#im so glad my job requires very little mental energy

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

Ooooookay so not sure im gonna keep going to walmart to get my groceries unless absolutely necessary cuz the one closest to my house is awful

Its fucking massive. The app tells you the wrong aisles for everything. And there were way too many fucking people. Not a fan.

[andhumanslovedstories]

Hi Sarah (or Sara? I remember you discussing the h but don't remember which way it's spelled). I hope you're doing well on your break and enjoying September. I have a question - how much schooling did you have to do to become a nurse? I'm considering becoming an elementary school teacher in Norway, which would require me to go back to school for 5 (additional) years. Seems like a long fucking time and i didnt do great the first run tbh. It would be free though. Investment in the future seems like it could pay off, so i guess im looking for inspiration from other ppl who have perhaps made a similar plunge

Hi, anon! I wish I could give you some straight up inspo. Instead, I navel-gazed for a while. Schooling-wise, I already had a (completely unrelated) bachelor's degree so I was able to do an accelerated nursing program after two semesters of community college doing the prereqs. I did struggle in nursing school. College has always been brutal on my mental health and nursing is a hard pivot from my original degree (double major history and english w a concentration in creative writing) (you cannot imagine how many books I read and essays I wrote). It took a little over two years in total.

You don't have to don't have to worry about student debt which is so so wonderful. I didn't have to either, and that's let me be way more adventurous with my life choices. The cost of your education would just ("just") be your time, energy, and the potential money that you could earn by focusing on work instead. I had to stick around in my hometown instead of going traveling with Cyrus. I worked a lot fewer hours than I would if I'd not been in school. I had to miss the live airing of the Jesus Christ Superstar on NBC in order to study for an anatomy test which was genuinely so distressing to me. 2018 was a hell of a year for me. (I aced that test btw. It was such an improvement over my previous test my teacher emailed me a congratulations note with twelve exclamation points.)

All of this while people were constantly talking about how shitty it is to be a nurse and how so many of them leave the field within six months. (Similar to teaching in that way, at least in America.) I was doing work I didn't enjoy for a job I might not stick with. There were a lot of times I resented nursing school for interfering with my life.

I'm still very glad I did it. My degree gave me a lot. On the very practical side, my degree has given me more financial freedom and a much higher earning potential. On the idealistic level, my degree has enabled me to do work that I find meaningful. The work touches a lot of things that I find interesting. My nursing degree has benefited my life, regardless of if I stay in nursing for the rest of my career or move on to something new. I didn't like getting my degree, but I don't regret that I got it.

Maybe it'll go way easier for you, maybe it won't be worth it. When I thought about becoming a nurse, it felt like my life plan clicked into place because it ticked every single need I had for a job. I didn't know if it would work out, but the rewards outweighed the risks. More than that, it was the first plan I had for my future that made me excited. I liked the life I pictured if I was a nurse. I've found that excitement to be rare and precious. If teaching gives you that, I'd strongly consider pursuing it.

Besides, you can always use my last-line defense against school despair: being like "fuck it I'm gonna drop out after this semester" and then keep not doing that. You can bail on stuff! It's rad.

[elytrafemme]

literally just woke up so this might be mildly incoherent and rambley but heres some of my favorite hcs

c!tommy crochets. for many reasons really but ultimately because its a repetitive task that he can put his energy and feelings into. he's really quite repressive when it comes to talking about exile and i think when he gets really stressed out about everything he uses crochet as a coping mechanism. he makes sweaters for ranboo, gloves for tubbo, and little stuffed animals for michael all the time because at the very least he still tries to be kind to the people he loves, but really hes disguising his mental distress with a fun hobby

this one was already mentioned so i wont elaborate but c!tubbo made his own prosthetics and mobility aids. i love that one

cranboo gives ctubbo little trinkets and such, like along with other bigger gifts sometimes he just sees a little thing that reminds him of tubbo and gives that to him too. tubbo keeps them all in a little box or somethin

cranboo knows how to bake from niki (and is good at it) but is absolute shit at cooking, cant cook to save his fucking life

also ctommy keeps a garden, though its not at his own house. theres much more space in snowchester, and he visits often, so he asked tubbo if he could make one there. he said it was because there was no good food around, but really its because he just really loves plants and the job of caring for them

id say this one is pretty common but cquackity still wears the rings ckarl and csapnap gave him on a chain around his neck. he never took em off. if someone brings it up he ignores them deliberately, but then when he has a second, he quickly hides them back in his shirt

morning liv ^-^

YES YES YES YES YES!!!!! ABSOLUTELY im so glad i got c!tommy sews/knits/croquets believer mutuals i LOVE it sm. him making c!ranboo sweaters bc he wears suits a lot even though its cold... c!tubbo gloves cos he builds a lot... michael stuffed animals eueue fantastic fantastic

yes yes yes

ABSOLUTELY i think c!ranboo's giving love language would be gifts so like 10000% he gives c!tubbo things he finds and small stuff he makes and flowers and yes!!!

c!ranboo being a disaster in the kitchen is my favorite thing but i absolutely agree that he would know how to bake, and i feel like c!tubbo would be the opposite? baking requires very very specific measurements and clear instructions; cooking requires you to improvise as you go. i can't tell which one fits which better but either way yes yes

oh my god c!tommy caring for a garden..... <33333333 he talks to all the plants and gives them names

with this last one you want me dead you want me to lay on the floor and cry. yes you are absolutely right though, he never gets rid of them because he can't bring himself to and it's just another one of those subtle ways that c!quackity shows that he still cares even when he tries so hard not to.

[fit-as-fxck]

knock knock

who’s there?

Monday, bitch, lets go.

My body is doing a great job of recovery from the soreness inflicted last week. I originally planned on doing a conditioning day Saturday but my first week of training hit me super hard, and I think I needed the recovery. I would like to give myself a gold star for fighting through a panic attack. It’s been almost four years since one. It’s terrible, your skin begins to crawl and you just want to climb out of it, you can’t breathe, can’t control your lungs, your head can’t calm you down, you shake and the last thing you want to do is keep on living because it all seems so hard. Like someone dropped you in a pit of despair and forgot to pull you out. Like everything is black and you can’t see even the next 5 minutes in front of you. Life never came with a user manual. You gotta keep on keeping on. You always got this. You can always carry on. You can always carry on. I never claimed to be perfect and I think more people suffer with things than they would like to admit. But we all keep moving forward. Because you can ALWAYS find a way to keep moving forward. Perhaps maybe the people who struggle are stronger because, they know how to get through it all.

My system felt pretty shot after that and took the weekend to recuperate and I’m glad I did. Today starts training with a new partner. I’m using this week to asses where he is and then we’ll go from there based on his goals. He’s not “out of shape” in the usual sense but he does have some lofty goals which I will keep under wraps for the sake of privacy until he is ready to share and things more concrete. I did a little research on the requirements he will need for his goal, and what I’ve deduced is that he needs a good strength to weight ratio. He needs to reach a much better cardio endurance level than the average person, strong shoulders, back and overall fitness level. It’s going to be hard. But completely possible through correct tactics, strategy and SMART hard work. I do believe strength training 4 days a week and conditioning training every single day will get him there. But for now we’ll see where he is on the fitness scale. I’ll be taking him through my daily training this week and get feedback from him.

I mentioned last week that it was very difficult having my HEAVY days back to back so I’ll be splitting them up this week. I’m starting with a heavy lower body day today and then an upper endurance day tomorrrow, then heavy upper body, then lower endurance - unless he objects and wants to start with a different one. Today will be exceedingly heavy for me considering all the rest i got over the weekend. I’m still hammering down form and technique, and will definitely be focusing on that if I’m taking someone through it with me.

I’m starting him out with a mile run to warm up. Then we move onto my warmup mobility work. A couple warm up sets of deadlifts, just to get it going. Then we move onto working sets. I start out with deadlifts because they are usually the most taxing compound movement. Then squats. Now, squatting and deadlifting is best done with a flat shoe that doesn’t provide bounce like a running shoe and provides good solid connection to the floor. So a change of shoes may be needed. I know, high maintenance but what are you gonna do. I’ve found I like to switch to chucks, and recently tried squatting barefoot in socks which I like. Don’t judge. Im going to be taking him through proper form and technique (leg placement, hand placement, high bar vs low bar, cues like 1. bend the bar = keeping kinetic energy from the lats to the glutes to support the bar almost like you’re doing a lat pull down, retracted scapula 2. Belly breath and draw ribs down. Inflate/ increase intrabdonminal pressure, activate and push outwards through obliques, queuing deep spinal stabilization 3. Spread the floor - solid footing 4. Sit back - break at the knees and hips simultaneously. Now, his goals may not be the same as mine, but I need to at least see if he has the basic compound lifts down. He could probably cut out a lot of the “fluff” I do, and not do as many assessory movements as me. Mentally, he seems ready to really test what he’s made of. He seems so focused and he’s ready to sprint out of the gate. I’m excited to see where he’s really at and move from there. We can start the squats with some drills to make sure he has technique down.

We will be ending the session with stretches.

Deadlifting cues:

Mid foot under barbell

Hold arms overhead, draw shoulder blades back, activate lats and back.

Pull arms down and shoulder width grip the bar

Bend knees

Chest up, brace core, straight back, hips not too far down or up

Stand

Squat cues:

Draw ribs down

Inflate obliques

Bend the bar

Twist feet into floor/spread the floor

Sit back

The rest of the workout looks like:

Stiff dead’s or RDL’s

Hip thrust

Hamstring curl

Leg press

Good mornings

Back extensions

Hanging leg raises