#intend to read the books they compulsively buy and post about

[holdoncallfailed]

SPILLED.

[afoolnottoloveu]

moonlight ♡

Summary: Spencer wants to go to sleep, but Reader doesn’t wanna break tradition (WC: 1.6k) {Masterlist <3}

Pairing: Spencer Reid x (intended she/her but technically gender neutral)!Reader (could be read as platonic or romantic!!)

TW: none!

A/N: i was supposed to post this on the 29th.. we dont talk about it its okay its fine everythings all good, I ALMOST FORGOT thank you to gracie for beta reading this!! she’s the first one on the taglist at the end if you wanna check out her amazing work as well mwah, n e ways enjoy :0

Playlist Pairing: it’s not a singular song this time, listen to the inspo playlist here! 🌘

_

You rushed up the stairs, praying to some deity that you would catch him before he sent himself to bed or was too immersed in some book to answer the door. JJ had called you 7 hours ago, so it wasn’t surprising that you somehow didn’t notice the time passing, plus the fact you had to get gas for your little trip.

Rapping at the door insistently, you were delightfully startled when Spencer opened the door only a few moments later. He was still in his work slacks and button up but tie-less. A quick glance behind him and you could see he had been making himself tea, and the satchel by his feet couldn’t have been dropped more than 10 minutes ago.

“Peanut?”

You were too elated that you had caught him to respond, instead opting to attach yourself to his torso. “You’re back! Oh my gosh, I was so worried you wouldn’t make it back in time, but luckily JJ called me that you were getting back today, but that was over like 7 hours ago, and then I got worried I wouldn’t make it here before you went to bed--” you rambled, but Spencer quickly brought you back down to Earth by removing you from his torso.

“Y/N! What’re you doing here?”

“We’re going on a drive, duh!” you said, before grabbing his wrist and making it halfway out the door before being pulled back.

“Now? I just got home from two back-to-back cases, and it’s almost midnight.”

“Spence, we can’t break tradition now! Unless Mr. Eidetic Memory forgot what tomorrow is--” you interrupt yourself with a very exaggerated gasp, earning an eye roll from Spencer.

“Of course I know what tomorrow is but--” Knowing he would only go on and on to list reasons why he shouldn’t come with you, you used your last resort, the “puppy dog eyes.” All Spencer did was stare at you, both of you knowing fully well that he was capable of resisting, but he didn’t like to. After a whole minute of unnecessary intense staring at each other, Spencer let out a groan and turned around to walk away, which you thought meant that he was going to bed. Instead, you were pleasantly surprised when you heard him half-yell from across his apartment, “I’m just getting my keys!” You squealed excitedly, knowing what was ahead of you both that night.

~

Your car was small, a basic silver Toyota corolla you named Carrie. She smelled of gas and was decked out with teddy bear head pillows and keychains that you asked Spencer to buy, hanging from the rearview mirror, (but only from the cool states). You even kept a tan knitted blanket in Carrie, which Spencer was now wrapped in.

You couldn’t help but notice Spencer’s infatuation with the moon tonight, as he took a long sip from one of his two cups of hot cocoa you guys had picked up on the way.

“Is it a full moon?”

“No,” he said--not in a rude way, just quietly and quickly, like he didn’t want to take his focus away from the moon or it might disappear.

So, you let him be. He was most likely tired, and despite tomorrow, which most people would be restless for, he probably just wanted rest. You almost felt guilty, but your tradition was important to you, and you could only hope that it was important to him as well. 

“Did you know the full moon is one of the most powerful symbols in astrology? It can represent one’s emotional instincts, habits and private aspects of one’s personality. It’s said that while the sun sign of someone represents their head, their moon sign represents their heart. Though, most astrologists say the moon is heavily compulsion-based. Similarly, someone’s sun sign depicts their actions, but their moon sign depicts their reactions,” he told you, still gazing, almost longingly at the moon.

“I didn’t take you for an astrology type of guy, Doctor.”

“I have knowledge in many areas, Y/N, I thought you knew this by now.” You snickered at the understatement. “If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression of something beautiful, but annihilating,” he quoted.

“Plath--are you flirting with me, Doc?”

“Never, peanut.”

You rolled both your eyes and the windows of your car. Hopefully the blanket and cocoa was enough to warm him. All you wanted was to not blow out his eardrums as you turned up the music. Night Changes by One Direction was playing, and you reminisced on the fact that he originally had never heard of the band, causing your binge session, which consisted of watching their documentary and listening to all 5 of their albums straight. He told you he thought they were okay and he saw the appeal. What he didn’t tell you was that his favorite album was Midnight Memories, but if the way he was humming along to the song now was any evidence, you could’ve been a profiler.

You two listened to your playlist, made specially for the tradition, (Spencer insisted you always pick the music on these trips, since you weren’t very interested in classical piano) and besides the melodies, a comfortable silence encompassed the car for the most of the ride. As the road started to incline and your destination started getting near, you broke it.

“Can you believe-” you started, earning Spencer’s gaze from the sudden conversation, “Can you believe the audacity the calendar has, to change dates in the middle of the night, just like that, while we’re sleeping?” Spencer couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled out from him. “Like tomorrow… You’re gonna wake up and, and you’re gonna be one year older.” When you said this, you couldn’t help but steal a look at him. He wasn’t making eye contact, just fidgeting with his fingers, but the small smile was there.

“Just like that,” you finished, as you pulled onto the edge of a hill. 

When you showed up at his apartment the night you got your driver’s license, you found this spot. This was your guys’ cliff. The one you guys found on accident, when your car ran out of gas on your first night of the tradition. The same one you guys have had a handful of picnics at and late night rambles about both of your favorite things. Covered in the blanket of light that the moon so graciously provided, it was perfect, and it was both of yours.

Parked atop the hill, you turned off the car and turned to Spencer, who went back to admiring the stars. You were just about to tell him that you would be right back, but you decided he was a little busy, and so you quickly shuffled to grab the box he wasn’t aware was hiding in the trunk.

He finally noticed your disappearance when you came back with a lavender gift box in your lap and an excited smile on your face. “Oh Y/N, you know you didn’t--”

“Save it, Spence. Just open your gift,” you demanded, shoving it into his arms and the smile on your face only lingering. He rarely received real gifts, only for Christmas. You were essentially his only non work friend, and he told everyone at work that he never wanted nor needed anything.

He repeatedly blinked, yet carefully removed the lid. He first saw the small brown envelope which contained a gift card for the local coffee shop near his apartment. Underneath that and the matching lavender tissue paper, he found a tie of no other color than purple and two pairs of socks, one of colorful stripes and the other of baby tardises. (You knew nothing about Doctor Who, but he appreciated the references.) The whole time smiles adorned both your faces. The last item was a copy of The Alchemist. It was one of the main books you two had bonded over, and only a few weeks ago, someone had spilled coffee on their copy. Spencer was against buying another one, saying he could literally recite it in his head word for word if he ever wanted to again, but you stubbornly insisted that it didn’t have the same sentiment, (and of course you were right).

He took the book out the box and held it by the spine as he flitted through the pages, taking note of the annotations, your annotations. When done, he closed it and only opened the cover, finding your heartfelt message. 

Dear old dear old Spence,

I know you’re probably gonna read this in .02 seconds, and probably right in front of me at that. Unless we broke tradition. But I trust that I convinced you. (It was the eyes, wasn’t it?) Regardless, I wanted to wish my very, very best friend a happy birthday. You alone are so strong for going through all that you’ve gone through, stuff that no one should have to even imagine. You are one of the strongest people I know. You need to know that I’m proud of you, Spencer. I’m beyond grateful for you, for having such a caring, resilient, and just incredible friend as you. I hope I don’t need to remind you that I will be here for you, through anything and everything. See you in 500 years :)

Love, with all my heart, Peanut

In only a handful of seconds, he shut the cover once again, and the happiness (and slight gleam) in his eyes became painstakingly evident. “This is your copy?” He asked, mostly rhetorically, because he knew it was. At this point, he was lightly sniffling between words. “Thank- thank you, peanut,” 

“It’s no problem Doc,” you smiled and lightly punched him on the shoulder, “happy birthday, Spencer. I’m glad we didn’t break tradition.” And by the look on his face, well- you were no profiler, but you could safely assume that he was just as glad.

-

Taglist: @bxbyspxncer @goldenxreid @prettyboy-reid @rottenearly @rainsong01

[bettsfic]

how i got an agent, or: my writing timeline

when i started writing, i had no idea how publishing worked and i had a lot of misconceptions about it. but i just signed my first literary agent so i thought i’d share what my experience has been getting to this point, in case it helps anyone else with their own publication goals. i’m also including financial details, like submission fees and income, because “i could never afford to pursue writing as a career” is something that kept me from taking the idea seriously.

for context, i write mostly literary fiction and i’m on the academic/scholarly writing path. this process looks a lot different for other genres. 

i didn’t write this in my pretty nonfiction narrative voice; it’s really just the bare-bones facts of how it went down, how long it took, how many words i wrote (both fanfiction and original fiction), and how much it all cost. 

background

2002 - 2005: read a fuckton of books, wrote some fiction, wanted to be a writer but knew it would never happen, journaled every moment of my life in intimate detail

2006: started working full-time (at a chinese restaurant) while still in high school, also started taking courses for college credit; no time to write, and forgot i had ever wanted to be a writer

2007: graduated high school, started college (psych major), still worked at the restaurant, moved out of my parents’ house into an apartment with my boyfriend; my dad got diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer

2008: continued college full-time, quit the restaurant and started part-time as a bank teller, broke up with bf and moved in with a friend at an apartment where the rent was obscenely high; had to pick up a second job altering bridal gowns

2009: continued college full-time, started dating someone else, moved in with him, had to support him, took a third job as an admin assistant 

2010: continued college full-time, still had 3 jobs; my dad’s cancer became terminal

2011: my dad passed away; i graduated college with a 3.9 and $31k of debt; quit 2 of 3 jobs; got promoted at the bank; my bf cheated on me and we broke up; moved back in with my mom

2012: a very dark time; also, bought a house (because where i’m from, it’s cheaper to buy than rent)

2013: discovered fandom

2014, age 24

this is the year i started writing and posting fanfic. prior to that i was a compulsive journaler but had no drive or desire to become a writer, despite how much i had written when i was a teenager. it seemed like a very childish dream. at this point i assumed writing was just a phase like all my other hobbies i’d picked up and set down. 

but fandom proved to be really healthy for me, and i made some good friends who encouraged my writing and made me want to be better at it. i was really not very good at writing. i don’t think i had any natural creative talent whatsoever, or even a particularly vivid imagination. the only thing i had going for me was the ability to put thoughts into words after a decade of obsessive journaling.

i started writing in spring, and by the end of the year my total word count was 311k. i was making a decent income at the bank, insofar as my bills were covered and i had health insurance. i still had a significant amount of credit card debt from college that i was trying to pay down, and which was eating up all my extra income. 

2015, age 25

i continued writing through 2015 and went to visit @aeriallon, whom i’d met in fandom and who told me i should consider applying to MFAs. i was miserable at the bank and knew i wanted to go back to school, but i didn’t think there was a chance in hell a grad program would accept me, since my writing wasn’t very good and i hadn’t so much as taken a single english class in undergrad. she told me to just look around and do a few google searches to see what i found. 

when i started searching, i assumed i would probably be more compelled toward an MEd or MSW programs and go the therapy route, which is what the plan had been in undergrad before my dad died and my life got derailed. i never wanted to be a banker, but i’d got a promotion into commercial finance that paid decently, so i took it and told myself i’d work for a year before going back to school. but then i kept getting promoted and one year became many.

i ended up being more drawn to creative writing MFA programs because they seemed to want people with weird backgrounds like mine. also the classes sounded fun and the programs were funded. i didn’t know how i would be able to afford my mortgage payment or sell my house on a fraction of the income i was making at the bank, but i figured i’d apply and see what happened.

it took 6 months to get a writing sample ready to apply to MFAs. it was the only ofic story i’d written as an adult, and in retrospect i had no idea what i was doing because at that point i didn’t read literary short fiction. but i got the sample as good as i could get it and completed my applications. i applied to 6 schools and got accepted into 1. 

in 2015 i wrote 250k. i can’t find my application spreadsheet from that year, but i probably spent between $300 and $400 on application fees. early in the year, i had finally managed to pay off my credit card debt and save a little bit of money.

2016, age 26

the school i got into was within driving distance of my house, so i didn’t bother moving. i tried to quit the bank but my boss convinced me to stay on 2 days a week working from home. i agreed to it, because my grad stipend wasn’t enough to cover my bills, and i was counting on what little savings i had accrued to get me through the program. i still had no drive or interest to publish. i mostly just wanted to go back to school so i could learn how to be better at this thing i really enjoyed doing.

in the MFA, as you might imagine, i had to read a lot of stuff and write a lot of stuff, and was encouraged to begin submitting some of the short stories i wrote for workshop. i was not particularly into the idea, considering it seemed like a lot of work for little reward, and also i didn’t think my stories were very good.

i also started teaching english comp. i hated it and decided that after the MFA, i never wanted to do it again. haha. hahahahahaha

in 2016 i wrote 343k. i didn’t apply/submit in 2016 so i didn’t pay any fees, but my grad stipend was $14k for the academic year, plus the income i was making at the bank.

2017, age 27

i did a complete 180 and decided i loved teaching more than anything else in the entire world, and i was willing to do whatever it took to become a teacher. i realized that to become a teacher, i needed to publish. begrudgingly i started submitting to literary journals. i also applied to summer workshops and got into tin house, which i highly recommend if that’s something you’re interested in. at tin house i met my dream agent, who seemed really interested in my work and encouraged me to query her as soon as i had a book done. 

a lot of personal drama happened that year. i was still working at the bank in addition to teaching a 2/2 and taking a full course load. in summer i had a long overdue mental breakdown. 

2017 was a rough year. i wrote 149k. this is the year i started keeping a dedicated expenses spreadsheet. i spent $174 in submission fees. tin house tuition with room and board was a little over $1500 + travel. i thought it was worth it because i met the agent i thought i would later sign, but that didn’t pan out. (i made some great friends though!!) tin house was definitely an unwise financial decision; i paid for it out of what little i managed to save in 2015.

2018, age 28

early in 2018, i went from teaching comp/rhet to creative writing, which only cemented my desire to teach writing as a career. i realized i was far better at teaching writing than writing, but i knew i had to keep writing to keep teaching (shocked pikachu.jpg), so i kept submitting to journals. i got my first story accepted. i didn’t receive any payment for that publication. i quit the bank early in the year (finally! after 10 years!) and was terrified about money, in part because my student loan payments were coming out of deferment and i was still paying off my hospital bills from my breakdown. 

in spring semester, i won a few departmental awards (totaling $500ish) and got a second story accepted (again, no payment). i also got accepted to another workshop which i will not name because i hated it. i graduated in may and defended my thesis in july. the thesis would later become my short story collection, zucchini.

in fall, i stayed on at my school as an adjunct, and started writing training wheels which would later become an original novel called baby. 

i wrote 450k in 2018. i paid $373 in submission fees. i was also nominated for an award for one of my publications but didn’t win. the workshop i went to was like $4000 with room and board (it was a month-long workshop). i got 75% of it covered with scholarships and i paid for the rest of it out of my savings, and even though i’d intended to drive there, my mom ended up buying me a plane ticket. again, i met a lot of big-wig writers i thought for sure would help me get an agent. i told myself i was networking, and that publication was all about Who You Knew. but that turned out not to be true for me.

as an adjunct i made $3200 per course, and i taught 3 classes in fall. in winter, i got my shit together and started applying for creative writing PhDs, mostly to convince my family i was doing something with my life, with no expectation that i would get in. in winter i applied to 2 schools. with application fees and the GRE, i ended up paying well over $500.

2019, age 29

in spring semester, i taught 2 classes while i revised training wheels into baby. when i had a completed manuscript, i finally pulled the plug and used all my networking contacts to get my dream agent i’d met at tin house. i queried her, and a very popular and well-regarded author i’d met at the other workshop emailed her on my behalf to tell her good things about me. i thought for sure i had it in the bag. this author also touched base with a few other agents whom he thought would like my work.

i didn’t hear back from any of them. not even a “no thanks.” i set down querying for a while. 

i got a third story picked up and published around this time, and i was paid $25 for it. they also nominated me for an award, and i don’t think i won? but i can’t find out who did win so idk.

my grandpa passed away and i decided to sell my house and move in with my grandma so she wouldn’t be alone. i got rejected from both PhD programs i applied to and decided to get a “real job” instead, and began applying for random positions that offered health insurance, because i knew i was drastically undermedicated and it was becoming a Problem.

near the end of spring semester, i moved out of my house, put it on the market, and was interviewing for a community development manager position for a nonprofit. at the same time, i found out about another university that was taking late-season applications, and i applied. five days later, i got accepted. one day after that, i got a job offer for the nonprofit. since i had no idea how long it would take for my house to sell, and being unable to afford both rent in a new city and my mortgage payment, i deferred my PhD acceptance for a year and decided to work at the nonprofit for a while. the risk was that i could only defer my admission, not my funding, so there was a chance that the following year i wouldn’t get the same funding package.

i lasted one month at the “real job” before i had another breakdown and ended up quitting. 

my house sold for well under the asking price and i received only $4000 in equity once it was all said and done. that’s a lot of money to me, but considering that i’d been paying on the house for 7 years, i was expecting a lot more.

i had a year to kill until the PhD so i decided to take a break from teaching and apply to artist residencies instead. i applied to 8 residencies and got accepted into 4, but only ended up attending 3, because the 4th was outrageously priced and there was no indication of the cost when i had applied.

in winter i picked up querying agents again. i queried 10 agents every other week. i also got a ghostwriting gig writing children’s books that paid $800 a month.

in 2019 i wrote 417k. i spent $441 in submission fees (to residencies and contests, not agent queries. never pay money to query an agent!!). i ended up teaching 3 classes fall semester.

2020, age 30

i started out the year driving across the country going to residencies. the first cost $100 (no food), the second cost $250 (A LOT OF VERY GOOD FOOD), and the third paid me $500. i was at the third when the pandemic hit.

the query rejections started rolling in. i gave up in february after 60 queries. of those 60, i received 7 manuscript requests for baby, but the consensus was that it was too long and plotless (you got me there.jpg). at the second residency completed and revised zucchini and decided to begin querying with that instead. i could only find a few agents who accepted collections so i only queried 16. i got one request for the manuscript but then didn’t hear back. i gave up in april shortly after the pandemic hit. 

when i figured the collection, like the novel, just wasn’t publishable, i started submitting to contests which is the more standard route for the genre. i submitted to 12 in total and was a finalist in 1. i was rejected or withdrew from the rest.

the PhD program reached out to ask if i was still interested in starting in fall, and i said i was, so they put me in the running for funding again and i was accepted. the stipend was $17k per academic year.

like most of us, i got totally derailed in spring and stopped doing basically everything. the ghostwriting gig started paying $1500 a month and i also started my creative coaching business, which slowly but surely began to supplement my income. i also received the $1200 stimulus. 

when school started, i quit the ghostwriting gig. i had no intention to continue querying either book, but i saw a twitter pitch event called DVpit (diverse voices) and decided to participate. for those who don’t know, a twitter pitch event is where you tweet the pitch for your book and use the hashtag, and agents scroll through the tag and like tweets. if an agent likes your tweet, you query them. 

i got one like, so i followed up with the query. the agent asked for the full MS and a couple weeks later followed up with the offer for representation. we talked on the phone, she sent me the contract, i asked for a couple changes, and then signed! 

so far this year i’ve written 375k and paid $518 in submission fees. i’ll give more details when i do my end of year roundup next month. oh, and i finally paid off my student loans.

totals

word count: 2.3 million

agent queries: 77

agent MS requests: 9

agent rejections: 28

agent no responses: 44

short story submissions: 86

short story acceptances: 3

short story income: $25

total submission/application fees: $1472

my (final) query letter

honestly this query letter probably isn’t very good which is why i got such a minimal response, but it got the job done eventually.

Thank you for expressing interest in ZUCCHINI through this year's DVpit event.

ZUCCHINI is a collection that views sex through an asexual lens. It poses inquiries into constructs like gender, sexuality, and love to dissect the patriarchal/puritanical foundations from which our social perspectives often derive. Being a collection about asexuality, each story portrays a relationship that develops from forms of attraction other than physical.

In one story, a grieving widow purchases her first sex toy; in another, a woman uses sex to cope with the death of her abusive father, and later in the collection faces the long road to recovery; an administrative assistant seeks out a codependent relationship with her boss; a masochist hires a professional sadist to lead him toward self-actualization; a woman begins to recover from her sexual assault by staging a reenactment on her own terms; and lastly, two lifelong friends in a queerplatonic relationship decide to get married. Asexuality is an under-acknowledged identity within the LGBTQIA community and is often misunderstood. In seven stories, ZUCCHINI dissects the notion of attraction, explores the intersections of sexual identity and trauma recovery, and conveys the experience of intimacy without physical desire.

Three stories in the collection have been published in literary magazines. “Lien” appeared in volume 24 of Quarter After Eight and was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. “An Informed Purchase” appeared in the summer 2018 issue of Midwestern Gothic and won the Jordan-Goodman Prize in Fiction. “The Ashtray” appeared in issue 16 of Rivet Journal and has been nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize.

Complete at 53,000 words, ZUCCHINI is a collection in conversation with Carmen Maria Machado’s HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES, Lauren Groff’s FLORIDA, and Samantha Hunt’s THE DARK DARK.

If ZUCCHINI is of interest to you, I would be happy to send you the manuscript. Per your guidelines, I've appended the first twenty pages below, which is the entirety of the first story.

what comes next

i’m going to spend january revising the collection per my agent’s feedback. when i send it back to her, she’ll shoot it out to the first round of publishers. my understanding is that the goal is to get multiple offers on it so that it has to go to auction. if there are no offers, she’ll do another round of submissions, and so on, until we’ve exhausted our options. if that happens, we’ll reassess, but by then hopefully i’ll have another novel finished.

meanwhile, i’ll be continuing the PhD which entails teaching a 2/2, workshop, and 2 lit seminars per semester. i’m also still doing my creative coaching, writing fanfic, and working on my original projects. in summer, i’ll finally be moving to hopefully start going to school in person next fall. 

the PhD is a 3 year program with an optional fourth year. i don’t see myself finishing in 3 years so i do plan to take the extra year unless something comes up. after the PhD, i’m not sure what i’ll do. a lot will probably change by then so i’m trying not to commit to one idea. i might apply to post-doc fellowships and tenure track positions, or i might leave the country and teach overseas, or i might move to LA and try to get in a writer’s room somewhere. i’ve got a lot of options.

overall thoughts/stuff i learned

first of all, you don’t have to go through all of this to publish a book. you could feasibly just write a book and query agents. the only reason it took me this long is because my PTSD brain was sabotaging me every step of the way and i didn’t start taking anything seriously until i found something i was willing to fight for (teaching). i went the MFA/literary route but other, faster routes are just as good. maybe better. probably better. actually if there’s any chance you can go a different route, you should take it.

reflecting on all of this, very little of it has anything to do with talent or being a good writer. nor does it have to do with being at the right place at the right time. i’ve only made it this far because i took very small steps over and over again, and during that walk met people who could help me -- the authors who have mentored me, the editors who accepted my stories, the agent who signed me. and as i got further along my path, i started being able to help other writers in the way i was helped. 

i don’t believe i’ll ever be a great writer. the best thing i can say about my writing is that it’s competent and accessible. everything i write sets out to do something and most of the time it gets the job done. i don’t imagine i’ll ever be able to financially support myself with publishing, and i’ll certainly never be famous or well-known, but i’m good enough to keep making progress. i’ll probably continue to find opportunities that are adjacent to writing and that will keep me afloat, pending my health and provided the country doesn’t devolve into civil war. 

probably the most important thing i learned in all this is that having a wide appeal isn’t the goal. you don’t write to be lauded or liked. you have to stay as true to yourself and your interests as you possibly can, so that the people who come across your path can see you and help you. you’ll need those people; no one gets anywhere alone. if you pander, if you’re too concerned with praise and success or being adored, you won’t make it very far. the rejection will eventually kill you. 

with all that said, my advice to you is this: never stop writing. the ability to share our stories is the single most precious thing we have. you can’t let anything stop you from telling your stories the way you need them to be told.

[thenightling]

In defense of Tom Sturridge (Already!?)

Apparently Tom Sturridge needs defending from our own meager fandom... already...

Disclaimer:  Though it is looking more and more likely that Tom Sturridge has the role of Morpheus in Netflix’s Adaptation of The Sandman this has still NOT been confirmed.   We are still riding on pure speculation.  However, I will defend the man.

Though it is not officially confirmed that Tom Sturridge will be playing Morpheus in The Sandman there are already people in the fandom complaining about the casting. (See the Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Facebook group.  The one with over three-thousand-members that I left.)  

In this post I will be addressing each and every complaint that I have seen thus far.   

And you wonder why they’re keeping the cast a secret from us for so long?  This.  This behavior would actually be worse if you knew for certain who was in the cast.  

When these negative reactions are in regard to who “might” be playing Morpheus, without any actual footage, or even images of him in character, they were wise to keep it a secret from us.

Now, let us begin.

1.   “He looks too much like Robert Pattinson.”  The hatred of Robert Pattinson is bizarre and irrational.  It is as if a great deal of the population cannot separate him from a character they despise.  The irony is Robert Pattinson never liked playing Edward Cullen anyway.  He did it strictly for the money.  And as far as vampire fiction goes, there is far, far, worse out there than Twilight.  Twilight is not good but there is worse out there.  It seems the hatred of Twilight is almost a knee-jerk reaction- a compulsive raw contempt against anything that appeals to teenage girls.  I do not like Twilight but I do not irrationally hate an actor just because he was in the films.  So what if Tom Sturridge resembles Robert Pattinson a bit?  You’ll condemn an actor because of his bone structure?  Because he “Kind of” reminds you of a man who played a character you don’t like?  Really?  I thought most of this fandom were grown ups.

2. “He’s too young to play Morpheus.”    The casting call was for men between the ages of twenty six and thirty six.  Tom Sturridge turns thirty-six this year.   It’s true that a man in his forties or even a youthful fifties could probably play Morpheus perfectly well and Morpheus did have crows-feet wrinkles in the first issue but to condemn an actor based on his age is merely ageism.  In this day and age a man can look any age with the right makeup.  Look at the lead in the silent film of Faust, directed by F. W. Murnau (Director of Nosferatu).   It’s impressive to know a thirty-six-year-old played elderly and youthful Faust in that film, and that was back in 1926.

3.   “He’s too old to play Morpheus.”  ...Seriously?   What did you want?  A CW teenager or early twenty-something college kid as the ten-billion-year-old dream lord?  Yet again, I know a man can pretty much play any age with the right makeup.  All else is ageism, even my cynical statement about the CW, that’s ageism.  

When Lestat the musical was on Broadway the actor who played Lestat was forty, the woman playing his mother was only about two years older than him.  

The actor playing Barnabas in the original Dark Shadows was in his forties.  The character was (According to Dan Curtis) only twenty-five when he became a vampire.  The woman playing his mother was only five-years-older than him.  

Tom Welling was still in Smallville as pre-Superman Clark Kent and he was older than the actor who played Superman in Superman Returns.  With good acting and makeup age doesn’t really matter.        

4.   “He’s a terrible actor.”    The man has about ten acting credits in total according to IMDB.  Most are bit parts and two are from when he was ten and eleven-years-old respectively.  

Are you judging him on roles he had before he hit puberty!? 

I have my doubts you ever saw him act in anything yet.  You’re probably leaping to conclusions because the pictures you found of him are a stoic pretty boy with beard stubble.

5.  “If he’s playing Morpheus that’s automatically a deal breaker.  I’m not watching.”   Okay.  Okay, fine. Don’t watch it.   You don’t have to.  No one is making you watch it.  However, you should be aware that Neil Gaiman watched the auditions.  He had a say in the casting.  If Tom Sturridge is playing him than this is the man HE chose. If Neil Gaiman doesn’t know who should play Morpheus, than no one does.  I thought James McAvoy did an excellent job in The Sandman audio drama and I will not automatically assume Tom Sturridge is a bad actor just because there are people pre-determined to hate this.

6.  “He shouldn’t be played by a white man.  It indicates that The Endless are all white and white people rule the universe.”   Morpheus likely will still have his bone-white (not human-white) skin from the comics (and I hope, the black void eyes with star pupils).  This was pulled off successfully with the Frankenstein monster in Penny Dreadful, with his own inhuman skin and yellow eyes.   

Morpheus’ bone-white skin, improbably thin build, and black void eyes are supposed to be without distinct race.  He’s not a human being. He’s not Caucasian.   He might be played by a white man, yes, but the actor was chosen based on talent, not racial background.  

I saw the casting description. Race was not a factor.  Since actual non-human / humanoid entities devoid of distinct racial background were unavailable, the show simply had to make do with a human being, instead.  The real Endless were unavailable or refuse to act.  You know how temperamental anthropomorphic personifications can be.    

7.   “He’s not thin enough.”   Okay, look. A lot can be done with CG.   I don’t want an actor killing himself for this role. 

Back in 1976 David Bowie was close to ninety-pounds when playing Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man who fell to Earth.  He was so under-weight that the wardrobe department had to buy his clothes in the children’s department of a store.  Yes, the character was really that thin in the Walter Tevis novel that the movie was based on.  But in the book Newton had hollow bones, like a bird, David Bowie, however, is a human being, not an alien.  And Tom Sturridge is a human being, not an anthropomorphic personification.  

When David Bowie played Newton he was on a diet mostly consisting of cocaine...  He could have easily died.  Thankfully Bowie cleaned up later, but he was not in a healthy state when he was in The man who fell to Earth.  We do not need a return of The Thin White Duke.  Not like that.

For a human to reach Morpheus’ comic book weight- that might require very unhealthy behavior, it would potentially be dangerous.  This is something they can adjust with camera tricks and computer effects.  He does not need to look like he’s dying. 

8.   “They should find an actor whose cheekbones stand out.”   See above...

9.    “He doesn’t look anything like Morpheus.”   I am certain you have not seen him in costume yet.  Neil Gaiman has (hypothetically speaking).   Let us trust the author and believe that his character looks the way he intended.    Remember how Henry Cavill went from Superman to The Witcher.

 10.   “I wanted Henry Cavill to play him.”   ... What?   

Have you... have you read Sandman?   Henry Cavill is under contract to do The Witcher.   He needs to stay buff for that role, and you want him to play “rake thin” Morpheus?  Yeah, a lot can be done with CG but Henry is an action hero actor.  He can act.  He’s a good actor.   But this is probably not the right role for Henry Cavill.

11.   “He looks like an American Youtuber.” He’s not either of those things.  Stop judging by appearances.   

12.  “He’s too pretty to play Morpheus.”   Stop judging by appearances.

13.  “He’s not attractive enough to play Morpheus.”  See above... 

14.  “He’s too short to play Morpheus.”  / “I heard he’s only five foot three.” / “I read that he’s just five foot eight.”    According to Google and IMDB he’s 5′10.  That’s the same height David Bowie was.  That’s average adult male height.  If they want him to look taller that’s easily done. Remember, Tom Cruise was The Vampire Lestat.  

It’s just lather, rinse, repeat, when it comes to fans.  Every adaptation the same thing.   “Tom Cruise can’t play Lestat.” (Anne Rice apologized for leading that charge, when she saw him in action).   Or “Michael Keaton is too wholesome to play Batman.”  or even “Ryan Reynolds should never play Deadpool after what he did in Wolverine.”  

People never learn.

Just give Tom Sturridge a chance. The casting isn’t even official yet.   And if he is Morpheus- try and wait to actually see how he plays the role before you decide he’s the worst thing to happen to The Sandman.  A few publicity photos don’t tell you what he is capable of as an actor.   You might be pleasantly surprised. 

[forgottenyear]

an up

[Long text - it does get better]

A friend suggested I should read Janina Fisher. I have added one of her books to a list, for when I can afford it. I will follow through, despite all that I am about to write. I am grateful to my friend for the suggestion.

This brings up a lot of fear and confusion in me. I have been dealing with a multitude of distracting thoughts and projects that would have me quickly forget (but I added the book to a list so I am not depending on memory).

I am not writing to entertain the distractions and would-be barriers. I am writing because this is how I have lived my life for as long as I have been me. I want to understand the game so that I will no longer be the one being played. For too many years, I did not know that this was happening, much less how it was happening.

I have an opportunity to find a healthier path. I intend to try. I will not allow anything to block me from this.

When I did not understand how I have been “herded” by the identity fragment, and when I did not understand what an identity fragment was, I was helpless. For too many years.

I am angry over this dysfunction. I am angry that it feels bad to be angry. I am angry that it feels bad to want to end the dysfunction. I am angry that I feel like I am instigating war with an identity fragment that has taken care of me since before I was me.

I am angry that all of this sounds crazy. I am angry that this, to all outward appearances, is me arguing with myself.

I will not, but there is an insidious feeling that if I will only turn my back and forget about this, I can go back to feeling safe again. This feeling is why I have stagnated. It is akin to compulsion, as I understand it. There is an intangible “bad” that will come of failure to perform specifically.

It is complicated. The identity fragment is not set against me. The identity fragment is not my enemy within. The identity fragment is probably the only reason I am alive today and not in an institution. All of which makes it so much harder to wrestle for control, to instigate.

An argument could be easily carried that the identity fragment does not exist, which is a complication in itself. But the point is that the identity fragment is less identity than fragment. The identity fragment, outside of extreme emergencies, does not directly control anything. I am not commanded to do this or that. The identity fragment does not force me to do things against my will. The identity fragment does not have even a voice (I cannot begin to explain how communication happens).

If, as I did for years before the last decade, I were to forget the identity fragment, I simultaneously would forget the trauma and all that goes with it. It goes away like magic. The trauma and the fragment are intertwined. It would be the easiest solution.

Of course, trauma is not so neatly packaged. As much as I am sure that the identity fragment would have wished, there is no control to be had over the nightmares. There is no control to be had over the terror. The flashbacks. There is no way to prevent trauma’s random return visits. Memory, however, is frighteningly easy to manage.

I have no reason to think I have not had nightmares continuously since the forgotten years. I am almost certain that I have more nightmares than I realize, even during my current nightmare storm. With one or two exceptions that I can remember, I do not wake from a nightmare with a vivid recollection of what was just happening. I wake with fear and dread for everything, especially sleep. And when my body recovers, I mostly forget the event entirely. But for the fear of sleep. I do not remember the nightmares, but I cannot forget the fear of sleeping.

Ten years ago, when the fantasy world of my identity’s “childhood” was intruded upon by reality, I was confused by my lack of nightmares. I took this for a sign that the trauma was imagined. I believed I had no nightmares, but I had frequent periods of disturbed sleep.

Recognizing somniphobia as a byproduct of my nightmares, I have no reason to think I have not had nightmares for as long as I remember.

The identity fragment does not control me. I have a choice. I am exercising to buy a book by the therapist suggested by my friend. I exercise my choice with every post I write. I am not locked into – or out of – any specific thought or action.

What does happen is in feelings and attention. I will feel like it is bad or dangerous or scary to think or do a thing. I will also feel like there is a greater thing to think about or to do. I may press forward with my original thought or action, if I am so determined. But the easiest path is always to forget and to move on to that very interesting thing that was offered instead.

There is a large part of my mental processing that gets handed to the identity fragment. This is done by choice, although I have never known there to be a choice. Nor have I always known there to be a need for a choice. We do not regularly think about how we walk or talk, or how we think. The boundaries between my thinking and the thinking done by the identity fragment are not clear.

I take in information, and then I wait for the solution. I have known this about complicated puzzles for longer than I have been aware of the fragment. Where I am less aware is the simpler puzzles. Judging from the confusion that I experience when I press on with writing posts for this blog, I hand off a lot of my thinking to the identity fragment. When the collaboration is done, it gets a bit sticky to start trying to assign credit for this idea or that (as anyone who has work on team projects may attest). The “conversation” is so fluid that the sum ceases to be that of two individuals.

I do not think the identity fragment is necessarily preventing me from working on this stuff. I think that I am unaccustomed to working solo. That I am not aware of my dependence until I have to do without.

I also cannot say that the identity fragment induces fear. The fear could be the result of my insistence on going it alone.

It occurs to me that I do not understand the identity fragment as well as I might. I began this post with an unhealthy amount of suspicion. And maybe blame. I began with too little ownership of my responsibilities.

I can function, arguably, without the identity fragment. If we can function together as one, that is far better. If we can function far better, that is still far betterer.

I am without an opinion on integration. I see no need. It would probably be ridiculous, given the circumstances of the last integration. The current system is good. Surprisingly good, given the circumstances of the last. The alternative was not (not good and not to be).

I think there is always room for growth and improvement. That is the opportunity I see here.

*

I have my ups and my downs. Clearly, my last post was a down. I am looking forward to more ups.

[cedar-woods]

Sex Menu Brainstorm (Round 3!)

I posted this (and later deleted, because that's what I do) in it's beginning stages a few months ago after I initially had the idea. This is intended to essentially be a "menu" of sexual and intimate activities, which could be used a few different ways - as a discussion point, as inspiration, as a challenge, as a basis for compromise, to deprogram "sex=intercourse" or "sex=orgasm" all-or-nothing mentality, as a tool to overcome performance anxiety or aversion, or just to help break routine. I wanted something a little different from the standard BDSM checklist or Mojoupgrade. I'm creating this with my specific situation in mind, specifically to help overcome mismatched libidos and performance anxiety issues, so it's likely not going to be useful to everyone. I may end up changing/rephrasing/reordering a lot of things, and I obviously plan on adding more "levels", but here it is so far.

What's been added/updated?:

Menu Presentation Options

Homework

LEVEL 2.5: Indirect/Transitional Contact

LEVEL 3.0: Contact Intimacy (Sensual Non-Orgasmic)

LEVEL 3.5: Contact Intimacy (Sexual)

Any suggestions or ideas are very much encouraged! :) Apologies for any wonky formatting......

Menu Presentation Options

Single document (menu style) all at once (Initial assessment and discussion, review)

Single document, given page by page (weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly) (Full document might be overwhelming initially - gradual introduction allows content to be concentrated and reflected on, possible goal of implementing a few items from prev page before next page is revealed)

Index cards, one section/category each (See above. Possibly use to help communicate/compromise depending on which "level" we're feeling)

Playing/Business cards, one "item" each (color coded by level?) (Pick one at random - once a day, every other, week, etc. Either to actually try, or just reflect or fantasize on if working on responsive desire or sexual aversion)

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

Homework - nitty gritty/nuts & bolts hard work

Schedule Sex/Date Night

Discussion/Check In

Individual/Couples Therapy (personal, relationship, sex)

Seek Medical Assessment/Treatment

Sensate Focus or Exposure Therapy

Sex Ed (developing sexual intelligence through reading books, articles, podcasts, etc - bonus points for discussing together)

Reduce or give up porn (_ days/weeks/months/forever) and/or masturbation

Practice redirecting compulsive/destructive fantasies to realistic/healthier fantasies

Barrier Assessment

Snacks - brief interactions throughout the day

lingering/suggestive touch

kisses (again: lingering! Don't just peck, kiss! And draw out that kiss a little longer than usual)

flirting & compliments

sexy texts/notes

sexy/suggestive photos

Appeteasers - solo & shared practices & precursors to the main dish (note: mainly things the LL can utilize to boost their desire - HL can create/provide/guide some of these)

Positive associations - visualization ... (recall enjoyable past experiences. scenarios/fantasies)

sex ed (developing sexual intelligence through reading books, articles, podcasts, etc - bonus points for discussing together!)

Create sexual tension outside of bedroom ( )

Side Dishes - a little extra treat on the side

Adornment: make up, underwear, lingerie, corsets, fishnets/stockings, shoes, nails done, hairstyle

Sexcessories: [either an inventory of your toy box, a list of toys you may want to buy & try, or both] vibrators, plugs, cock rings, regular lube, specialty lube, massage oil, massage candles,

Ambiance: lighting/candles, scent, music, temperature/fan, sex nest (pillows, blankets, etc)

Dessert: (aftercare)

Cuddles

Water/snacks

Sex towel retrieval/clean up

Verbal reassurance/light discussion

What needs to happen before sexy time can be enjoyed?

Time together

Time apart

There’s some stuff we should talk about first.

Clean house some

I need a shower

My partner needs a shower

Nap

Stars in alignment

LEVEL 1.0: Intimacy Building (Solo) Masturbilia

Erotica "quickies"/excerpts (written by/for partner) - recalled, hypothetical/fantasy

Erotica longer stories (written by/for partner) - recalled, hypothetical/fantasy

Photos/Video - for/by partner, together

Audio or verbal "guide"/JOI, recorded erotica, recorded sessions

Practices

Positive associations - visualization ... (recall enjoyable past experiences. scenarios/fantasies)

LEVEL 1.2: Intimacy Building (Together)

Holding each other while clothed

Kissing

Caressing the hair, back, arms, and legs

Non-sexual massage

Flirting/sexual dialogue

Sex ed (developing sexual intelligence through reading books, articles, podcasts, etc - bonus points for discussing together!)

LEVEL 2.0: Non-Physical Contact Intimacy (For Touch-Averse)

Verbal forplay/teasing; Dirty talking; "Clean" talking (lovey, affirmations)

Exhibitionism

Writing/Reading erotica together; reading out loud

Letting my partner watch me masturbate

Watching my partner masturbate

LEVEL 2.5: Indirect/Transitional Contact

Get naked with me. ( Just cuddling, no direct touching at first, nothing overtly sexual./ When you're pleasuring me / we're messing around. )

Sensate Focus exercises

Dressing up Partnered Masturbation

Mutual/Simultaneous Masturbation

Solo Masturbation Support

Positions: Side by Side, Spooning, Facing Spoons, Inverted/69ish, Inverted Spoons (ass or feet in face), Modified Missionary, Chest Chair, Doggy

Passive Masturbation: cuddling/caressing/kissing with toy (vibe, c-ring, plug) in place

Hide n Peek (voyeurish): start solo, partner outside room "spying" or listening

LEVEL 3.0: Contact Intimacy (Sensual Non-Orgasmic)

Holding each other while nude

slowly undressing each other

kissing the shoulders, neck, chest

massaging the buttocks;

Sensual massage (non-orgasmic)

Reading or listening to erotica together

using lotion, oil

light bondage

body paint/body writing

Sensation Play

Manual touch (vary techniques, pressure, speed, etc.)

Temperature (warm oil, candle wax, ice)

Texture (different materials & implements)

Sensory deprivation (eg. blindfold)

Games (A vs. B, mindfuck [pick A use B, etc], guess item)

Scratching or biting (light/hard)

Spanking (light, hard)

Impact play w/ implement

LEVEL 3.5: Contact Intimacy (Sexual)

Gently touching or holding the breasts, penis, and/or vulva

Fondling the breasts, penis, and/or vulva

Physical teasing/groping

Passive contact (placed between asscheeks, thighs, feet, breasts while cuddling/caressing/kissing/masturbating)

Grinding (clothed)

Outercourse (nude)

grinding/pussyjob/outercourse/acliteration/slitsurfing

hotdogging (ass cheeks)

thigh job

tit job

foot job/feet fucking

Handjobs/Fingering

Testicular massage (penis covered up [if performance anxiety]; can combine w/ HJ, masturbation, foot job, oral)

submitted by /u/rekreative [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/sexover30/comments/hnneyp/sex_menu_brainstorm_round_3/

[maxwellyjordan]

Symposium: Enough is enough: The coverage provision is still constitutional and the court should reject this latest pretext for attacking the ACA

This article is part of a symposium previewing California v. Texas.

Brietta Clark is a professor of law and J. Rex Dibble fellow at Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.

In California v. Texas, two individuals and 18 states are once again asking the Supreme Court to do what it refused to do eight years ago in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. They want the court to find the minimum coverage provision in Section 5000A of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unconstitutional and to invalidate the entire ACA as inseverable from the provision.

To justify a second bite at this apple, the plaintiffs are relying on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which amended Section 5000A to set the penalty for failing to have insurance at zero. Paradoxically, they claim the TCJA transformed the minimum coverage provision into an unconstitutional mandate to buy insurance, despite the fact that it eliminated the only means of enforcing the provision. Indeed, President Donald Trump and legislators have described the TCJA as effectively repealing the mandate so that no one would be compelled to purchase insurance.

Unlike the issues confronting the Supreme Court the first time around in NFIB, this case does not present a difficult question. Simply, the TCJA’s removal of the financial penalty has eliminated any credible basis for claiming there is a legal mandate to buy insurance. Although the coverage requirement language is still technically “on the books” because of a Senate rule limiting what could be amended through the budget reconciliation process, the removal of the financial penalty renders the provision merely precatory. Without an enforcement mechanism, this provision is more reasonably interpreted as a moral mandate that, at most, encourages participation in the insurance market. Because the TCJA does not compel the purchase of insurance, the Supreme Court should unanimously reject this latest attack on the ACA.

What’s really at stake in California v. Texas

Although the plaintiffs are claiming the TCJA created an unconstitutional mandate, this case is not about government compulsion. After all, the minimum coverage provision was unquestionably rendered unenforceable through the TCJA. The administration has not taken or threatened enforcement action against those forgoing insurance, nor could it. And the remedy for a successful challenge to a mandate would be to make the provision unenforceable, which the TCJA has already done.

The challenge to the coverage provision is a pretext: The plaintiffs are trying to do in the courts what reform opponents failed to accomplish through the political process – topple the ACA. They not only claim that the currently unenforceable coverage provision is an unconstitutional mandate; they argue that Congress viewed this provision — which Congress itself rendered unenforceable without repealing the rest of the ACA — as so essential to the ACA that the entire law must fall with it.

This would dismantle a system that millions rely on for health care – a need that has become even more urgent in the wake of the dire health and economic consequences wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the ACA’s Medicaid expansion provides coverage for the millions of workers who have lost their jobs, and thus their job-related health insurance. And the ACA’s private insurance protections ensure that the millions of people who have been infected with the coronavirus cannot be denied coverage or charged higher prices as a result.

This threat to the health care safety net is real. A federal district court in Texas held that the TCJA created an unconstitutional mandate and invalidated the entire ACA on that basis. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed the unconstitutional mandate holding but remanded for a more searching inquiry into the entire ACA to determine which provisions Congress intended to be inseverable. Finally, the federal government has refused to fully defend the ACA, prompting other states and the U.S. House of Representatives to intervene to defend the law.

Why the 5th Circuit’s mandate ruling should be reversed

In ruling that the TCJA created an unconstitutional mandate, the 5th Circuit struggled to account for the fact that both the intent and practical effect of the TCJA was to do the opposite. Instead, the 5th Circuit claimed its conclusion was dictated by NFIB. Specifically, it interpreted NFIB as limiting the possible interpretations of the challenged coverage provision to only two: a constitutional tax or unconstitutional mandate. After holding that the TCJA eliminated the tax option by reducing potential tax revenue to zero, it concluded it must be an unconstitutional mandate. For further support, the court pointed to statements in NFIB that the most straightforward reading of the coverage requirement was as a command to purchase insurance.

Contrary to its assertions, the 5th Circuit’s ruling is not supported, let alone required, by NFIB. While it is true the NFIB court considered only two interpretations of the coverage provision as a mandate or tax, this was based on interpretations offered by the government to fit the original coverage provision — enforceable with a financial penalty. This does not limit the range of possible interpretations for the amended provision. For the same reason, the 5th Circuit’s reliance on NFIB language describing the most straightforward reading of the provision as a mandate is misplaced. In adopting the mandate frame, the 5th Circuit improperly disregarded the TCJA’s nullification of the original enforcement mechanism – a mechanism which seemed crucial to both the majority and dissent’s constitutional analysis in NFIB.

NFIB’s analysis of the coverage requirement produced a fractured opinion with shifting majorities. Five justices did not believe Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce authorized it to compel individuals to buy insurance. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan believed Congress did have the power to enact such a mandate; nonetheless they joined Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion upholding the provision on an alternative ground — as a constitutional tax. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

In upholding the coverage provision, the NFIB majority demonstrated a willingness to look beyond the straightforward reading of the statute as “a mandate, enforced by a penalty,” to determine whether there was an alternative reasonable construction that would save it as a constitutional matter. Focusing on how the provision actually functioned, the majority found that the reasonableness of the amount, the factors used to set the amount, and its collection by the IRS made the “penalty” look more like a tax. The absence of more punitive legal consequences, like criminal sanctions, and the government’s own estimates that about four million people would forgo insurance, led the majority to conclude that the provision operated more like a tax on a lawful choice to forgo insurance, rather than punishment of unlawful conduct. In this case, however, the 5th Circuit discounted the fact that, by eliminating the financial penalty, the TCJA preserved the lawful choice to forgo insurance that was crucial to the NFIB majority.

The 5th Circuit’s approach is not even supported by the NFIB dissent, which rejected the tax theory and adopted the mandate frame. In contrast to the 5th Circuit’s apparent disregard of the TCJA’s intent and effect, the NFIB dissent repeatedly pointed to the financial enforcement mechanism as crucial support for the mandate frame. It emphasized that the coverage provision was enforced with a financial penalty, that this exaction should be understood as penalizing a violation of law, and that this reflected the government’s expectation that participation in the insurance market would be required. This reinforced the dissent’s fundamental concern about the expansion of federal power to legally compel individuals to engage in commerce – a concern that no longer exists after the TCJA.

Why the shifting composition of the Supreme Court should not matter

After the death of Ginsburg, who was part of the narrow majority in NFIB, there has been considerable angst over whether there will be enough votes to save the ACA this time. In particular, commentators point to statements in an essay written by newly confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which seem to indicate agreement with the NFIB dissenters on the mandate issue. But it is important to remember that we are not re-litigating NFIB.

In this case, the TCJA has removed the element of government compulsion that animated the NFIB dissenters’ and Barrett’s view of the original minimum coverage provision as unconstitutional. Now that the provision is merely precatory, it no longer implicates the tension between federal power and individual freedom that triggers difficult constitutional questions and sparks deep ideological divides. Indeed, people across the ideological spectrum have widely criticized the 5th Circuit and district court decisions. Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court should not determine the ACA’s fate – at least not in this case – because this should not be a close call.

The post Symposium: Enough is enough: The coverage provision is still constitutional and the court should reject this latest pretext for attacking the ACA appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/11/symposium-enough-is-enough-the-coverage-provision-is-still-constitutional-and-the-court-should-reject-this-latest-pretext-for-attacking-the-aca/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[crohnsdigest]

5 Ways the Coronavirus Is Changing Everyday Life

Everyday Health wanted to know just how much the outbreak is affecting everyday life, so we surveyed our readers. Then we spoke with healthcare professionals about the most common responses, best practices during the virus outbreak, and how people can manage their stress levels

1. I Am Using or Intend to Use Telemedicine More

Telemedicine is important to take advantage of during this time, says Tania Elliott, MD, a clinical instructor of medicine and an infectious-diseases specialist at New York University's Langone Health in New York City. According to Dr. Elliott, there are three reasons medical professionals should make use of virtual care; to minimize sick patients’ contact with others, to give mildly ill patients who don’t need hospitalization recommendations for symptomatic relief, and to enable people with chronic conditions to still have access to care. “Telemedicine is also an approach to reduce person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV2 through reducing person-to-person direct contact,” says Jill E. Weatherhead, MD, an assistant professor at the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. By participating in telemedicine there are reduced interactions between patients sitting out in waiting rooms and between patients and healthcare providers within the exam room, Dr. Weatherhead explains. This could also potentially reduce the rate of transmission within the community. But this practice should be used only if patients have mild SARS-CoV2 symptoms or are in need of non-SARS-CoV2-related and non-emergent medical care, such as refills on daily prescriptions or to discuss lab tests, she says. 

2. I Am Working From Home More

Working from home may aid in reducing the rate of community transmission of SARS-CoV2. If more people are at home it reduces potential interactions with sick individuals. According to experts, this is also why it is imperative for individuals who are sick to stay at home.  “We determine the contagiousness of a virus by the reproductive number known as R0 (R-naught). This refers to how many people one single infected individual can transmit the virus to within the community,” explains Weatherhead.  According to Weatherhead, the estimated R0, or how quickly SARS-CoV2 can spread in a community is between 2-4, meaning one sick individual can spread the virus to 2 to 4 other people. As a result of rapid spread, health systems can be overwhelmed with the volume of patients infected.  "When social distancing is practiced, including telecommuting, the rate of transmission will be reduced, allowing hospital systems to better handle the pandemic flatten the curve,” explains Weatherhead. 

3. I Am Stocking Up on Medications and OTC Medicines

“It’s essential for individuals to have their normal daily medical supplies available at home, particularly their medications,” says Weatherhead. This is important in case they develop symptoms and need to be quarantined at home for 14 days.  For people with chronic conditions, it’s very important to make sure they get a minimum of a three-month supply of prescription medications, says Elliott. Keeping chronic conditions under control is very important because people with them are at the highest risk for the COVID-19 disease.  The CDC recommends considering mail-order services for medications if you need to stay home for a prolonged period of time.  Elliott also recommends keeping open communication with your doctor: telemedicine, email, and patient portals are all good options during this time when we are practicing social distancing.

4. I Am Buying Medical Supplies I Wouldn’t Normally Purchase

A common survey response: People are buying medical supplies that they normally wouldn’t purchase. The two most popular? Thermometers and face masks.  According to Weatherhead, face masks play a role for individuals who are infected who need to seek medical assistance and for caregivers of people who have become infected so they can protect themselves. It is not currently recommended for noninfected persons to wear a mask, according to the CDC. Preserving access to masks for those who need them the most is critical for their health, she says.  Experts generally recommend keeping thermometers on hand to take your temperature if you feel feverish, a common symptom of COVID-19.  “For people with chronic conditions, I recommend having a blood pressure cuff at home, ideally one with Bluetooth so you can upload the information easily to your doctor,” says Elliott. She says inexpensive blood pressure cuffs work fine, too.  People with lung conditions may want to consider home digital stethoscopes that can listen to the heart and lungs and send information to your doctor. Elliott recommends Tytocare, an at-home medical exam kit that works in tandem with a healthcare provider. 

5. I Will Be Practicing More Social Distancing

There are many things we can do to help protect ourselves against this novel coronavirus. These things include what we call social distancing, avoiding contact with sick individuals trying to stay six feet away from somebody who’s coughing or might be sick, says Mark Mulligan, MD, the director of the division of infectious diseases and immunology at NYU Langone Health and the director of the NYU Langone Vaccine Center. “Don’t feel shy on public transportation, for example, about moving away from somebody who’s coughing,” says Dr. Mulligan. He also recommends not going to work if you’re sick. Stay home until at least 24 hours after a fever. For elderly individuals, avoid unnecessary visits and interactions, he says. 

How to Cope With Stress During a Pandemic 

Our survey results included responses related to stress, like avoiding too much news, staying home and watching Netflix and other activities to quell anxiety.  “We’re seeing people engaging in things that give them illusory control, like panic buying and compulsively checking the news as a reassurance,” says Vaile Wright, Ph.D., the director of clinical research and policy at the American Psychological Association. The level of uncertainty around the coronavirus brings a sense of threat or danger, which exacerbates people’s anxiety and stress because the uncertainty reminds people of all the things out of their control, Dr. Wright explains.  Her advice is to identify activities you do have control over. She said it’s good to stay aware of things like places closing in your neighborhood because of the coronavirus but otherwise limit the news you’re taking in, especially if you’re looking at the same headlines over and over again. Identify reliable sources like WHO and the CDC and your local government; she recommended avoiding platforms like Twitter and Facebook for news updates.  “We see people — they can’t stop themselves from scrolling. They’re not posting about how many recoveries there have been but the number of deaths and the spread of the disease,” Wright explains. These are important to know but it’s not good to be overly saturated with them, she notes.  According to Wright, it’s important to think about preparation measures for school closures, teleworking, and coming up with contingency plans like buying supplies for a week or two. While people need to be doing important basic things that are good for them and their communities, they also need to pivot and think about their mental health and self-care routines: Get enough sleep.Eat well.Stay active.Reach out to friends and family virtually.Find things you enjoy. Wright calls these “opposite actions,” when you purposely do something to counter what’s going on around you. She specifically advises against watching films and shows about pandemics (no matter what Netflix says is trending) because that's similar to panic buying — it lends a false sense of control. Instead, she recommends choosing a comedy to watch, putting on some music, reading a comforting book or taking a bath — even if it's just for 10 minutes.  “Try to focus on things within your control and accept that things are uncertain now but they will get better,” she says. “Remember, we’re all coming together to reduce the spread of the virus.” click here to read more on crohnsdigestnews Read the full article

[youmightfindyourself]

What follows is a version of a lecture given to the students of Columbia University’s writing programme in New York on Monday 24th March 2008. The brief: “to speak about some aspect of your craft.”

1. Macro Planners and Micro Managers

First, a caveat: what I have to say about craft extends no further than my own experience, which is what it is—12 years and three novels. Although this lecture will be divided into ten short sections meant to mark the various stages in the writing of a novel, what they most accurately describe, in truth, is the writing of my novels. That being said, I want to offer you a pair of ugly terms for two breeds of novelist: the Macro Planner and the Micro Manager.

You will recognise a Macro Planner from his Post-its, from those Moleskines he insists on buying. A Macro Planner makes notes, organises material, configures a plot and creates a structure—all before he writes the title page. This structural security gives him a great deal of freedom of movement. It’s not uncommon for Macro Planners to start writing their novels in the middle. As they progress, forwards or backwards, their difficulties multiply with their choices. I know Macro Planners who obsessively exchange possible endings for one another, who take characters out and put them back in, reverse the order of chapters and perform frequent—for me, unthinkable—radical surgery on their novels: moving the setting of a book from London to Berlin, for example, or changing the title. I can’t stand to hear them speak about all this, not because I disapprove, but because other people’s methods are always so incomprehensible and horrifying. I am a Micro Manager. I start at the first sentence of a novel and I finish at the last. It would never occur to me to choose among three different endings because I haven’t the slightest idea of the ending until I get to it, a fact that will surprise no one who has read my novels. Macro Planners have their houses largely built from day one, and so their obsession is internal—they’re forever moving the furniture. They’ll put a chair in the bedroom, the lounge, the kitchen and then back in the bedroom again. Micro Managers build a house floor by floor, discretely and in its entirety. Each floor needs to be sturdy and fully decorated with all the furniture in place before the next is built on top of it. There’s wallpaper in the hall even if the stairs lead nowhere at all.

Because Micro Managers have no grand plan, their novels exist only in their present moment, in a sensibility, in the novel’s tonal frequency line by line. When I begin a novel I feel there is nothing of that novel outside of the sentences I am setting down. I have to be very careful: the whole nature of the thing changes by the choice of a few words. This induces a special breed of pathology for which I have another ugly name: OPD or obsessive perspective disorder. It occurs mainly in the first 20 pages. It’s a kind of existential drama, a long answer to the short question What kind of a novel am I writing? It manifests itself in a compulsive fixation on perspective and voice. In one day the first 20 pages can go from first-person present tense, to third-person past tense, to third-person present tense, to first-person past tense, and so on. Several times a day I change it. Because I am an English novelist enslaved to an ancient tradition, with each novel I have ended up exactly where I began: third person, past tense. But months are spent switching back and forth. Opening other people’s novels, you recognise fellow Micro Managers: that opening pile-up of too-careful, obsessively worried-over sentences, a block of stilted verbiage that only loosens and relaxes after the 20-page mark is passed. In the case of On Beauty, my OPD spun completely out of control: I reworked those first 20 pages for almost two years. To look back at all past work induces nausea, but the first 20 pages in particular bring on heart palpitations. It’s like taking a tour of a cell in which you were once incarcerated.

Yet while OPD is happening, somehow the work of the rest of the novel gets done. That’s the strange thing. It’s as if you’re winding the key of a toy car tighter and tighter… When you finally let it go, it travels at a crazy speed. When I finally settled on a tone, the rest of the book was finished in five months. Worrying over the first 20 pages is a way of working on the whole novel, a way of finding its structure, its plot, its characters—all of which, for a Micro Manager, are contained in the sensibility of a sentence. Once the tone is there, all else follows. You hear interior decorators say the same about a shade of paint.

2. Other People’s Words, Part One

It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone. I gather sentences round me, quotations, the literary equivalent of a cheerleading squad. Except that analogy’s screwy—cheerleaders cheer. I put up placards that make me feel bad. For five years I had a line from Gravity’s Rainbow stuck to my door:

“We have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function… zeroing in on what incalculable plot?”

At that time, I guess I thought that it was the duty of the novel to rigorously pursue hidden information: personal, political, historical. I say I guess because I don’t recognise that writer any more, and already find her idea of the novel oppressive, alien, useless. I don’t think this feeling is unusual, especially when you start out. Not long ago I sat next to a young Portuguese novelist at dinner and told him I intended to read his first novel. He grabbed my wrist, genuinely distressed, and said: “Oh, please don’t! Back then, all I read was Faulkner. I had no sense of humour. My God, I was a different person!”

That’s how it goes. Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.

Recently I came across a new quote. It’s my screen saver now, my little scrap of confidence as I try to write a novel. It is a thought of Derrida’s and very simple:

“If a right to a secret is not maintained then we are in a totalitarian space.”

Which is to say: enough of human dissection, of entering the brains of characters, cracking them open, rooting every secret out! For now, this is the new attitude. Years from now, when this book is done and another begins, another change will come.

“My God, I was a different person!”—I think many writers think this, from book to book. A new novel, begun in hope and enthusiasm, grows shameful and strange to its author soon enough. After each book is done, you look forward to hating it (and you never have to wait long); there is a weird, inverse confidence to be had from feeling destroyed, because being destroyed, having to start again, means you have space in front of you, somewhere to go. Think of that revelation Shakespeare put in the mouth of King John: “Now my soul has elbow room!” Fictionally speaking, the nightmare is losing the desire to move.

3. Other People’s Words, Part Two

Some writers won’t read a word of any novel while they’re writing their own. Not one word. They don’t even want to see the cover of a novel. As they write, the world of fiction dies: no one has ever written, no one is writing, no one will ever write again. Try to recommend a good novel to a writer of this type while he’s writing and he’ll give you a look like you just stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife. It’s a matter of temperament. Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I’m too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I’m syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style.

Yet you meet students who feel that reading while you write is unhealthy. Their sense is that it corrupts voice by influence and, moreover, that reading great literature creates a sense of oppression. For how can you pipe out your little mouse song when Kafka’s Josephine the Mouse Singer pipes so much more loudly and beautifully than you ever could? To this way of thinking, the sovereignty of one’s individuality is the vital thing, and it must be protected at any price, even if it means cutting oneself off from that literary echo chamber EM Forster described, in which writers speak so helpfully to one another, across time and space. Well, each to their own, I suppose.

For me, that echo chamber was essential. I was 14 when I heard John Keats in there and in my mind I formed a bond with him, a bond based on class—though how archaic that must sound, here in America. Keats was not working-class, exactly, nor black—but in rough outline his situation seemed closer to mine than the other writers I came across. He felt none of the entitlement of, say, Virginia Woolf, or Byron, or Pope, or Evelyn Waugh or even PG Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. Keats offers his readers the possibility of entering writing from a side door, the one marked “Apprentices Welcome Here.” For Keats went about his work like an apprentice; he took a kind of MFA of the mind, albeit alone, and for free, in his little house in Hampstead. A suburban, lower- middle-class boy, a few steps removed from the literary scene, he made his own scene out of the books of his library. He never feared influence—he devoured influences. He wanted to learn from them, even at the risk of their voices swamping his own. And the feeling of apprenticeship never left him: you see it in his early experiments in poetic form; in the letters he wrote to friends expressing his fledgling literary ideas; it’s there, famously, in his reading of Chapman’s Homer, and the fear that he might cease to be before his pen had gleaned his teeming brain. The term role model is so odious, but the truth is it’s a very strong writer indeed who gets by without a model kept somewhere in mind. I think of Keats. Keats slogging away, devouring books, plagiarising, impersonating, adapting, struggling, growing, writing many poems that made him blush and then a few that made him proud, learning everything he could from whomever he could find, dead or alive, who might have something useful to teach him.

4. Middle-of-the-Novel Magical Thinking

In the middle of a novel, a kind of magical thinking takes over. To clarify, the middle of the novel may not happen in the actual geographical centre of the novel. By middle of the novel I mean whatever page you are on when you stop being part of your household and your family and your partner and children and food shopping and dog feeding and reading the post—I mean when there is nothing in the world except your book, and even as your wife tells you she’s sleeping with your brother her face is a gigantic semi-colon, her arms are parentheses and you are wondering whether rummage is a better verb than rifle. The middle of a novel is a state of mind. Strange things happen in it. Time collapses. You sit down to write at 9am, you blink, the evening news is on and 4,000 words are written, more words than you wrote in three long months, a year ago. Something has changed. And it’s not restricted to the house. If you go outside, everything—I mean, everything—flows freely into your novel. Someone on the bus says something—it’s straight out of your novel. You open the paper—every single story in the paper is directly relevant to your novel. If you are fortunate enough to have someone waiting to publish your novel, this is the point at which you phone them in a panic and try to get your publication date brought forward because you cannot believe how in tune the world is with your unfinished novel right now, and if it isn’t published next Tuesday maybe the moment will pass and you will have to kill yourself.

Magical thinking makes you crazy—and renders everything possible. Incredibly knotty problems of structure now resolve themselves with inspired ease. See that one paragraph? It only needs to be moved, and the whole chapter falls into place! Why didn’t you see that before? You randomly pick a poetry book off the shelf and the first line you read ends up being your epigraph—it seems to have been written for no other reason.

5. Dismantling the Scaffolding

When building a novel you will use a lot of scaffolding. Some of this is necessary to hold the thing up, but most isn’t. The majority of it is only there to make you feel secure, and in fact the building will stand without it. Each time I’ve written a long piece of fiction I’ve felt the need for an enormous amount of scaffolding. With me, scaffolding comes in many forms. The only way to write this novel is to divide it into three sections of ten chapters each. Or five sections of seven chapters. Or the answer is to read the Old Testament and model each chapter on the books of the prophets. Or the divisions of the Bhagavad Gita. Or the Psalms. Or Ulysses. Or the songs of Public Enemy. Or the films of Grace Kelly. Or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Or the liner notes to The White Album. Or the 27 speeches Donald Rumsfeld gave to the press corps during his tenure.

Scaffolding holds up confidence when you have none, reduces the despair, creates a goal—however artificial—an end point. Use it to divide what seems like an endless, unmarked journey, though by doing this, like Zeno, you infinitely extend the distance you need to go.

Later, when the book is printed and old and dog-eared, it occurs to me that I really didn’t need any of that scaffolding. The book would have been far better off without it. But when I was putting it up, it felt vital, and once it was there, I’d worked so hard to get it there I was loath to take it down. If you are writing a novel at the moment and putting up scaffolding, well, I hope it helps you, but don’t forget to dismantle it later. Or if you’re determined to leave it out there for all to see, at least hang a nice façade over it, as the Romans do when they fix up their palazzi.

6. First 20 Pages, Redux

Late in the novel, in the last quarter, when I am rolling downhill, I turn back to read those first 20 pages. They are packed tighter than tuna in a can. Calmly, I take off the top, let a little air in. What’s amusing about the first 20 pages—they are funny now, three years later, now I’m no longer locked up in them—is how little confidence you have in your readers when you begin. You spoon-feed them everything. You can’t let a character walk across the room without giving her backstory as she goes. You don’t trust the reader to have a little patience, a little intelligence. This reader, who, for all you know, has read Thomas Bernhard, Finnegans Wake, Gertrude Stein, Georges Perec—yet you’re worried that if you don’t mention in the first three pages that Sarah Malone is a social worker with a dead father, this talented reader might not be able to follow you exactly. It’s awful, the swing of the literary fraudulence pendulum: from moment to moment you can’t decide whether you’re the fraudulent idiot or your reader is the fraudulent idiot. For writers who work with character a good deal, going back to the first 20 pages is also a lesson in how much more delicate a thing character is than you think it is when you’re writing it. The idea of forming people out of grammatical clauses seems so fantastical at the start that you hide your terror in a smokescreen of elaborate sentence making, as if character can be drawn forcibly out of the curlicues of certain adjectives piled ruthlessly on top of one another. In fact, character occurs with the lightest of brushstrokes. Naturally, it can be destroyed lightly, too. I think of a creature called Odradek, who at first glance appears to be a “flat star-shaped spool for thread” but who is not quite this, Odradek who won’t stop rolling down the stairs, trailing string behind him, who has a laugh that sounds as if it has no lungs behind it, a laugh like rustling leaves. You can find the inimitable Odradek in a one-page story of Kafka’s called “The Cares of a Family Man.” Curious Odradek is more memorable to me than characters I spent three years on, and 500 pages.

7. The Last Day

There is one great advantage to being a Micro Manager rather than a Macro Planner: the last day of your novel truly is the last day. If you edit as you go along, there are no first, second, third drafts. There is only one draft, and when it’s done, it’s done. Who can find anything bad to say about the last day of a novel? It’s a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word. The last time it happened to me, I uncorked a good Sancerre I’d been keeping and drank it standing up with the bottle in my hand, and then I lay down in my backyard on the paving stones and stayed there for a long time, crying. It was sunny, late autumn, and there were apples everywhere, overripe and stinky.

8. Step Away from the Vehicle

You can ignore everything else in this lecture except number eight. It is the only absolutely 24-carat-gold-plated piece of advice I have to give you. I’ve never taken it myself, though one day I hope to. The advice is as follows.

When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second—put it in a drawer. For as long as you can manage. A year or more is ideal—but even three months will do. Step away from the vehicle. The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat backstage with a line of novelists at some festival, all of us with red pens in hand, frantically editing our published novels into fit form so that we might go onstage and read from them. It’s an unfortunate thing, but it turns out that the perfect state of mind to edit your own novel is two years after it’s published, ten minutes before you go onstage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each show-off, pointless metaphor, all the pieces of deadwood, stupidity, vanity and tedium are distressingly obvious to you. Two years earlier, when the proofs came, you looked at the same page and couldn’t see a comma out of place. And by the way, that’s true of the professional editors, too; after they’ve read a manuscript multiple times, they stop being able to see it. You need a certain head on your shoulders to edit a novel, and it’s not the head of a writer in the thick of it, nor the head of a professional editor who’s read it in 12 different versions. It’s the head of a smart stranger who picks it off a bookshelf and begins to read. You need to get the head of that smart stranger somehow. You need to forget you ever wrote that book.

9. The Unbearable Cruelty of Proofs

Proofs are so cruel! Breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Proofs are the wasteland where the dream of your novel dies and cold reality asserts itself. When I look at loose-leaf proofs, fresh out of the envelope, bound with a thick elastic band, marked up by a conscientious copy editor, I feel quite sure I would have to become a different person entirely to do the work that needs to be done here. To correct what needs correcting, fix what needs to be fixed. The only proper response to an envelope full of marked-up pages is “Give it back to me! Let me start again!” But no one says this because by this point exhaustion has set in. It’s not the book you hoped for, maybe something might yet be done—but the will is gone. There’s simply no more will to be had. That’s why proofs are so cruel, so sad: the existence of the proof itself is proof that it is already too late. I’ve only ever seen one happy proof, in King’s College Library: the manuscript of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. Eliot, upon reaching his own point of exhaustion, had the extreme good fortune to meet Ezra Pound, a very smart stranger, and with his red pen Ezra went to work. And what work! His pen goes everywhere, trimming, cutting, slicing, a frenzy of editing, the why and wherefore not especially obvious, at times, indeed, almost ridiculous; almost, at times, indiscriminate… Whole pages struck out with a single line.

Underneath Pound’s markings, The Waste Land is a sad proof like any other—too long, full of lines not worth keeping, badly structured. Lucky Eliot, to have Ezra Pound. Lucky Fitzgerald, to have Maxwell Perkins. Lucky Carver, we now know, to have Gordon Lish. Hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable—mon frère! Where have all the smart strangers gone?

10. Years Later: Nausea, Surprise and Feeling OK

I find it very hard to read my books after they’re published. I’ve never read White Teeth. Five years ago I tried; I got about ten sentences in before I was overwhelmed with nausea. More recently, when people tell me they have just read that book, I do try to feel pleased, but it’s a distant, disconnected sensation, like when someone tells you they met your second cousin in a bar in Goa. I suspect White Teeth and I may never be reconciled—I think that’s simply what happens when you begin writing a book at the age of 21. Then, a year ago, I was in an airport somewhere and I saw a copy of The Autograph Man, and on a whim, I bought it. On the plane I had to drink two of those mini bottles of wine before I had the stomach to begin. I didn’t manage the whole thing, but I read about two-thirds, and at that incredible speed with which you can read a book if you happen to have written it. And it was actually not such a bad experience—I laughed a few times, groaned more than I laughed and gave up when the wine wore off—but for the first time, I felt something other than nausea. I felt surprise. The book was genuinely strange to me; there were whole pages I didn’t recognise, didn’t remember writing. And because it was so strange I didn’t feel any particular animosity towards it. So that was that: between that book and me there now exists a sort of blank truce, neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

Finally, while writing this lecture, I picked up On Beauty. I read maybe a third of it, not consecutively, but chapters here and there. As usual, the nausea; as usual, the feeling of fraudulence and the too-late desire to wield the red pen all over the place—but something else, too, something new. Here and there—in very isolated pockets —I had the sense that this line, that paragraph, these were exactly what I meant to write, and the fact was, I’d written them, and I felt OK about it, felt good, even. It’s a feeling I recommend to all of you. That feeling feels OK.

This lecture appears in her new collection “Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays” (Hamish Hamilton). © Zadie Smith

[fraggle-batches]

Because these are fun

1:Full name: Not comfortable sharing that

2:Zodiac sign: Libra 

3:3 fears: ladders, loneliness

4:3 things I love: my cats and boyfriend and laptop and dogs

5:4 turn on’s: tattoos, good hair, smoking, choking, hickeys

6:4 turn off’s: trump supporters

7:My best friend: my boyfriend

8:Sexual orientation: pansexual

9:My best first date: went to a concert (styg, stray from the path, knocked loose), was soo much fun, and also my first concert with a s/o

10:How tall am I: 5′7

11:What do I miss: my nana, being confident in myself and those around me

12:What time was I born? like 5:30 am 

13:Favorite color? grey

14:Do I have a crush? on my boyfriend, and cole sprouse

15:Favorite quote? “

16:Favorite place? Algonquin park

17:Favorite food? Pizza

18:Do I use sarcasm? Never

19:What am I listening to right now? Flaked Season 2 on Netflix

20:First thing I notice in new person? Shoes, hair, actions

21:Shoe size? Women’s 9.5, Mens 8.5

22:Eye color? Shit brown :))

23:Hair color? Naturally: Brown, Currently: Blonde, Previously: Pink

24: Favorite style of clothing? Uhm idk like casual/skate/dude clothes

25:Ever done a prank call? When I was like 11, but i grew tf up

26:What color of underwear I’m wearing now? I’m not..

27:Meaning behind my URL? Lord of the Rings (on a comedy video)

28:Favorite movie? ^

29:Favorite song? 

30:Favorite band? Don’t know, either The Wonder Years, Pink Floyd, The Tragically Hip

31:How I feel right now? Kinda shitty

32:Someone I love. Aaron

33:My current relationship status. In a relationship, one year at the end of the month.

34:My relationship with my parents. Was pretty fucked up for a while, I got kicked out and shit but now we’re civil and they buy me stuff to suck up for the shit they put me through/

35:Favorite holiday. 

36:Tattoos and piercing I have. I have my nose pierced, three 18g holes p/ear and one 10mm hole p ear.

37:Tattoos and piercing I want. I want to get a second nose piercing, maybe a septum, and my 10mm holes are going up to 22mm as we speak, I also intend to get an assload of tattoos when I’m no longer broke.

38:The reason I joined Tumblr. Joined it when I was like 12.. so I don’t know, just because it was ANOTHER form of social media for me to have.

39:Do I and my last ex hate each other? I hate him because he’s a rapist piece of shit and I’m sure he doesn’t even think of me so.

40:Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night” texts? No.

41:Have I ever kissed the last person I texted? Idek who the last person I texted was.

42:When did I last hold hands? Last night

43:How long does it take me to get ready in the morning? Depends what my hairs like, if it’s good, then 15 mins, if it’s shit then 35mins.

44:Have I shaved my legs in the past three days? Yeah

45: Where am I right now? On the couch at my boyfriends grandparents.

46:If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me? Maybe my boyfriend, maybe a nurse 

47:Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level? LOUD

48:Do I live with my Mom and Dad? No

49:Am I excited for anything? I’m going to see Roger Waters in October and I’m moving in 1-3 months.

50:Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to? My boyfriend.

51:How often do I wear a fake smile? Often.

52:When was the last time I hugged someone? Earlier today I think

53:What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me? I’d fucking leave him and move alone and go back to fucking instead of dating (other people obv)

54:Is there anyone I trust even though I should not? Maybe

55:What is something I disliked about today? Got into a couple pissing matches with the boy.

56:If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? Gord Downie

57:What do I think about most? The amount of debt I’m in

58:What’s my strangest talent? Licking my nose maybe?

59:Do I have any strange phobias? I don’t know..

60:Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? Behind all the way

61:What was the last lie I told? “I don’t want anything to eat rn”

62:Do I prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? NEITHER

63:Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens? Ghosts: no. Spirits: Yes. Aliens: no, Extra-terrestrial life on another planet potentially in a different solar system: Yes.

64:Do I believe in magic? No

65:Do I believe in luck? I don’t know

66:What’s the weather like right now? Shitty, cloudy, cold, and dark

67:What was the last book I’ve read? The Handbook of Human Sexuality

68:Do I like the smell of gasoline? Uhh yeah

69:Do I have any nicknames? -----

70:What was the worst injury I’ve ever had? Probably when I fractured my skull as a kid. Or the two times I broke my clavicle in the SAME spot like 3 years apart lmao.

71:Do I spend money or save it? I’m a compulsive spender

72:Can I touch my nose with a tongue? Yep

73: Is there anything pink in 10 feet from me? I don’t think so

74:Favorite animal? Elephant maybe

75:What was I doing last night at 12 AM? Same thing as I’m doing now basically... fuck all

76:What do I think Satan’s last name is? He doesn’t have one/exist

77:What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it? I believe by Stevie Wonder

78:How can you win my heart? Be a decent person and show the fucking world that I’m yours and you’re mine.

79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone? “fuck all you cunts from my hometown”

80:What is my favorite word? cunt

81:My top 5 blogs on tumblr? nah

82:If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say? “stop polluting, kill trump, learn how to give a girl good head, end world hunger, adopt dont shop, support everyone regardless, cherish each other”

83:Do I have any relatives in jail? I don’t think so, but maybe

84:I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power? To be able to like pause life and be the only one who isn’t paused but I don’t age on pause so it’s chill. Or to turn off my bad emotions whenever I want

85:What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on? I don’t know, I;m pretty open

86:What is my current desktop picture? My dog 

87:Had sex? Daily

88:Bought condoms? Hate them, but yeah

89:Gotten pregnant? No

90:Failed a class? Yeah

91:Kissed a boy? Yeah

92:Kissed a girl? Yeah

93:Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain? Yeah

94:Had job? Yeah

95:Left the house without my wallet? The worst!!

96:Bullied someone on the Internet? No... well maybe this one stupid piece of shit that raped my friend, posted her nude pics on a porn website and harasses her to this day. But I think that’s with warrant to bully so idc

97:Had sex in public? In a few places...

98:Played on a sports team? Other than school, no

99:Smoked weed? Daily

100:Did drugs? some

101:Smoked cigarettes? Yep

102:Drank alcohol? Yep

103:Am I a vegetarian/vegan? Used to be 

104:Been overweight? Currently am

105:Been underweight? Yep

106:Been to a wedding? Yep

107:Been on the computer for 5 hours straight? Most of the time

108:Watched TV for 5 hours straight? Yep

109:Been outside my home country? Yep

110:Gotten my heart broken? Sort of

111:Been to a professional sports game? No

112:Broken a bone? Skull, elbow, clavicle x 2, wrist x3, most of my toes, both my thumbs, my left ring finger, my ankle, and foot.

113:Cut myself? Used to

114:Been to prom? Fuck prom

115:Been in airplane? Yep

 116: Fly by helicopter? No

117:What concerts have I been to? To name a few (not even close to 1/4 of them: The wonder Years x4, Moose Blood x2, Neck Deep, Real Friends x3, Modern Baseball x3, Knocked Loose, Stick to Your Guns, etc...

118:Had a crush on someone of the same sex? Yep

119:Learned another language? Started to learn german, dropped it. Spoke some french but I’m rusty.

120:Wore make up? Most days

121:Lost my virginity before I was 18? Way before I was 18

122:Had oral sex? Yeah

123:Dyed my hair? Every few months for the last like 4-5 years

124:Voted in a presidential election? Not yet.. 2019 here I come

125:Rode in an ambulance? No

126:Had a surgery? Small one

127:Met someone famous? A few people.. Dan Campbell from the Wonder Years being one of them

128:Stalked someone on a social network? In an innocent-ish “what the fuck is my boyfriend doing liking your slutty pics” stalking

129:Peed outside? Yep

130:Been fishing? Yep

131:Helped with charity? Yep

132:Been rejected by a crush? No

133:Broken a mirror? Yep

134:What do I want for birthday? A camera

135:How many kids do I want and what will be their names? 2-3. Nora, Avalyn, and idk maybe Declan, Jax, Quinn?

136:Was I named after anyone? No

137:Do I like my handwriting? Sometimes

138:What was my favorite toy as a child? Pogs, Pokemon Cards, Idk I mostly read books

139:Favorite TV Show? Shameless is lit

140:Where do I want to live when older? I don;t know yet, used to be Alaska but the US is fucked rn

141:Play any musical instrument? A little piano, tried guitar

142:One of my scars, how did I get it? one on my hand is shaped like a dick.. i stuck my hand in a fire to get a cigarette that dropped when i was drunk and burned the fuck outta my hand, when it scarred the center got prominent, and dick shaped

143:Favorite pizza topping? Bacon

144:Am I afraid of the dark? No

145:Am I afraid of heights? A little

146:Have I ever got caught sneaking out or doing anything bad? Yeah, I’ve been caught sneaking out and smoking pot and getting drunk when I was supposedly studying or having a quiet movie night in

147:Have I ever tried my hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end? All the time

148:What I’m really bad at. Life, keeping my temper in check

149:What my greatest achievements are. I graduated high school, and got into college and university

150:The meanest thing somebody has ever said to me. “fat homewrecking bitch”.. but it wasn’t the truth

151:What I’d do if I won in a lottery. Pay off my debt and adopt a load of animals in need

152:What do I like about myself? I got some nice eyelashes, and a nice rack

153:My closest Tumblr friend. ------

154:Something I fantasies about. Cole Sprouse 

155:Any question you’d like -------

[owldesk9-blog]

Suggestions That's Going To Help You With Video Games

A pastime that many people around the world join is video pc gaming. A lot of individuals play video games to having fun, yet some peopled are paid to play. jojo siwa phone number Whatever the reason for having fun, video games are right here to remain. The adhering to short article has advice making your game playing a whole lot a lot more enjoyable. If your are going to a shop to get a gift game for a young person, make sure you have a variety of options. There are many different kinds of video games and also several rate of interests. Constantly examine numerous various shops before purchasing a game. Ensure you look both online and in actual traditional stores in your location. The cost of a computer game can vary commonly, specifically if a video game isn't brand-new. By doing a little additional leg job, you can obtain a game for a swipe. For every fifteen mins of video game playing, get up as well as stretch. Your body obtains stuck doing the very same movements repeatedly. Additionally, if you sit immobile for extended periods of times, you will certainly obtain cramps and maybe also embolism. Doing this will certainly preserve your wellness. If you are playing an RPG video game, take the time to talk to the other characters in the video game. A lot of the moment exactly what they say is not valuable to your ultimate goals. However, sometimes, you will certainly strike gold. For that reason, the small financial investment of time deserves the large payback that you will certainly get if you persevere. Attempt lightening up the screen. Games that have setups in dark caves or buildings may look good, but can adversely impact your efficiency. It will certainly be difficult to find enemies or find some useful ideas if you play at night. If the state of mind change doesn't trouble you, transform the brightness up. Shades will be sharper and also you will see the crooks before they locate you. Prior to playing a brand-new computer game, reviewed the cheat book. The majority of games have a book you can buy separately. You may intend to consider doing this and also reading it before you play, or perhaps while you are playing. This way, you can get one of the most out of your game play. Computer game are a lot of enjoyable, however they can be fairly complicated, too. If you are stuck on a video game, browse the web as well as look for cheats. The majority of games have some kind of cheat or cheats that can make them a great deal simpler. Just search in your favored search engine and also you can easily find cheats to make your video game play far better. Video games are a terrific way to hang around with your children. Today kids really enjoy playing computer game. If you feel like you aren't obtaining enough quality time with your kids, play video games with them. Program interest in what they have an interest in and also you can grow your relationship. Know the indicators of computer game addiction. This might appear amusing, and you may not think such a thing exists, however addiction to video games is as real as any other addiction. Signs and symptoms consist of long hrs of play, compulsive ideas about the game, and also too much spending connected to computer game of all kinds. Consume alcohol enough water during lengthy video game sessions-- don't obtain dried out. Computer game can obtain someone away from truth, also to the point where they are failing to remember to care for their fundamental demands. Dehydration is a possibly harmful problem, so make certain not to forget to consume alcohol liquids while playing games. If you play on-line multiplayer video games, don't disregard the power of voice chat! A microphone or headset is a very small investment, and also being able to talk with your fellow gamers has a great deal of advantages. You can build stronger bonds with the pc gaming community and be a more effective team gamer when you can connect aloud. After establishing a system concerning how long as well as just how often your children can play games, put that in writing. Post the policies in a visible location and ensure you review them typically. If a scenario arises where your kid disagrees with you, just refer back to the policies that have been formerly established. There are many games that can be highly addictive, such as combating games or sports video games. This is something that can create an issue in the future, as you will wish to have control over your life and also not let your video games control you. Be aware of these habit forming games and also try not to fall into the catch of playing them for most of the day. Keep your console or computer cool. Whether you video game on one of the significant gaming consoles or on your pc, heat is the adversary of every system. The complex graphics in today's game cause the video cards as well as processors in gaming systems to go for very heats, and when this heat develops too high, it can bring about failure. Always keep your system in a location where air circulate around it, and never ever cover the follower ports. If you're a parent of a child who plays video games, you have to check them. Consider things like how long they are playing and just what sort of games they are playing. You have to know precisely what they are doing when they activate that console or computer. You must utilize the most effective video clip connection that is offered. Great deals of video game systems offer numerous cable choices in order to give the most effective experience. Does your TELEVISION assistance more than one sort of link? If you can, use DVI or HDMI in order to obtain the most effective feasible signal as well as image. Next, try Composite as well as S-Video as well as if those do not function, make use of the RCA. Coaxial connections take place to be one of the most usual computer game connections, yet they're the lowest quality. Just use them if that's all you have. Computer game are certainly right here to remain. Pc gaming is an excellent pastime that is fun for the whole family. If you prefer to enter gaming, then learn all that you can as well as exercise it. A whole lot of individuals play video clip games to have a good time, yet some peopled are paid to play. The cost of a video clip game can differ extensively, particularly if a video game isn't brand new. If you are playing an RPG video game, take the time to talk to the various other characters in the video game. Symptoms include long hrs of play, obsessive ideas concerning the game, as well as excessive spending connected to video games of all kinds. There are many video games that can be extremely addicting, such as fighting video games or sporting activities video games.

[newstfionline]

No, Google’s Not a Bird: Bringing the Internet to Rural India

By Ellen Barry, NY Times, May 21, 2017

TARADAND, India--Babulal Singh Neti was sitting with his uncle on a recent afternoon, trying to persuade him of the merits of the internet.

It was 105 degrees outside, and the sun was beating down on the frazzled croplands. His uncle said he had no use for the internet, since he had never learned to read; furthermore, he wanted to nap. This he made clear by periodically screwing up his face into a huge yawn.

Mr. Neti, 38, pressed on earnestly, suggesting that he could demonstrate the internet’s potential by Googling the history of the Gond tribe, to which they both belonged. Since acquiring a smartphone, Mr. Neti couldn’t stop Googling things: the gods, Hindu and tribal; the relative merits of the Yadav caste and the Gonds; the real story of how the earth was made.

Access to this knowledge so elated him that he decided to give up farming for good, taking a job with a nongovernmental organization whose goals include helping villagers produce and call up online content in their native languages. When he encountered internet skeptics, he tried to impress them by looking up something they really cared about--like Gond history.

His uncle responded with half-closed eyes, delivering a brief but comprehensive oral history of the Gond kings, with the clear implication that his nephew was a bit of a good-for-nothing. “What does it mean, Google?” his uncle said. “Is it a bird?”

And then, theatrically, he yawned.

While India produces some of the world’s best coders and computer engineers, vast multitudes of its people are like Mr. Neti’s neighbors, entering the virtual world with little sense of what lies within it, or how it could be of use to them.

The arrival of the internet in their lives is one of India’s most hopeful narratives.

In the 70 years since Independence, India’s government has done very little to connect Taradand, in Madhya Pradesh State, in central India, to the outside world: The first paved road appeared in 2006. There has never been a single telephone landline. Electricity is available to only half the houses. When Mr. Neti was growing up, if someone in the village needed emergency medical care, farmers tied the patient to a wooden cot and carried it five miles through the forest to the nearest hospital, a journey of four hours.

By comparison, India’s battling telecoms have wired Taradand with breathtaking speed. Two years ago, Mr. Neti counted 1,000 mobile phones in the village, which has a population of 2,500. This tracks with India as a whole; last year it surpassed the United States to become the world’s second-largest market for mobile phones behind only China, according to Groupe Speciale Mobile Association, an industry group known as G.S.M.A.

With the cost of both smartphones and data plummeting, it is fair to assume that Taradand’s next technological leap will be onto the internet.

Those who work in development tend to speak of this moment as a civilizational breakthrough, of particular significance in a country aching to educate its children. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has made expanding internet use a central goal, shifting government services onto digital platforms. When Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, toured India in 2014, he told audiences that for every 10 people who get online, “one person gets lifted out of poverty and one new job gets created.”

So it is instructive to follow Mr. Neti as he tries to drum up a little interest in Taradand. Young men use the internet here, but only young men, and almost exclusively to circulate Bollywood films. Older people view it as a conduit for pornography and other wastes of time.

Women are not allowed access even to simple mobile phones, for fear they will engage in illicit relationships; the internet is out of the question. Illiterate people--almost everyone over 40--dismiss the internet as not intended for them.

Still, Mr. Neti persists with the zeal of the newly converted.

“You can call me the black sheep. That’s what I am,” he said cheerfully. “I don’t care. It’s the internet age. One day they’ll all come around.”

Mr. Neti is, in some ways, an unlikely harbinger of technological change. His parents pulled him out of school in fifth grade to marry--his wife was 10--and though he can read and write in Hindi, his school transcript brands him illiterate, foreclosing any opportunity to get a government job.

When he bought his first mobile phone, in 2001, he was so nervous he did not make a call for nearly a week. When he finally did, he blurted out: “Friend, I have bought this mobile. Is this your number and your name? I am Babulal!” The next day his phone stopped working and he returned to the shop, telling the salesman that something was wrong with the phone.

“I had no idea what to do,” Mr. Neti said. “He said, ‘Your balance is over.’”

But this experience in no way prepared Mr. Neti for his first encounter with the smartphone, which he spotted about a decade ago in the hand of a computer operator in Taradand’s local administration building.

The official was an agreeable sort, and Mr. Neti began borrowing his phone for two- and three-hour stretches. He went on Google, searching for the word “Gondwana,” the name for the Gond tribe’s traditional land.

“It was as if I had opened up history, the history of Gondwana,” he said. “It seemed fascinating. You didn’t have to buy a book. The earth map came up as round, and part of it was Gondwana. Ireland, Gondwanaland, Switzerland. I was fascinated. No sooner would I see a mobile than I would run over.”

Only after some time, he recalled, did Mr. Neti realize it was possible to search for terms other than Gondwana.

“It seemed,” he said, “as if I was diving into a sea with no bottom to it.”

Mr. Neti finds it maddening that, in a region whose farmers are desperate to educate their children, his neighbors still regard the internet principally as a way to watch movies.

“The villagers do not yet understand,” he said “They don’t know that the whole world rests inside the mobile. The day people realize that, they will stop going out to study.”

If Mr. Neti’s audience was tougher than usual, there was a reason: A 15-year-old girl from Taradand had just eloped with a 17-year-old boy from a different caste, and everyone was blaming technology. There was no evidence the young couple planned their getaway on the phone, but everyone assumed it.

Mr. Neti does spend a lot of time online. Walking around the village, he stops periodically to take selfies and post them on Facebook, and he scrolls through his feeds compulsively. He likes to describe his smartphone as his “best friend,” or his “guru.”

None of this makes much sense to his neighbors. A friend from childhood, Markandeya Yadav, said it was difficult for him to keep up with Mr. Neti’s internet discoveries.

“I am a simple man,” Mr. Yadav said. “He has changed, but I have not.”

At moments of discouragement, Mr. Neti recalls that Taradand has already accepted a new technology. Fifteen years ago, when people began using mobile phones, his neighbors were elated. They were more efficient in everything they did.

It was no longer necessary to make long overland journeys to inform relatives of family news. Before going to market, farmers could call around to compare wholesale prices for vegetables. Migrant laborers could find out where the contractors were paying 400 rupees a day, or around $7.50, instead of the usual 150.

Even Mr. Neti’s uncle, Siya Ram Singh Gond, shook his head gravely at the thought of how long they had lived without these tools. “So much time was wasted,” he said.

Once in a while, Mr. Neti feels he is close to a similar breakthrough with the internet. An example came recently when his father mentioned visiting a district records office to check the boundary of his land. Mr. Neti used Google for a few minutes and then held up his smartphone in front of his father. His father peered at the property lines that Mr. Neti was showing him, accessible on the district administration website, and approved.

“The boundaries were there,” he said. “It was all correct.”

Within hours, he had performed the same service for a dozen other men from neighboring farms.

“It was a very happy moment for me,” Mr. Neti said. “My father also realized this was no ordinary instrument.”

[yes-dal456]

Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth Soothes Self-Help Fatigue

Has your self-help turned into self-criticism?

The self-help struggle is real. Collectively we search for the truth, our path, and purpose from the outside in. We seek answers from psychologists, psychics, and priests without slowing and softening to the wisest guru of all: Ourselves. During my sultry conversation with Danielle LaPorte about her newly released book, White Hot Truth, she shed some light, because, as she says “it’s all about the light,” on how she became her own guru.

Danielle vividly explained the moment when she realized she was at a “jarring juncture: the conflict between sincere spiritual aspiration and the compulsion to improve.” As she opened her day planner and saw upcoming appointments with a shaman, psychotherapist, and astrologist, along with scheduled massages and yoga classes, she had a revelatory moment where she realized “all of this self-helping was becoming a bit of a burden and impinging on my ability to create with a capital C. Spirituality was becoming just another thing on my f*ing to-do list.”

Through breathy prose she broke down how she questioned her spiritual quest and transformed her to-do list, thus creating freedom and fluidity. With her lyrical lathering in full force (by the way, I highly recommend the audio version of the book; you can thank me later) I noticed my shoulders settling into their natural position, less like accessories for my ears, more gliding down my back like wings. My breath eased its way into a gentle rhythm as I physically released the anxiety of my own daunting self-help regimen.

What is this feeling overcoming me as this diva I’ve admired for years (and secretly channeled in moments of insecurity) – thanks to her rockstar books like The Desire Map and The Firestarter Sessions – reveals her process and progress (because, as she says in her Canadian accent, “everything is progress”) to me? Ah, yes, it’s relief! Relief that there’s another way. Relief that we can still be self-evolving, spiritual seekers, without stressing ourselves out on the regular. Without drowning ourselves in green juice cleanses and repeatedly clearing our chakras. We can liberate ourselves from the perpetual spiritual striving through discernment and self-love. Finally!

“It’s Not How We Seek Spiritual Growth; It’s Why We Seek It.”

Many of us, myself included, are drawn to the vast sea of self-help. Investing copious amounts of cash to feel free. We sign up for the lightworker retreat, past life regression, and some oh-so-necessary karmic healing. Yet, ultimately—I’m speaking from my own decades worth of psychotherapy, angel card readings, and psychic sessions—it wasn’t ever quite what my soul needed to truly heal. Why? Because everything I thought I could find ‘out there’ was already inside me. I’d become dependent, tethered actually, to the feedback from others that only I could best offer myself. What once was a young woman chained to an eating disorder like a dog on a leash, was now someone addicted to guidance from experts. Looking to strangers to tell me about…me. Someone who could only get quiet and still in a yoga studio. I was missing the point.

It’s painful to be lost, for sure. However, suffering is waiting for someone else to bring you home when you knew the way all along. You don’t need to wait until next Wednesday at 2 p.m., or head to an ashram to get clarity about your path, because, as Danielle says, “the best self-help is self-compassion.” Guess what, it’s free!

Self-Help or Self-Hate?

When Danielle described, in her alluringly poetic way, that underneath all of our self-helping is a whole hell of a lot of self-hatred I heard myself silently screaming, “Hell ya, sister! Preach!” I mentally scanned the thousands of self-help books I’ve purchased in an attempt to transcend whatever self-imposed trap I was caught in. Books with promising titles like, 10 Steps to Radical Self-Acceptance, left me feeling frantic as they gathered dust on my nightstand. Why do I continue to buy into the notion that a book, sermon, or healer holds the key to unlock the door to my evolution? Probably because it seemed easier.

Without question, I’m devoted to spiritual growth, healing suffering (my own and others), and tending to my psyche and soul. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these soul goals, unless, they disempower you, or require you to disown your deeply held inner wisdom. Seek the counsel of others as a conduit to connecting with your truth, not as a means to adopt others’ truth about you.

Compulsive Self-Improvement   

Danielle believes, “We are driven by the compulsion to improve. We all look so healthy on the outside, but we’re really actually pretty neurotic on the inside.”

Danielle is clear that she didn’t ditch her spiritual to-do list entirely, she’s found a more useful sequencing of priorities. “Self-referencing is a lifelong journey. I meditate daily, pray, or engage in some sort of contemplation. It’s like brushing my teeth, it has to happen.” Therapy continues to be on her agenda, but it’s evident she’s no longer reliant on it to make a decision.

White Hot Truth is the permission we all need to check in with ourselves deeply, with reverence, and to listen to the wisdom of our bodies and souls. We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Keep the yoga class if it serves you. Call the astrologist if you’re in the mood. But let’s stop the perpetual insanity of striving to perfect what was never intended to be perfect. Let’s greet ourselves—our messy, sometimes arrogant, or inconsiderate selves—with compassion, gratitude, and unabashed acceptance. We have everything we need. Already. We are wholly (or holy) enough even when we feel dreadfully inadequate. Beautiful even when we feel broken. The solution is not out there, my love, it’s right here inside. Go talk to the part of yourself that knows. Find her in the trail alongside the river. Find him in the pauses, those quiet moments in between. Sit in your own company and dwell there long enough to remember yourself. That’s the way home. Those are the moments where we hear the truth. Lean on others for support, yes, but don’t let their interpretation or analysis be your sole compass.

Get White Hot Truth!

Hungry for more?

*Part 2 in this blog series will be published on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2017

*I’d love to inspire you to take the next step on your path to recovered and send you my free weekly Recovery Tip videos. Please visit my website to sign up.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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[imreviewblog]

Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth Soothes Self-Help Fatigue

Has your self-help turned into self-criticism?

The self-help struggle is real. Collectively we search for the truth, our path, and purpose from the outside in. We seek answers from psychologists, psychics, and priests without slowing and softening to the wisest guru of all: Ourselves. During my sultry conversation with Danielle LaPorte about her newly released book, White Hot Truth, she shed some light, because, as she says “it’s all about the light,” on how she became her own guru.

Danielle vividly explained the moment when she realized she was at a “jarring juncture: the conflict between sincere spiritual aspiration and the compulsion to improve.” As she opened her day planner and saw upcoming appointments with a shaman, psychotherapist, and astrologist, along with scheduled massages and yoga classes, she had a revelatory moment where she realized “all of this self-helping was becoming a bit of a burden and impinging on my ability to create with a capital C. Spirituality was becoming just another thing on my f*ing to-do list.”

Through breathy prose she broke down how she questioned her spiritual quest and transformed her to-do list, thus creating freedom and fluidity. With her lyrical lathering in full force (by the way, I highly recommend the audio version of the book; you can thank me later) I noticed my shoulders settling into their natural position, less like accessories for my ears, more gliding down my back like wings. My breath eased its way into a gentle rhythm as I physically released the anxiety of my own daunting self-help regimen.

What is this feeling overcoming me as this diva I’ve admired for years (and secretly channeled in moments of insecurity) – thanks to her rockstar books like The Desire Map and The Firestarter Sessions – reveals her process and progress (because, as she says in her Canadian accent, “everything is progress”) to me? Ah, yes, it’s relief! Relief that there’s another way. Relief that we can still be self-evolving, spiritual seekers, without stressing ourselves out on the regular. Without drowning ourselves in green juice cleanses and repeatedly clearing our chakras. We can liberate ourselves from the perpetual spiritual striving through discernment and self-love. Finally!

“It’s Not How We Seek Spiritual Growth; It’s Why We Seek It.”

Many of us, myself included, are drawn to the vast sea of self-help. Investing copious amounts of cash to feel free. We sign up for the lightworker retreat, past life regression, and some oh-so-necessary karmic healing. Yet, ultimately—I’m speaking from my own decades worth of psychotherapy, angel card readings, and psychic sessions—it wasn’t ever quite what my soul needed to truly heal. Why? Because everything I thought I could find ‘out there’ was already inside me. I’d become dependent, tethered actually, to the feedback from others that only I could best offer myself. What once was a young woman chained to an eating disorder like a dog on a leash, was now someone addicted to guidance from experts. Looking to strangers to tell me about…me. Someone who could only get quiet and still in a yoga studio. I was missing the point.

It’s painful to be lost, for sure. However, suffering is waiting for someone else to bring you home when you knew the way all along. You don’t need to wait until next Wednesday at 2 p.m., or head to an ashram to get clarity about your path, because, as Danielle says, “the best self-help is self-compassion.” Guess what, it’s free!

Self-Help or Self-Hate?

When Danielle described, in her alluringly poetic way, that underneath all of our self-helping is a whole hell of a lot of self-hatred I heard myself silently screaming, “Hell ya, sister! Preach!” I mentally scanned the thousands of self-help books I’ve purchased in an attempt to transcend whatever self-imposed trap I was caught in. Books with promising titles like, 10 Steps to Radical Self-Acceptance, left me feeling frantic as they gathered dust on my nightstand. Why do I continue to buy into the notion that a book, sermon, or healer holds the key to unlock the door to my evolution? Probably because it seemed easier.

Without question, I’m devoted to spiritual growth, healing suffering (my own and others), and tending to my psyche and soul. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these soul goals, unless, they disempower you, or require you to disown your deeply held inner wisdom. Seek the counsel of others as a conduit to connecting with your truth, not as a means to adopt others’ truth about you.

Compulsive Self-Improvement   

Danielle believes, “We are driven by the compulsion to improve. We all look so healthy on the outside, but we’re really actually pretty neurotic on the inside.”

Danielle is clear that she didn’t ditch her spiritual to-do list entirely, she’s found a more useful sequencing of priorities. “Self-referencing is a lifelong journey. I meditate daily, pray, or engage in some sort of contemplation. It’s like brushing my teeth, it has to happen.” Therapy continues to be on her agenda, but it’s evident she’s no longer reliant on it to make a decision.

White Hot Truth is the permission we all need to check in with ourselves deeply, with reverence, and to listen to the wisdom of our bodies and souls. We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Keep the yoga class if it serves you. Call the astrologist if you’re in the mood. But let’s stop the perpetual insanity of striving to perfect what was never intended to be perfect. Let’s greet ourselves—our messy, sometimes arrogant, or inconsiderate selves—with compassion, gratitude, and unabashed acceptance. We have everything we need. Already. We are wholly (or holy) enough even when we feel dreadfully inadequate. Beautiful even when we feel broken. The solution is not out there, my love, it’s right here inside. Go talk to the part of yourself that knows. Find her in the trail alongside the river. Find him in the pauses, those quiet moments in between. Sit in your own company and dwell there long enough to remember yourself. That’s the way home. Those are the moments where we hear the truth. Lean on others for support, yes, but don’t let their interpretation or analysis be your sole compass.

Get White Hot Truth!

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*Part 2 in this blog series will be published on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2017

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from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://bit.ly/2qNmFod