying backwards into a wall.

The man in red pirouetted like a ballerina. “Thank you! Thank you!” he bowed and kissed to an invisible crowd that only he could see. Then with the flourish of a magician on stage, the man in red produced an unknown device from his jacket. Lars couldn’t tell what it was, except that it had a circuit board, part of a cell phone interface, it leaked oil and it was held together with electric tape and staples.

Making like a linebacker, the man charged forward and through a wall. Drywall dust flooded the area and its acrid, sooty taste made Lars choke and hack. He was so consumed by coughing a lung up that he didn’t see the man in red activate the detonator on his device and throw it into the donut fryer.

It was like the fourth of July as the incendiary bomb detonated inside a vat of fryer oil. The entire inside of the donut shop was sprayed with flaming canola oil. The blast of heat struck Lars like a fist and he stopped coughing long enough to realize that his sneakers were on fire.

He was luckier than Luke and Jan. The two vampire brothers screamed and writhed as the stood directly in the blast of weaponized kitchen oil. Each one twisted and thrashed, burning like dry christmas trees in July.

Lars kicked off his shoes and started to look for a path to the exit that didn’t involve walking through pools of flaming oil. Then to his utter surprise, the tall vampire in red went tearing out of the flames like a bat out of hell; his jacket and hair on fire and his face and shirt smeared with drywall dust. “You think this hurts? THIS hurts, sweetheart!” he bellowed hysterically as he started punching Luke and Jan.

The two vampire brothers screamed even louder as they were burned to death and beaten to a pulp at the same time. The red coated man’s gloves were blackened by fire and smeared with blood as his knuckles got the perfect workout.

“That is hurt, darling!” he cackled like an abusive boyfriend, punching Luke’s jaw right off. “That’s pain, schnookums!” he giggled as he punched a hole right through Jan’s chest and out his back.

“How’s this, son of mine?” he asked as he kicked Jan’s legs from under him. For a very brief moment, Jan thought that he’d found his long lost father right before the more powerful vampire stomped on his head like a teenager vandalizing a jack-o-lantern.

Lars didn’t stay to find out how it ended. It ended with him burning to death inside the big donut. He turned and ran, his feet blistering from the hot tile floor. He was almost at the exit when the man in red teleported right in front of him, stopping Lars from getting to safety.

He tried to say something to Lars, but all he did was mumble as he chewed on Luke’s severed head like a dog with a treat; blood and drool ran down his sooty, drywall dust coated chest. Lars screamed as the edges of the man’s jacket rose up like bat wings and wrapped around him.

The young boy of Philippine descent screamed as he woke to blackness one more time. “Mom! Dad!” he screamed, “Someone! Help!” he banged on whatever pitch black enclosure held him. Trembling hands went into his pocket, searching for his lighter.

A weak flickering flame cast light on Lars’s situation and it was getting darker by the minute. From what he could tell, having seen it in various movies and TV shows, he was in a coffin. Lars had been buried alive.

Panicking, Lars started to pound on the lid of the coffin. “Let me out! Someone, please let me out! I'm not dead!” he began to sob and cry uncontrollably.

Then like before, his prayers were answered, just not by God.

The coffin lid flew open and the bright, harsh light blinded Lars for a moment. In the time that it took his eyes to adjust he fluorescent light, he realized he’d been looking at the crazy vampire who accidentally saved his life and was now probably going to end it.

“Hey there,” he said in a not totally friendly voice, “We never got properly introduced last time. Alucard is the name and sexual pleasure is my game.” He flashed Lars what he thought was a winning smile but looked more like something out of a Sam Rami film.

Lars looked back up from the coffin, totally frozen; his trembling hand still holding his lighter.

Alucard cocked his head, “Well, aren’t you going to say anything back to me?”

“Get your junk out of my face!” Lars shouted at Alucard. It wasn’t just that he’d kidnapped Lars and held him against his will inside a fucking coffin, but he was half naked while doing it. In the harsh light, Lars could make out that Alucard was nude from the belt up. His hairy body was grotesquely muscular, with oversized pecs and shredded abs that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Dragonball Z.

Alucard shifted, his tight leather pants doing nothing to hide his boner and his erect pink nipples peeking through his carpet of chest hair. “So, what’s your problem?” he adjusted his stance so that standing over the coffin, Lars got a better look at his hard cock and his tight, muscular ass. These leather pants weren’t exactly comfortable but they did do a good job showing off the parts of the sexiest vampire alive.

Lars was appropriately disgusted by the view presented before him. Dropping his lighter he shouted up at the literal sexual predator, “I’m getting the fuck out of here!”

Like Harvey Weinstein on a catastrophic acid trip, Alucard had other plans. “Oh no, you don’t, mother fucker!”

Suddenly his white gloved hands were all over Lars like big, horny spiders. The boy thrashed, struggled and swore. After being manhandled, groped and forced out of his clothes like a disobedient puppy, Lars got a good look at what he was wearing and shrieked with horror.

Sitting in the open coffin, Lars was now wearing nothing but a pair of tight, tight pink panties with a sprig of mistletoe tied over his dick. Other than two nipple pasties shaped like hearts, Lars wasn’t wearing any other stitch of clothing anywhere on his body.

Alucard flashed that shark toothed grin once more, deliberately putting his hands on his hips and flexing his muscles. “Now that’s impressive!” he commended the terrified lad, “Look at you, nice firm ass, clean, hairless limbs and those cute floppy ears that are all the latest craze with young people these days.” He sucked in his breath like he’d been talking about a delicious slab of meat instead of a person, “Yes, you’re definitely a looker, son. While you’re here, you can just call me Uncle Touchy.”

Alucard guffawed at his own terrible joke, failing to notice the fear and confusion on Lars’s face. “Or if you like, you can call me daddy,” he winked at the boy, causing him to turn green with disgust. “Think about that the next time you see your father in the shower. Now come give Daddy Alucard a kiss, Larsy boy!”

Lars did the only sane thing and ran. He jumped out of the coffin and began to run through a spacious, well lit dungeon made of damp stone. There was a large wooden door with no obvious locking mechanism or door handles. Alucard scowled at this.

As Lars was about to reach the door to the dungeon, a freakish thing materialized out of the ether.

“I’m Puppet-Rebeca Sugar,” the thing said. Lars stopped and fell on his ass, mortified by the life sized creepy puppet that looked like it came out of Jim Henson’s worst nightmares.

Puppet-Rebeca looked at Lars with plastic eyes while lewdly feeling up her felt vagina. In her free foam hand, she clenched a large, rusty butcher knife.

Grabbing him with more strength than something made of foam rubber should be, Puppet-Rebeca stopped feeling up her crotch to grab Lars by the throat. “I’m going to butter your bread, honey. I’m going to sit on your face with my big Muppet ass.”

“That’s enough, Becky!” Alucard commanded. “You’ll get your taste only after I’m done with that sweet thing.”

Bowing to her dark master, the creature who’d summoned her from the fiery pits of hell, Puppet-Rebeca let Lars go and stepped back.

“I don’t want you!” Lars protested, trying to cover himself with his hands; the panties were starting to ride up a lot. “I don’t want either of you, I want to go home!”

Alucard laughed at the boy’s emotional anguish, “Why? So you can fuck that fat girl, Sadie? You’re better off without that pasty cumbucket. I swear, she looks like a blob fish with hair.”

“Sadie’s my girlfriend!” Lars shouted at Alucard, “Nobody gets to talk about her that way, I don’t care who you are or what you can do!”

The master vampire laughed, “Well Laramie, assuming I care what you think; stop and take a moment, take a deep breath. Your parents don’t give a damn about you, as of now they think you’re dead and they’ll have an easier go mourning a dead son than caring for a sack of shit like you. Sadie thinks your dead and I’d give her a day before she finds a new fuck toy. Everyone else in Beach City hates you and thinks you’re full of shit. The Cool Kids laughed at you and think you’re a douchebag; no matter how you spin it, I’m all you’ve got. I’m the only one who can tolerate a miserable cumrag like you and you should get on your damn knees and thank me for it.” He took his belt off and then gave a most lecherous grin, “How come here and show Daddy Alucard that big mouth and fast hands of yours.”

Lars pointed a skinny finger at the mad vampire, “You don’t get to touch me! I’m a person, not your boy and you’re not my daddy!”

The lad turned around and started banging on the wooden door as Puppet-Rebeca looked on with her ping pong ball eyes. He had to get out he had to get out he had to get . . .

===============================================================

Lars woke up in his own bed, naked and screamed. Trembling, he looked over his body and felt everything. He had no cuts, no bruises and nothing broken. Feeling over his ass and crotch; he felt whole and untouched.

The phone began to ring and he yelped. It was Sadie calling him. Looking over his phone, he glanced around and saw that his computer had the same porno video on as this morning; the same video of a twink being dominated by a hairy muscle man. It was all the same. Had he really been dreaming?

“Sadie!” he nearly shouted into the phone, answering the call.

His girlfriend winced on the other line, “Lars, what’s going on?”

“Sadie I was—actually it’s nothing,” he managed to slow down, “Uh, how are you? Are we good for dinner with your mom?”

“You remembered? I mean, of course you remembered,” she couldn’t hide her shock, “Yeah, my mom still wants you over for dinner. She even made pizza rolls.”

The boy could hardly contain his glee, “Yeah I love her fucking pizza rolls. I’ll be there!”

Sadie was taken aback. Normally she and Lars brought out the worst in each other, but this day, this day before day before Christmas day he was really giving her what she wanted. “Thanks for remembering, Lars. See you there, Player 2.”

“See you there, Player 1,” Lars said goodbye, showing his love in his own way. She hung up and Lars knew that there was no time. His phone was dying, running low on power but he had no interest in getting his charger from the Big Donut.

The first thing that Lars did was throw on some underwear before tossing on his customary tight jeans. Next came on his favourite scorpion T-shirt and sneakers. He was almost good to go; he just had to get his jacket.

Lars opened the closet and there he saw a tall man in red overcoat and big hat. Alucard grinned at Lars and threw a punch through the coat hangers.

The blow completely cleaned Lars’s clock, sending the boy flying backwards and slamming into the desk. Groggily, he spat out one of his front teeth. The head trauma meant that he really didn’t feel all the pain right away, but he felt the fear when Alucard’s twisted mug loomed large over him.

“Happy Christmas, cunt!” he jeered at Lars, picking up the boy by the front of his shirt and lifting him off the ground. “Did you have a good sleep? Any good dreams?”

Lars could only manage a numb shock, that this living nightmare—Cthulhu’s diarrhea in a human shaped bag—was very much real and not a figment of some fever dream.

“Well that’s nice,” Alucard sneered, “I’m happy to hear all of that from you.” Violently, he threw the boy onto the bed and pointed a long, clawed finger in his face. “Because I’ve got a message for you. This year you get a Mulligan from me, but next Christmas and every other Christmas until you die I will find you wherever you are and fuck your ass and face. If you’re eighty and living in a cave on Mars, I’ll find you and make your asshole look like a burrito filled with sour cream.”

The insane vampire lord trembled with rage and sexual energy as his hair and jacket floated around. “Don’t think of hiding from me, I have control over space and time. I have powers you can’t possibly imagine.” he turned and grabbed his junk, “So Happy Christmas, Laramie Bariga; next year I expect you to be waiting naked for me, bend over a table!”

He began to laugh like a hyena on crystal meth as his body dissolved into bats which then dissolved into shadow and fire. Just like that he was gone and Lars knew that he’d gotten a gift that was way worse than coal.

===========================================================================

Epilogue

Lars of the Stars slept in his Captain’s chair. Becoming an undead pink zombie was in hindsight one of the least shitty things to happen to him. If nothing else it gave him command of a group of ragtag rebels on the run from a totalitarian government and allowed him the chance to tool around the galaxy in a top of the line gem cruiser.

His calm time was interrupted by Steven Universe and his buddy Connie Maheswaran coming out of the portal in his hair. It was a pain in the ass but he honestly missed those two kids. He appreciated them way more than he had before his death.

“Hey, Steven! Connie!” Lars shouted, “Rhodonite figured out how to synthesize tequila, we can all drink and your parents won’t be able to stop you.”

Connie looked at him warily but Steven was just full of smiles. “Thanks Lars but Connie and me will do the responsible thing. We came here to drop off a care package from your parents and weapons from the Crystal Gems.”

Lars did a fist bump, “Sweet, little guys!”

Then a monitor started beeping, and the ship’s grandma caterpillar fusion, Fluorite announced the danger . . . very very slowly. “There’s a . . . ship approaching . . . our vector.”

On Screen appeared a gem who looked like she was Cosplaying for Code Geass. “Captain Lars! This time you will truly meet your end!”

Lars laughed haughtily at this enemy who’d dogged him across multiple galaxies. “Bring it on, Emerald. You can’t out-think me, you can’t out-fight me or out-drink me! You’d need the devil himself to beat me!” Admittedly all the anime he’d watched over the years was getting to his head.

And speak of the devil, a deep, music voice rang out behind Emerald. “Get out of my way!” snapped Alucard as he elbowed the fierce looking gem away. “Lars! Thought that travelling to another galaxy would save you from my wrath and my cock?” demanded the loopy vampire.

Steven looked at the insane vampire in his Carmen San Diego outfit, confused. “Lars, who is that guy?”

Alucard snapped, answering Steven’s question, “Who am I? Who am I! I’m the greatest vampire who ever lived! I’m the head pimp at Yellow Diamond’s personal Whorehouse; and it’s now my job to deliver Lars of the Queers to her Yellowness!”

He jabbed a finger while Lars stood speechless, honestly scared shitless even after all he’d grown and learned. “When I start, I’m going to fuck you until you love me! I’ll video tape the whole thing and send your parents a copy, along with a lock of your hair and a set of cum stained panties! Finally you’ll be albel to feel every night Yellow Diamond’s python sized tongue up your ass!”

“He’s the guy who molested me last Christmas,” Lars said, nearly on the verge of tears.

The tiny defective seer Padparadscha stepped in front of Lars, wrapping her tiny arms around him. “I’ve had a vision where Lars is threatened by a rapist. I will defend him with my life!”

Steven and Connie hugged Lars as well, “You fuck off, you two-faced mutant!” Connie yelled, “Go back to sparkling in the sun or whatever the fuck it is you do!”

Alucard’s eyes widened as he realized they went there, “You will all pay with your asses!” before Emerald punched him in the face and knocked him off camera.

“Stop stealing my spotlight, you fucking deviant!” Emerald snarled. She glared at Lars and his little friends. “Give up now, Lars of the Stars; or I’ll screw you, kill you and bring you back. I’ll do it over and over until you love me!”

Was Lars afraid? Oh fuck yes, he was. But he wasn’t about to take any of of it lying down. “Let’s dance,” he said to both Alucard and Emerald.  

[empmoniitor]

07 EFFECTS OF EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION ON WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT

If you have read the quote mentioned above, I guess you might have already figured out what we are going to talk about in this blog- the importance of employee recognition. And yes, it has A LOT to do with workforce management.

Believe it or not, but employees tend to work longer for the companies in which they get more recognition, even if they are not very happy with their salary.

Don’t believe me? Let me change your mind.

Of course, employees work for their salaries- that’s the only way they are earning their bread and butter. We all know that joyful feeling when our salary gets credited into our bank accounts. But does that feeling stay with us throughout the month? Of course, it doesn’t!

An employee’s month usually starts with a warm welcome of the salary, but usually ends with a lot of work stress and anxiety. The hardship deserves more than just a handsome salary as a pat on the back.

We are all humans, and we love being praised and appreciated for our efforts. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. Present-day corporate culture involves employee recognition as one of their mandatory strategies for a reason.

Actually, there’s more than just one reason why workforce management is more than just paying employees on time and managing the work environment. Here are 07 of the most prominent reasons why should we never skip employee recognition:

1. IMPROVES COMPANY CULTURE

Employees are like the building blocks of an organization, and the only thing that glues them together is their company’s work culture. Combine the mission, vision, and goals of your workplace, and you would know what your company culture is- for real.

Now, raise your hands if you can confidently say that you absolutely LOVE the work ethics of your organization. I know a majority of you can’t do it, but a few of you definitely can. One thing that assists any corporate organization in uplifting the morale of their staff is praise and appreciation.

When people applaud for your hard work, you tend to set your bars higher for the next time. You always try to work harder in order to meet their expectations. As a result, you end up working harder despite the long working hours and work pressure just for the sake of work satisfaction.

Basically, employee recognition is like a drug- the more you get it, the more you want it.

BONUS- READ

03 TIPS TO AVOID TELECOMMUTING BURNOUT

2. PROMOTES EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

When was the last time you thought of quitting your job? Did you consider missing your colleagues? Of course, you did. Why? It is because they are more than just your colleagues now- they are your friends.

Here’s a thing- employees need communication to function adequately in their daily schedule. As a matter of fact, workplace transparency is only possible when the staff’s engagement is high. Higher engagement, in turn, is only possible when employees are happy with their jobs.

As you might already notice, the HR departments of all the organizations focus more on employee engagement programs- from birthday celebrations to festivals, appreciation programs, and whatnot.

So, basically, every HR’s goal is to make the employees feel valued- valued individually.

3. INCREASES EMPLOYEE RETENTION

It doesn’t matter how well you pay your staff- they are prone to get tempted by any job offer that offers them a more creative and enthusiastic work environment.

The only thing that holds them back is their loyalty towards your organization. I mean, if it’s not true, then half of us would be ready to draft our resignations right now.

The bottom line is- you have to make your staff understand their worth and reward them according to their caliber and performance. Remind the fellas that they are an inevitable part of your organization. It will ensure that they don’t turn over their jobs.

Every person tries to perform better than their best. Your appreciation is only going to make them feel they are worth it.

4. OVERALL PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCEMENT

We all live in a world where all the corporations are in a rat race to achieve maximum productivity with minimum investment.

But here’s a thing- you can be a pitch penny when it comes to capital investment, but you must never think of holding back when it comes to putting efforts into human resources. Your employees are more than revenue-generating machines, and they need more than their monthly salary as a fuel.

The employees who feel more appreciated and valued in their office seldom hesitate to take that extra mile in completing their projects. Such employees do more than just their jobs. They actually focus on the growth of your company.

Covering an extra shift, completing an urgent project on time, working at odd hours to compensate for a leave- nothing would be a big deal if the employees love to work for you.

All your strategies of workforce management would go in vain if you cannot keep the staff’s productivity high.

ALSO READ,

UNDERSTANDING TELECOMMUTING: 15 PRODUCTIVE THINGS TO DO WHEN WORKING FROM HOME

5. MAINTAINS WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIPS

Operating a workplace is not something that a person does alone. It’s more of a grouped responsibility managed by every person working there.

In a nutshell, HRs can never maintain harmony among the teams if folks are not willing to contribute on their own. Contribution occurs when the staff stays satisfied with their environment. It is only going to happen when every employee is treated well by their colleagues.

Being a manager or a team leader, if you recognize and praise the efforts made by your juniors, you can foster healthy relationships with them. They can trust and confide in you more. As a result, the employees would never feel left out.

A strong bond of trust and confidence is fundamental to a healthy work environment. Apart from bringing the existing employees closer, it also reflects your brand image to the people, in general.

Thus, you increase the chances of hiring some very creative minds in your organization- which brings me to the next point.

6. EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY

Employee advocacy is the practice of reaching out to the public through the employees working in a company.

We all know why this step is so essential. How else would you know if you want to work with a company or not? Any strong organization with a commendable work environment encourages its staff to become their voice. And it becomes more manageable when the staff already loves the work culture.

Also, nowadays, employees share their workplace achievements on social media. It is a great way to elevate your brand value by exposing your work culture to the crowd. This way, you get to attract the best people in your organization.

The employees that get more appreciation recommend their workplace to their peers more often. Employee recognition, thus, never goes in vain.

7. POSITIVE BALANCE SHEET

It is, by far, the MOST IMPORTANT factor listed in this article.

According to a source, employee recognition programs lead to an increase in profit margins by a whopping 58%. No kidding, it actually does so.

The growth chart of any workplace depends largely on how actively their employees participate in every assigned activity. If they perform their tasks whole-heartedly, they are going to look for perfection. And it’s only going to happen when they feel more productive and valuable for their teams.

Employee recognition steers the wheel of workforce management and employee satisfaction parallelly- ultimately leading to an increase in productivity.

All the employees need to be physically as well as mentally motivated for their everyday office work. The profit margins are going to soar higher pretty quickly.

ALSO READ,

IS COVID-19 REVOLUTIONARY FOR REMOTE WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT?

CYBERSECURITY MANAGEMENT DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

HOW TO MOTIVATE YOUR TEAM EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE WORKING REMOTELY

HERE YOU GO!

Hey, there! Did you read them all? I’m glad you did. I guess, by now, you might be able to understand why I am stressing on employee recognition as an unavoidable step in workforce management. What to do now? Well, try implementing more strategies that favor employee appreciation and observe the transformation of your workplace in no time!

Do you have a doubt or query? Want to add something here? Did I miss mentioning a point? Do let me know your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!

Originally Published On: EmpMonitor

[ardinifauziyyah]

Notes during Quarantine

This morning was a very pleasant morning with a bundle of sunshine knocking the glass of my bedroom window.

I sighed for a momment.

.

.

.

It is such a shame that I choose to postpone such enjoyment because of some work i ought to do for today's class. In addition, this morning was quite tiring. A side effect from yesterday's late night class and my stubborn silly ego to finish my work until past midnight, that I ended up passed out of tiredness. And the clock nearly displayed my work time again.

.

.

.

What I did yesterday was absolutely not cool.

The action of working when we should not, and still working when we should; it really is not healthy.

I decided to post this as a reminder for me and for others that might read this post.

We should love ourself; our health, our body, our mental health, especially during this time of quarantine, when are infact more alone than we have ever experienced before.

No one really know when you're sick, tired, sad, happy, delighted, and in joy, except when you tell them.

Some people might be on their own. And it is not anyone's fault. It is just how the world go in the time of quarantine, right now.

Only us and God that know our condition and capacity. Sometimes, even ourself don't know. Which is very dangerous.

We should know when we should eat, drink, work, rest, and sleep. We might actually die when we neglect such important things.

So let go of many thoughts such as:

"I did this because I need to. My work responsibility forced me to."

Did they really do? Perhaps you workplace did not specify it like that. Your workplace did though specify on when you should work and when you should rest.

"I did this so that I have a proof that I'm working very hard."

Well, you don't have to. You just need to work as hard as you told to, with a healty mind and a healty body.

And if what you're seeking is a sympathy from someone, perhaps nobody truly notice or understand what you're wishing to tell them. You do not have to make them pity for you. They already have their problem too. Perhaps they too need words of encouragement, not another depressing thoughts.

"I did this because it's just my life. It's so sad and depressing."

We'll it doesn't have to be that way. Perhaps God want your life to be more happy and healthy instead.

Don't hate yourself and your live.

Love them.

Take a good care of them.

So promise yourself:

1. To not work past your late night class. Wake up early instead. Perhaps you can catch the late night prayers and have a better morning instead.

2. Do not pity yourself. Love and take care of yourself.

3. Have faith that God will help you. And God really do love you and will help you.

Love yourself as best as you can right now. Have faith that one day God will present you with the best of companion, one that will love you more than you can ever hope for, more than you have ever loved yourself :)