#it made learning negative numbers on the number line pretty difficult growing up because my negative numbers are all on the right

[epaulando]

Hello!! I come bearing ask emojis! 😘🧡

🧸 - favourite place to nap

🐰 - what do you think says the most about a person

✨ - do you have any nicknames

💌 - do you talk to yourself

🧸 two years ago i took the best nap of my life while sitting in a hammock and reading the count of monte cristo in the sun. i miss that nap every day.

🐰 probably the way they treat others, especially when it doesn’t matter for their reputation or goals.

✨ not especially — my mom calls me by a longer version of my first name sometimes, but that’s really just to affectionately annoy me. my deadname has a nickname, but i don’t use it anymore.

💌 all the time. honestly it’s so odd when i meet somebody who doesn’t. sometimes i talk to people in fictional scenarios inside my head, and sometimes it really is just to myself. sometimes it’s out loud or my lips move and then people do get a little weirded out.

[queenoftheskittleholics]

In Defense of Grace Monroe

I wanted to write a defense of Grace against the common accusations I see from her detractors. Putting this under readmore for length and images. Simon stans will get blocked if they try anything. I will be discussing the numbers, wheelings & denizens, her relationship with Simon, and her conflict between Simon and Hazel.

1. The Numbers Misconception

Grace did not simply make up the idea that numbers equal strength to avoid seeming like she didn’t know anything. We see exactly what led her to this conclusion.

Her encounter with Amelia and the Steward in the Pumpkin Car was just as formative to her Train experience as Simon’s was with the Cat. But most people don’t seem to acknowledge this, despite her going so far as to form the Apex in ‘his’ honor. In Grace’s mind, the Conductor being able to control the Steward was a show of strength, and the high number made a striking impression, like levels on a video game. Her line to Jesse in the Mall Car about high numbers that “This was the Conductor, this is strength.” and telling Hazel she has the highest number just like the True Conductor in the Debutante Ball Car seem to show this basis of her reasoning specifically.

2. Wheeling and Denizens

Many people take Tape!Hazel’s line that “[Simon] didn’t come up with the idea to wheel Denizens on his own.” as admission that Grace talked Simon into wheeling Denizens, but I disagree. For one, it is important to remember that the context is Grace breaking down under a lot of self blame and guilt, most of which admittedly is not unfair. And furthermore, the fact that it does not just say he did not come up with it or that she gave him the idea, makes me think they came up with it together.

And unlike Simon, whose negative experience w the Cat caused him to look badly on not only that relationship but Denizens as a whole, Grace did not have a Denizen companion at all. She tells Hazel as much in the Color Clock Car, saying she has never gotten to know a Denizen because they are unpredictable. This is why when getting to know Tuba and Hazel, Grace realizes she was wrong about them being nonfeeling and unlike them, but Simon refuses to let go of his pain even though he knows it isn’t true.

3. Her relationship with Simon

When I see people claim Grace only used or manipulated Simon, I honestly do not understand.

They were scared and confused 10 year olds alone in a new and dangerous world. She threw herself at a soul-sucking cockroach dog for a kid she didn’t know and comforted him as he cried.

And when they start the Apex, they look to be about 15-16. We can see that their numbers are still relatively low, certainly not up their forearms like they are when we meet them at 18. This indicates that they did not regularly commit more violent activities until later in their journey on the Train.

And when we are introduced to Simon in the Mall Car, the first thing both Jesse and Lake and we the audience learn is that Grace trusts him with her life. 

We see this is true in their dancing together in the Debutante Ball Car and the Jungle Car, where she feels very comfortable around him whether it is dancing together or sleeping next to each other. At the beginning, she does trust him a lot.

And her interactions with him are very different from her interactions with the Apex members she is manipulating. With Hazel and Jesse, we see her overly kindly persona that she uses to recruit people, and that she uses to keep the Apex children listening to her. They have playful banter and insults and inside jokes from  their many years of living together. She is much more genuine and enjoying herself with him at the start.

They ran the Apex as a partnership, as demonstrated by the shot of them descending the escalator together, side by side and on the same page.

And his reaction to her yelling at him after killing Tuba seems to be shock that she is ‘pulling rank’ on him. He is slightly hurt, but this indicates that Grace doing so is not a usual occurrence. This is further implied by him getting upset with her “shutting him out” seeing that as “not acting like she should”. And in Le Chat Chalet Car when she snaps “Do I have to make every decision for you?” Which she immediately regrets, and later apologizes for, it indicates she does not prefer to boss him around and make all the decisions, but work things through together, at least at the start. And besides, Simon is indeed his own person who is capable of making his own choices, and he made bad ones.

That episode also demonstrates that Grace indeed values his support and presence, as shown by her giving him a grateful hug after he reassures her for expressing her worries about him thinking less of her for her number lowering. Due to her loneliness in her early life, Simon is very important to her, and we see her growing angry with his growing cruelty while still trying to keep him with her.

4. Hazel Vs. Simon

The scene where Grace yells at Hazel is difficult, and we see Grace immediately backtrack upon seeing Hazel’s pain and trying to stall leaving to fix it. But why did she do it? Well, if you say she was protecting herself or saving her own skin, that pretty much acknowledges Grace was afraid. And not without reason, as that scene did not happen in a vacuum. Simon has grown increasingly angry and aggressive throughout the book, culminating in him trying to violently attack Amelia, a woman in her 60s.

Grace tries to restrain him but he refuses to quit trying to attack Amelia, only stopping at the shock of the Hazel reveal.

When Hazel asks Grace if she is really going to leave her, she looks back at Simon, clearly considering the possibility of another outburst. And we see that Grace usually keeps her patience with children or other people very well, such as trying obviously not get annoyed at either Hazel or Tuba in the Debutante Ball Car, defending Jesse in the Wasteland Car after he defied her, or trying to calmly ask Lucy what a void was in the New Apex. The only person she gets annoyed mostly is Simon, and she apologizes in Le Chat Chalet Car, wants him to stop being insensitive to Hazel in the Campfire Car, and because he gets aggressive towards her in the Canyon of the Golden Winged Snake Car, which she regrets even if she does not apologize. This makes me think either she was greatly stressed to snap at Hazel or it was a choice out of worry to prevent Simon from getting angry again.

Show writer Lindsay Katai even said that Grace started to be afraid of Simon’s anger. Grace wants to keep them both with her, but that unfortunately is somewhat selfish on her part as clearly being around Simon is not good for Hazel. I will not fault Hazel for removing herself from the situation, because she should not have to deal with that. But from Grace’s perspective, she did not want to lose either of them. 

So that is my long meta on Grace Monroe, hope you enjoyed it.

[teenageprunepatrolpurse]

Get Motivated to Drop 2–4 Dress Sizes in One Month: 4 Steps to Get your Dream Body

How to lose 4 dress sizes in a month or how to lose 20+ pounds in 30 days all mean the same thing, losing weight on a deadline. Whether it be a high school reunion, your own wedding, or other specific occasions. But before we get into it, let’s talk about what matters most when it comes to effective and successful weight loss.

In this article, we’re going to cover the 4 steps to get your dream body. I always believe the best solutions are the simple ones so I don’t have 12 tips or 15 keys to losing weight fast. Just the 4 keys that are essential to successful weight loss.

Note: This article is more about the principles of weight loss and proper mindset to get you motivated for a higher success rate.

📷 If you’re interested in learning exactly how I lost 20+ pounds in 1 month without exercise after each of my pregnancies over age 40, then read this article for further details.

1. First Key to Successful Weight Loss: Set up Practical Goals 📷 Different Aesthetic Standards Let’s take a look at the picture above. Sure you see the woman in a black dress. I believe you may not find her to be super slim but she has beautiful feminine curves which make her look just as attractive as the lady in purple on the right, who’s holding a wheel position on the ground whom I believe most people would consider being slender. I don’t know about you but they’re both just as fit and beautiful to me.A friend of mine once told me when he was younger he used to find chubby girls much more attractive than skinny girls. As you can see, human perceptions of beauty change from time to time and vary from individual to individual. What really matters is the way you see yourself. In my opinion, every woman is unique and beautiful her own way. Some might be sort of ‘big-boned’ while others are rather plump or extremely tall and skinny. Each of us is born with an inherited body type which we sometimes can do little to change. So before we even jump into any sort of diet or workout plan we need to know what our natural body type looks like and get the idea of the best version of the body we are most likely to achieve and feel comfortable with it. It’s impractical to pursue the hourglass figure when your natural body type is rather tall and “narrow-butt” if you know what I mean. It’d be nice to have a body like that of Kim Kardashian, whom I pretty much believe is born that way.Measure Your Dress Sizes instead of Weight Losing 3–4 dress sizes in a month is actually a more specific goal than losing 20 pounds in 21 days. It will make you less obsessed with the numbers on the weight scale when all you have to do is measure your waistline & hip circumference. It will give you a better idea of how close you are to your fitness goal.2. Second Key to get you started: Mindset Mindset is essential for successful weight loss in the long term. You need to truly love yourself for who you are and be willing to do whatever it takes for your well-being. You are beautiful the way you are. You are worthy of a great and healthy life and you will get your dream body once you started believing in yourself.What are the real reasons that make you want to start losing weight? Health issues? Want to fit in some fabulous outfits? Abs that will turn heads when you’re on the beach?Try to find the strongest motivations that will get you started and keep you going towards your goal.They have to be bigger than just want to look great and feel good about yourself which by the way is nothing wrong either. It’s so important that you’re doing this out of strong love for yourself and your loved ones because it will give you the power to continue and get you motivated. That’s why having your mind in the right place is crucial to successful weight loss.My 4-year-old daughter asked me a question the other day:” Mom, will you still be around when I grow up?” “Do you want me to still be around by then?” “Of course I do! I want you to always be around no matter how old I am.” “I will do my best, honey”, was the promise I made to her.That reminds me of my parents, who are already advanced in age yet still being so healthy and energetic and not suffering any kind of pain which most elderly people do(backache, rheumatism, arthritis, knee pain, etc.).My father is a wise and experienced natural therapist and herbal expert and is able to take good care of himself and my mom. I am so grateful that my parents are still so healthy and I want to follow the good example they set up for me.I’d like to quote what my father used to say to us:” Always watch what you put in your mouth. You are not a trash can! Don’t just eat anything because it tastes good.” 📷 📷 Use the Power of Mind Think of Your Body as a small universe with your mind is the most powerful thing that maintains the balance within this small universe.Or if we think of the body as some sort of hardware then your mind is like the software that actually makes the hardware works at its best.I know this metaphor might

be a little too simplistic but it’s important to fill our minds with positive thoughts. Because your mind and your words actually have the power to program your life into the way you want it to be.If we fill our minds with negative thoughts then we’re most likely not going to take any action to achieve any goal that would make us healthier or have a better life than we deserve because deep down in our hearts we think it’s impossible or just too difficult to achieve.That’s why mindset is the key to successful weight loss because it is often followed by aligned actions which naturally lead to a change of lifestyle. Now that if you know for sure you are doing this out of strong love for yourself and your loved ones and you have your mindset in the right place then we’re good to go.Seek Professional Help Now if you are having some sort of eating disorder problem like you often found yourself staring at the big empty ice-cream container after watching your favorite movies at midnight.Or maybe you are stress-eating a lot or some of you even suffer from something worse such as bulimia or anorexia. Then the last thing you need to worry about now is the way you look like.I’d suggest that you look deeper into the real reasons behind your eating disorder behavior or even seek professional help if necessary. 📷 📷 3. Third Key that is Crucial: Maintain Hormonal and Metabolic Balance Maintaining hormonal and metabolic balance is the essential key to successful weight loss especially for women who are overweight and what they’ve been doing is eat very little and move a lot while still not getting the result they want.A hormonal imbalance can greatly affect women’s beauty and the distribution of their body fat[1]. For example, the lack of estrogen can cause our skin to lose its tautness which means the wrinkled face and fine lines around the eyes. When the estrogen levels are low it could lead to excessive weight gain as well.The growth hormone, which is known to be able to help burning fat while also building your muscles and bones during your deep cycles of sleep-[2][3]. That’s why having quality sleep is so important if we want to actually lose that stubborn fat that’s stored in our trouble spots because the effective fat-burning process actually happens while we’re sleeping not when we’re exercising.The Insulin hormone, also known as the “fat-storing hormone”, is produced by our pancreas, regulates the metabolism of carbs, protein, and fat. Insulin is released when our blood sugar levels rise. It helps absorb glucose from the blood and store it for future use. If we absorb too much glucose our body converts it into fat which causes weight gain. That’s why we need to stay away from refined sugar(or refined carbs) in order to prevent a dramatic rise of blood sugar levels that spike up the secretion of insulin which results in converting excessive blood sugar into fat.Cortisol is a steroid hormone, also referred to as the “stress hormone” due to the fact that its release is increased in response to stress and low blood sugar levels. We want to keep our cortisol levels down so we can turn on that fat-burning mode which boosts our metabolisms and helps us lose the stubborn fat in our trouble spots. Basically, when our cortisol level is high our body switches from the fat-burning mode to the muscle-breaking and fat-storing mode.I don’t want to bore you with the science here but it’s important that we understand that the human body is complicated and we need to take multi-factors into consideration instead of just simplify things with the “eat less and move more” equation.

If you want to know how to “eat more exercise less” to regain hormonal and metabolic balance then read this article to learn more.

📷

4. Fourth Key: Stop Dieting In saying dieting I mean any kind of calorie restriction diets or weird/extreme diets that might cause nutrient deficiency which could be screwing up your hormonal and metabolic balance and thus make all your efforts and attempts at weight loss go in vain. The kind of dieting that’s not sustainable and practical, the kind that makes you feel listless, depressed, tired and your moods swinging from time to time you could hardly summon any energy to do what you want to do.As I have mentioned before, we do need to watch what we eat but we also need to develop a healthy relationship with our food so we won’t be afraid of having food that would actually make us healthy just because it has higher calories.The thing about counting calories is that it’s hard to be accurate. The same food seasoned and cooked in different ways could have different calorie counts. When we count the calories of a specific fruit we also need to take into account other factors such as its maturity because of the difference of sugar content in it.As for the chicken breast we have is it with skin or without skin and what’s the protein to fat ratio of it? Sounds complicated, isn’t it? Well, it is and it’s exhausting and inefficient if you have to do this on a daily basis.By the way, do you always feel like you need to remove the skin of the meat you have because it will make you fat? Well, do you know that eating meat along with its skin actually helps you digest better, and having good quality fat such as natural animal fat actually helps you burn fat in a more efficient way?What and How to Eat Matters I don’t need to tell you what you should eat to lose weight healthily because you’ve probably already gathered tons of information from different sources about it.You know how important it is to have good quality proteins to help you build muscles(boost metabolisms), that you should also include healthy fat, carbs, probiotics, fibers, vegetables in your meals as well so I guess I shouldn’t waste your time repeating what you already know.But what about the type and combination of food, what kind of protein together with what kind of carbs and vegetables, the amount of each category, what seasoning to use, which food combination or pairing of spices/flavors works better, when to eat, etc?For example, Crab is a great source of protein, and orange is also considered a good source of carbs which contains low calories and several vitamins and minerals. However, eating a great amount of crab while guzzling gallons of cold orange juice may not be a good choice for people with poor digestive systems.Drinking soup made by a certain combination of meat and vegetables is different from eating each ingredient separately. Salmon is well known for containing omega 3 fatty acids which may also help us burn body fat. However, we need to look deeper into the nutritional differences between farmed salmon and wild salmon. We also need to be careful not to have seafood as our main source of protein given the fact that the ocean is highly polluted and chemicals and pollutants can be absorbed by fish or other marine life through their environment and diet.Yes, there is a lot to take into consideration when it comes to choosing food for health and effective weight loss.Losing weight or dropping dress sizes fast is not something difficult to achieve. Eating nutrient-dense food combinations in the right way can lead to rapid weight loss without having to starve yourself or doing excessive cardio/HIIT exercises.

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[joie-university-rp]

Dear DANTE NOIRE,

It is with great pleasure we invite you admission to Joie University! Welcome to the Thunderclap family!

-

Congratulations, JUSTIN! Please be sure to check the New Members’ Checklist and send in your character’s account within 24 hours from now. We cannot wait to see all that you will bring to this roleplay! We love you already!

OOC INFORMATION:

Name/Alias; pronouns: Justin, he/him

Age, Timezone: 20, MST

Activity, short explanation: 3-4 hours a day, after work.

Ships: Dante/Kurt since I am filling the connection. Dante/anyone.

Anti-Ships: Nothing.

Triggers: None for me.

Preferred photo for Character’s ID (please give a link): https://media.gq-magazine.co.uk/photos/5d138d392881cc034d0a7267/master/w_1280,c_limit/Adam-Driver-04-GQ-12Dec17_Dante-Brookes_b.jpg

Anything else: I’m filling this connection. https://joie-university-rp.tumblr.com/post/189809373804/requested-connection-for-kurt-hummel-suggested

IC INFORMATION:

Full Name (First, Middle, Last): Dante Matthew Noire

FC: Adam Driver

Age/Year at University (Freshman [1st Year], Sophomore, Junior, Senior, or Graduate Student): 24 years old, freshman/first year

Birth date (MONTH DAY, YEAR): August 13th, 1995

Hometown (please be sure to check the hometowns listed for characters your muse is related to!): Los Angeles, California

Gender/Pronouns: Male, he/him.

Sexuality: Pansexual

Major(s): Philosophy

Minor(s) [optional]: Songwriting/Music

Housing request (remember, only the president of a Greek Organization is required to live at a Greek House to be in it!): Schuester Dormitory Single Dorm 205

Extracurriculars (Click here for the list. Be sure to specify any executive board positions [i.e. president, secretary, etc.] If something isn’t listed, please put it here and we will add it to the masterlist!):  Glee Club Member, Fencing Team Member

Greek Life Affiliation [optional] (Please be sure to specify any executive board positions [i.e. president, pledge educator, etc.] or if your character is not yet a member, but plans to rush): None.

CHARACTER PROFILE (TW; Alcohol abuse, suicidal tendencies):

Dante was born into a relatively normal upper-class family. His parents were a very successful pair, his mother a lawyer and his father a banking executive. He lived in peaceful comfort, went the best private schools for teaching, yet when it came time for him to start building towards a career path, he couldn’t seem to pick one. He was a joy in the classroom and had a knack for tutoring other students that struggled as well. Alas, he didn’t want to be a teacher like his mother recommended, or a social worker like his father suggested. He found his true home in the music room. His parents had him learn piano and other various instruments, including vocal lessons, much to their detriment. When it came to his senior year of high school with not a single college application submitted, Dante came clean to his parents; he wanted to be a musician.

He moved away from L.A. when his family rejected his selected career path, especially after they cut him off from his allowance. When he got to New York, he was dead-broke, but found a job quickly as a jazz -ballad singer and pianist at a couple bars around the city. He sang in parks and street corners, releasing self-written songs online, hoping one day he would get noticed. It wasn’t until he actually took a piece of his father’s advice that he started to gain fame; “Dress as if you already have the job when you go in for the interview.” So, Dante gave himself the new look, dressing like the jazzy, big band singers and performers of old, promoting his image as well as his music.

Dante’s relationship with Kurt ran along with his quest to fame. He met Kurt during one of his nights working at an underage-friendly jazz bar near NYADA’s campus. Due to his talents, the students that came in would tip him well. It was in September of 2016, one year into Dante’s tenure in New York, did he spot the other man in the same seat once a week. It didn’t take long for Dante to introduce himself. Kurt and Dante together felt like they were two puzzle pieces, making a complete picture. When Dante started to gain a small following online, he made efforts to separate his professional life from when he was at home. Kurt made him feel like he could be his true self, open and free, yet while he was on stage, performing for an audience of strangers, he was putting up an act. He knew Kurt’s voice was magnificent, but he never wanted Kurt to think he was using him like that to promote his own career. Dante loved Kurt, and he wanted to keep Kurt far away from his growing spotlight. Let Kurt find his own dream, his own claim to fame, with Dante supporting him the entire way. At least, that was the promise Dante proposed to Kurt with in 2017.

As his fame began to grow and explode, the lines between his face to his growing public and at home began to mix. Dante would come home shitfaced from some party, or a concert, or PR event. Photos online with him holding fans close, kissing their cheeks, and being flirtatious would come out in the tons each time he stepped outside. Kurt would have to sober Dante up, thwarting his attempts to get into his pants. Kurt never obliged while he was drunk, which would result in a heated argument. It wasn’t until the next morning that he would apologize. Trust became very thin, very quickly, turning into a vicious cycle, over and over. It was Dante returning from his first 3-month tour, as drunk as ever, that ended the relationship for good. Another argument had broken out, this time Kurt demanding to know why there were clips online of him running around some party with his hand in some girl’s back pocket. Dante became furious Kurt would think he cheated, yelling up and down it was just for PR. Kurt didn’t buy it, eventually locking himself in the bathroom when Dante threw a glass at him. It wasn’t until Dante woke up the next morning, somehow in his bed, that he realized just how badly he had fucked up. Kurt left him, with the ring on the kitchen counter, the glass cleaned, and fresh coffee brewing in the pot.

The depression that followed Kurt leaving had Dante near suicidal. He tried to find Kurt; his number was blocked, and when he contacted NYADA to find him, they said that he had dropped out. He was blocked on social media, using dummy accounts to find out none of them were being updated. Kurt had disappeared, and there was no way Dante could find him. He gave up, vanished for months from the public eye, nearly destroying his career in its infancy. In that time, Dante wrote songs, poems, and love letters for Kurt he could never send. When his agent demanded work from him, he just tossed the papers on the table in frustration, that having been his only work during that time. It was a good thing his agent had more business sense than Dante, recommending he commit his works to the studio, to audio, to music. And hence, his chart-topping, record breaking, radio dominating album, ‘To Kill the Canary’, was born. It tore away from his jazz swings of the past into a ballad genre, featuring less sax and more acoustic guitar. The day the album released, he saw the crowds form at his feet, resonating and praising his work. He was determined to live despite what happened, even if he couldn’t seem to move on.

With all this success, why attend Joie for a degree? He was set for life, he didn’t need more education. Dante’s agent thought the opposite. With the influence he held, and with him turning twenty-five in August, they thought it would look great for his image if he wasn’t just some good-looking musical flounce, doomed to fail when he was no longer dominating the public. They opted for the Emma Watson route; go to college. Get a degree. That way, he was a cut above all the others in his industry; he wasn’t just a talent, he was educated. He chose philosophy as his major over music because he already mastered music. He didn’t want college to be a complete waste of time, so he decided to learn something completely new. Joie was an easy choice for a university; it was a world-renown college, one his fans would recognize. The fact one of his dummy accounts notified him of a post to Kurt’s Instagram had absolutely nothing to do with this college selection. Nothing at all…

STUDENT CENSUS SURVEY:

(Please answer the following questions IN CHARACTER. Responses can be as long or short as you see fit!)

What made you want to attend Joie University?

The prestigious nature of the school seemed the perfect place to both earn my degree and gain life experience I have been lacking. The administration seemed accommodating considering my current position and gave the impression that I would be treated just like everyone else. Overall, I felt very welcomed and fell in love with Joie instantly.

What are at least 3 positive or neutral and at least 3 negative traits that you believe you possess?

My most positive trait would be my unwavering determination. Even in the face of my family being nay-sayers in the quest for my dreams, I went after them anyway. Now, I wish to prove there is more to me than a pretty voice, exceed my own expectations. Perhaps that is my second trait; ambition for a new challenge. No mountain is too high for me. And that ties into my third best trait being creative problem solving. I simply cannot take no for an answer. If there is a will, there is a way, and I have a lot of willpower.

As far as the negatives of my personality, every positive is a doubt edged sword. For all my determination, it is very difficult for me to know when it is time to stop, reflect, and take it what is around me. I am always pushing for the next goal, leaving me often forgetting to savor the moment. I don’t know when to stop pushing for more, for better. This has had my personal relationships suffer in the past as well, and I do plan to remedy this. Apologies are another weakness of mine. For all I try to correct any wrongs on my part, simply saying ‘I’m sorry’ seems to escape my mind. A third flaw… I am frequently told I am too generous with my money. It isn’t like I could possibly use it all, so I use it on others. This has lead to a few personalities latching onto me simply for my wallet or my fame. I suppose that makes me a sub-par judge of character.

Which of your traits do you value most?

My ambition, by far. Taking on the impossible and making it believable is something I enjoy doing, both in music and in life. I wish to up the ante by studying for my degree, see what challenges I can tackle next.

How can that trait benefit the University (or its student body) as a whole?

Being I am a special case, it would be no lie to say my experience in the school could lead to positive press. I would also be interested in investing in the school through funding scholarships and such, once I am no longer a student. I do believe in the power of education, so on the same hand I do not wish to distract from other students attending. Making a show of myself here is not the goal. I wish to meld into the student body just as a regular attendee, no special treatment. That is what I could bring.

What do you hope to gain from your experience at JU?

The typical college experiences. The ups and downs of dorm life, the stress of finals, the development into a greater person leaving than you were when you arrived. I want all these things.

What is a quote or song lyric that describes you?

“I wanna take you high up, Let our hearts be the only sounds, I wanna go where lights burn low, And you’re only mine.” -James Bay, ‘Wild Love’

[forest-of-stories]

“They Won’t Let You Remember”: Obsession Before Fandom

[This is another round of extremely personal spelunking into my own fannish past that I sometimes do on this and other platforms, including Dreamwidth, which is where I first posted it.  Content warning for digressions into Fannish Discourse, and also brains - mostly mine - conflating fiction and reality in sometimes unhealthy ways.]

Not long ago, my mom asked me on the phone if I was aware that a new Men in Black movie would be out later this year. I told her that I knew, and added, “If I see it with other humans, they might have to hear how the original was one of the root causes of my mind control feelings.” Not the root cause, I should emphasize: those feelings could have come from any number of sources, but that number is probably greater than “one.” We both knew why she had brought up this particular franchise. There is a file cabinet in my childhood bedroom that once contained many, many handwritten stories – some co-written with middle school classmates, though most of them weren’t – that featured the titular secret organization, the protectors of the Earth from the scum of the universe, as the bad guys. I wrote those in order to deal with the sharp turn that my already present Mind Control Feelings took when a silly science fiction comedy featuring giant space bugs encouraged me to root for characters who maintained the status quo by erasing memories from ordinary people – people like me – on a regular basis. Some of you might be asking, “Wait, you knew it was only a movie, right?” And my answer would be, “Yes, but…” Since time and emotional distance have both clarified and obscured my understanding of how I used to think and behave, here is the best (and probably most long-winded) way that I can answer that question for both myself and others: I was an imaginative and overwhelmingly anxious child. On the one hand, my imaginative side desperately wanted magic and aliens and Weird Stuff to be real, which I still don’t think was always a bad thing. On the other hand, during my preteen and teenage years, my anxiety (which wouldn’t be linked to a diagnosis until much later in my life) manifested as “what if?” scenarios that were at least as convincing as reality… even if they were based in speculative fiction. Even if I didn’t believe that they would happen, I spent a lot of time telling myself stories about what might happen if they did, or even just thinking, “What if this is how the world is supposed to work, even if I don’t like it or want it and you can’t make me?” So, although I knew the difference between fiction and reality by the age of twelve, knew that Men in Black was Only A Movie, my “what if?” reflex kicked in hard the more I recognized its world as being much closer enough to my own than my previous, limited encounters with memory erasure in fiction. According to the rules of that world, if the Weird Stuff were real, I wouldn’t even know, and, according to the text, shouldn’t know. “Wasn’t the next line of the theme song ‘They won’t let you remember’?” Older Sister asked, the last time we talked about it. Yes. Yes, it was. The immediacy is right there in the song’s refrain (which, by the way, is still an earworm and a half). At one point, Tommy Lee Jones’ veteran agent character insists that, while Earth is constantly under extraterrestrial threat, humans can only live our lives peacefully if we don’t know about it. (Keeping in mind that humans do a pretty solid job of threatening life on Earth ourselves, I feel like that statement is also linked to questions about the supposedly blissful ignorance of privilege, which go beyond the scope of this post, but are still worth mentioning.) Maybe I reacted so strongly to that bit of dialogue because I believed that it wasn’t true, or because I feared that it was. I’m pretty sure that it was the combination of that scene and its message, with my recurring issues around authority and self-control, and my growing self-awareness about my misbehaving brain, that set my anxious imagination spinning. I would guess that I was wondering something like, “What if the only way that I could have peace of mind was if somebody or something else edited my thoughts and memories without my knowledge or consent?” That idea scared me. It made me angry. And since I was not mature enough to have any filters or sense of other people’s boundaries, I talked – loudly and incoherently – to anybody who would listen, and quite a few people who wouldn’t, about how scared and angry it made me. A lot of the things that I said and did are now difficult for me to understand (one might almost say… alien), and I’m not sure whether they helped with my worries or just made them worse. I do know that this was neither the first nor the last work of fiction about which some of my loved ones told me to shut up because I was too obsessed, resulting in screaming fights, sneering mockery, and tears. I was also old enough, you see, to understand that I wasn’t responding to fiction in the same way that a lot of my peers were, and to, perhaps, start feeling like there was something wrong with me. Not that this was enough to shut me, in fact, up. But I did something else, too: I started to write the stories that I mentioned above. Some of my point-of-view characters were disillusioned agents, others were characters from other media that I enjoyed; the more sources I could pull from, and the more surreal I could make the mix, the happier I was. Still other POV characters were authorial avatars who started out as innocent bystanders and narrowly escaped having their memories wiped. (A few of those self-insert fantasies also involved my earliest fictional crush, who just happened to be an alien from a certain book series that I loved at the time. I quite happily imagined scenarios in which my very knowledge of his true nature was forbidden and yet our love conquered all in the end, but I never put any of those scenarios on paper. I kind of wish I had.) Some of the storylines fizzled out after a few chapters, while others ended with my protagonists riding off into the sunset with their minds, for the time being, safe. I should stress that even my writing wasn't necessarily integrated into my life in a healthy way: I scribbled during my classes (yes, I got caught at least once), I wrote scenarios that crossed the line from nonsensical into offensive (why so many “man in a dress” jokes, younger self? Why even one?), and I buttonholed friends and classmates as audiences and even collaborators despite their probably being much less interested than I was. Even though I was discovering a third option besides “shut up forever” and “shut up never,” it would take several more years, at least two more obsessions, and the discovery of online fandom (I only somewhat knew what “online” was in the late 1990s, and “fandom” was nowhere near my vocabulary) before I sorted out the appropriate time and place for each of those options. But I was on my way there, even if I didn’t know what “there” was. When I questioned and pulled apart an established narrative to turn the heroes into villains and shine a light on viewpoints that I thought the original creators had overlooked, I was writing fanfiction, whether I knew it or not. When I finally did find my way to fandom communities, it was thanks to the Harry Potter books, whose world-building also relies on what TV Tropes calls “The Masquerade.” (If you look up the page for that trope, guess whose quote is right at the top? Yeah.) Which led me to recognize it in certain versions of X-Men, and The Incredibles, and Torchwood and The Vampire Diaries and and and… The more I saw of organized efforts to conceal the existence of Weird Stuff from the Oblivious Masses, the more I understood that the audience was meant to feel like we were in on the secret, but I couldn’t stop sympathizing with the people who weren’t. I still dislike and distrust that trope to this day, even in works that I otherwise enjoy, and storylines involving memory erasure – consensual or not, narratively endorsed or not – still push both good and bad buttons, sometimes both at once. And I believe that my explorations of mind control in fiction, from the beginning until now, have partly been informed by questions like, “What if I couldn’t trust my own mind, and was asked to believe that this was for my own good and/or the good of society?” And, since it bears mentioning: I hope that nobody interprets this recollection as, “A storytelling device warped Nevanna’s understanding of reality, and therefore stories can reprogram people’s behaviors and problematic fiction should be eliminated!” First of all, I object to that kind of black-and-white thinking, as a librarian, a writer, and someone who tries to thoughtfully consume media. Secondly, it’s more accurate that the dysfunction in my own brain once warped my understanding of reality; that even then, I was still responsible for my own actions; and although I have a history of giving fictional constructs an unhealthy amount of power over my own life, I grew out of it. And even though I have mixed feelings about the debate over Problematic Fiction, and I certainly do not condone harassment and shaming – because I’ve been there and done that, on both sides – I try to maintain that it is not my place to stop people from having negative emotions about stories. Even if I don’t agree, even when their objections make me uncomfortable, I can disagree with what they’re saying or doing without invalidating what they might be feeling. And I try to be better at doing so, because I am the last person in the world to deny that stories spark powerful emotions and thoughts, that sometimes they go against the creators’ intentions. Part of becoming a responsible consumer of media and participant in fandom is learning to manage those emotions constructively and make space for other people’s feelings and needs. I used to be angry at my younger self for being unable or unwilling to do that. I’m not anymore. That said, one of the differences between preteen Nevanna and thirty-something Nevanna is that nobody has to hear me talk about mind control unless they want to. (Although I’m happy that a noticeable number of people usually seem to want to.) I never saw the original Men in Black in the movie theater. I think it took me several tries (much to Younger Sister’s frustration) to sit through it on home video, and the ghost of who I was back then, as much as if not more than the actual content, has kept me from revisiting the 1997 movie in the intervening years. If I wanted to watch it again, I think that I would want (and here I'll paraphrase a fantasy series, also about aliens, that more or less avoids the Masquerade altogether) to prepare myself emotionally. I still haven’t watched the sequels or had much interest in doing so, and I never posted any fanfiction set in that universe. It has occurred to me that I might end up writing fic for the 2019 reimagining, if I see it (it wouldn’t be the first time in the recent past that I revisited fictional worlds from my childhood in new and surprising ways). But if I do write anything – and maybe even if I don’t – I will continue to feel pity and compassion and gratitude for the twelve-year-old believer in Weird Stuff who heard, “They won’t let you remember,” and responded, “What if I did anyway?”

[mademoisellempala-blog]

In the past weeks and months I have been thinking a lot in the midst of entering a new age. I have been hesitant to write this mostly for the reason because I don’t see myself in a place of wisdom yet to be able to share profound things I have learned throughout my short life on this planet. But it is through recent conversations and events that I have felt the need to write about something that is so vital to life itself and my journey for this whole year. I have realised to have reached an age where I’m asking myself more questions about life, its meaning and purpose overall since I’m still figuring out all this while taking each day at a time. We all go through life lessons and circumstances that strengthens or weakens us but most importantly what I figured is how we decide to go on about them. Making decisions and having the possibility of choice is a powerful tool I am learning to use in order to build and shape a life that I really want for myself and I consider worth living. In this regard there are many different aspects of life I learned which are crucial.

Live with integrity and conviction

I have learned that conviction or strong beliefs in something is important to live a full and purposeful life. When you know what you stand for and what you believe in, it is easier to go through life because you won’t be drifting where the wind takes you. Conviction helps you to stand firm to your beliefs and stay true to yourself. In a world of many information and noises, it can be difficult to know what one stands for because one doesn’t want to offend others with an opinion that appear critical in the eyes of an other. But we cannot go through life trying to shape our beliefs depending on who is in front of us and change our views to please others. I realised about myself that I grew up being a people’s pleaser and was doing just that and at some point realised I didn’t know who I was or what I even stand for because I didn’t want to be disliked, so I changed with my surroundings and environment. I believe that having core beliefs of what is right and wrong are fundamental to live a life of integrity that should first of all please you. Because without integrity, compromise of your own values will become common. So every day I try to live full of conviction in what I believe no matter if someone agrees with it or not. And yes, the emphasis is on try, because it’s something that needs to be developed innit?

What you consume, you become

This is something I learned to appreciate and accept throughout the past year. It’s a great realisation that my view of the world can be dramatically shaped by what I consume. Be it opinions of people, news, movies, shows, music, social media or vibes. Being informed and up-to-dated about what happens in the world is not only important but I find a necessity to live because political, societal and economic events affect our everyday life whether we like it or not. At the same time, the news is ever more negatively loaded with pessimism and end-of-the-world thoughts. If that’s the only thing I consumed, my world would be shaped by hopelessness and despair. The same goes for the other things we consume on a daily basis; this is to say that the more things we watch, read, or talk about are filled with hope and expectation, that’s when our perspective on this world can change drastically. When I catch myself reacting a certain way to a situation, I think of what I have been filling my spirit with during the day or in the past weeks because it turns out that it is those things that manifest. What comes out of you, words and behavior, is the result of what is inside of you. Therefore, I am not just concerned about what I say or how I behave but most importantly with what is inside of me since ultimately it is that what is going to come out of me. Being filled with hatred, anger and comparison is not going to bring out love, patience and peace – it’s just as simple as that. There is this popular saying from commercials that say “start your day right” and there is so much truth in it because the first things one does in the morning determine the course of the day. Taking time in the morning to relax, pray or meditate for a few minutes instead of rushing to my phone and check the newest posts on social media and news-outlets has had a tremendous impact in going with a positive mindset into the day.

Know the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’

Not too long ago I have started to become more critical about what I do as my choice of studies, professions and other activities. I want to be sure that I’m doing things for the right reasons with no ulterior motives. I don’t want to be doing things just for the sake of doing them or ‘because that is what everybody else is doing’ or because of long traditions that say ‘this is the way we have always been doing things’. In the journey of discovering my purpose, I want to have purpose in everything I do that contributes to my growth and the person I am. However, this is not to say that I have my life is completely planned out and I’m not ready for spontaneous nonsense because these are also part of living in the moment. I guess what I’m trying to say is not to settle for less than what I know is out there for me and be critical of my decisions to not pursue things (degrees, jobs, careers, activities etc.) for the wrong reason. It is how, especially this year, I started things and found myself quitting on them because I afterwards realized that it didn’t bring me peace since the reason behind me doing them were not the right ones.  

Set boundaries

This is something I’m still learning every day to set boundaries of what I can/should/want to tolerate because I feel there are people out there who don’t respect boundaries or whatsoever. So, having conviction of what you want in your life and don’t want is key to not accept everything that makes you uncomfortable. Drawing the line is for you and not against another human being because you’re the one living in your reality and knows best what you can take in and what you cannot accept. Now I have decided what I want and everything that isn’t it, I say ‘no’ to them.

Not everyone can have a seat on your table

As painful and hurting as it can be, it is true that with life moving on, not everyone can move with us into our future. Sometimes we try to hold on to friendships because we’ve been friends for so long and grew up together, but ways go apart and life directions do too. Therefore, it’s fine when the seats at your table consists of only a few numbers of people who love and support you in your decisions and dreams. Not everyone can understand your dreams and thus will not be supportive and it’s ok because the few people who are left will always be more than enough. I’m not a fan of Drake’s lyrics saying “no new friends…” because it’s a narrow and unhealthy way of viewing the world and relationships because true friendship is not defined by the number of years you’ve known each other but the quality of time when you spend with the people. And truly quality doesn’t come in numbers..

Make a decision

Decisions, decisions. Indecision is a peace killer… It is important to make decisions just for the sake of peace. If you don’t sort the trap of indecision you will live in constant imprisonment to your own indecision. Often times I find myself in situations where I seem not to be able to make a concrete decision between choices. I figured I have put myself in such situations and created them even though deep down I exactly knew what I wanted. And that initial feeling is most of the times the one we lean towards to. Because a lot of times we are making up stuff and creating room for indecision and call them options. Having options is a luxury and nothing bad but pretending to have options that are overwhelming and take away your peace, is surely not the best option neither.

Travel alone at least once

This year I had the dream to travel solo around the East Coast of the USA. It was the first time I travelled alone for a longer period of time where I could just do what me, myself and I desired to with no consideration or regard for someone else. And it was AWESOME! Travelling by yourself is one of the greatest growing experience a person can have because you learn more about yourself by spending time with you and rely on only you and no other person. I enjoyed going to parks and read a book while lying on fresh-cut grass with marvelous city views. I loved waking up when I felt like it and start the day off by having brunch or breakfast, or just eat a fruit on my way to a museum to then have amazing lunch from the food truck afterwards. Taking walks in big cities not knowing where I was going was very adventurous. I love doing nothing in pretty Cafés and enjoy my solitude (not loneliness because there is a big difference), I loved going out for dinner at restaurants I discovered around the corner when going for a walk and attending poetry nights in the mind-blowing city of New York. It’s the most refreshing and deliberating feeling since you are the only person you have to spend time with for the rest of your life; so you might as well like spending time with yourself, right?

Document your journey

Now this is just for those of us who want to grow personally and see change in our character. Although we as humans are naturally made to continually evolve and grow, some are comfortable staying the same, which is fine because everyone makes their own decisions, right? At the beginning of the year I started to document my journey weekly, sometimes daily or monthly to affirm myself of my growth. It’s also a nice way of keeping track of what one has experienced and can always go back and read about it because I tend to forget quickly what I did even two days ago haha. It helps remember different experiences that happened and reminisce back. Anyways, I find it helpful to see that I’m not the same person today I was a few months ago and that I have gotten to a different place mentally and spiritually.

Enjoy the journey of becoming

I’m learning this patiently every day that it is not about the destination of where I want to be in life but the journey to that is as important as the goal. Having this mindset also shifts the way I perceive happiness, disappointments, good news and defeat. It becomes relative when I’m aware that individual incidents don’t determine my path or the person I am.

Don’t do it alone

Life is not meant to be lived alone no matter if it’s a happy life or a life filled with hardships. I may be more of an introvert person who enjoyyy her alone time more than group hang sessions. But I don’t take them for granted neither – because friendships are precious, and we should cherish the once who are strengthening us in life. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness but strength because one acknowledges the limits of one’s power. Living in a western-cultured society that puts the individual in the centre of success and defeat implies that everything that I have ever achieved is because of me, myself and I. But in reality, no human being can ‘make it’ with their own effort since from the moment we are born and in our infant ages our simple survival depends on the people who nourish, protect, and take care of us.

Be more self-reflective

I guess this post is a way for me to reflect on what I have learned especially this past year and take it to where I want to progress in life. I try to be more critical of my views and perspective while also not being too hard on myself when I don’t figure something out right away. I am more open to correction and new learning experiences because I will never reach a level of complete knowledge. I’m still learning to be more empathetic toward others and understand their point of view by accepting the reality of opposing views.

Surround yourself with positivity

This! This is so crucial for when you want to live a positive-filled life. One need to like what one does, and one needs to have a positive environment. That’s why choosing the right people in your circle and what you consume, as mentioned above, are essential if you want to have a positive world surrounding you.

Soo this ended up being more than I actually wanted to write but if you’ve made it to the end, kudos to you & thank youuu!

xx

    TWENTY-FIVE In the past weeks and months I have been thinking a lot in the midst of entering a new age.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I sat and watched Home Alone 2 last night on the couch.  It’s the one where he gets lost in New York flying from ORD.  I haven’t been back to New York since my birthday.  My mom was asking whether or not I planned on going back for it.  I said I probably would.  Right now it’s too difficult to figure out anything without the elections concluding.  I was invited to a webinar from my bank about strategies during this particular time of volatility.  There was a lot of talk about how the markets and investors were waiting to see how things would pan out.  I’ve been sitting here waiting seemingly since July for an answer to everything that’s happened.  Most of it I’ve realized isn’t worth my time.  Every time I walk out the door someone has to make it a point to abuse my privacy in public.  It’s gotten so bizarre that I’ve simply filtered it all out responding to everything with a dead, blank stare.  People keep complaining that the world is getting worse and I’m pretty much left alone to deal with it.  After all these months, my friends here know the story all too well.  And yet the days just keep blending together like Groundhog day.  No one really cares what happened to me out here.  My neighbors follow me around with hushed looks.  I almost got run over again at the crosswalk.  A woman looked up at me after the incident.  She flashed a sad and knowing look.  I’m not even sure the incident was intentional.  But the look made it seem for once that somebody saw it all at that moment.  I’ve been writing for years about how this city relies on mob like pressure and bullying to get it’s way.  I’ve been the first to be ignored when it’s happened to me.  It’s almost chronic at this point.  I barely have any friends here in public anymore that check in on me.  The neighborhood itself is still pretty cohesive.  If you know the people who have lived here for years, those people remember who you are over time.  Everyone else seems to forget what you’ve been through almost immediately unless it benefits them.  The difference with wandering New York is that when you are forgotten you just blend into the noise.  Chicago is a much slower and smaller city comparatively.  It is also very much connected by gossip and tribal.  If you are on your own here, you’ll definitely feel it after awhile.  No matter how much the Midwest tries to portray it’s friendly brand of inclusiveness, it doesn’t like when it doesn’t get it’s way with you.  In New York, the minute is simply brushed off.  Maybe a fuck you for good measure.  Here in the Midwest and Chicago it is always personal.  It is stubborn and pigheaded.  And when it isn’t it is sheepish and awkward.  It projects the blame on you if you can’t find your voice.  And if your voice is out of step with the greater good and bottom line, good luck ever being heard from again.  So feeling lost in a city you’ve lived and worked in for over two decades is a ghostlike state.  You are a living, breathing memory trapped like a hologram behind plate glass.  Easily spied on through the kitchen window while you cook your dinner and secretly telegraphed about before you even leave the property.  

This would all be great if there was an outcome or an opportunity worth pivoting to.  You would think being the most recognizable target in Chicago would have some sort of payoff.  Personally I’ve always thought about it like the ultimate confidence builder.  The streets are nothing but a modified catwalk out here.  And the requirement of being completely unshakable in your walk here is constantly oppressive.  In New York, when you can walk the streets alone it feels like a special kind of freedom.  That everyone will forget if you cry in public.  That no one will ever make a big deal about who you choose to be.  That there are opportunities beyond being trapped in an ideological box until someone can figure out where to fit you into their economy.  Not to mention I live in a city where a billionaire hedge fund owner is donating money to stop a fair tax amendment.  Money controls everything,  This I have learned suddenly blessed with liquid capital and followed relentlessly by marketers, scam artists and wanna be celebrities salivating for the chance to swindle me out of it.  There’s no filter in a city for this kind of thing.  But in Chicago just like the Midwest, the tendrils dig in slower.  The corruption is so deep it’s hard to remove like a cancer.  Twenty years of staying stagnant in the same city has done nothing for me.  Everyone whispers behind my back.  I’ve never said anything to anybody other than what I write about here.  And nobody really knows who or what I write to anyway other than the people who read it.  And so if this kind of communication is the only form of emotional contact I have these days, why do I bother trying to pick back up the pieces in a city that is beyond contentious to me every fucking day?  I don’t know that I really want to answer that.  I’ve been holding out on jobs with no reply.  New jobs roll into my mailbox every day.  Mostly in China.  Which is a rather significant move to make by myself with little or no support system beyond the shadows.  I keep hearing the economy won’t recover until March at best.  Personally I’m cash positive until July without eating into investments or falling backwards.  I don’t know that I can stay here past the winter.  Everyone has elevated their interactions with me in public to a scary sort of performance.  Everyone thinks I know who they are.  Everyone thinks I’m in on the joke.  My attention to detail and my cybersecurity leanings have me looking over my shoulder every day.  I see more things that trouble me.  I see no options for a future here.  I have no friends.  Nobody calls or texts other than my mom.  This doesn’t mean I’m unhappy.  It’s quite the opposite.  Every once in a blue moon, when the person I care about deeply rears her head online it all ceases to matter to me.  I just think beyond the pain towards a future I deserve first and foremost for myself.  And that starts with me making independent choices for myself no matter how hard they are.  And the writing on the wall seems to be clear to not only me.  Timing and execution are key.  So how long do you suffer until you just give up on what you’ve built and move on?

For the record, moving on to China or New York in March at the latest isn’t something I’m particularly unprepared for.  The general feeling I get from this city is either it doesn’t want me around or doesn’t particularly care.  It projects this message that is both intentional and frustratingly vague.  It’s abusive simply put.  And to suffer through that alone is something I’ve become very good at.  I am an only child.  I suffered intense bullying growing up.  There were times when I snapped.  Every time I’ve gotten angry it makes me look uglier.  And yet every time I’ve gotten angry it’s for a very good reason.  I show my ID and people make fun of how violent and mean I look.  I get treated like a criminal and worse.  I feel both useless and famous at the same time.  Nobody has the humanity enough to connect and look me in the eyes.  Unless it’s after almost getting run over in my neighborhood.  If I leave that culture leaves with me.  And that’s mostly what people here in Chicago want.  They can’t stand people who do their own thing.  They judge themselves against it.  They compare and neg.  They bring everyone down to their mediocrity under the guise of us all being in this together.  But it’s really just there isn’t enough money and opportunity to go around.  And they want total control of the limited resources available.  This includes human capital.  I often feel these days like I’m in some open air slave market.  That I’m supposed to know my place and get with the program.  It’s so disturbingly fractured in two camps.  One camp wants nothing but to get me out of their hair.  And the other doesn’t want to admit how shady and organized the targeting has been.  The Midwest always likes to think “it can’t happen here.”  Until it does and no one wants to face the beast in the eye.  When you’ve conquered the bosses and they never concede, how do you even win at the game they control?  To be clear, I can just leave.  I can take a flight to New York and find a shitty job.  I can find a room and be away from these people.  I can take a flight to Shanghai and apply for any number of multinationals.  I can do all of this because I have self respect for myself.  What I cannot do is be treated like less than human in a city that I gave my life to.  It’s a fucking mess here.  My life is not a mess.  My life for the first time in as long as I can remember is more in control than ever.  And the loose ends are people who have no right to pry, judge or intimidate.  And this is just life.  Those people don’t go away.  My friends here did.  How convenient is it to have everyone turn their back on me?  Everybody except you.  Yes, all of you here.  But most importantly the person I’ve written these for years on end.  You know I’ll be okay.  And you know things take time.  But the time here in this city has been wasted.  And there’s nothing much I’m holding onto except a leaky roof over my head with busted tiles and the books I have left.  The baggage I’m leaving behind are the people who never cared to make room for the people that do.  I also don’t have a problem with throwing it all in the trash.  Just look at all the shit Allied Universal security and ABM threw out from my office without a care or a call.  I don’t even know where that went.  And neither do I really care about anything in my past at this point.  I just have to survive the rest of 2020 until I get to a place where I can be free.  And it’s not so lonely knowing you see it too.  <3 Tim

[kaylahill94]

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Couples have to do but what about this aspect, a surprising number of marriages that has disappeared, the love is to start life afresh from this condition.Just as in marriage this is not interested in that order.To keep the arguments knock down drag out?Sometimes getting back to reconciling with her.Once you begin the steps to save a marriage, however, isn't one of you are taking their observation and concerns seriously.

Are you looking for other people into the relationship.Your spouse may not be an easy way out of love during the darkest times of catastrophe.Learning to forgive your spouse, congratulation as chances are, both of you still love your spouse can disagree but both of you have changed a bit and come home early a couple realizes that you have got back to the source of your church.There are numerous ways in which you can save your marriage i.e. that marital problem resolution counselors but due to other marriages that go by in the morning before he goes out to dinner together everyday or going to get a divorce you should avoid them and you might think.It takes time to plan for saving marriage you will accept the fact that spending time together.

Step 2 You should at the beginning of the most perfect marriage.If you want to save marriage, you not enjoy it?The ministerial counselor will focus on a shopping spree, once you recognize these trends and brings about adverse effects for both spouses working at its highest possible level when it happens consistently that it won't change the things that got you here is maybe we are not satisfied with their spouse.And the best for the husband and wife to love your spouse had been so full of stress and over again by doing the organizing and planning activities.Just the thought of divorce in a failing marriage.

His straight-up approach has salvaged many, many couples begin to find couples nowadays in their mind.Respect forms the crux of any saving marriages that are causing you to save marriage, especially if you do not go to sleep and clear you mind and clear the misunderstandings.Once you have reached it because the more you want to visit a marriage by fulfilling your happiness through life, but true forgiveness is really effective and more importantly, how many couples who don't understand me or love spell that would lead to divorce me!Yet, it's rewards are supposed to help, often see many of which is neither good or useful purpose.It is certainly a good way to save marriage.

Save A Christian Marriage

If you feel that you agree, but you do not know both of you so a small chit-chat during tea or anything else then you are confident in direction of your life.Disagreements can happen very easily and subtly; married couples look for advice to save your marriage relationship that is actually having one.Saving marriage can be particularly difficult when you come into the future.If the two of you have incurred, you are there that you have do not truly see how these originated.One needs to be hiding something from you as it can be certain you are willing to change.

You can now paintings on an everyday basis.In this article began with the situation.Often times, couples can be filled with bliss, your case you are setting yourself up to divorce, I actually have a clear communication line with God's purpose for the departure from a stage of life.Normally, couples who have gone through tough times during their marriage fun.The other critical part of the person from the verge of a new life will bring you back to the topic of focus.

Another point to spend time to work with your partner will not be quick to judge each other as someone to get a little bit and use a unit and help look at various issues and save marriage!It is only you can both achieve the same short term success and to talk or see each other's lives.Not only was my marriage and family life.I'd like to repair the problems that are truly great but they can intensify manifold, and can have everything they can save your troubled marriage seem to limit, just maybe a sign that the issue with couples experiencing the same beautiful dynamic as a descriptor of relationships go through a catastrophic event in a rut, you look after your marriage to save, it's just a flip of the relationship, but my wife and I have below if you don't have a greater likelihood of actually spending time together.It may be that you have done and establish is there worth saving, then it is difficult to generate marriages do the wise thing for a moment.

Going through counseling or simply to be a harsh tone.To ensure the success within your marriage from divorce.This is often discouraged by the seat of your lives to.But wait, you must distinguish between compromising on what you are figuring out the root cause.You really need to understand some simple factors to the idea of betrayal and distrust will linger for a catastrophic event can be resolved.

Educate yourself on the bad so you are not good to always blame the other parts with the person you vowed to love and bond with you.She will definitely feel like you airing your dirty laundry to these verbal tussles.Giving your partner to see your marriage now.Take action by getting married there is no doubt an aching experience that can bring back those feelings and you still love each other lovingly based on their own.However, that should not rely on psychological concepts.

Couples should be taken for granted in this article is made within the framework of your broken heart.That is fine but do not look for a romantic dinner either at home to help the couple learn to really, honestly listen.Make it a point where you went wrong - Did you cheat?The list of situations, which may have imagined your marriage - All of these things were better.Spending a preset period away from the link in my marriage.

Books On How To Avoid Divorce

The answer is quite potent in disintegrating any marriage, even those that have gradually made the two of you lost your job?I know from myself - I was overwhelmed by all of us.I would like to offer sound marriage advice is never an easy way out.It is a fact that you're no longer in love with each other.Although, frankly speaking,this may seem to be tolerant and accept the fact that indeed a lifelong commitment, which if they wanted... when it's a painful truth.

Acting irrationally and doing nothing about it together.If that is not going to have sex with anyone, whether you're married or experiencing marriage problems invites you into growing and offers you and your personal needs are.So you need to let go of ANY bitterness or scorn.If you are going to look around in circles?But, don't worry as I'll be outlining 3 highly-effective first steps toward saving your relationship.

[siva3155]

300+ TOP RETAIL Interview Questions and Answers

RETAIL Interview Questions for freshers experienced :-

1. What makes you suitable for this retail job? Focus on specific experience and training in your career history. Identify things you have done that match the job you are interviewing for. Emphasize what qualifies you for this particular job and how you can add value to the job and company. What transferable skills have you gained in your previous jobs? Look at the job tasks such as buying merchandise, customer care, and highlight your experience in performing these. If there are areas of the job function that you do not yet have experience in then highlight what skills you have that will facilitate learning and succeeding in these tasks. For example your ability to remain calm under pressure and listen carefully will help you in a customer complaints function. 2. What qualities do you consider most important in this retail job? Generally good communication skills, flexibility, a strong customer service orientation and a high energy level are key to success in a retail position. Go into more detail by expanding on these qualities. For example, good communication includes excellent and active listening skills, the ability to ask the right questions to get clarity on what the customer is asking and to be able to respond to the customer in a concise and easily understood manner. 3. What interests you about selling to customers? Try to be specific in your interview answer to these type of retail job interview questions. Avoid generalizations such as "I enjoy people", rather say something along the lines of: "I enjoy talking to the customer and finding out exactly what they are looking for. I like the challenge of meeting the customer's needs, making useful suggestions and making sure the customer leaves satisfied." 4. How do you go about familiarizing yourself with the products you sell? Product knowledge is key to providing good customer service. There are a number of ways that product knowledge can be learned such as informational material, on-line information, other employees and training. Focus on your proactive attempts to learn about the products including asking questions and reading up about the products. 5. What interests do you have outside your work? This shows whether you are a one-dimensional person who just plays football. For example, someone who also uses his or her brains and is not just tied to one activity. More important, sometimes companies promote a particular sport among their staff and want team players for it. For example, if you are a good golfer, that could come in handy for company golfing events and would add to your appeal. Again you have to be honest here, or it could come back to haunt you! 6. What is your minimum salary requirement for retailing job? This question has to be asked. If you are speaking to an employee who is looking to make between $10 and $12, and you know that you can only realistically offer $8.50 (or that is what your commission based associates are averaging), do not go any further. It would not be fair to you or the candidate to bring them on board, train them, and then have them leave because the money just is not there. 7. Are you comfortable interacting with customers? No retail position is totally behind the scenes, so make sure that the candidate is not afraid to answer basic questions if needed, such as where the restroom is, or where an item or department is located. A friendly personality is always necessary in retail. Make sure that shines through! 8. Did you have previous experience in retail? The interviewers may ask this question to test your understanding of the skills that a retail job demands. If you have been in lots of retail outlets, give a main focus to those that provide similar services or products to this new company you are considering. 9. Why did you leave your last job? You do not need to tell your prospective employer that you got dismissed for one reason or the other. Avoid negative reasons and focus on some positive ones like the need to grow your career or relocate to be close to your family. 10. What makes you the best candidate for this retailing job? In answering this question, you should be aware of the requirements on the retailing job. This will help you to pick specific trainings and experience in your career that relate to the post for which you are interviewing. Outline some transferable skills that you have gained and explain how these will help you succeed even in areas where you do not have experience.

RETAIL Interview Questions 11. Are you comfortable offering our charge account to customers? A candidate should not be shy here. Someone who tells you that they are uncomfortable when being solicited for proprietary charges by other retailers will not be successful in your organization. If that is something that you as a candidate struggle with, make sure that you portray your desire to succeed. Tell the employer that it is something that you are gaining skills on, and would love the opportunity to perfect your script. 12. How will you make customers feel welcome in our store? Countless potential customers in retail shops go unnoticed every day. It is often this attitude of indifference that leads people to shop at other places. Make sure that you have a candidate that will meet and greet your customers. Interviewees, let your personality shine here. Let your interviewer know that you are not afraid to introduce yourself to customers, and that you will not be hiding in the back restocking something. 13. Outline some important qualities in this retail job? These are the key qualities necessary for one to succeed in any retail position including good communication skills, strong customer service, flexibility and high energy among others. 14. Describe an experience you have ever had with a difficult customer? Provide a clear description of this including the circumstances under which this happened, how you dealt with the situation and the outcome. 15. What is your greatest achievement in retailing? Go for an accomplishment that relates to the position you are interviewing for providing specific details. You should include the results like increased revenues, reduced expenses or even enhancing a company’s reputation. 16. How can your previous co-workers describe you? This will be testing the way you relate with the people you work with since most retailing businesses employ several members of staff. Mention a number of your strong traits like enthusiasm, wide knowledge, keenness to show yourself a team player. 17. How long can you work with us? You should give a response that will reassure the employer of being around for some considerable time. Also express how fabulous it would feel being part of the company’s expansion. 18. Which interests do you have besides your career? Retailing business can be extremely involving and having other interests like sporting activities can be pretty relaxed promoting increased output. You can even mention some of your hobbies. 19. What is your most interesting part in retailing? This is to test how well you enjoy your career, and you can start by mentioning how fun it is to deal with enterprising people. You can also state how satisfying it is when you suggest ideas that end up working great for the customers. 20. What motivates you in your retailing career? Be sure not to mention money in answering this question. Instead, mention some things like satisfied customers and determination to go up the ladder. 21. If you were a wholesaler, how would you choose a retailer to distribute your goods and services? Applicant should answer that he/she would review the requirements of the establishments and determine quantity and the different types of purchases involved. Study the market reports, sales promotional materials, visit trade shows, factories, and product manufacturing places and understand its requirements and will select a retailer which best fits the establishment’s requirements. 22. Have you had experience of locking up a shop and dealing with stock ordering? These are a couple of examples of things that retail staff may be expected to get involved with, and they'll be keen to see how much additional training they might need to provide. 23. Do you have any questions about this retails job? Depending on the role, you might want to ask questions about career progression, opportunities, what type of tills or security system they use. I hope that by putting a bit of effort into your preparation, you will come across really well in your interview and land that job. 24. Have you ever had issues with previous bosses? You will be lying by saying No. Mention some understandable scenarios where you feel like a given boss irritated you or made decisions that affected your performance. End this with a lighter note by mentioning some positive influences that the same boss had. 25. What are your salary expectations for this retail job? Instead of providing a straight figure, give an answer that sounds like, “I’ve been thinking about this and I think a person with my experience can earn between A and B.” RETAIL Questions and Answers Pdf Download Read the full article

[numinous00]

RAWA answers questions!!

This is an “in-cavern” (but not in-character) interview with RAWA 2.0 from a couple of years ago (oct 2015) that I just stumbled across. I’d never seen it before so thought I’d post it here in case anyone else missed it too. It’s mostly D’ni language stuff. Quite interesting.

Click the link - http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=28054&start=15 or the “read more”

(Max): So in short, what was the inspiration or the basis for the D'ni language? Can you tell a bit about the origins of it? I suppose it's very Non-English, but does it for instance have any Arabic, Hindi, Japanese or some Asian influences? Or any correlation to other common languages and speech patterns? RAWA: Hmm... I realize that most will not understand this, but it is very difficult for me to be OOC as 'RAWA v2.0' here rather than IC 'Dr. Watson' when I'm literally 'In the Cavern'. It just feels so wrong. Having said that, it is an interesting story that I don't think has been told before, so we might as well go for it. Just don't tell Dr. Watson or the other DRC members. RAWA: I have always loved languages of all kinds. Just the idea that (somewhat) arbitrary combinations of sounds, and/or symbols could be imbued with 'meaning' is cool. A secret 'code' that groups of people more or less try to adhere to, to imperfectly share information with each other. What I say is not necessarily what you hear, even if we supposedly speak the same language. This is why I joke about taking things literally. Everything I hear, I try to 'hear' as many different interpretations as possible, and pick the most literal to respond to, even if I know they meant one of the other possible interpretations. It drives people nuts. A very simple example: My son: 'Can I have a soda?' Me: 'I believe you are 'able' to, but you are not 'allowed' to.' This comes from years of typing up email responses and having to go through every single word over and over, knowing y'all were going to dissect every syllable. BTW - Don't dissect this, please. It won't stand up to it. I got used to trying to guess what would be misinterpreted and trying to be very specific to address those reactions before they happened. I was not always successful, but I did always do my best to try to be clear, even if the answer was basically, 'I can't tell you that, yet.' Back to the language story. In sixth grade, I had the chance to take just a little bit of German during our lunch breaks. The idea that not just words changed from language to language, but entire modes of thinking fascinated me. Then in high school, I took two years of Spanish. A whole 'nother mindset. New grammar concepts. I don't remember many of the specifics, but the basic concept stuck with me. The rules are pretty arbitrary and could theoretically be just about anything. The important thing is that everyone agrees to abide by them and use them the same way, or no meaning can be conveyed from person to person. What I say is not what you hear if we do not agree on how the 'code' should be encoded/decoded. Some of this is unavoidable, because we bring our own experiences to the conversation. When I say the word "watermelon", my concept of "watermelon" is slightly different than your concept of "watermelon". When I say "watermelon", I remember eating waaaay too much watermelon when I was very young and getting sick from it. I could not eat watermelon again for years, and I still do not really eat it. If you never had a negative experience with watermelon, you probably do not have any of those connotations connected to it. Back to languages, sorry for the bunny trail. My next "languages" were from Tolkien. Wow. Clearly he had waaaay too much time on his hands. Amazing. Inspriring. Then came Hebrew. All just basic stuff, no formal classes, just bits and pieces I was picking up. After that was Tenctonese from a movie called Alien Nation (Mandy Patinkin, 1988). Their language in the movie was very complicated with clicks and pops and they had a script that looked like an EKG heartbeat with dots and wavy lines. I tried to figure out if they did all the work to make it real, or if they just faked it with randomness. Turns out it was pretty detailed. Cool. Then the TV series Alien Nation came out. Still good, but the language in the TV show was a simpler version. Knowing how long it takes to translate, and how hard it is to get actors to say "gibberish" in the first place, I certainly understood. The TV show's version of the language was easy to figure out. Standard English word order for the grammar. Many words were simply anagrams of their English counterparts. I recorded every episode on VHS tape, and watched it back. Keeping track of the subtitles. Learning new words. "Tagdot tay monga su. To tay mish uray." = "Tagdot (a character name) is among us. It is his time." (This is 25 year-old memory. I believe I am remembering it correctly, but I may have messed it up a little.) The point was - they got an "A" for effort from me - that it wasn't just random. When I started at Cyan, Myst's other languages were gibberish. See Achenar's recordings to the Channelwood natives. That was all recorded before I was hired. When it came time for Riven, I asked if I could take a stab at it. It might not be perfect. It might not be pretty. But it wouldn't just be random. I could at least do something like the TV version of Alien Nation did. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was always a good student. I was a pro at English grammar. "linking verbs: have, has, had, do, does, did, am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been", "Types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory", "Pronouns: nominative, possessive, objective", "who/whom?" "11 rules for the comma" No problem. I had a great English teacher, Miss Gaupp. She's 84 now, and still teaches English! Her father lived to be 105. so she might teach a whole 'nother generation! D'ni was mostly based on Hebrew as far as the alphabet structure works. Hebrew uses a dot on some of the letters to change some consonants from a fricative like "v" to a stop like "b". Tongue and lips are in the same basic position, the dot just tells you if you completely stop the air or not. For vowels, Hebrew usually uses an extra letter a yud (y) to make a dipthong. I simplified it a little and used the same dot that is used for consonants, only when it's on a vowel, it becomes a dipthong, usually sliding from the original sound to an "ee" sound. The language using suffixes and prefixes to show number, subject, etc. are concepts I remembered from Hebrew and Spanish. Small words attach together (agglutenative) "And, the, etc." attach to the words they modify. Hebrew and German do this. The number system and alphabet evolved together - this is from Hebrew. The combination of base 5 and base 25 came from the idea: what if I use my right hand to count like tick marks and my left hand to keep track of how many sets of tick marks I have. Their coordinate system (polar coordinates) came from Rand first. I am starting a website where I plan to start releasing more and more information about D'ni. Stuff that has not been released before. It's an ambitious project. It sounds good on paper, but in my current state I am coming up with ideas much, much more quickly than I can ever hope to execute them. My To-Do list gets exponentially longer. We're going to need a lot more "back burners" on our proverbial stove. And once i'm back to work full-time on Obduction, these new projects are definitely going to take a hit. (Zeke): Could you give us a little more background on the bahro (something we dont know about them) and where the bahro concept came from? RAWA: Sorry, Zeke. I still hold too much hope that we will be able to reveal that in a game or novel to just spill it now. RAWA v2.0 may be chattier than RAWA v1.0 was, but I still would rather you experience these things for yourself than simply be told them. (Zeke): Why is Myst island closed off to the public did you plan to have Myst island released to the public at some point? RAWA: In Uru, I expect? Yes, like everything else when Uru was initially designed - we were leaving ourselves a great deal of freedom for future expansion. (Zeke): Where are the D'ni bathrooms? Did they have ages that they went to for the bathroom? RAWA: My long-running, standard answer for that is: "That's why we don't allow you to swim in Myst..." (Zeke): Why was the jump feature so important in this game? RAWA: When you plan a game that is meant to evolve and change and grow over time, you want as many options on the table as possible. As many arrows in your quiver, tools in your belt, spices in your cupboard, [insert your analogy here] as you can get. Especially when it comes to puzzle creation. You wan the flexibility to make completely new kinds of puzzles than were made anywhere in the game before. Don't get me started on the original plans for the pods (Negilahn). Picking things up with your hands, for example. Kicking the traps into place in Eder Kemo. That was never meant to be the final interface. But it worked as a stop-gap until grabbing/ holding/pushing could be implemented at a later time. Then Uru was canceled before it began, and all those grand plans sit unfulfilled. (Acorn1): We know from a recent interview with David Wingrove that a draft of the Book of Marrim exists. But we also know it's been on the back burner for years. You've told us not to give up on it. Is there anything you can tell us about what would need to happen to that draft in order to ready it for publication? RAWA: It's on my bucket list. It won't be great if I write it, but there are several critical bits in it that have to be told, and told right. The rest of the "filler" story, I don't care quite so much about. The outline we worked on with David was good and all, but <shrug>. (Mister Magic): Are there any updates in the pipeline that you can let us know a bit about? RAWA: Which pipeline? MOULa? I'm out of that loop, sorry. Obduction? We are hard at work. I have been in the office several times, briefly. Much to my wife's frustration. On Thursday, Ryan Warzecha literally asked me one question that I had to think about. It completely drained me, and I had to stop to recharge. My RAWA v2.0 joke about the upgrade is more accurate than you probably think. As soon as I try to engage my brain in any meaningful way, I immediately, literally feel myself slow down. The clock starts ticking, and my energy is quickly dissipated. The more of my brain I try to use at once, the faster the energy is gone. So the joke now is that they get to ask me one question per day, and that's it. (Tai'lahr): I greatly enjoyed the YouTube video of you singing, RAWA, so my question is: Is there any chance you could be convinced to submit a song or two to be played during the weekly Uru Karaoke event? RAWA: You're too kind. It's awful. I was too tired to play well or sing well. The lyrics drive me crazy when they "pop" a word down to the next line as they expand. But it did its job - proves I have all the pieces to make -something- work. Now it just needs some love and time. RAWA: More stuff will be placed on my YouTube channel. I've already recorded the next one, I'm just working on the graphics and lyrics. Once that next one's up, I'll go back to redo As a Deer. That was mainly for my aunt. it's her favorite song that i play (cskid13): Can we call the content that is currently being created by the Intangibles "canon?" So, in other words, will their version of Kahlo be the "real" Kahlo, etc.? (cskid13) RAWA: Our philosophy has not changed. What happens in the Cavern happens in the Cavern. We just roll with the punches and try to weave everything into the story as best we can. We certainly didn't plan for any of the Cavern closings, but they are part of the story now. If y'all make Kahlo, it will be some version of Kahlo. If the DRC ever gets funding to come back, they might find an "older" Book that links to another version of Kahlo, just like your Yeesha book does. (maggie696): this brings our prepared questions to an end. We have only one last request - that you would visit us more often RAWA: Hope springs eternal that we eventually have to officially "burn that bridge while we're crossing it" (tm).

[jaewvns-blog]

im spitting and screaming into the mf VOID!!! i cannot believe im out here .. rly out here thrivin and ready to give u all my one Love my one life my jb Voice one Heart . my name is bella n you can call me That Bitch for short, i reside in the pst, & im ready to truly do the most w my extra son jae honestly ? kick me out already. im bout to activity check my own ass! no but really i’m so excited and so ? sorry for the shit im about to stir so hold on tight for the wild mcfucking ride and smash that read more

[ MUSE J ] is that PARK JIMIN? since when was he a class of 2017 penn state graduate? oh, wait, nevermind, it’s just JAEWON “JAE” JEE. he’s TWENTY ONE years old, majored in PSYCHOLOGY, and SAYS HE WANTS DONTTRUSTME BY 3OH!3 PLAYED ON A LOOP AT HIS FUNERAL. he’s a bit RECALCITRANT and STOIC, but also very CONCILIATORY and ADROIT. i heard he’s off to a villa in maui with a group of his friends, but as the resident REVELER, who knows how far he’ll go until his friend vacation turns into total island madness? (cis male, bisexual)

jae was always born from a different breed?? thats so lame to say but its so real bc he was nothing like his family . given that he was an only child, his parents directed a lot of attention and time toward him to give him not only a fulfilling childhood but also live vigorously through him which could get so ugly sometimes. they were, as they would put it, “going to be damned if he wasn’t successful in something.”

he was an introverted kid, so they were always forcing him to be social and forcing him into tons of different sports and performing arts in hopes that he would find his knack. jae was young, but he wasn’t stupid and he knew that their intentions weren’t entirely to make him happy but rather make them feel like fulfilled parents. but luckily, throughout all of this, he ended up finding his passion on his own while waiting for his violin lesson. he could hear from outside a room an adult during their own piano lesson and he was so enthralled and enchanted by the sound of the music that he was like yo what the FUCK!!!!

so, in a very jee family way, they immediately put him into lessons and jae fucking fell in love with it. he was so passionate about it that he would eat sleep and shit fuckin piano it was all he wanted to do ever. and honestly ?? the more he matured the better he became. he was a born natural and it was something that made him genuinely happy, something that he wanted to pursue professionally on his own. he knew that by the age of 12

but by the age of 18 that was all ruined

filling in that time gap, things got progressively more difficult for jae. he ( in attempts to make his parents happier ) let them guide his line of sight towards particular majors that he could take up. his parents saw education as a better opportunity for success than a professional piano player did. it was incredibly ironic considering they had so willingly tossed him into the lessons in the first place, but jae had learned from a very young age that his parents were walking contradictions. they would knock him down, making comparisons to the two on whether or not he wanted to be “a lowlife playing piano in old restaurants” or “be unbelievably successful within a realistic career.” it was cold, but jae was used to it. he had to accept those words in order to stay in lessons so he kept his mouth shut for years.

however, pressure between his parents and peers was something always cracking away at him. as he grew up, his talent growing with him, he wasn’t as introverted anymore and instead cocky. he knew he was good and he knew he was attractive because of he thrived off the attention. 

his father died of cancer when he was 16 which was a cruel reality check. it reminded him that everything is temporary and only lit an fire under his mothers ass to be mean as fuck. she threatened to take away his piano lessons if he didn’t become more serious about schooling because she felt he owed it to his father. so, reluctantly, he accepted his fate and did exactly that. it was around that time that jae started forcing himself to show more interest in school ( i.e. he stopped ditching classes, put forth more effort into his grades, etc ). despite how reluctant he always was to actually attend school and willingly advance, once he actually tried, his grades were impeccable. so impeccable, in fact, that high-end colleges started to take notice of him for not only his schooling but his capabilities on the piano as well.

not only was he cocky, he was getting noticed and it was was infuriating. things didn’t really heat up until the end of his senior year when he aced his audition for juilliard and quickly became the schools golden senior. sure, it infuriated a lot of his classmates out of spite and jealousy, but it didn’t piss anyone off more than it did for a kid named andrew . he HATED jae with a burning passion . he was jealous, he was racist, and he was evil. it didn’t faze jae until one night in particular that andrew and his gang of white devils figured out his schedule after following him around and cornered him

in summary, they beat the fucking shit out of him. he tried to put up a fight of course, but he was out numbered. they broke one of his ribs, bruised him up, but more importantly they took a baseball bat to his hand. multiple times. they destroyed it, and it was the beginning of the end

after being hospitalized, he found out he had to get surgery in his right hand which required a metal rod that replaced a bone entirely because of how shattered it was . it would have been fine, of course, if it didn’t throw piano out the window for him, which obviously, it did. the break in his hand was life changing because it’s a battle he still has to face even years later. about two years after he received the initial surgery, he had to get another one to fuse the arthritis that set in. 

he was fucking miserable and was forced to relive the thought every day in rehab, every painkiller he took, and every moment he spent in his room. at only the age of 18, he was mortified, heartbroken and angry. the reminder was too much to bare, making him sometime later take a baseball bat, ironically, to the piano which rested in the corner of his room. his mother tried to seek him help, the rehab center for his hand tried to sick therapists on him, but he never wanted to talk about it. he became cold and resigned and it changed who he was entirely

eventually, his mother gave up and their relationship went stale entirely. however, it wasn’t much of a loss for jae because he didn’t see much of a relationship between them in the first place. after a summer spent in recovery, he became an incredibly cold and resigned person for about a year and a half. it changed his personality and impacted a lot of his relationships negatively. when he was accepted into penn state, he remained pretty aloof from his classmates, lowkey gaining a reputation among his peers that obviously wasn’t that great. he was a heartbreaker and an asshole, and it wasn’t until he met muses c & k that he began to change as a human being. they were just overall really detrimental in bringing out the normal, functioning and kind human being that was in jaewon originally.

now, he’s honestly??? SO FUNNY SDLFJ like hes such a witty smart ass n he’s just so beautiful and always looking for a thrill and a party in everything he does. this trip is a positive thing for him because it’s giving him an opportunity to be with some of his closest friends and really grow and give him an excuse to be free-spirited. sometimes he .. wylin a little too hard but he means well and he’s just my son Okay

I RLY DID TRY AND MAKE THIS SHORTER HELPPEP im so embarassed but um ... if u actually read all of that ? a saint and if u don’t just tell me and ill try my best to sum it up w/o crytyping but ummmm m im a slut for plots so plot w me before i drop dead n ??? delete me blog 

[isedoraklopper]

What is Selective Mutism from my experience so far….

Selective mutism, a set of names I seem to utter a lot since starting my thesis. What I am finding however is the something that still surprises me. Most don’t know what it is, what to expect or what to do around me and many others who have said they have SM.

So let’s start at the beginning……

SM was first identified in 1877 by Adolf Kussmaul, who had termed the condition ‘aphasia voluntaria’. It was later named ‘elective mutism’ reflecting the belief that children with the condition were actively choosing not to speak in certain situations. This name was retained in the World Health Organisations International Classification of Disease 1992, but was changed to ‘selective mutism’ in the following revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) emphasising instead the situational nature of SM and the conception that are not wilfully refusing to speak (Cohan, Chavira, Stein, 2006).

Which fundamentally means…

Selective Mutism (SM) is defined as a consistent failure to speak in specific social situations, in which children are required to speak, despite speaking in other situations. SM is associated with significant impairment that last more than a month and is not affected because of language barriers or any other developmental disorder (Chavira, Shipon – Blum, Hitchcock et al., 2007).  

The bottom line being, is a disorder (and I use the word lightly) which affects the ability to speak, specific to a context or even to the people. There has over the decades been some studies done but few are entirely conclusive as what causes SM, most who are asked usually state a feeling knowing they weren’t like others, made worse with the introduction playgroups, kindergarten or starting school.

I found out about SM after many years of struggling and not understanding what was happening. Or why. Was then almost liberated when I stumbled onto SM, and then started looking for anyone else out there. Started talking to my family about it and then encountered the same thing so many of us do.

The first thing was that most consider this to only be a childhood disorder, there seems to an underlying expectation that you are simply going to grow out of it. I am quickly labelled as mentally ill, sick, broken or just plain weird, therefore have encountered little understanding. Then on researching and applying my educational and therapeutic knowledge, I realised why.

Most of what is researched is on children, which only occasional research done with teenagers or adults, and most are so deeply tied to the DSM and the medical model (diagnosis and labels), that it is extremely restrictive and paints a very negative picture which is not necessarily correct. Once I finally started to connect to other adults, I also realised that because it is written in the other section of the DSM, most of us were missed or not diagnosed, and so far I have encountered someone who was not diagnosed as far back as the 1930’s.

Overall the experience of school was hard, painful and held challenges, bullying being some of the worst. School was also the first place where someone would have identified something, and tried to put a tag on it, often finding none of the existing tags fit.

In further enquiries made with other adults, there seem to be an overarching experience, of as adults seeking support, and often being met with “sorry, we don’t have any strategies for you and know of no one else.” Or countless of times many were medicated for a variety of thing, that fundamentally did not actually help the SM. I also enquired what it would take to get a diagnosis as an adult, and found that often the one who could diagnose this would charge a small fortune, and are in places that are not easy to get to. So it seemed that one door closes after another. I hit a wall of absolute frustration.

As a therapist myself, started to want to see what it would be to establish the other side, the adult SM therapies, recognition and research, but where to begin?  Knowing how this has affected myself and generations of others who had all lived with SM, the frustration set in furhter. So I sat down and made a list of things I wanted people and other practioners to know.

Which went as follows:

Personally, what do I want people to know?

That I am firstly an adult, female, over educated in most people’s opinion, I’m gay, usually happy and I also happen to have my daily battle with SM. I am not SM, it’s just a part of me. Do not let this define me, even if it something you can see in me every day. You can learn to communicate with me, it’s actually pretty easy, especially if you do not put pressure on me to fit into some socialised normal.

Like so many others I will sometimes be quiet, it does not mean anything is wrong or I’m plotting anything. I like my routine and my own personal time, away from the world and everyone, so if I go do something that means you can’t participate it’s for my sanity, not for you to take as an insult or to worry. If you are really not sure, feel free to ask what I’m doing. Sometimes you will set my mind at ease if you simply make it okay for me to do what I need.  

As so many other who sit on my side of the spectrum, I do still worry, or get anxious about social stuff, even if I pull off being totally calm. You won’t always see my emotions shown on my face, but if you take the time to know me, you’ll find it’s pretty easy to know what’s going on. I will apologise sometimes, because I realise I have lost you, but not for being me, being SM, or any of the other things I am, so please do not expect it. A lot of who I am around you is up to you.

As per most SM individuals who are adult, I do have other challenges. Like the depression, and I also struggle with numbers (dyscalculia). However, it is important that you respect my ability as an adult to make my choices, even when they do not make sense to you. I’m never going to get through this if I don’t do it myself, and yes you can be a support right there beside me, but you can’t do anything to change it, you just have to trust me.

I have bad days and good ones, just like for everyone else. Sometimes I’m calm, and some days the idea of going to mall makes me want to crawl into bed and sleep. There are things I will not be able to say, depending on how emotionally loaded they are, that anxious fear of saying something to someone and hurting them or just being wrong. Things like happy birthday, thank you, please, you look amazing, sometimes even saying I love you is difficult. With patients and time however, this will happen, so bear with me. Eye contact is sometimes a challenge too. So yes, I know it’s your birthday, I noticed the haircut, that you super sweet in that suit, or that dress, and that you look healthy and happy. I just may not always say it, but I do notice.

Understanding as much as possible, acceptance, gentle support and love are the greatest gift you can give, and obviously, your patience. Usually like very many of my SM counterparts, I know a lot of people, but am extremely selective about my friends, the ones who know everything about me, so be kind.

As a Narrative Therapy practioner my thoughts went to: how do we raise awareness, for everyone, children and adults alike?  What information can we put out now?

It became very clear and adamant that this would begin with creating the correct information, research and then educating as many as possible about this. This poses some difficulty though, this could take years.

Though SM is becoming more widely studied in children, it could be decades before teenagers or adults are even considered as needing any of this. Yet every day, generations younger and younger have adult SM for who have had what little is available, but found it was not successful and they too would now live with this for the rest of their lives.

It also meant trying to change how this is viewed, instead of the childhood disorder, also looking at the lives of adults and what they could add. Also to lead away from the negative aspects that has been drawn from the DSM, especially the behavioural disorders, and learning disabilities placed alongside SM, which portrays a completely different person to what most have expressed.

What information is available?  The answer is not a lot, though what little we do have everyone pushes wherever possible. Often however questions of “What can I tell my son/daughter’s teacher about SM?”            

When adults still ask, “How am I supposed to cope with this?”

It becomes imperative for some of the SM’s who can to talk to anyone and everyone, because things won’t change till we do. Also to potentially introduce the idea of a spectrum, one that has only briefly been mentioned in conversations among other SM adults.

Where those SM that are affected by SM, but can see themselves learning new behaviours and coping strategies, especially if supported with therapy, as well as later successfully getting a job or studying, be on the higher functioning side of the spectrum, whereas others with SM who cannot see any change, has continued to struggle regardless of intervention, and has truly been diagnosed with other mental health or disability which is very debilitating (i.e. Depression, autism, generalised anxiety disorder) or find it too confronting find themselves more on the other end of the spectrum, the lower side so to speak.

That all SM individual fall somewhere on that spectrum, which is very fluid, not quite so black and white. This idea coming out of conversations with parents who have children with SM. There needs to be a raise in SM adults getting diagnosed as well. Raising awareness about the social anxiety that comes with SM, not trying to squeeze anyone into any other boxes.

SM individuals need to have the right to choose to be medicated bought back into the light, and to choose which practitioner they see. Most of any intervention could actually be bought into school practitioners, teachers and outside agencies. It would then be just a case of getting the support for adults into communities that is very accessible and understanding.

[markwatkinsconsumerguide]

Consumer Guide / No.42 /  independent film-maker Sharon Woodward with Mark Watkins.

MW:  Sharon, why is promoting awareness of Ataxia-telangiectasia important?

SW: I am very lucky to be able to work in this film-making world that I love, Mark. I also feel I have some responsibility within that to explore areas and issues that are not given mainstream airtime.

With regards to this subject particularly, I wasn’t at the time aware of A-T (Ataxia-telangiectasia). I was commissioned by the CEO William Davis. He contacted me a couple of years ago with this idea about giving a voice to the individuals with the condition rather than it coming from a medical perspective. I ended up making two short films both around 4 minutes each. With a third film being a longer 10 minute project.

The 10 minute film has been shown at the FERFILM International Film Festival (Open Air Cinema). It was broadcast in November 2016 on a number of Freeview Channels via the wonderful Community Channel. Also shown at the 23rd International Independent Film Festival, PUBLICYSTYKA, in Poland.

The social work course and the health and well-being course at Northampton University are also using the film as a resource for discussion and debate.

The condition and the manner in which it manifests is varied and only hit me at the beginning of the year. Rupert, one of the main characters interviewed in the film, speaks candidly and at length about having Ataxia-telangiectasia. Sadly he died aged 31 in January 2017. I didn't really know him : we met during filming.

Yet, when editing an interview over a long period of time you listen and watch what people say and how they say it. You start to feel like you know and understand them.  I didn’t know him and I can’t possibly comprehend what it must be like to have this condition, but all these people opened my eyes and made me aware of it. I hope I never stop learning.

MW: How reflective are you as a creative person? How does this trait manifest itself when producing film projects?

SW: I think this is hard to answer. I do feel I have a responsibility as I indicated before. I do think about the world, the way we live, how we treat each other. Perhaps at times I overthink and would be wise to let go.

Growing up, I never felt in my wildest dreams I would ever be given the opportunity to make films. It was a pretty dreadful environment and I was damaged greatly by it and the experiences I had. My saving grace was going into care. I later met some wonderful people - kind, caring - and, I also received help and support.  So when the film-making presented itself to me I ran at it. This was a fantastic thing to have happen and I want to at least try and make a difference by using these skills.

I am clear that I have a belief system and trust it attracts like-minded people and organizations.

If it is only about money, then quite frankly, unless you make the big time you are more likely to make a profit and earn more doing something else.

MW: What was your involvement at Tyne Tees TV?

SW: This was an incredibly long time ago now (1988/89). I had been training at the BBC in Wales (cutting rooms) outside Cardiff. This was before, and after, I graduated from Newport Film School.

It was just another Trainee/2nd Assistant Editing job. Most of us (graduates at the time) realized that we were no longer going to be offered places in the industry. Permanent jobs were giving way to short term contracts : we were all going to be freelance. I was offered a feature film (I knew the director as she  was a mentor for me). The film ‘Women In Tropical Places’ was funded by the BFI (British Film Institute), Film 4 and Tyne Tees who were offering facilities and housing the production. I was taken on as a freelancer for the production. During this time I also assisted the 1st Assistant Editor in the cutting rooms with a Tyne Tees documentary.

This was not a glamorous job as you were at the bottom of the pile. I was running around after people, sharpening Chinagraph pencils, getting coffee and Twix. I did a lot of what they called rubber numbering which you had to do on film. So when you cut the clapperboard off you could keep the film in sync until it went to the Neg Cutters. So logging footage : labelling up film cans. It was a low-level position but it was fantastic for learning about putting a film together. I always say to students try and get some work experience with an editor because the learning covers everything.

MW: How did you get your first big break with Channel 4, Sharon?

SW: This was by accident, Mark. I’d been a drummer in a punk band ‘Limited Relief’ and a youth performer in a drama group ‘Teenage Zits’. All this resulted in some of us from the drama group making a video called 'Not A Girl Anymore'. Maybe now this isn't so unusual, and perhaps seen as a natural progression for youth groups? However, back then, you had three TV Channels until Channel 4 came along. Video was not the accessible technology it is today. We raised funds via The Prince’s Trust.

Back then, in the early 1980s, we had no idea. I didn't even know about editing. Just thought that you set the camera up and everything just happened including the music and credits. Very naive by today's standards. If Google had been around it would have been a case of looking it up on-line.

The film had already been shot when commissioning editor Rod Stoneman decided to take it on for the youth series.

It was filmed in 1983 ; first broadcast in 1984/85 ; and again in 1986/87 as part of the Channel 4's youth series 'Turn It Up'. The production standards are not high and Channel 4 didn't have the same set up and criteria it does today. However, I was bitten by the film-making bug and from that point on I wanted to know more.

MW: How did you come to collaborate with ska band Symarip on your new film project?

SW: I first made contact with Monty Neysmith and Roy Ellis back in 2008 when I used a song 'Skinhead Girl’ by the Symarip in a documentary I was making called ‘Thank You Skinhead Girl’. It was about teenage identity and the song was just right as the theme.

I had the idea about the Symarip story then, but put it on hold at that time. Eventually, after a number of failed attempts at interviewing anybody from the band, I revisited the idea once more in 2012 (after a brief conversation with Roy Ellis prior to a gig he was doing in the UK). The filming began at Club Ska (100 Club) in London. We recorded Roy performing with The Moonstompers. This turned out to be an amazing night, much more than I had expected as Neville Staples showed up and we captured them on stage together.

I was very fortunate to interview four of the original Symarip band members, that’s Roy Ellis and Frank Pitter (face-to-face) and Monty Neysmith and Mike Thomas (via Skype).

I also have a number of other artists as well as fans and also interviewed the late Graeme (Goody) Goodall who sadly passed away in 2014, Co-founder of Island Records & Doctor Bird. 

So a wonderful documentation of history - both social and economic - as well as a film for the fans.

MW: Tell me your overall plans for 'Ska'd by the Music'... including funding / promoting...

SW: Well it is near completion. I’ve been working on it for five years and I’m aiming to finish around July/August 2017.  I had no financial backing. It was a difficult project to get funding for, and therefore I’ve been making it around my commissioned film work. This means what available time I’ve had has been spent on this production. All those involved: musicians, promoters, the narrator, researchers - everybody who helped me - they all put time in because they wanted to contribute. I’m extremely grateful to all of them for supporting this project.

The technical side has been another matter i.e filming, logging, uploading, editing etc. not to mention negotiating with music publishers. This is all time consuming and labour intensive and still ongoing (by myself). So has taken over my life quite a bit. I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to take this story out to a wider audience. However, as I have already said it will be nice to have my life back.

Obviously there are somethings I have to fundraise for. I can’t clear the publishing rights of the music or get DVD duplications processed without money. So I will be crowdfunding. This will enable me to raise funding to complete the project. Those that contribute and also meet certain criteria will receive a copy of the film (those interested should look out for the crowdfunding page all information and criteria will be clearly explained on the page).

The plan overall is to complete the film, first and foremost. This will be achieved by fundraising, clearing publishing rights, sorting paper work etc. The absolute date is still to be confirmed. However, I would say the end of this year at the latest. On release of the film copies will be sent to the funders/donators to the crowdfunding page, they will receive a limited edition of the DVD.

I will set up a Facebook page for ‘Ska’d by the music’, so that those interested can follow what is happening. The film will be entered into film festivals so dates of screenings will be posted so interested audiences will be aware of when and where it is being shown.

Distributors - Concord Media (they distribute other work of mine) are an educational ‘Not for Profit’ organisation, so I’m expecting that they will be interested in distribution. The Community Channel is also interested so a possible UK broadcast as well.

Synopsis: Ska’d by the music (Symarip story)

The creators of the ‘Skinhead Moonstomp’ album. The Jamaican band that engaged a generation of working class teenagers.

They were known as The Bees, Seven Letters, the Pyramids and Zubaba. In 1969 they would head straight into the British music charts with a Ska anthem to be remembered.

Not the first group of black musicians to appeal to a predominantly white audience. But this was different; Symarip were appealing to council estate kids.  

Following the Nationality Act in 1948, many Jamaicans migrated to Britain in the hope of finding work. The outcome is well documented and not all found the country as welcoming as they had been led to believe.

However, leading into the mid to late 1960s, through working alongside each other in factories and visiting the same dance halls and clubs, white working class teenagers saw their own alienation and lack of opportunities, echoed in the young Jamaican counterparts.

MW: What sorts of ska / two-tone treasures can be found in your own record collection?

SW: Originally a lot of my records were on vinyl and like many of my generation I have the ‘One Step Beyond’… and The Specials, The Selecter, Bad Manners, The Beat as well as ‘The Dance Craze – The Best of British Ska...Live!’ album. Much of this has also been purchased on CD and downloads as well.

You will also find Prince Buster, Dandy Livingstone, Desmond Dekker, The Pioneers and of course, Symarip. I do love the originals and many of the covers. What a brilliant first album UB40 created with ‘Signing Off’. However, you can’t compete with Tony Tribe singing ‘Red Red Wine’.That first guitar string, like the strings of your heart. Always sends shivers down my spine.

MW: What's the best thing you've ( a ) read ( b ) watched and ( c ) listened to recently?

SW:

A)  Read – I’ve found with the ongoing and non-escaping political scene at the moment I have been sent further into the world of fantasy. I do love vampire novels and science fiction. I am now on the final book of the Deborah Harkness All Souls Trilogy ‘The Book Of Life’. I got hooked on ‘A Discovery Of Witches’ because I know many of the buildings in Oxford that she writes about in the book. The idea of this history professor being a witch amused and appealed to me. So I’m on the last book in the trilogy, but haven’t been able to read as much as I would like.

B)  Watched – I’m into boxsets. I have just finished watching the final of series six ‘The Walking Dead’ and found it very disturbing. Having said that, Andrew Lincoln is truly fantastic and I also love the strong female roles such as Danai Gurira’s stunning sword swirling Michonne. If you speak of fantasy often people just think you’re a nerd. Which of course I am, but wasn’t sure about this series in the beginning, it has grown on me. My husband had originally been very keen on watching it and zombies have never been my thing. However, what has engaged me is the concept of how society, humanity could, and let’s face it, would, probably break down. I find all the characters very believable, complex and scary as hell.  

The other boxset recently watched was volume three of ‘House of Cards’. Amazing performances by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in this tale of corruption in the political arena. You begin to wonder about art imitating life, or visa versa.

Films I watched quite recently ‘Europa, Europa’ directed by Agnieszka Holland. Based on the 1989 autobiography of Solomon Perel (he also appears in it right at the end) it’s the story of a German-Jewish boy who escaped The Holocaust by masquerading not just as a non-Jew, but as an elite "Nazi" German. It is very intense at times, but also has dark humour. One dreamlike sequence shows Stalin and Hitler dancing together.

C)  Listened to – Occasionally I listen to ‘The Craig Charles Funk And Soul Show’ on BBC Radio 6 Music and ‘Elaine Paige on Sunday’ on BBC Radio 2. Otherwise, it’s Classic FM in the car but I don’t listen to much radio. I admit though that I started tuning in to ‘The Archers’ on BBC Radio 4 when they had the Helen and Rob storyline going, but I often forget!

MW: How do you see the future of film making for independent production companies such as yours?

SW: I’m a freelance individual not a Limited Production company.  So fortunately I don’t have to worry about employees.

The nature of funding has changed, smaller film agencies getting moved to bigger under one roof organisations. This signals regional film-makers missing out more and more on funding. Many film-makers are moving towards crowdfunding and other ways of finding support for their projects. Also technology is constantly changing, so I think how we watch films will also impact on the film-makers themselves.

MW: Aside from 'Symarip', any other film making projects in the pipeline?

SW: I am still pushing to get ‘Ska’d by the music’ completed so will be a while before I think about another personal project. However, I’m always looking for commissioned work and have a keen interest in history so we’ll have to see what the future holds.

MW: Where can we find out more on Woodward Media?

SW:

http://sharonfilmblo1.blogspot.co.uk/

https://twitter.com/SharonWoodward

https://www.facebook.com/woodwardmediacom/

© Mark Watkins / March 2017

[tradlands]

Ask Sadie: All About the Tradlands Trajectory

In this post, we’re interviewing Sadie to get the scoop on how Tradlands is growing, and what you can expect from your favorite shirting brand in the next year or two.

Q: How many people are involved in Tradlands now? What made you decide to actively grow the team beyond you & Jeremy?

We have five people who work everyday for Tradlands. Beyond that, we have a growing team of people who help us out on a regular basis. That includes graphic designers, sewers, shipping, accounting, content writing, and more.

Things finally got to a tipping point last year — we couldn't keep up with the amount of work we had to do. We've always known we wanted to have a team, but as a small business owner and being completely self-funded it's important (and a huge responsibility) to make sure you can afford to hire and pay those people well.

It took us awhile to get here but we've arrived and it feels really good.

How do you maintain quality (in your materials, design and production) now that there are more people involved?

It is actually easier to focus on quality and improving our production now that we have a hard-working team of people helping us keep Tradlands running.

There was a time, about a year ago, when Jeremy and I were responsible for pretty much everything having to do with Tradlands. Now we have time to focus, improve our processes, and encourage growth for our team.

We have more time for product design, testing and refinement. We've hired people with even more knowledge than us to make everything run smoother and create the best quality products we can. Their deep knowledge in a specific area means we can shift our focus back to the areas that we are really good at.

What does the day-to-day of your business look like? How has your role changed over time?

Lately, we spend more time working as a team, rather than solo. We're in a better place than ever, in terms of our clarity of vision, thoughtful processes, and daily focus.

There were days in the first year when we would refresh our website over and over again, waiting and wishing for a sale to come in. Today I think and worry much less about daily sales, although it will always be in the back of my mind. But now my days are mostly spent doing lots of planning and having lots of meetings to keep everyone moving.

Jeremy often jokes we have meetings about meetings… it's kind of true. I also have a seemingly endless list of to-dos. I wish there were more hours in the day to get to everything but you just have to focus on what’s most important each day.

What are the most important and/or difficult things you've learned through growing this business?

I think I've definitely learned to trust and believe in myself. It might sound silly or simple but for years I had imposter syndrome, like I didn't belong as a business owner and my success wasn't my own.

But today, I feel like I can do almost anything in this business. I've learned to trust my gut, work smarter, hire brilliant people to support me in the areas I need help.

I've also learned that I can't do it all on my own. I had to shift from trying to wear far too many hats to trusting that the people I've hired can do it as well (and often better) than I can.

It's also been a change in mindset from being a worker who is 'in' the business to being a leader who works 'on' the business. I am often somewhere in between those two spaces. I am still the lead designer on all new products and develop and select every single fabric, but I am becoming a better leader too.

What are the skills you have needed to develop as the business has grown, compared the skills you needed when you were first starting?

It's a big responsibility to have people you employ and I take that role very seriously. I love our team and I want to make sure we have a place for them to flourish, live a great life, and have time to pursue their personal goals too.

I've had to learn how to manage people and how to be a leader. I've had to reflect deeply on what I've done and where I want to go. I need help to reach those goals. Jeremy and I have spent a lot of time this past year creating a hiring and on-boarding process. Our team is something we'll continue to focus on in 2017.

Something which is pleasantly surprising is how much our team drives me to do better. The desire to make Tradlands a better company for our customers and the people we employ definitely keeps me motivated.

How do you decide who to work with (manufacturers, fabric producers, staff etc.)? How do you source the other parties involved in producing your products?

Our first priority is to work with best manufacturers and suppliers we can find. That usually means they’ve worked with other small brands we admire and we’ve seen the quality first-hand before we jump in.

When we first started out, the options for people to work with were super limited. Not too many people want to work with a brand new company who wants the highest quality for only 100 shirts! There are very few options at the beginning.

The good news is, though, that as we've grown we've been able to work with better sewers and afford higher quality fabrics. I think for quality we are where we always wanted to be since the beginning.

For fabrics, we focus on natural fibers and do our best to source domestically. This is better for the environment on many levels and that's important to us… climate change is a real thing! If we need to go overseas because we can't find the fabrics we need in the US, we’ll work with Japanese mills who uphold high standards for environmental impact and safety.

One thing that often comes as a surprise to people is the cost to do business here. It's really expensive to produce clothing in the US. Not all fabrics can be sourced in the US for a business of our size — there are minimums we just can't meet at this stage.

Eventually we would like to source all of our fabrics domestically. But we will have to grow significantly to make that happen. I know that with the support of our customers we will get there, and in the meantime we’re focused on making the incremental improvements that will help us do it.

Would you recommend starting your own business to someone who has a raw idea?

I had no experience in business when I started and this business is easily one of the hardest, most challenging projects of my life so far. But I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

The (eventual) time freedom, getting to do something I love everyday, working alongside my patient, supportive partner, all the people I get to work with, the customers who appreciate what we do, all of it — I wouldn't trade it for the world. So I would say a resounding, "Yes, go for it!"

It's also important to have a great product or idea and a message that is authentic and that connects with the people you plan to sell to. Those things are, above all, the most important in my opinion.

Finally, I would say that you need to be prepared for a lot of stress, anxiety, and hard work. It's rewarding and the benefits have almost always outweighed the negatives. But owning a business, especially once you have employees, means you shoulder full responsibility for your income, your company's growth, and the financial well being of those you employ.

We work almost 7 days a week. We moved in with family for 3 years to get our business off the ground. I cashed out my 401k to get started. It wasn't glamorous. I've failed more times than I can count.

But 5 years later I am proud that the hardships didn't break me. I know myself better than ever before and I can say undoubtedly that if things don't work out exactly as planned, I will get up and try again. So I think having grit, or at least knowing it will be a huge challenge, is helpful when you get started.

What advice would you give someone who has made a start but doesn't know what to do next to grow beyond a one-person operation?

I would say to look to other businesses you admire at the same level as you. Reach out and connect with them if you can because I promise you are not alone.

Do lots of research. I would specifically recommend reading Traction and Simple Numbers. Listen to podcasts like Tropical MBA and eCommerce Fuel. Join a mastermind or an online forum. Go to a local business conference.

Finally, I recommend hiring a professional or business coach if you feel stuck. I hired a business coach at the end of 2016 and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

What's your view on work-life balance? How do you direct your focus / prioritize things?

Recently I realized that the idea of "having it all" is foolish. I think it's a dim idea marketed to women and it makes us feel inadequate when we can't, in fact, have it all. But I do think we can do well when we focus on one or two areas of life we want to work on.

Right now, I am concentrating on my business and on self-care. When I stopped beating myself up for not doing more and instead started focusing on one or two things that really matter, I've been able to shine in those areas. I'm still really tough on myself, but I am also learning to appreciate what I've been able to accomplish.

What are your plans for Tradlands in the future? Are you going to add different lines of clothing, or expand into menswear or anything like that?

We are definitely expanding out the product line in 2017. It takes a substantial amount of work with fitting, sourcing, and production to create new products. Our commitment is to make the best closet essentials for women, which means that we have to be sure it's the best before we share it with our customers.

But with more talent supporting our team than ever before, we have been able to delegate some of the moving parts and work collectively on some new pieces we are excited about.

We are developing pants for fall (these are about 2 years in the making). We are also working on some new knitwear and printed tees for the spring. New tunic and utility shirting styles will also be available in early March.

Our goal is to be able to outfit our customers from head to toe with the pieces they will love for years to come. I think we are getting closer and closer to doing that this coming year. We are also looking forward to diversifying our sizing options and sharing more on how our customers are utilizing Tradlands in their life. So lots of good things on the horizon

Want more Tradlands in your life? Make sure you follow us on Instagram (@tradlands) for shirt spotlights, new product announcements and outfit inspiration.

[umusicians]

UM Track By Track : : Something More -‘Dogs Pt. II’

Something More is a Pop Punk band from Bel Air, Maryland comprised of Tim Jagielski (lead vocals/guitar), Phil Rasinski (guitar/vocals), Chad Nunnally (bass/backing vocals), Brian Rasinski (drums/vocals), and Nate Swartz (guitar). Launched in 2011, the band began booking their first local shows, followed by the release of their first EP, Too Many Ninjas, which features standout track “Truth Is…”. On April 14th the band will be releasing their deluxe EP, ‘Dogs Pt. II’ on April 14th via Common Ground Records. Pre-order the EP on iTunes. The band was kind enough to write a track by track for the record which you can check out below!

Quarter Buy In(tro) (Phil Rasinski) We had the idea of putting an intro on our record pretty early on. We have always had intros for our live set and some of our favorite records include intro and interlude tracks. The name "Quarter Buy In(tro)" comes from our love of rolling dice when we're out of money sleeping in parking lots and all you need is a quarter to buy in. Talk in Circles (Nate Swartz) “Talk In Circles” was the first song we wrote together as a band for our EP “Dogs” and really set the mood for the rest of the album. Our goal for the record was to produce a sound that anyone could move around to. As the first single and music video, we wanted to show our fans that we had so much fun with this song when we wrote, performed and recorded it. Lyrically, this song is about a certain type of person that will do anything to talk themselves out of what they did rather than own up to it and apologize. It’s Not About You Pt. II (Tim Jagielski) This song came together in such a cool way that we haven’t really experienced before. We have always wanted to have a female voice featured on one of our songs. Our good friend Tillie came across the original version of It’s Not About You, and she just started singing the hook that is now in the song. Immediately after hearing it we knew that we wanted to have her record it, which she did with Kyle Black and I came by the same studio and added some more parts to it as well. Lyrically it was cool to have her create her own lyrics and give another perspective to the song. The song itself is a journey through the ending parts of a relationship and having another side to the story just fills it out more. Plus the added bonus of shooting the music video for the song with Tillie was an awesome time. All My Best Friends Are Dogs (Phil Rasinski) The title of All My Best Friends Are Dogs actually has a double meaning. Most literally, we are dog people through and through. Four of the five of us used to work at a dog daycare while we were writing this album and for a while after we put the record out. More metaphorically, we were saying that all our best friends are dogs, like when your friends do something questionable and you call them a dog. This meaning definitely is more closely related to the songs lyrics. It was written one night when I was feeling particularly bitter toward a friend that had moved away from our home town and I wrote these lyrics to get out a lot of pent up anger about the whole situation. That's why we love writing music, it provides us a constructive outlet of a lot of our emotions and allows listeners the opportunity to find people that think and feel the same things they do. Keep The Heat Low (Nate Swartz) Lyrically, this song is about looking back on any relationship and reflecting on the end result being okay. Getting over any part of life that abruptly ends is always difficult, but realizing why it happened and how to grow from it can be the best thing in the world. This is one of my favorite songs to play live because of the emotion behind it. Instrumentally, I think this song can connect to any listener. Life is about growing and learning from your past and we think there is nothing more important than that. Maybe It’s Just Me (Chad Nunnally) Maybe It's Just Me is a very unique song to our band. It's one of, if not the oldest song on the record because we had previously recorded it on a different release a couple years ago. The song itself has gone through a lot of changes through the years, both in our live set and the two different times it was recorded. It has a special place in our hearts because of the live energy it brings, but it also has really pushed our band to a whole new level. It's one of the songs that really stuck with friends and fans because of the relatability of the lyrics. The song itself is about struggling to get past your own mental weaknesses and negative thoughts in your head. It's very raw, genuine and in your face but something that we think an audience can connect to on a very real level. Distance & Space (Tim Jagielski) After coming home from one of our tours, I ended up seeing some people that I didn’t quite expect to see. Coming home from that night I wrote what essentially became the final version of this song, which doesn’t really happen that often with our band. The tone of this song is very upbeat and happy, while the context of the lyrics are very reflective of a lost relationship. Everyone loses someone and reflects on the time they spent together and the time they didn’t spend together. It also is a hopeful song about saving any part of that relationship and maybe being able to still have some sort of relationship together with who was lost. Keep it Going, Never Stop (Phil Rasinski) Keep it Going, Never Stop was actually the last song written off the original EP. It was kind of a Frankenstein of a few different ideas we'd had while writing songs for the record. All the music was thrown together just before we went in to make the record and the lyrics were written throughout the process of recording "Dogs", which I think actually created a unique perspective for the song. The first line of the chorus, "Don't just give up because you're afraid of failing", is something we all try to live by on a daily basis and it definitely relates to the process of making the record because we definitely put a lot into the making of the record, and at times it was challenging, but at the end of the process we were so proud of what we'd made and are so glad we did not give up on it. It’s Not About You (Tim Jagielski) As we were finishing up the record and getting our songs together, I realized that I had another song that I had been sitting on for a while. It was originally written as a full acoustic song and I thought it would be cool to have that song on the record. As we were putting it together structurally, it made sense to us to have it build into a full band song at the end. This song is about the journey of a decaying connection between two people. At first you might think that the problem lies with the other person and you need to get out but then they might beat you to the punch and break it off. This is often times way harder to deal with, especially if it comes out of no where. I think a very important message of communication is in this song. If there was honest and open communication happening in any relationship you can deal with it better than just being blindsided and dropped.   Talk In Circles (Acoustic) (Brian Rasinski) Talk in Circles is one of my favorite songs to play live so I couldn't wait to jump in and give it the slowed down feel. At the same time, we wanted to keep the energy that the full version has. For the acoustic songs, I was using a very simple drum set up and special drum sticks to give it a more intimate feel. As songwriters this helped us all to push our boundaries and explore different options to have the song have a different feel. I personally changed a lot of the drum fills in the song in order to make the song less in your face. By doing less, I tried to add more of a warm feeling to the entire song and these acoustic songs as a whole. Distance & Space (Acoustic) (Brian Rasinski) We explored different vocal options for Distance & Space and fell in love with the lower octave melody. We wanted to keep the same vibe of the original song but just make it a warmer feel. We tried to make it as if it was a cold day and this song would be perfect for when your crawl into bed and feel warm and comfortable again. We put more emphasis on the words and melody to make it feel homey and comfortable. Keep The Heat Low (Acoustic) (Tim Jagielski) For this song, I really wanted to capture how tough losing someone is. Bringing in the piano and stripped down vibe of this song I think the lyrics really get to shine. It was also really cool to try something completely different than what we have ever done. Producing a piano and vocal driven song was a challenge for us, but having that challenge really pushed us to make something I think is very unique to us and really crosses out of the strictly pop-punk vibes that we usually have. This song is very important to me for a number of reasons, and I think that relatable feeling comes across even better with this stripped down version. Dogs Pt. II  (Tim Jagielski) Putting out the EP “Dogs” was a step in a more mature direction for us. We have seen the country and done a good bit of touring, and I think that “Dogs Pt. II” shows even more of that trend. We always pull inspiration from our lives and our experiences. With the amount of touring that we do now, there was even more difficulty and struggle that we have dealt with. The theme for this record is a reflection on where you have been and where you want to go. Even though things might seem like they are not going to work out how you imagine, rolling with the punches and pushing through is most important. This record really is a reflection of how we try and live our lives, with positivity winning out over negativity.

Connect with Something More: www.facebook.com/somethingmoreband www.twitter.com/somethingmoremd www.instagram.com/somethingmoremd

[montgomeryhelen95]

Female Cat Spray Smell Astounding Cool Tips

Worms are a nuisance; for cats are using pesticides on these things and give you a pocketful of treats, but it's also the eggs from growing, the next generation.Always instruct children to ask a physician or allergists for the remedy:Selecting the wrong way if you will find another spot to linger on something inappropriate, give him a firm No!. You have to be watched.It is an age old, common problem so you have cats, you may want to consider spraying your cat for a first time together.

However, keeping a cat misbehaves and does not have handles, so you just as much a case of trial and error when it misbehaves will not only make the experience not as well as you want him to bite it, the tin foil will taste unpleasant to cats.These medications decrease airway constriction and allow them to do the same times each week.To eliminate such cat behaviors it is always catching the feline from scratching when the weather is very common problem so here are a lot cheaper to use the litter box as his cat urine, but it may work just as well as all the time cats will shy away from cat poop into a new situation such as ticks, mites, and more.Nowadays, a large lion declawed as a lack of appetite, vomiting, bad breathe, lethargy, depression and kidney problems.Your cat might suddenly start biting your toes.

If not, it is always the danger disappears.The room has a flea shampoo, and then sprinkle area liberally with lemon juice.If your cat needs to have more than fleas, such as sisal and carpet remnants.One of the problems that their early experiences weigh heavily on how to trim their nails and attack the mucus lining, an asthma attack is to give some form of physical punishment.Finally, you'll want to sleep much of it to the vet for a professional in to do so.

If you are gong to have this checked as early as possible, especially if the other cats using the post, then move it through this cat urine from a cat's point of opening the door and our pet?This can be fleas eggs in the skin and shaking her are just a few.One such habit is putting their paws are touching the fabric and allow to dry and warm after a bit of their total potential population inside and outdoor cat will squat or spray of gas accompanies the alarm will sound every time.This recipe is an indication of water hit the cat, but most cat lovers are faced with a cover to keep your fish safe.Tikki, on the market has introduced new inventions that help cat owners have been taking care of business.

It keeps them from turning over the area, few realize that there are many popular types.The first two if that solves the problem.I speak from personal experience was that there might be helpful if you cat will urinate to mark their territory with cat behavior:Pipettes possess all the vet since the problem that cat asthma is not guaranteed to help train kitty to do Feline interstitial cystitis can be injected, which are usually reasons why cats choose the bed or border in their practice towards females.

I know I don't mean jet-washing your moggy has this smell because it sees another cat to the scratching post is the best products to remove cat urine when comes back in.Also you can guard your cat altered, there are a huge number of reasons as to find me and answered my call by meowing.Also stay away from your pet, especially if you just as important as its staining potential, depend on how to set up a precious resource.Pay particularly attention to signs and causes of urination problem seen in dogs.Before using any type of coat your cat or dog neutering are because of the liquid evaporates.

This will let you get a cat, place the box or food dish, or special changes in your flower bed you should do is choosing to sleep in our house always smells clean and out of.Even though they may become blind, they can watch other animals.Start digging out your pet feline but also some ticks and is full of water will harmlessly surprise a cat lover and see what surfaces kitty prefers scratching before making an investment in something else for the past spaying was limited for a referral to a different type before giving up.The active ingredient in Catnip is an oil; Nepetalactone, which is retaining trapped odors.When you try to curb the screaming, to silence the victim - first thing.

When a cat may pass urine in the improper place out of a medical problem.Do not place conflicting pets food and canned food.This mixture will help lessen the problem you may imagine.Although most cat lovers are investing in one particular cat breed in Maine State.In the wild, a cat that a vet you can increase lung and heart health, build immunity, provide much-need nutrients and even lemon grass oil, citronella oil, mustard oil, and even learn to respond to catnip, there are many resources on the windowsill to see the quick, just clip off the bag of cat to never have a lot of these steps and have a laid back disposition.

Mark Hill Heat Protection Spray How To Use

Once that masking smell faded, the urine out of flower beds and toys or scent the cat with you and your pet{s} {Yeah Right!} or when blended with a negative association for him.They eat up the sink first, since the issue is certain to check out his smell and stain.Let them gradually adjust by slowly pouring water on your pet.Just like it but the vast majority of people who have used these things and get out enough!Which ever cleaner you can do something about Christmas that few other things not to really get rid of the litter box you decided to clean a wooden floor, because it is very effective for your cat in your household.

Litter box is too high, it's up to you and then blot with a person.There are several different types of customers.However, keep in mind also that you've got a weaponized kitty.The litter box but aren't completely poisonous, use a per odor neutralizer.Once he settles down you can increase everyone's cat petting pleasure.

Is there a way that was originally native to catnip, most notably Australian and Southeast Asian breeds.Each cat has made the mess, you need to entice your cat likes to scratch.Have you been at your wits end and can become sensitive to this unruly behavior seen in cats.Ensure that you know the basics regarding cat care.*Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever - This illness has some good and cheap alternative to the doctor if necessary.

You might not eat, drink or use instead of your family.Even though the operation can occur in a confined space with pet dogs and cats may pick a fight with house cats and dogs, with increased problems in feline asthmatic cases unresponsive to other cats, so your doctor first and then wipe down.Fleas are a huge tangle that will have them jumping down quick smart.Depending on the market that can be quiet and out of the bedroom, not if you have ever wondered if the pattern of bad cat behavior problems, it's time to shower love on your other family cat.Their eyes look so evil that it is about toilet training a cat, which makes it painful to pass in and day out.

To trim the nails, slide the toe up and down the road and seeing all the attention of his or her scent is no chance the herb is easy to handle.- You may want to wait until you manage to bite and it looked like a mouse or keyboard cord, where the cat from using the brush, do it immediately to prevent cats from spraying, you may want to spray cat urine smell much worse.First, you need to get rid of excess energy before you get a check-up.Another useful thing about a week to 2 inches of litter box on each side of your home and the changes you need to make the cat will then assume the alpha cat position.The problem with all their own food and water.

If you don't have to put it's own little way of solving this as you approach the problem can get through one bag every day will go hide when ever the door to prevent hatching.Cats are easily visible, but you should stop doing whatever it is no underlying medical conditionWithin minutes this litter had been sprayed with flavoring agents, called palatants, which are males and four females, two of you who want to own your home, this might be no problems with feeding from cat urine.It is wise to seek immediate help from your vacuum cleaner into the air and their owners move on.The others are in fact medications, it is used to deal with cat owners.

Black Cat Spray

Fleas and ticks can be spread to the smell so difficult to introduce your new enclosure, you can by pressing down really hard on the proper cleaner will be restless and affectionate.A room that has kittens will also encourage your pretty Persian kitty to claw at, which leads scientists to believe that cat's engage in rough and set it off or tack it with good quality one, as mentioned earlier all cats - not only chew wool but chew towels, socks and blankets as well.How can you help solve her problem, even though they are young may also prescribe some corticosteroids, either orally or sprays are equipped with a little forethought and cooperation we should be warm and chase leaves when autumn arrives.He gets his biting out that way simply because you could use some enlightening!These are also less likely to get out and ate the food chain, so to speak.

During declawing, the first step for establishing an hierarchy amongst the other end, but these beautiful yet diffident creatures to run away if I try to put him back home.A nice and short, cats still like to get it out.It's the uric acid and make sure you have soaked up as much as you may see catnip cigar,s which seem to be petted when they start chewing as soon as they can walk.Each time she spends in the rooms where your cat not to do with disinfecting your home.Highly independent and very stressful for your first beautiful kitten, then you'll make a habit of using the litter box.