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annakie · 4 years ago

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Are we out of the woods yet?

Hey all, haven't been on tumblr in a few days!

I have been living through what so many other Texans have been living through, so I thought I’d write a bunch of words about it, for posterity. My story isn’t nearly as bad as so many others, but hey, it was still a fairly major historical event so... writing it for my own memories. :)

Post title because that particular Taylor Swift song was stuck in my head for most of the last few days, for obvious reasons.

So the last week has been an adventure! Last Friday I got my first Moderna Vaccine, and I posted about it a few times, but by Monday was feeling pretty good. Of course, it snowed overnight. I'd been so out of it all weekend I didn't realize quite how bad it was going to be, but when a friend who lives nearby told me his power was out I kinda went "uh oh", baked myself a box mix of orange cranberry bread, fortified some windows with blankets, and crossed my fingers. Also starting that morning I'd reduced the temperature in the house, and shut off and unplugged everything non-essential.

I was feeling pretty happy when the power stayed on all day. My friend's power came back that evening so I thought I was out of the woods.

And then at 10pm... plunged into darkness.

I threw some more blankets into areas where the cats hang out and my bed, let some friends know, and tried to go to bed, hoping for the best in the morning. Couldn't fall asleep for hours, worrying, as the temperature was plunging to the negatives for the first time in living memory in Texas. Finally fell into a restless sleep, and woke up a few hours later, no power.

The worst thing about no power is like, all the things you can't do. My phone started at 100% charge and I'd charged all my devices including my backup battery, but still tried to conserve power. The scary thing was hearing that this could last for days. And boy the news that day was bleak about the possibility of having power again anytime soon. The house, however, stayed at about 51 degrees the entire day. So, it was cold, but very bearable with a few layers and blankets. Whichever cats I was near were very cuddly though.

I was really glad to have the cranberry orange bread because it was tasty and easy to eat. Also had a sizeable amount of beef jerkey, and chips, and I'd bought about 48 bottles of water at the start of the pandemic that I never drank, so I had no worries about what to eat for the time, luckily. I figured, worst case, I'd figure out a way to do soup over a candle to have a hot meal eventually.

I’d been dripping the bathtub and checking the other faucets regularly. I’ve never had a burst pipe in the normal cold we have, and was hoping for the best this time as well. All seemed well the entire day.

I slept a lot when I wasn't scrolling twitter and nextdoor for information. And early afternoon there was a knock on the door. My mom literally called the cops to do a wellness check on me because I hadn't answered texts in a few hours, lol. I thanked him, and called my mom. Internet had been spotty and her calls weren't going through, nor notifications when I got texts. So that was... notable.

I tried doing some reading, and playing on my Switch but to be honest, I was so anxious about everything that I couldn’t relax and keep my mind on anything but the lack of power and when it’d come back. I did take about four naps though. Considered bringing some of the cats into the car with me to warm up but realized I’d have to lift the garage door manually to run the car without, you know, dying, and instead just turned it on for less than a minute twice that day to keep the battery fresh...er... without carbon monoxide poisoning. (My garage door is solid wood. Even with good springs... it’s heavy.)

By the time it started to get dark, I started to worry about how much longer this would go on. I have a friend who has a 4-wheel drive... idk a land rover or something. He lives about 30 minutes away normally. It'd probably take well over an hour for him to get there now, especially since there was another storm coming that night. Since learning my power was out, he'd been asking if he could come get me, and they had steady rolling blackouts in their neighborhood, several other people I knew nearby were also saying their blackouts were rolling along.

I resisted, because I really didn't want to move the cats but I would never ever abandon my pets. But also it would be very difficult to move them. Patchy doesn't get along with any of them -- she stays in the master bedroom 100% of the time. There was a short period of time last year she would explore the house, but she got along with everyone else, especially Fry, so poorly that she decided she did not want to explore the house anymore. Fry sometimes wanders into the master bedroom and if they're both on the floor there's lots of hissing and yelling, and maybe swatting. She also has nothing but hissing for Pemily and Leela if she sees them. The master is her domain, the rest of the cats can have everything else.

Everyone else can be mean to Leela, though she gets along OK with Pemily most of the time.

But Fry is just... hoo boy he is nothing but a problem child I don’t want to subject on others. He’s a bully and an asshole and yells loudly when anything doesn’t go his way. He would really, really not take a new environment well. He hates the outside, and runs away when I even open a door. And getting him to the vet involves kitty sleeping pills, though he also still fights through it enough to freak out the entire time he’s in a carrier badly, yeowling the entire time and literally rips all his nails off trying to get out, still trying to dig his way out with bloody paws. It’s a nightmare. So the thought of getting all four of them into carriers at the same time, then putting them all in a car for well over an hour (and the entire trip would be nothing but all four of them crying the entire time with Fry being the worst), then bringing them into someone else’s house, and needing two separate rooms because I can’t put Patchy in the same room as the other three... and trying to keep them all calm in a whole new situation when none of them were used to any other environment than my house (aside from yearly trips to the vet) man... moving them was a last resort.

But around 10pm when I had been sitting in the dark for 24 hours, I texted him and said in the morning, if the power wasn't on, we'd talk about him coming to get me and the cats in the morning.

I fortified Leela’s bed with a blanket fort. (Pic above was from later, when I got power, and was way more open than I kept it when it was cold.) I couldn’t get her to move anywhere else... it actually worked pretty well.

I fortified the master bedroom with blankets over the sliding glass door on Monday and then put Patchy’s cat bed on the bed and fortified IT with more blankets. After she was settled in I managed to get her covered up. Then I went into the living room, which is the smallest room in the house and a room most would use as a bedroom, and snuggled into the couch with Fry and Pemily, the door cracked for ventilation, and four candles burning.

Fell asleep around 10:30.

Around midnight I was woken up by a terrifying sound... running water. Honestly thought I was dreaming for a moment, had to work to pull myself out of my dream, and my heart froze in terror that I may have a burst pipe. And then I heard a very, very good sound... the furnace turning on.

POWER! 26 hours later.. POWER. The running water sound was the cats’ water fountain.

Got out of bed, nuked myself a small frozen pizza, checked around the house for everything and everyone being OK, plugged in all my portable devices to recharge, and went back to sleep. Woke up around 4 and still had power. I thought... I really wanted a hot meal and should cook something that wouldn’t be bad as cold leftovers for lunch, as I’d finished the cranberry orange bread when I woke up at midnight. I didn’t want to use too much power so uh... I made Fettuccine Alfredo, and ate half of it... at 4am. What? It was good.

Also... I hadn’t seen the stray cat I’d been taking care of since Sunday night. He hadn’t even visited because there were no tracks in the snow. Checked the backyard randomly and he was there!!! So he got food and water. I was very happy.

THERE’S THE BOY! I call him Patchy’s Boyfriend. Taken through the blinds as to not scare him.

Animal tracks in the snow!! I was glad some birbs got some water, too!

Went back to bed in my own bed. Woke up a little later than normal for work with the power still on. Texted my folks to tell them the good news. Got up and went into the kitchen, started contemplating coffee and pancakes for a hot meal. Opened the fridge for the first time and checked the milk. Sadly, it didn’t survive, and realized I was a dumbass for not just.. putting the groceries... in the garage... where it was cold...

And just as I sighed and started to decide if I wanted coffee without milk... the power went back off. Aw, damn.

My spirits were lifted, though, at having power and a warm house overnight. I checked in with work and let them know I’d be out again unless the power came back, told my friends and said NOT to come get me, decided NOT to tell my mom the power was off again, because all that would do is make them worry about me all day again, checked on the cats and tucked them in, and went back to bed. Got some more sleep.

Relaxed more that day, with the house taking longer to cool down. Actually played some Switch, read the first couple of books in the Mass Effect Comic Collection. Had cold Alfredo and an apple with peanut butter for lunch. Scrolled twitter a lot more, not afraid to have to go to my backup battery if needed.

Right around the time I’d usually be knocking off for work... the power came on again.

And it didn’t shut off. Yay.

In total I was without power somewhere around 34 hours. It sucked.. but also... I didn’t have my pipes burst... they didn’t even freeze. The house never dipped below 50, thanks insulation! My water was always running, though for a few hours it was very low pressure, and always clean. My city government and congressman were both very involved and communicative, doing their best to help people and get the word out. City had two warming centers should I have needed them, one of which was pet friendly. I had plenty of food and water, enough for a week or more easily. I had friends willing to put themselves at risk and through inconvenience to make sure I was taken care of.

A lot of people had it much, much worse. So yeah. I don’t ever wanna do that again, but for me, it wasn’t all that bad.

Shoutouts to:

My nearby friend Eric, who would have let me stay at his place if needed.

My far-away friend Marcus for offering to come and get me, and suffer the inconvenience of my cats. Other friends would have if I’d asked, too.

My queen sized purple fleece blanket for being so warm and comforting.

My warm fuzzy bathrobe, messy bun beanie, and fuzzy slippers for making sure I was never all that cold.

My cats for weathering things well. They also learned that maybe they DO like being under covers now.

My LED Headlamp for providing hands-free light for hours and hours.

My mom for a bag of candles she gave me YEARS ago I always would see and want to throw out, but didn’t let myself just in case I needed them someday. I burned many of them and they kept me warm that second night.

Also my mom for... calling... the police... on me? I know she loves me. Also that cop for having a sense of humor about it and telling me to call my mom more often lol. ACAB and all, but I shoulda checked my texts.

My Switch and Mass Effect Comic Collection for being huge piles of entertainment when I could finally relax and read them.

My coworker Monica for suggesting I make something I could snack on easily in case we lost power. That cranberry orange bread was perfect.

Me for never throwing away a blanket. I should probably donate some, though. Between the cats and covering windows and me, though.. I used... a lot of blankets.

4am Fettuccine Alfredo.

My municipal utilities for already saying our bills wouldn’t be drastically higher from this month. Although, I take it back for being real bad at the “rolling” part of the “rolling” blackouts.

Also, one more thing... FUCK YOU TED CRUZ, YOU DESERTING PIECE OF SHIT. BETO O’ROURKE DOES YOUR JOB BETTER THAN YOU WITHOUT THE TITLE, POWER, OR PAYCHECK.

#personal post tag thingy #snowpocolypse2021

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whoistheasshole · 4 years ago

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My boyfriend went on a guy trip while my dad is dying and he didn‘t even text

Anonymous asks: Am I the asshole for being upset my boyfriend hasn’t texted me even though he knows my dad is dying? My dad has been in the hospital for about a month now, which my boyfriend has been aware of. I’ve told him about how sad I am. Last week, the doctors told us that his chance of recovery is extremely unlikely & that we should consider taking him off of the machines since he’s been unresponsive for so long/ his quality of life is so bad right now.

Initially we were going to take him off the machines on Friday but my sister is in Georgia and wont be able to make it until Monday, so that’s when we’ll all be able to see him (for the first time since he’s gone into the hospital due to covid, and for the last time alive). My boyfriend, knowing this, and under the impression that my dad was going to be taken off the machines on this past Friday, went to Vermont with his friends. We’re long distance anyway so it doesn’t make a difference to me if he travels, but he left me on read since friday morning even though he knows how distressed I am and is under the impression my dad died three days ago! I admittedly haven’t texted him since then either but I’ve been coping with the fact that I’m going to have to attend my dad’s funeral & wake next week!

I’m pretty freaking peeved that he couldn’t spare a literal minute to ask if I’m doing okay but I can’t tell if I’m being unreasonable maybe? It always bothered me that he didn’t text me for days at a time when he was with his friends but I figured I was just being a little clingy as we only started dating in October (but have known each other since last June). I don’t know if I have any right to confront him/be upset that he hasn’t texted me for a few days.

sorry this is so weirdly late but in my last message i think i said he texted me on friday? I can’t remember but actually the last time he texted me on Thursday **, the day before my dad was initially supposed to be taken off the machines & also thank u for reading

Hello anon,

He might be the asshole.

I’m being vague because I want to leave room for the possibility that there are mitigating circumstances (like bad cell reception/internet access or a substantial misunderstanding), but it doesn’t sound good.

I am looking quizzically at a fun weekend out in the middle of a pandemic. I am also questioning the radio silence during this really really tough time that you’re going through. Nobody should ever have to make the decision that your family is facing right now and I hope you can lean on each other.

To move forward with your boyfriend, I recommend going back to some really trite advice: Communicate with him. It’s not clear to me whether you have had a conversation yet where (both of you) put it all out there: What are you expectations around communication, especially when your boyfriend is away “with the boys” (in a pandemic)? Which level of contact would you prefer? What is he looking for? Can you find common ground?

You are absolutely within your right to reach out and let him know how you feel and how he can help. I can’t tell if he deserves it, but any conversation is usually more productive if you assume good intentions for now. That’s generally the case when we want somebody to do something, but we haven’t actually told them out loud yet. Maybe he thinks you need some space. Maybe he doesn’t know how to be there for you around your grief, even though he would like to be, so he’s erring on the side of doing too little. Yes, maybe he’s just self-centered and doesn’t pay enough attention to you, but get the evidence on the table first, by asking him.

To be clear, I don’t recommend this approach because I think you’re wrong or that he’s a misunderstood sensitive boy. I’m recommending it because I assume you want to be with him and that you fundamentally think he’s worth putting in the effort and in that case, your best bet is open communication (provided you haven’t already tried and he failed). So go ahead and put it out in the open, ask him what he is looking for communication-wise during these trips, say your piece and go from there.

Of course this might not be the best time to have a non-judgemental discussion, especially as this is not a mere non-texting during trip situation, but a massive painful life event during trip situation. If you need to get to calmer waters to pull off such a discussion, proactively address your current needs and leave the bigger talk for later. This could mean asking him for something specific that would be helpful like “Hey bf, I’m having a really hard time right now. Are you open to having a call this evening?/Can you send me distracting animal videos?/Can could lend me your ear for 15 minutes and then we talk about something completely different?” Or if you can’t really talk to him right now without blowing up: “Hey, I’m having a tough time because of my dad and will focus on … the next days. I don’t know when I’ll text you next, but encouraging words are appreciated in the meantime.” or whatever you’re looking for. Basically, no matter which direction you go, be the one to open communication. Sometimes when one person opens up, it can start a slow chain-reaction with everybody in the relationship becoming more communicative. And focusing on the “shoulds” (he should have been calling, he should not be unavailable right now) doesn’t get you closer to where you’d like to be. Finally, if you feel like you’re too angry to have any kind of productive exchange, write it all down in a text document or make an angry drawing or scream in the basement/woods. Get your feelings out, be they sad or angry.

It’s possible that one of the above conversations will reveal that your expetations are not compatible, but cross that bridge if you come to it.

To sum it up: Yes I think you are completely justified in feeling miffed that you didn’t hear anything from your boyfriend in a situation like this. No I can’t say if it’s all his bad or if he has some kind of good explanation for the radio silence. Take care of yourself and be the turtlelest turtle you need to be right now (idk where I am going with this image, just build a blanket nest, alright?) to get through this difficult situation.

If you had to take your dad off life support at this point, I am very sorry for your loss. It’s incredibly hard what you and your family have to go through and I hope it gets bearable sooner rather than later.

#post #questions #advice #death #relationships #covid-19 #communication #who is the asshole

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thekillerssluts · 4 years ago

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Will Butler: “I am very American and that is my thing I have to deal with“

In times like these, where some of us are reflecting on what the future will bring and what role we can play to make it more bearable, Will Butler uses his new solo record “Generations” to ask profound questions in a very intense and compelling way.

As a member of the renowned Indie Rock Band Arcade Fire his fans quite often perceive the multitalented musician as an entertainer who likes goofing around with his bandmates and who gets carried away on all kinds of escapades on his instruments. Nevertheless, there is a very serious person behind that facade who is deeply involved in community work with a strong political opinion. Not only a Master’s Degree from Harvard in public policy can prove that, but also his engagement in countless events with political focus.

It was a special honor to chat with Will Butler about his new solo record “Generations”. An album which sounds quite joyous at first glance but has a lot to offer when you listen closely. We talked about how the Covid crisis affected his work and life, how he deals with the political situation in the US and how it is for him as a live enthusiast to not be able to perform his new record on stage:

Great to have you back with us! Last time you talked to my colleague Gabi about your first solo album “Policy”. That was quite a while ago.

Oh yes, many years ago. Five years and a lot changed since then.

How is life treating you, how is the whole Covid crisis treating you?

It’s been weird six month. This summer I am in New York. The summer felt pretty good, it seems we are through the worst and people were out and about and going back to living their lives. Now fall comes and we will see what happens.

How does it feel to release an album in those times? We interviewed artists with quite opposite opinions. Some say people can´t focus on music at the moment as they are distracted with more important things while others say it’s especially important now to have the distraction of music. Which side are you on?

What I have been seeing is that people are very grateful for music that has come out, both a as a distraction but also as a spiritual nourishment, like some sort of comfort. Music sometimes works like food, where it comforts you and make you ready for the fight ahead. That side to me is quite beautiful.

Honestly, I was very thankful that you released that album. For me music is exactly what you just described, it gives me comfort and positiveness. It often helps to escape reality, although I have to say that your album “Generations” pushes you right into reality.

(laughing) Oops.

I have the feeling it´s not an album for pure distraction, it´s music you have to dive deep into and confront.

Yes, it definitely has an urgency to it. It is contiguous with the last four or five years which have been very intense, especially in the US but all around the world. So, it´s definitely coming from the same soil as this mad year.

I think you already started working on the album before the whole lockdown happened?

I finished recording the album on March 9, I thought that was the perfect time, so it was marked in my calendar. It happened that just a few days later New York shut down and went into complete lockdown. Mixing then took probably the next six weeks; half the record was mixed in Montreal. And suddenly we had to deal with a lot of things like schools closing, people had to figure out helping their parents and how to get help for other people. It was suddenly chaos and a terrifying time. That itself was complicated even though only the mixing was left to do.

Interestingly enough the record sounds as if it was written with all the things happening already in your head. It fits so much with the times.

Yes, I kept checking in with the record and I thought yes, it’s still the same world. So much has come out of the police crisis, the refugee crisis happening at the same time, which is still ongoing. These where part of the impetus for the world we are in right now. The pandemic is particularly strange and not what I was imagining. It just adds to the weirdness that was already there.

I saw you live several times with your band Arcade Fire and also solo. You seem to be such a live person. The new songs sound to me like they’re made for being performed live. How do you feel about not being able to play them now?

I am really sad to not be touring this fall. I planned on touring the US before the election in September and October. I wanted to do political town halls where I can have local politicians and invite activists to talk about shit. Now I´m very sad to not be able to do that. It´s such a crazy time and I want to be useful, useful in a sense of being able to talk to people in different cities about important stuff. It´s hard to not have that toolbox. Also, the songs were very much written live. I booked shows before we went into the studio and we were trying to figure out how to play the songs live.

That sounds tough, so it´s even more devastating not being able to do it. What do you do now to raise your voice?

It´s hard. I´m not that good at the internet. I do some stuff online but this is not my natural medium. So what I’m doing is I´m talking to friends, my wife and I are also very active in our community. I think it´s very important to have that intimate connection to friends and family and talk to them.

Listening to your lyrics you seem to have a lot of questions but no answers. I think none of us do, but it makes exchange of thoughts even more important to make sure the head is not exploding.

Yes exactly. For me music is a force that is moving forward, by its nature it is a creative act. To me there is hope in the music and hope in the drums that are a bit of a propulsion. But there is not a lot of hope or knowledge in the head. I think that is a bit true for all of us these days. Our heads are completely toasted. Nevertheless, there is still hope in our friendships, there is still hope in our neighborhoods, there is still hope in our families.

It´s great that you talk about hope. That would have been actually my last question, what gives you hope? I think we all need something positive to not go totally mental.

Yes, very much though and you have to be grateful to see a lot of people around you being safe and remind yourself that you are not alone. Follow the ones who have a good common sense and surround yourself with the good ones out there.

What I learned is also being thankful for the little things and everything we took for granted for a long time. I, for example, took concerts for granted. I could never imagine that there is a world without live music. When I see videos from gigs it feels like another life.

You are so right. I could also never envision that this is going to happen and now I´m like what? It´s genuinely deeply confusing. It is going to echo in our lives for a very long time how strange this year was.

Talking about how important friends and family are – you have recorded “Generations” with the same solo band as “Policy”. Do you need that intimacy of knowing the people well you work with?

Yes, my actual touring band consisted of my wife’s sister Julie, my wife contributed a lot to the record – she is a great musician, and Sara Dobbs who is a friend and was our neighbor in New York. My drummer Miles is also part of it. There is a lot there, we’ve been playing together for five years now. There is a lot of instinct and call and response, that’s hard to manufacture. That´s how it works; you always work with the people you are familiar with.

You come from a very musical family with your grandfather Alvino Rey being a musician, your mom playing the harp, you and your brother in the same band. Is the title “Generations” referring to that legacy?

Yes, very much so. My mom’s grandfather was the last son of a Mormon pioneer from across the American west. He decided to be a musician and he encouraged his children to be musicians. My grandmother, who grew up in a family band, married the grand Alvino, they had kids who were all musicians, so there is a beautiful heritage that stretches back and such a deep privilege to have. But there are also very horrifying things you inherit, every country and every people inherit their different stretch of horrors, as part of why they are where they are. In America it is particularly situated around race and gender. I think we are starting to unpack those burdens as a country but this will take a couple of generations.

Tackling those inherited problems will be even harder if Trump will be elected again.

(sighs) That’s going to be really dark. I can´t predict anything anymore, my capacity for prediction is just gone but if it happens it will be really bad.

So now we are back at all the questions you have in your songs about the past, the future and where we are.

You are exactly right!

You have lived in Canada for quite some time. Do you sometimes wish you have stayed there?

No, never to be honest. I love Montreal, it´s one of the greatest cities in the world and I have friends and family there. I am very American and that is my thing I have to deal with – these are my problems, I´m a citizen here – let´s try to fix it to the extent we can.

Do you see the future differently since you became a father? You have always been a very political person but did something change since you have a family?

Having kids didn´t really change my vision of the past or future in a particular way. It´s not like now I make sure my kids have a better world but I feel like I have learned a lot about humanity, about nature and nurture and where humans come from and particular reasons why they are cruel and why they are kind and something about fundamental things like human love. I learned a lot about all those things in the past years. I feel a great responsibility – not so much to make a better world for them but to make sure that they´ve got their shit together as much as I can.

Unfortunately, we are running out of time. I could go on with you forever. I wish you all the best for the record. I really appreciate that you put some good music out, although it is something you have to get your head around and digest while swaying to the joyful tunes.

Thank you. This is something very meaningful. Thank you for letting me know.

I have to be honest I also need a deeper thought about your video for “Bethlehem” which you just have released.

I´m thinking in metaphors my whole life, so I was like let´s just cook our way through this one. Let´s just cook some of our anger and fear into a big meal.

To me at first glance it looked like a big feast inspired by Klu Klux Klan in a way. Watching it once I was not quite sure what feelings to have about the scenery; if it’s something positive or negative.

Oh wow, I was not intending that but that is not the worst vision of it. It was part of the goal to create something beautiful but also horrifying. It´s a horror film kind of comedy. It should be contradictory, so you are absolutely right with your feelings.

So again, good luck for the record and let´s hope that we can get all back together again at a concert and celebrate and sing and shout together and enjoy the moment.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And yes let´s hope so (sighs). Fingers crossed on that one.

https://fastforward-magazine.de/will-butler-i-am-very-american-and-that-is-my-thing-i-have-to-deal-with/

#Arcade Fire #will butler #interview #generations

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all-hail-the-witcher · 4 years ago

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im in high school and it sucks do you have any advice you could give me

aright ive been thinking about this one for a little while, trying to actually come up with something helpful. in interest of accuracy, i graduated high school in 2019 and am about to enter my sophomore year of college.

first and foremost, you're in high school. i dont know what grade you're in, but at most you've got 4 years left. and after that you never have to see Any of the people you go to school with ever again if you dont want to. i know this one might seem kinda stupid, but it was one of the few thoughts that got me through junior and senior year. (also when i was home on college breaks (and right now during *this*) the only people ive seen from school are the ones that i choose to see and if i happen to run into someone else we either wave or just ignore eachother. i also live in a fairly smallish town)

find a spot to eat lunch thats not the cafeteria if possible. idk what kinda school you go to, and this is not possible at all schools, but if it is, take advantage of it. i would eat lunch in the crafts room 99% of the time and work on whatever project i was currently doing. sometimes my friends would join me and sometimes id be by myself, but either way it was nice to get away from the nonsense for a little bit.

make fun of your awful teachers. not to their face obviously, but with your friends. it makes the class that you absolutely cant stand so much more bearable. i had a teacher in my senior year who was absolutely awful and my friend and i who had the class together would make fun of him outside of the classroom.

doodle. some teachers do notebook checks, so dont do it in that notebook, get some plain lined paper or do it in a different notebook entirely, but doodling is a great way to relieve some of the stress and shit that goes on in class.

go on your phone. i probably shouldn't be advising this one, but i spent a fair amount of time on my phone in high school, esp as i got into senior year. i think i might have spent more time on my phone than paying attention honestly. theres definitely an art to it. but once you figure it out, its pretty simple. just make sure you're still getting decent grades.

snacks! figure out which of your teachers let you eat food in class and bring snacks. you'd be surprised how much snacks improve your mood. (maybe not this year tho cause of the whole pandemic thing. but if you're taking classes from home, do it!)

try to take at least 1 class that doesnt require a lot of brain power. my classes of choice were dance and crafts. if your school offers stuff like that, its nice to have a break in your schedule that doesnt require you to be sitting and taking notes and thinking about things.

know your limits when making your schedule. just because you place into all honors or get reccomeded for ap classes doesnt mean you Have to take them. obviously, parents (and sometimes guidance counselors) dont agree with this. but if theyre cool with it, only take honors or aps in areas that you actually enjoy. that way you will be more motivated to do the work. it also gives you a break in your other classes. when i was in high school, the bulk of my honors and ap classes were in history and english because that was what i was better at and liked more. i took non honors science and math when possible. those classes had significantly less homework, which left me time to do my homework for my harder classes without feeling stressed.

determine which classes you *actually* have to pay attention in. there will usually be one or two ones that you actually have to pay 100% attention in, and then you can kinda get away with not completely paying attention in the rest of them.

listen to music whenever possible. if you have a teacher that lets you have your earbuds in, take full advantage. or listen to music while changing classes, or during lunch. music does so much to improve your mood and its something to look forward to. just be careful of that one teacher every school has that makes you take out your earbuds. dont get in trouble.

give yourself an outlet. something that you can enjoy that is absolutely not connected to high school. it could be a youtube channel, a fandom, writing fanfic, a book, a movie, some form of media. and let yourself indulge in it after (or even during) school. i wrote a lot of fan fiction in class. i wrote character maps, hcs, song lists with themes, shit like that. and then when i got home i let myself watch like an hour or so of youtube before i did my homework. just because you're in high school doesnt mean you cant give yourself breaks. again, parents can be annoying about that because they see you not doing your homework and think you're a bad student, so dont get in trouble. but definitely give yourself breaks when doing homework.

try not to start or get mixed up in drama. its a lot easier said than done, but it makes everything so much better. also in the grand scheme of things, high school drama is not important.

find a few friends to be close with and stick by them. if you have one or two close friends in high school you're pretty much set. of course you can go through high school with no friends and make it out, but its easier to have a few close friends. it makes it fun. and if you dont have any friends at your school, internet friends work too.

dont get caught up in the whole college application thing. yes its stressful, but whatever school you end up at will be fine. and people often get so consumed by the process that they get incredibly stressed and forget to take care of themselves. make sure you're still hanging out with your friends and making time for yourself.

high school seems like the most important thing in the world when you're in it. but it's not. and you'll get through it. i hope this wast least a little bit helpful. if not feel free to message me or send me another ask!

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dreamsinfiction17 · 4 years ago

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Reflection.

So here is my reflection post for 2020. I’m sure I’m not the first one to say this cos COVID was a major pain in everyone’s asses but yes, 2020 was a hectic and unpredictable year.

Work: Not only did I have to adapt to a new work routine (it’s now 10 months into this WFH arrangement and I have a love-hate relationship with it), but I also had to handle with the fallout of the pandemic since our MB (Major Boss) was placed in charge of the response team. To make things even more fun, GE was added to the mix. This is my first time working in the civil service during a GE and I can say I have survived haha. It was an intense 2-week period, with me waking up at odd hours of the night and day to come up with coverage reports together with my colleagues. I wished we could have spent days in the office together as that would have made things less lonely but at least I felt encouraged by their warm messages every now and then. I also had to handle a period of 4 months when my colleague went on ML and that felt even more strenuous to me than GE and COVID, I feel. Maybe because it was for a long stretch of time when we were understaffed; at least during the peak of COVID and GE we could always count on covering one another. I also did a lot more translation work and the tight deadlines sometimes made me want to rip my hair off lol. But I would like to think that I have grown from the experience. And then, there were both senior management and director changes. Senior management changes was bearable but I was very sad to see one of the best bosses I’ve worked with move on to another portfolio. I hope we do cross paths again one day.

Okay now that I’ve written it all down; a lot of work-related things did happen in 2020. How did I survive all that without taking an overseas holiday? As J would say, my PB pay in March/April will definitely reflect my hard work the past year heh.

Personal: Hmm, I’m not sure if I’ve grown much personally in the past year. I always think that life is a marathon and your growth shouldn’t be measured by bouts of time but by seeing the bigger picture (if you get what I mean). I think I have learned to be a bit more mellow, to let things flow where they go as long as I have put in my best effort. It’s still hard sometimes as I tend to treat myself more harshly than I do with my friends or family, but ever since the new iOS update came out and I placed Kim Seokjin’s quote on my homescreen, I feel more comforted every time I look at it and remind myself to take it slow and go at my own pace.

The customisation of widgets took me 7 hours according to Screen Time >.<

Oddly, thanks to COVID and CB, I’ve become closer to my friends as we hang out more often (virtually) - almost every weekend at one point! I think we were all feeling the stress of staying at home 24/7. Also D is back in SG now! We all had a lot of fun watching Netflix shows together and playing online games (including virtual escape rooms which I love!) I’m glad that COVID gave me this silver lining - to reconnect with past friends and know who to rely on when times get tough.

I think I’ve also grown spritually this year? Since I was mostly WFH last year, I am so thankful that I managed to do my prayers on time each day and having time at all to just sit down and talk to God. I’m not the most spiritual/religious person but I loved having these dedicated small pockets of time where it’s just me and my Creator. Subhanallah, the many mercies of our daily solat. I hope this is a turning point for me spritually; please make many duas for me :)

I’ve also dabbled more in writing and personal fitness last year, especially during the circuit breaker months. As much as I love the written word, I’ve never really taken it seriously - maybe because I felt like I could never measure up to all the great works of literature that I’ve enjoyed over the years. But this year, I tried writing short prompts (thanks to Skillshare haha) and I was surprised with how much fun I had writing it! They’re not any good and I don’t know if I will publish them on the internet someday but I just liked nursing this little flame of writing passion I have with no expectations whatsoever. Hopefully I could do more writing sessions during my spare time and cafe days! On the personal fitness front, I felt myself getting more sedentary during CB, since my usual form of fitness (hour-long commutes to and fro work) were suddenly gone. I also felt more restless being cooped up at home. So I did my daily steps! I relied on my Xiaomi fitness tracker and did indoor walking while I was watching a show so that I feel more “productive” LOL. But then my tracker died (it just would not charge anymore?) so I took the opportunity to upgrade to an Apple Watch as a birthday present to myself! It was so expensive but also very much worth it (the Apple Store in MBS is also such a beaut). I’ve had it for close to a month now and loving it very much; it makes me want to be more active and close my Move, Exercise and Stand rings each day heh. I also synchronise it with my phone so that Telegram and Whatsapp messages come through too and now I don’t feel worried about missing an important work text while my phone is charging lol.

But one of the main highlights of 2020 is definitely working on achieving some of my childhood dreams. I finally signed up for piano classes with a private tutor! I was always semi-bitter that I didn’t get to do the things I want when I was a child (partly due to money being tight at home but also because that same money went to my brother’s hobbies urgh). Now that I’m a working adult, I’m gonna be independent and work on achieving my own dreams. I will probably write about my piano learning experience (thus far) in a separate blog post so I won’t go into too much detail here but I just want to say that I am loving it very much so far and it gives me so much joy <3

...and that’s it! What a lengthy wrap-up haha. Hope you’re not dozing off at the end of this post.

I’m looking forward to what 2021 will bring. Whether good or bad, I pray I have the strength to see through it all.

#wrapped2020 #2020 #recap post

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arplis · 5 years ago

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Arplis - News: Cooking with Varlam Shalamov

In Valerie Stivers’s Eat Your Words series, she cooks up recipes drawn from the works of various writers. The Kolyma Stories and my extended time indoors offered me the opportunity to use up some obscure items that have been languishing in my pantry. The complete stories of Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982), published by NYRB Classics in two newly translated volumes, contain some of the bleakest and most powerful writing we have about the Soviet gulag. They’re also terrifyingly and indelibly about food—that is, about starving to death. Shalamov was first arrested in the twenties, when he was a student at Moscow University, and then again in 1937 for Trotskyist activity. He spent the next seventeen years in labor camps, including on the far northern island of Kolyma, where he mined for gold in some of the most horrific conditions in all the gulag. He found no redemption in the camps, writing that they were “a negative school of life in every possible way. Nobody can get anything useful or necessary out of the camps … Every minute of camp life is poisoned.” Yet in the decades after his release, he boiled the horrors he’d seen down to their pure essentials and shared them via this extraordinary body of work. Shalamov is plainspoken—“he knew his material perfectly, and wrote in a way that everyone can understand,” notes the translator Donald Rayfield—but prolonged immersion in the work reveals him as a better Solzhenitsyn; the stories are compulsively readable despite their subject matter, as compressed and brilliant as the Arctic snow. The temptation would be to compare them to “metal number one,” as gold was called by the Soviet authorities—if Shalamov had not so loathed it. I was reading the first volume, Kolyma Stories, two weeks ago as New York City shut down due to the ongoing public health crisis. He was the only writer who didn’t feel frivolous—not because there can be any comparison between America’s sudden food insecurity and the Stalinist gulag’s conditions of prolonged starvation but because I have been depressed by the human behavior on display. To me, social distancing seemed to erupt spontaneously, and I found it heartbreaking. Even if it will later emerge as necessary and the best decision, I’m hopelessly stuck on the idea that distance is bad. I read a Leslie Jamison piece about being sick with the coronavirus and caring alone for her two-year-old, and on an emotional level, I’m outraged that I can’t bring her soup and human kindness. The recipe called for a Pullman loaf pan, but I had to make do with what was on hand and baked my bread in a Dutch oven. Proper Russian rye bread is not round. I don’t claim Shalamov’s moral authority for my opinions, but I think often of the first point on a list he wrote in Moscow in 1961, which Rayfield includes in his introduction to Kolyma Tales. The list is entitled “What I Saw and Understood in the Camps,” and the first point is: “The extreme fragility of human culture, civilization. A man becomes a beast in three weeks, given heavy labor, cold, hunger and beatings.” That’s too bleak for our times, but it bears keeping in mind. The third point is: “I realized that friendship, comradeship, would never arise in really difficult, life-threatening conditions. Friendship arises in difficult but bearable conditions (in the hospital, but not at the pit face.)” We have opportunities. I find Shalamov consoling for his gravity, his sorrow, and his moral purity. Our times are grave and sad, though unfortunately for those of us not deemed essential workers, feelings of moral purity are hard to come by. I decided to bake from him in order to encourage others to read his stories, not because I think that baking bread and sharing it on the internet does much for humanity; baking is fun, but as a cook and sensualist, I consider virtual intimacy no intimacy at all. I’ve also had a long-running, long-failing personal project to correctly bake Russian rye bread from homemade sourdough starter, and testimony by all the novice quarantine bakers currently struggling with this implies that my experiences may be of some use. Moreover, while any attempt to faithfully reproduce the staff of life from a concentration camp would be ghoulish, Shalamov specifies that the bread was rye, and I had the medium rye flour, coarse rye meal, and red rye malt necessary for such bread already in my pandemic pantry, waiting to be thriftily used up. Appropriately, it was snowing on Shalamov baking day. I weighed options for using this can of condensed milk. Shalamov writes that bread was the “basic food” in the camps, and it appears in nearly every story. “We got half our calories from bread,” he explains. “The cooked food was something hard to define, its nutritional value depended on thousands of different things.” It was bread that kept him alive, specifically the ratio between its quantity and his labor. Men in his stories scheme for bread, fight for it, weep when they don’t get “a crusty piece.” There are loving descriptions of allowing crumbs to dissolve on the tongue. In the story “The Typhus Quarantine,” in which the Shalamov proxy Andreyev wakes up in the hospital and realizes he’s going to survive, he observes that “as little as half a kilo of rye bread, three spoonfuls of porridge, and a bowl of thin gruel were enough to resurrect a man: as long as he didn’t have to work.” I considered making a second dish, oreshki, that I remember from my time living in Moscow: walnut-shaped cookies filled with a caramel made from condensed milk. The inspiration was “Condensed Milk,” a Shalamov story in which the narrator achieves one of his few victories over the forces trying to destroy him, tricking an enemy out of two cans of condensed milk. He consumes both instantly, after having “used the corner of an ax to pierce a hole” in the cans. I also had a can of condensed milk sitting in my pandemic pantry. Moreover, a Russian friend from Irkutsk—where the narrator arrives after his long exile, in the last story of the first volume—once told me that to make the caramel, you boil the sealed can for hours, stopping just before the point of explosion. This sounded like a cooking adventure of the type I am familiar with and enjoy, but for two factors: I’d have to order a cookie mold off the internet at a time when people need the transportation grid for more pressing matters, and it felt inappropriate to Shalamov and his work. Thus, I made bread. It’s the title of a story, and it’s the ultimate human comfort food. There are many styles of Russian rye, but the one I’ve been trying to reproduce has a chewy, spongy, sour interior and a leathery black crust dusted with coriander seeds. I found a recipe that seemed close in a book called The Rye Baker, by Stanley Ginsberg. The first step was to develop a starter. The recipe did not specify if I was supposed to grind the red rye malt, but it looked ground in the book’s photo, so I did. The starter method outlined in The Rye Baker is fairly similar to all the others on the internet: You combine flour and water in about equal weights (half a cup of flour to a quarter cup of water, roughly), cover, and leave in a room-temperature place for twenty-four hours. Then you scoop out half the mixture, add another round of flour and water, stir, and repeat. After forty-eight hours, you should see gas bubbles, but even if you don’t, step up the discard-and-feed cycle to every twelve hours. Allegedly, within seven days you will have a puffy, sour mixture that can rise bread. I wish I could report success with this, but instead I’ve had days and weeks of failure—and even, one night, tears, when my husband preheated the oven and accidentally cooked three carefully tended starters I’d placed there to soak up the warmth from the pilot light. Mishaps aside (oh, there were more), I suspect that my fundamental problem was the temperature: the Ginsberg book specifies that “room temperature” is between sixty-eight and seventy-two degrees. Up in Vermont, it’s been snowing, and starters left on my countertop have remained completely inert. Some sources suggest that a starter that looks flat might still be working, but I tried it and got a rocklike, unrisen loaf. Starters nourished in warmer places—the proofing drawer, the oven with the light on, the microwave with the light on—showed some growth and bubbling but either didn’t survive or did not raise bread. I suspect they may have been too warm, since too-warm conditions encourage bacteria (the sourness and bubbles) but not yeast (the growth). It’s also possible that wild yeast is a more mysterious beast than commonly admitted and that my starter just didn’t have enough of it. A last caveat: Ginsburg says the starter should be ready in five to seven days. I tried mine at day seven, and it did not work. However, other sources say you need up to twenty days to establish a culture powerful enough to bake with. There is also the possibility that my starter was okay and the failure was somewhere in the bread recipe or my technique. Ginsberg’s Borodinsky rye bread asks for “a scald” and “a sponge.” For the former, you pour boiling water over rye meal and rye malt and allow it to soften overnight. For the latter, you make a slurry of starter, water, and flour and allow it to rise overnight. In the morning, you combine the two and let them sit for three to four hours “until doubled in volume.” I did so, and the doubling did not happen. I thought my starter was at fault. But then I added a packet of instant yeast (proofed), and though it bubbled, it also did not increase the volume. I would have stopped there, having been down this inedible-brick, wasted-flour road before, but for the sake of this story, I added the rest of the ingredients and followed the rest of the instructions, producing a pasty, bitter, concrete-like sludge, nowhere near the color of the bread promised in the cookbook photo. I had no faith in it at all. When my starter did not raise the scald-sponge mixture, I added commercial yeast. Luckily, I had some on hand. But the sludge rose, and I baked it, and the texture and crustiness were perfect. If I hadn’t made other mistakes, it may have even been good bread. Warm, with butter and jam, it wasn’t so bad. I’d like to say that having to provide a recipe for this failed loaf is a caution to me and that I’m going to give up on starter and stop wasting flour, but the truth is that I plan to make another starter tomorrow. There will never be such a time again (I hope, fervently) for sticking around the house tending to multiple long rises and watching the yeast grow. And anyway, I’m sure they would have eaten my bread in Kolyma. Borodinsky Bread Adapted from The Rye Baker, by Stanley Ginsberg. whole wheat flour water To make a starter: Day 1: Using a quart-size mason jar or other roomy receptacle, combine half a cup of flour (I used King Arthur White Whole Wheat) with a quarter cup plus a tablespoon of water, and stir to make a starchy paste, making sure not to leave any pockets of flour sticking to the sides. Cover with saran wrap, and seal with a rubber band. If it’s hot where you are, you can probably leave the jar sitting out at room temperature. Otherwise, place it in an unheated oven with the door closed and the light on, and leave for twenty-four hours. Day 2: Scoop out a quarter cup of the mixture, and refresh with half a cup of flour and an additional quarter cup plus a tablespoon of lukewarm water. Stir till completely combined, and let sit for another twenty-four hours. Days 3–5: Begin feeding the starter at twelve-hour intervals, with the following change from the above: Scoop out half a cup (rather than a quarter cup) of the mixture, and discard; refresh with half a cup of flour and a quarter cup plus a tablespoon of lukewarm water. Stir, cover, and keep in the oven with the light on. My recipe says you want five to seven days to build a powerful starter. I tried baking with mine on the seventh day, with inconclusive results. To make the bread: For the sponge: 2 cups medium rye flour 1 3/4 cups warm water 1/3 cup sourdough starter For the scald: 3/4 cup coarse rye meal 1/4 cup red rye malt, ground 1 1/4 cup boiling water For the final dough: scald-sponge (use all) 1 2/3 cups medium rye flour 1 cup bread flour 1 2/3 tsp salt 2 tbs dark molasses 1 tbs red rye malt, ground flavorless oil (for pan) 1–2 tbs coriander seeds Day 1: The evening before you bake, make the sponge and the scald. To make the sponge, combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, cover with saran wrap, and leave overnight in your warm area of choice (“room temperature” if you’re someplace warm; the oven with the light on if you’re someplace cold, like a New York City apartment). Do the same for the scald in a separate bowl. Let rest for twelve hours. Day 2, morning: Using the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the scald with the sponge. It’s essential that you allow the scald-sponge to rise in the mixer bowl because on the next step, you’ll add the rest of the ingredients and knead the dough, and you want to keep as much air in as possible. Cover the mixer bowl with saran wrap, put it in your warm place, and allow it to rest and rise for an additional three to four hours, or until doubled in bulk. Day 2, afternoon: Add the flours, salt, molasses, and red rye malt to the risen mixture in the mixing bowl, then use the dough hook on low speed for eight to ten minutes to create a soft, smooth, deep-brown dough. Cover and ferment in your warm place until visibly expanded, sixty to seventy-five minutes. Day 2, afternoon: Grease a nine-by-four-by-four-inch Pullman loaf pan with butter or flavorless oil (I baked mine in a Dutch oven because I didn’t have a loaf pan). Carefully spoon in the risen dough. Use wet hands to distribute it evenly, and smooth the top. Spoon a tablespoon of water over the top to keep the dough moist, then cover and set in your warm place to rise until the top of the loaf shows broken bubbles, an hour and a half to two hours. Day 2, evening: Preheat the oven to 550, arranging one rack in the middle of the oven and one at the bottom. Place a shallow baking dish or roasting pan on the bottom shelf. Five minutes before you put the bread in, add two cups of boiling water to the pan. Bake with steam for ten minutes, then remove the pan, cover the loaf with aluminum foil, and reduce the temperature to 350. Bake for forty-five to fifty minutes, then remove the loaf from the pan and return it to the oven to firm up the sides and bottom crust. Bake until the loaf thumps when tapped with a finger, ten to fifteen more minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool thoroughly before slicing. Valerie Stivers is a writer based in New York. Read earlier installments of Eat Your Words. #EatYourWords

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/cooking-with-varlam-shalamov-1

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mikazukikannagisjourney · 4 years ago

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Finding Your True Self in the Quantum Field - A Personal Log (Timeless)

This is just something personal that I had to log here, you don’t actually have to read this one if you’ve been to the post that came before this. Again, I mostly write stuff for myself, in the event that I need a reminder, a refresher on how much I have grown and still need to grow into. It’s hard to be my own cheerleader but at least, even for a bit, I am now getting a hang of this awakening and ascension thingy. Sure, it’s still a welcome idea to receive feedback or good vibes from others, but I am all about empowerment, and doing that by yourself, for yourself, is simply the expression of the greatest love of all: Learning to love yourself.

Alrighty then, personal explicit sh** after the cut. Jump at your own risk, I am not liable if this post triggers you lol

And if you’re still reading this, it’s all on you lol

I gave plenty of warnings that this is pretty much raw, unstructured and full of cussing so don’t complain or go tl;dr or so help me glob arrrgh

OK now that’s out of the way...

I initially felt a strong need to make this post actually, not make the previous post about quantum jumping. But hey, the universe works in mysterious ways, so maybe that one can reach out to those who actually needed a new lease in life. And now that I’ve written that one, it’s time to let this one out. For myself, should I lose my way again, and maybe for other people who are still feeling trapped in this annoying AF 3D reality full of anger, fear, pain, worry, disease, and all the low vibrational crap that actually, are being released and healed out of the mass consciousness.

I’m not operating on an egoistic standpoint here, I mean, really, I have no right to tell people what to do or how they should feel, they’re already of legal age, I’m just here to give suggestions, alternate ways of thinking, really crazy ideas that might just give the appropriate results. Or just simply tickle the imaginations of people, at the very least. Other than that, I am only here to bring forth the love from the universe, the infinte realm of all possibilities, the energies channeling from the quantum fields that cross all boundaries of time, space, dimensions, realities, timelines, lifetimes, and all that razzmatazz lol

But even though I lol at that, to be honest, I was not in the best place in my life, for quite a while, since the year started. Yeah, sure, I did my best at distracting myself, escaping what needs to be done, and by the middle of April I felt even worse than last year, to think I thought that the worst parts of my life was over... Here comes PANDEMIC-CHAN.. Sheesh..

Well, that lead to more contractions, more depressive states, darker thoughts aka wanting to escape the physical body... And I haven’t even started with the material stuff yet. Let’s just say that this year’s Dark Night of the Soul has also merged with the fears in the collective. I had to hold so much, not just mine, but everyone else’s. So again, I started escaping, but this time with the intent to increase my vibrations to attract something substantial and material in my life. I was really, really on the edge, and hunger was looming over my head. I didn’t want to get hungry, that brings back so much pain from the past, I didn’t just felt deprived of love and warmth, I was hungry a lot, as a child, and I have yet to heal that part of myself completely. Plus the fact that I got even further derailed from what I was supposed to be doing aka the spiritual ascension thingy stuff..

But I told myself that maybe, this time around, I have to let the universe help me, to be the receiver of gifts. This was one hard decision I had trouble letting go of: FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN. If I could only believe that the unknown bears more gifts, maybe I could have opened myself to better opportunities, more choices, more love... But no, I just kept distracting myself, in any way that I can. I was a dumbass, all the way until something knocked me off of that trajectory.

For some weird reason, despite the heat, I was called to do something random:

Collecting flowers from the yard. Just one type though, a weird hibiscus flower that blooms yellow in the morning until noon, then becomes orange and finally red in the late afternoon. This was around the middle of April, and my back pain was back in full swing, the flareup was incredible but since I’m fully aware of what it was, I figured out that I just needed an outlet for all that pent-up energy. And slowly but surely, my back pain started becoming bearable, I could stoop down and pick the tiny flowers, plop them in a little bowl, and add that to my quarters.

Sure, it wasn’t much, but with each day that I did it, something amazing happened for me.

I began reconnecting with nature, in a way that felt like I was a toddler again. Dragonflies started popping up, butterflies started stopping by my passionflower vines (RIP that plant, it died due to a fungal pathogen T_T), I started getting attuned to my dogs again, and somehow, I started cultivating a sense of peace.

It was that moment when I realized that... After all this time, I always had a choice on how to be happy. And even though I was in a lot of 3D problems, I still had a choice, to be happy with even the smallest of things. So I figured out, if I can’t be happy with the large stuff, I’ll just be happy and grateful for what I have. A roof over my head, food to eat, pets to love, friends that actually keep in touch even once a year, internet connection, and getting to eat junk food even once a week. For some people these may sound mundane, but looking back, me being in a depressive state and doing my best to enjoy these things, in a way, I was able to get some sort of happiness in my life. I mean, sure, I could do with more stuff but with whatver I had in that moment, I just did my best to relish everything.

It felt weird and it was out of my comfort zone. I constantly wanted to seek thrills, new experiences, all the stuff I wanted in my misspent youth. Yet here I was, gathering flowers in the evenings, looking at the stars at night, and getting tiny heartquakes seeing a shooting star slice through the night sky. I give zero fucks for sounding dramatic there, but honestly, I was already at the point of no return.

I suddenly had the strong urge to be my truest self. Including the parts that I had to suppress because other people didn’t like them.

That includes the dramatic, overly-emotional piece of yandere shit that sent my ex off flying. Too bad for him though, he thought I was a tsun-tsun(dere) for a long time, and now that I think about it, the disgusted and disappointed look on his face when he realized and told me I wasn’t tsun-tsun, I was a fucking yandere, bwahahaha that just hit the nail on the coffin for me. We weren’t meant to be together for so long. I wasn’t the tsun-tsun aloof and cold-hearted merciless girl I tried to be for the world, I was a weakass bitch, a bulldozer that ran over anything that stood in my way, an insecure moron who readily gives in to emotions which, I later found out was just my natural tendency to be empathic towards other people, so in a way, my psychic senses were still functioning properly despite all that anxiety that was running through my veins.

Speaking of psychic, I wasn’t even aware that I still had my gifts. I just thought that reading the pasts of people were normal and then blurting them out randomly was a fun way of breaking the ice with strangers. But after having to do that again, in various settings, with different people, I just had to accept that what I thought were psychic gifts, the normal stuff that mass media shows to the public, were not what I thought they would be. I got the subtle-ended stick, no seeing of spirits with my actual eyes, rather, I was feeling the deemahns of other people. I was seeing them for who they truly are, without filter, and I was just acting out accordingly. So whether I rubbed them the right or wrong way, either way, it was a way of uncovering the layers of masks that they wore, until they finally show their truest selves without any hesitation.

This made me feel like I was born to be an agent of chaos, which shouldn’t be a bad thing since chaos is an actual entity: it’s the darkness where everything comes from, the void of the unknown, the endless realm of all possibilities, which does not follow any kind of order known to man whatsoever. The cradle of everything that ever was, and ever shall be.

I still feel horrible for doing so, but at the same time I have also come to accept that at some point, people should just live their lives in their best truth, to be who they are, and even if I was able to allow people to be who they truly are and accept them as is, I was very stingy with myself.

And after that, I started getting angry again. With myself, with the universe, with the higher realms.

I was still, and yet have to get my own breakthrough. I was still feeling cooped up, constricted, choked up, my heartsong was still left unsung. But then again, I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK THAT WAS.

Why am I even here at this point?

I’m not here to just watch people succeed. I deserve that shit for myself too, damn it.

And, well, the need to get somewhere, anywhere became super strong. I came back to doing what I thought I did well at: Studying lol But really, I started reviewing my N4 materials, and after several months of just staring at them, I just tried studying, reviewing, with the intent to regain the skills I lost due to life happening for me. I finally understood more from the notes. What I learned felt a lot more rich, I wasn’t just cramming to pass an exam, I was learning this language, with the hopes that I could not only talk to other people, but to bring out the gifts of these people out into the world.

I don’t give a fuck if the fetuses would call me weeb at this point, do I look like I even care? They can’t shame me out of existence, the boomers never could in the past, so why would I even let these future boomer 2.0′s do that to me? I was trained to be bold and shameless for such a purpose lol

Well not all of them are like that, but some are just so judgmental so I had to put that wall up. Mostly to assert my rights to be what I want to be, it’s not like I kill or hurt people living this kind of life.

So again... Moving back to the topic of finding myself in the quantum field...

I started re-living my life when I was still taking Japanese language classes.. I didn’t just enjoyed and engaged with the learning process, I also found valuable lessons with my classmates. Turns out that as long as I KNOW I can, I don’t mind doing something alone. Some people just die even thinking of doing a solo hobby, and here I was, opening up to something that I haven’t done before: go to a class where I didn’t know anybody. I ended up enjoying that journey, like literally I had to take a 5-hour bus ride one way just to go to that 3-hour class, then go home again, so I basically travelled a total of 10 hours, once a week, for 6 months.

That gave me just enough energy to properly study my old material. I got to relearn things that I have forgotten, and that gave me a sense of accomplishment. So I started translating in... Japanese livestream chatboxes. A thankless job, which I did to improve my listening skills. Turns out I ended up in mostly Kansai-dialect streams, so not only did I became sensitive to differences in inflections but also in conjugations of verbs and whatnot. That was a fleeting yet memorable experience, and the only thing that made me stop was getting tired all the time lol

So after about 2 months I stopped doing it, though I still watch raw stuff every now and then to brush up, and I focused mostly on translating texts, because Kanji scares the shit out of me. I mean, that has been my waterloo ever since I discovered the SKIP method some 17 years ago. So my next focus was to learn as much Kanji as I could, even just the basic meaning of each one. In a way, bit by bit, I started building up the skills I needed to properly translate texts. I guess it went OK, so I was able to build up my comprehension skills from 20% to about 50%. Not bad, just enough to enjoy raw texts.

I just kept this momentum of following what I instinctly wanted to do, and I know that it has served me well as a child, so I figured maybe I can make that work for me. In the weirdest of ways, it did. I suddenly felt that I could at least see some chances for me to get someplace, wherever that was. Even though the road seems bleak, I could see something far beyond, and that helped me get up each day, even though I was dead-tired all the time.

By the time that June has ended, I felt like I lived yet another lifetime doing stuff I didn’t know I could do. I think it was also around that time that I started gaining confidence on going online in Tetris 99, and getting to at least top 20 consistently, even though I could only do Tetris clears and making T-spins was such a bitch lol Say what you want to say, but I don’t like straining my eyes so me choosing to start playing something like that, I guess I felt a bit better about myself. I didn’t learn the whole thing as fast as I wanted to be, and I have yet to get Tetris Maximus in Invictus Mode because I kept dying at #2 but the fact that I actually built some sort of self-confidence that I can learn something new, it felt refreshing for me. Maybe next year I’d have more confidence with Super Smash Bros lol just kidding that game hurt my eyes so much I don’t know if I can, right now. My eyes are very important to me so I do my best to take care of them. Also they don’t have Pancake boi in there bahahaha

When July came around, everything felt like a blur. I was doing so much stuff at the same time, I was just in a flurry with everything, and I was becoming more hopeful despite the COVID stats on the news. Well, I do have a background on epidemiology so I didn’t panic much. I did my best to send Reiki though, even though I felt dead-tired and drained a lot. I just opened up to the infinite realms, and at that time, I had no idea it was the right moment to do that. Turns out that there has been a great Karmic release around July, so all of the excess baggage that needs to be freed were coming up to the surface. My abandonment issues kept popping up so I went from there, and I felt the heavens open up.

Yeah, sure, there were days I kept crying while doing active meditations but I did my best to clear as much as I can at the time. It felt amazing when I was able to release that much suppressed shit in my body. My stomach started feeling better, I improved my breathing, and I saw that my face was becoming more and more relaxed. I’d even do finger guns in front of the mirror because I was feeling myself a lot. My depressed and insecure self could have been so appalled that it shut up lol but I was in the zone, I never felt so alive and free. Yet I was still stumpy, squishy, soft and rounded on the outside. In the eyes of society, I was still undesirable, an outlier to what is deemed “beautiful”. But I was already at a point where I just don’t care anymore, I’m beautiful no matter what, so suck it, society lol

This lead to more weird events, the best and weirdest so far was channeling my departed friends. Ghost month was about to set in but I totally forgot about that, so it felt weird when I started seeing the smiling faces of my friends. Except for that one who rarely did, we always argued about anything else other than work or tasks when he was still alive. But ever since he joined my spiritual team, he has always been frowning, always, for 17 years. He was aloof, he stayed away from me. He always wore that sad look on his face, the last day I saw him alive. I thought he should have been happy, he has a pretty girl beside him that seemed to be so glad and stuff. But his reaction when he saw me happily skipping like the dumbass that I was, it was very unnerving, and to this day it still haunts me like hell. Sometime after that, I was talking to my “twin brother” (we were both born on the same day and year lol) and he subtly hinted something about that other dude, that he hates me or something. Again, I felt unsettled because despite the fact that twin bro was normally honest about things, he kept this one to himself. Of course, I didn’t ask what it was about, I just sniffed the air and knew what it was. I hated what info came through and just denied that shit all the way through.

The information that came then, was the same one that the departed dude started yelling at me, and I didn’t expect it. I was having fun with the other dead peeps lol and at some point this guy just blurted out stuff, that I was meant to know when he was still alive. I feel horrified, because I didn’t want to know those things. But no, he just had to say it out loud. Aside from other stuff that he didn’t dare admit when he was still alive, he didn’t want me to get together with that other guy, who is now my ex. From the other side of the veil, he has been giving me signs, not to fall for this guy. He was steering me off-course, but to no avail. I wasn’t the best thinker at that time, I was insecure about myself, I was pretending to be someone else, and because like attracts like, I ended up with someone who as also pretending to be someone else. That shit was so messed up but now that I think about it, I still exercised my free will, and part of that was actually Karmic so maybe that’s one reason why despite the warnings, I went ahead. I had no regrets now, even though that entire relationship has yet to be cleared out of my body. But at least I have so much hope now, knowing that my dearly departed peeps are just over there, eating my junk food and plopping on my bed along with my guides. And also, I have more hope than ever before that in this lifetime, I’ll find my true north node partner, even though the thought of getting into a relationship and getting married to that guy still scares the shit out of me. I’m just opening myself up to the heavens, to the divine realms, to the infinite possibility fields of the quantum universe. Where time does not exist.

I guess my strangest breakthrough was the eve that Ghost month was going to end. I was at my lowest, I was feeling so much pain, because I caused pain to someone else. It was a heartbreak on a soul level, and words just couldn’t describe the pain that I felt, and how much pain I caused to this person. That part was my own undoing, and I do not expect that person to ever forgive me for being brash and overly-bulldozing. I was really, really doing my best to stay together, at that point. I was losing grip, starting to fall back on the dark thoughts, and yet somehow, I did one thing different:

I dared the universe to show me how much I was loved, how much I was worthy, to give back to me all of the love that I ever put forth ten fold, a hundred fold, a million fold, to make me feel that I am so deserving of all the gifts and blessings of the divine realms. I just needed one step, one instruction on what to do.

It wasn’t much, I just needed to listen to the radio for an hour. OK, cool, I have been doing that a lot for a while now. So listen to the radio I did. And then, it felt like a chilling breeze, I felt so much energetic surge, it was so surreal. I felt so much love, energetic hugs, I felt I was being squished and I was loving it. Mind you, I was just lying down and listening to songs, but it felt so real, I don’t know how to react, so I just gave in. And then, flashes of my life living at the foot of a dormant volcano started popping up. It didn’t even include living with the ex, it was the sum total of all the times I ever gave away my love, and me receiving that love in so many ways, shapes, and forms. I felt ecstatic. For an entire hour, the dense energies of regret and sorrow got flushed out of me. I felt even more hopeful, more tingly, more giddy, it was definitely something new.

I was still on a high for about an hour more after that experience. Sure, I still had vivid dreams, and my sleep was still insufficient, but I had enough energy to wake up still feeling so much joy, despite the fact that I did stupid things. I felt no regret, I felt so clear, I felt that I was being my authentic self. And that was so unsettling, I was used to the dark, of feeling like an endless pit full of sorrow and pain, yet less than half of that remains. I don’t know what came over me, and weirdly, my departed peeps started cooling down. Due to Ghost month ending? Me getting a breakthrough somehow? I really don’t know but they seem to be in good shape despite decreasing the racket lol

I wanted more of this nice stuff so I asked the universe how to make more similar experiences. I was told to do the same thing, just listen to the radio, but this time choose what songs I wanted to hear. So I did, I wanted to feel pretty, wanted, loved, cuddled, all that disgustingly-gooey romantic crap that I never got to have because I kept denying to myself that I love that trash. But now that I have fully accepted that gooey, icky, yandere-dere part of me, the energy that coursed through me was really strong, I felt that the energetic hug got so tight I thought my soul was gonna pop out. But no, it didn’t. I got maxed out with the tingles though lol

And this part where I deliberately chose what to listen to became rather amusing yesterday. I was tuning in to one radio station as I was sending Hooponopono to the friend that I caused pain to, to help clear the energies off, and then flashes of my miraculous encounters when I watched Goo Goo Dolls live three years ago started popping up in my head. All of a sudden, this song came up on the radio and I had a laugh. It wasn’t my absolute fave, but it was a classic. Three songs and two stations later, I switched and lo and behold, this song came up again. I was like what the fuck is this lololol It was like the universe was telling me what I was thinking exactly and I lol-ed more.

I had that much mindless fun in the afternoon, and I was about to let that whole incident slide, and I would have if this song didn’t came up on the radio again later in the night, yet another station. It shook me deep inside, and I asked the universe, is this mine or someone else’s? The answer is yet to be known. And however the answer comes to me, I am scared of whichever way that goes.

I wish I could say that these were all just stuff in my head, but they weren’t. Even more so when I had the same stuff happen, consecutively, with yet another song. I felt even more uncomfortable, and it doesn’t help that my forehead starts feeling cold despite my thick bangs covering most of it. I’m scared, but at the same time, I am still doing my best in opening up to the infinite realms of the universe. And still willing to receive the energetic hugs, headpats, and cheek pinches from the quantum field. That doesn’t calm down the nerves though lol but hey, at least I know where to get the stuff to fill my needs, even if it’s just a day at a time. I don’t know where I’ll go to from here, but at least I now have an idea on how to move forward, one way or another, and for that, I am truly grateful.

I used to think that I was cursed to be slow in manifesting what I wanted in all areas of life, but when I started dealing with these energies from the quantum field, it was uncannily fast. This was the proof that I needed to tell myself that I had that power within me, to remind myself of who I was. I was a being of pure love from Source, who came here to channel the unconditional love from the cradle of life towards those who needed it the most.

And I’m writing this to remind myself through the passage of time, that even though right now, I have less than what I would want myself to be, I am counting on the fact that because I am still within the field of infinite possibilities, I am worthy enough to be and have whatever I wanted. I just need to go home, back to who I really am, and owning that part of myself because I am worth it.

Lastly, I write this for everyone who feels like they’re losing their way, because it’s easy to forget where we needed to go. Please know this: There’s no right or wrong way to live your life, just be who you are meant to be, and live that kind of life without hurting any other, including yourself. You were placed on this planet to bring miracles to an otherwise desolate piece of rock, and you deserve all the magic that the universe holds for you.

You are loved, so much more than you can imagine, and it’s time to tap into that birth right we were all meant to have.

Love and hugs, fam.

#quantum field jumping #quantum jumping #timeline jumping #timeline shifting #my personal experiences #finding your true self

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