#it's a stress response done in times of crisis. it's the body burning its own fat directly in absence of a large source of energy (carbs)

[egginfroggin]

I feel like the more I post about diabetes the more I'm going to discuss ketones and ketoacidosis and the more it's going to become evident that I have a personal beef with the keto diet

[brawltogethernow]

So, I don't think I've ever asked you this... what IS the whole point of the Spider-Sense? It really seems like something that only exists for writers to ignore or work around when they want to inject Legit Tension into a story.

I’ve thought about this power so much, but never with an eye to defend its right to exist, so I needed to think about this. The results could be more concise.

Ironically, given the question, I have to say its main purpose is to ramp up tension. But it’s also a highly variable multitool that a skilled creative team can use for...pretty much anything. It does everything the writer wants it to, while for its wielder always falls just short of doing enough.

I went looking through my photos for a really generic, classic-looking example to use as an image to head this topic, but then I ran into the time Peter absolutely did not reimburse this man for his stolen McDonald’s, so have that instead.

A Scare Chord, But You Can Draw It

That one post that says the spider-sense is just super-anxiety isn’t, like, wrong. It’s a very anxious, dramatic storytelling tool originally designed for a very anxious, dramatic protagonist. I find it speaks to the overall tone of the franchise that some characters are functionally psychics, but with a psychic ability that only points out problems.

Spidey sense pinging? There’s danger, be stressed! Broken? Now the lead won’t even KNOW when there’s a problem, scary! Single character is immune to it? That’s an invisible knife in the dark oh my god what the fuck what the fU--

Like its counterpart in garden variety anxiety, the only time the spider-sense reduces tension is in the middle of a crisis. But in the wish fulfillmenty way that you want in an adventure story to justify exaggerated action sequences, the same way enhanced strength or durability does. Also like those, it would theoretically make someone much safer to have it, but it exists in the story to let your character navigate into and weather more dangerous situations.

For its basic role in a story, a danger sense is a snappy way to rile up both the reader and the protagonist that doesn’t offer much information beyond that it’s time to sit smart because shit is about to go down.

Spidey comic canon is all over the board in quality and genre, and it started needing to subvert its formulas before the creators got a handle on what those formulas even were, and basically no one has read anything approaching most of it at this point, so for consistent examples of a really bare bones use of this power in storytelling, I’d point to the property that’s done the best job yet of boiling down the mechanics of Spider-Man to their absolute most basic essentials for adaptation to a compelling monster of the week TV series.

Or as you probably know it, Danny Phantom. DON’T BOO, I’M RIGHT.

DP is Spider-Man with about 2/3 of the serial numbers filed off and no death (ironically), and Danny’s ghost sense is the most proof in the formula example of what the spidey sense is for: It’s a big sign held up for the viewer that says, “Something is wrong! Pay attention!” Effectively a visual scare chord. It’s about That Drama. And it works, which won it a consistent place in the show’s formula. We’re talking several times an episode here.

So why does it work?

It’s a little counterintuitive, but it’s strong storytelling to tell your audience that something bad is going to happen before it does. A vague, punchy spoiler transforms the ignorant calm before a conflict into a tense moment of anticipation. ...And it makes sure people don’t fail to absorb the beginning of said conflict because they weren’t prepared to shift gears when the scene did. Shock is a valuable tool, too, but treating it like a staple is how you burn out your audience instead of keeping them engaged. Not to go after an easy target, but you need to know how to manage your audience’s alarm if you don’t want to end up like Game of Thrones.

The limits of the spider-sense also keep you on your toes when handled by a smart writer. It tells Peter (everyone’s is a little different, so I’m going to cite the og) about threats to his person, but it doesn’t elaborate with any details when it’s not already obvious why, what kind, and from what. And it doesn’t warn him about anything else-- Which is a pretty critical gap when you zoom out and look at his hero career’s successes and failures and conclude that it’s definitely why he’s lived as long as he has acting the way he does, but was useless as he failed to save a string of people he’d have much rather had live on than him.

(Any long-running superhero mythos has these incidents, but with Peter they’re important to the core themes.)

And since this power is by plot for plot (or because it’s roughly agreed it only really blares about threats that check at least two boxes of being major, immediate, or physical), it always kicks in enough to register when the danger is bearing down...when it’s too late to actually do anything about it if “anything” is a more complex action than “dodge”.

Really? Not until the elevator doors started to open?

That Distinctive, Crunchy Spider Flavor

The spider-sense and its little pen squiggles go hand in hand with wallcrawling (and its unique and instantly identifiable associated body language) to make the Spider-Person powerset enduringly iconic and elevate characters with it from being generic mid-level super-bricks. Visually, but also in how it shapes the story.

I said it can share a narrative role with super strength. But when you end a fight and go home, super strength continues to make your character feel powerful, probably safer than they’d be otherwise, maybe dangerous.

The spider-sense just keeps blaring, “Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong! God, why aren’t you doing something about this!?”

Pretty morose thing to live with, for a safety net! Kind of a double edged sword you have there! Could be constantly being hyperattuned to problems would prime you for a negative outlook on life. Kind of seems like a power that would make it impossible for a moral person to take a day off, leading them into a beleaguered and resentful yet dutiful attitude about the whole superhero gig! Might build up to some of the core traits of this mythos, maybe! Might lead to a lot of fifteen minute retirement stories, or something. Might even be a built in ‘great responsibility’ alarm that gets you a main character who as a rule is not going to stop fighting until he physically cannot fight anymore.

Certainly not apropos of anything, just throwing this short lived barely-a-joke tagline up for fun.

One of my personal favorite things about stories with superpowers is keeping in mind how they cause the people who have them to act in unusual ways outside of fights, so when you tell me that these people have an entire extra sense that tells them when the gas in their house is leaking through a barely useful hot/cold warning system that never turns off, I’m like, eyes emojis, popcorn out, notebook open, listening intently, spectacles on, the whole deal.

It also contributes to Peter Parker’s personality in a way I really enjoy: It allows him to act like an irrational maniac. When you know exactly when a situation becomes dangerous and how much, normal levels of caution go out the window and absolutely nothing you do makes sense from an exterior standpoint anymore. That’s the good shit. I would like to see more exploration of how the non-Parker characters experiencing the world in this incredibly altered way bounce in response.

It’s also one of many tools in this franchise hauling the reader into relating more closely with the main character. The backbone of classic Spidey is probably being in on secrets only Peter and the reader know which completely reframe how one views the situation on the page. It’s just a big irony mine for the whole first decade. A convenient way to inform the reader and the lead that something is bad news that’s not perceivable to any other characters is youth-with-a-big-exciting-secret catnip.

Another point for tension, there, in that being aware of danger is not synonymous with being able to act on it. If there’s no visible reason for you to be acting strange, well...you’re just going to have to sit tight and sweat, aren’t you? Some gratuitous head wiggles never hurt when setting up that type of conflict.

Have I mentioned that they look cool? Simultaneously punchy and distinctive, with a respectable amount of leeway for artists to get creative with and still coming up with something easily recognizable? And pretty easy to intuit the meaning of even without the long-winded explanations common in the days when people wrote comics with the intent that someone could come in cold on any random issue and follow along okay, I think, although the mechanic has been deeply ingrained in popular culture for so long that I can’t really say for sure.

It was also useful back in the day when no artists drew the eyes on the Spider-Man mask as emoting and were conveying the lead’s expressions entirely through body language and panel composition. If you wiggle enough squiggles, you don’t need eyebrows.

Take This Handwave and Never Ask Me a Logistical Question Again

This ability patches plot holes faster than people can pick them open AND it can act as an excuse to get any plot rolling you can think of if paired with one meddling protagonist who doesn’t know how to mind their own business. Buy it now for only $19.99 (in four installments; that’s four installments of $19.99).

Why can a teenager win a six on one fight against other superhumans? Well, the spider-sense is the ultimate edge in combat, duh.

Why can Peter websling? Why doesn’t everyone websling? Well, the spider-sense is keeping him from eating flagpole when he violently flings himself across New York in a way neither man nor spider was ever meant to move.

How are we supposed to get him involved with the plot this week???? Well, that crate FELT dangerous, so he’s going to investigate it. Oh, dip, it was full of guns and radioactive snakes! Probably shouldn’t have opened that!

Yeah, okay, but why isn’t it fixing everything, then? Isn’t it supposed to be why Peter has never accidentally unmasked in front of somebody? ('Nother entry for this section, take a shot.) That’s crazy sensitive! How does he still have any problems!? Is everything bad that’s ever happened to characters with this powerset bad writing!? --Listen, I think as people with uncanny senses that can tell us whether we are in danger with accuracy that varies from incredible to approximate (I am talking about the five senses that most people have), we should all know better than to underestimate our ability to tune them out or interpret them wrong and fuck ourselves up anyway. I honestly find this part completely realistic.

*SLAPS ROOF OF SPIDER-SENSE* YOU CAN FIT SO MANY STORIES IN THIS THING

The spider-sense is a clean branch into...whatever. There is the exact right balance of structure and wishy-washiness to build off of. A sample selection of whatevers that have been built:

It’s sci-fi and spy gadgets when Peter builds technology that can interface with it.

It’s quasi-mystical when Kaine and Annie-May get stronger versions of it that give them literal psychic visions, or when you want to get mythological and start talking about all the spider-characters being part of a grand web of fate.

Kaine loses his and it becomes symbolic of a future newly unbound by constraints, entangled thematically with the improved physical health he picked up at the same time -- a loss presented as a gain.

Peter loses his and almost dies 782 times in one afternoon because that didn’t make the people he provoked when he had it stop trying to kill him, and also because he isn’t about to start “””taking the subway’’””’ “‘’“”to work”””’’” like some kind of loser who doesn’t get a heads up when he’s about to hit a pigeon at 50mph.

Peter’s starts tuning into his wife’s anxiety and it’s a tool in a relationship study.

It starts pinging whenever Peter’s near his boss who’s secretly been replaced by a shapeshifter and he IGNORES IT because his boss is enough of an asshole that that doesn’t strike him as weird; now it’s a comedy/irony tool.

Into the Spider-Verse made it this beautiful poetic thing connecting all the spider-heroes in the multiverse and stacked up a story on it about instant connection, loss, and incredibly unlikely strangers becoming a found family. It was also aesthetic as FUCK. Remember the scene where Miles just hears barely intelligible whispering that’s all lines people say later in the film and then his own voice very clearly says “look out” and then the room explodes?? Fuck!!!!

Venom becomes immune to it after hitchhiking to Earth in Peter’s bone juice and it makes him a unique threat while telling a more-homoerotic-than-I-assume-was-originally-intended story about violation and how close relationships can be dangerous when they go sour.

It doesn’t work on people you trust for maximum soap opera energy. Love the innate tragedy of this feature coming up.

IN CONCLUSION I don’t have much patience for writers who don’t take advantage of it, never mind feel they need to write around it.

[roseofithaca]

Right Here

Quick Hellstrop brotp mini-fic.

Fluff, hint of one-sided romantic feelings, emotional hurt/comfort.

It wasn’t until he saw the leather jacket on the desk that he began to worry. Before then, when he’d seen Eleanor make a rather impromptu exit out of Tahani’s party, he’d been a little confused. In what crazy dimension did Eleanor Shellstrop leave a party before all the shrimp had been devoured? The platters had barely been touched.

He’d waited a while, in case she came back, mingling among the fake residents, the real humans as well as the rest of the team, head constantly rotating back towards the door for a sign of her re-entry. Na-da. 

After making his own excuses, he followed the scent of her perfume, which had also left a pink mist in her wake, visible only to his supernatural eyes. He regrets having told his friends about that aspect of his abilities a little, mainly after Jason compared him to the sniffer dog that slobbered over him once at a bus station. 

The path lead him to their office, or the ‘Hot God’s Throne Room’ as she’d once named it. Hardly a false analogy, Michael had silently thought.

“Eleanor?” he’d asked, making his way in. All of his adversary-turned-friend-turned boss that awaited him was the jacket on the desk that she’d worn over her dress on the walk to the party.

That and two pairs of high-heels kicked unceremoniously to the side.

“Oh, Eleanor...” He whispered, grasping the jacket in his hand, instantly inhaling the odour of discomfort and anxiety. 

The smell said half of it. The fact some of her clothes had been hastily abandoned here rather than at her clown house said the rest. Something was wrong.

Fortunately, a burned out Eleanor is easy to track. 

It doesn’t take him less than fifteen minutes to follow the pink trail in the air, cutting through the deserted town, over the fields, out towards the lake. Ah, of course. As soon as he recognises the significance of her destination, he knows what prompted her to leave in such a rush. He doesn’t need to follow the trail, he knows exactly what wooden bench she’s going to be sitting on.

She doesn’t look up as he treads closer to her, head buried between her knees pulled up onto the seat, hugged to her chest. The little bumps on her exposed shoulders tremble while the rest of her stays rigid.

“Getting chilly?” he says, softly.

Eleanor lifts her head, the tiniest of gasps, her eyes sparkling with the briefest flash of excitement before they dim. Disappointed.

Were you expecting someone else? Of course.

Tears mark her blotchy cheeks that she rushes to dry with her fist; “No...Just way too hot at the party and I thought I could cool off back at the office but it was like a forking oven, so I came out here and....now I’m cold, yeah.”

He nods, understanding all too well how the world can turn into a furnace when everything feels as though it’s about to collapse in on you. And this is coming from a guy born and raised in magma.

Eleanor might not have had anxiety attacks the same as him. Her usual response to stressful situations was to lash out, toss over some cakes, kick some chairs, consuming a ton of alcohol on the way. Without any of those options being acceptable for an Immortal Heavenly Being; her only outlet was to do as she did as a frightened child; and hide away.

“Here,” he doesn’t wait for her to accept the offer as he removes his jacket and places it over her shoulders, just to cover the little bumps; “Wow, you’re small...It looks like you’re popping your head out of a molehill made from cloth.”

“Shut up, you flagpole” Eleanor manages a chuckle, sniffling after, tugging it around her shoulders, “...Thanks.” she remembers, with a mumble.

He lingers, this time waiting for her consent; “D’you want company?”

“No...” she responds, staring out at the vast body of water beneath the full moon; “I wanna be by myself.”

“Okay...”

He starts to step away, only for her to grab his hand.

“What the fork are you doing?”

Michael blinks; “You just said-”

“Yeah. By myself. And you’re like...ridiculously similar to me that we’re practically the same person, so you can stay.”

He blinks again.

“That’s...insanely confusing!”

“Just sit down, dummy.” She tugs him again. As she wishes, Michael places himself down beside her, taking note of how short of breath she still is from crying. As soon as he’d noticed the tears shining, he’d had to ground himself to avoid rushing forward to dry them.

Now he’s close enough, having been invited to share her space, he dares to reach out and rub her back.

“Just breathe. You’re okay.” he whispers, softly, “No one’s gonna be out here, you can cry if you want.” Fork the garbage Donna fed her about hiding her emotions. 

She sniffs, gulping for air; “M’so sick of crying...And I thought I was over this, I mean...We’re so close to the end and I’m sure we’ve got this but...Fork.” Eleanor looks down; “Seeing them dance...Seeing him kiss her...They look so happy.”

“Not half as happy as when he danced with you.” He’s tempted to give her the memory of their little dance in the rain in #119, in case it stopped being fresh for her. He’d been so pissed off about that not being enough to spoil their date at the time. 

“What does it matter if he doesn’t remember that?” She scoffs, untucking her knees and looking back at the lake; “What does the first kiss we have here mean anything if he comes here with Simone, all the time, and they have dozens of their own kisses!?”

“He will remember. I promised, I’d give him all his memories back when this is over.” It can’t come soon enough. Saving humanity was beginning to come second to just seeing her be happy again.

Eleanor’s shoulders slump; “...And if he still chooses her? What then? We could win this whole thing and he could come back and I’m just...back to being alone!”

“Okay, now you’re being an idiot.”

“Thanks, pal! And you wonder why I refuse to call you Hottest Savior?!”

“I mean it!” He almost growls, putting his hand on her shoulder; “Do you really think you’re gonna have none of us around you, on the one in a billion chance that Chidi doesn’t wanna get back with you? You don’t think what you’ve got to look forward to in the Good Place extends beyond being with him? C’mon. Chidi would the last person to want you to be thinking like that.”

Eleanor rolls her eyes; “Yeah well...Sometimes I wanna say ‘fork Chidi’. I mean...obviously I wanna fork Chidi but I mean-.”

“I get it.” Damn horny bipeds.

He reaches out to take her hand, linking his fingers between hers, caressing the joint of her thumb with his own.

“Listen. If you were ever alone without him, do you think I’d have followed you out here? Do you think Tahani or Jason or Janet wouldn’t have noticed, if not me, and done the same?” He lowers his voice, inching closer.

Eleanor pauses. 

Her other hand moves up to touch with the hem of his jacket covering her.

“It’s always you.” she mumbles, eyes casting over his chest. I’m up here, he wants to say, or would that crane her neck?

“Yeah, well...I could say the same about you.” The first one to ever pick him up after an existential breakdown. The last one who held him during a crisis, paralysed at the thought of losing his friends in the worst possible way. “Who else knows rock bottom better than us, hmm?”

Finally, she smiles; “We pretty much founded the place. It’s like our own little kingdom at this point.”

Michael shyly smiles. Hades and Persephone. All those times, in his past, when he pictured Eleanor at his side, not as an oblivious victim but his partner. His one worthy equal. Then he found himself constantly bested by her, beaten, to the point he was at her heels, following her lead, waiting for her to say jump so he could ask how high? Willing to cast himself into the fire if she deemed him unworthy, or she needed him gone. 

He will never understand how Chidi could resist her pleas to stay. If she asked for Chidi’s memory back tonight, even at the risk of dooming humanity, he would obey.

Perhaps the knowledge that he shouldn’t is all that stops him from making the offer in the first place.

Fork, when did his arm find its way around her shoulders? When did she start leaning in so close? She’s practically snuggling against him now. She must be getting cold.

He waves his hand, warming up the night breeze that passes over the lake. She still doesn’t move away. He doesn’t exactly push her either.

“Y’know...The reason I was looking to find you at the party when I saw you leave was I was gonna ask you for a dance.” he confesses, needing to break the tense silence.

“Oh, really?” She glances up, raising an eyebrow; “Well...I’m not walking all the way back.”

Michael nods; “It’s okay...I was expecting a ‘no’.”

“Did I say ‘no’?”

He looks to see her giving that cheeky smile. Shirt, he must be blushing. She always looks at him with that smug, endearing gaze when she knows she’s succeeded in teasing him.

It feels a shame to pull away from the cuddle she was beginning to relax into as he gets to his feet. Probably for the best none of the humans come across their Goddess sleeping in the arms of her Architect out in the open...especially Chidi, no matter how chaste it may be.

“No trying to trip each other to fall in the lake, deal?”

Eleanor groans, leaving Michael’s jacket on the seat; “I guess...Spoilsport.”

Neither are going to make that promise. What would be the fun in that?

He gives her his best ‘devilish’ grin and holds out his hand.

“May I have this dance, Boss?”

Eleanor’s eyes flutter up and down his front before locking his gaze again, her tears all but dried. “Only because you’re rockin’ that tux,” She gives him her hand; “You may, buddy.”

He gently tugs her up onto her bare feet. Without her heels, she barely meets his neck. She doesn’t seem to mind, smiling as he moves her onto the pier, beneath the strung up lights along the boardwalk. 

A snap of his fingers and a song begins to play on the invisible surround sound system.

If I see you next to never, How can we say forever?

Fingers smooth gently up her back as he holds her close. Her head rests into his chest as they sway to the 80′s ballad. Stroking her shoulders, he finds the same little bumps are still there, but no longer trembling. He wishes he knew enough about being human to understand what that meant. So long as she no longer feels alone, that’s all he wants.

“Michael...” she murmurs, sliding her other arm around his side.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for being here.” 

He resists the old urge to make a nonchalant quip for humor sake and gives into the sentiment swelling beneath this suit. He kisses the top of her head, whispering adoringly;

“Always.”

Wherever you go, Whatever you do...

It feels a little wrong to be dancing with Eleanor Shellstrop in the spot where she had her first kiss with the love of her life, but as she pointed out, he’s had just as many dates here with Simone. Michael allows the remnants of his demon past to find a weird taste of satisfaction, for Eleanor’s sake anyway. It’s hardly as if the nerd was here to see it, or even care in his current state. Maybe one day, in the future, if he’s feeling particularly petty and satantic, he’ll brag to Chidi’s face about how he had one of most romantic, moonlit dances with his girlfriend. Because only a fool would give up that chance, even if to save the Universe.

All for no other reason than to make sure his friend is always grateful for being the one Eleanor Shellstrop loves with all her heart, and wanting to make up for every moment he missed with her this year. Just as Michael thanks Upper Management every day that he has the honor of dwelling in a fraction of it.

Whatever it takes, Or how my heart breaks, I will be right here waiting for you.

[spaceskam]

i run my hands through what’s left

ao3

Day 2: family for @roswellnewmexicoweek 

Isobel felt him before he appeared.

She had always had a stronger connection with her brothers than they had for each other. She wasn't sure if it was due to her being an actual psychic or they were just born being macho assholes, but it was how it'd always been. They were parts of her soul.  She hurt when they hurt, she ached when they were gone. She still remembered crying herself to sleep every night as a little girl, wondering where Michael was and why they took him away from her.

When Max died, a piece of her went with him. It made her that much more concerned about Micahel, and, as they strengthened their powers in an attempt to help Max, their bond got stronger. 

His unintentional distress call woke her up before he had the chance to.

Michael appeared in her doorway a broken shell of his usual self. Tears tracks were stained to his cheeks, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He was visibly shaking and Isobel could smell the alcohol on him even with the space between them.

"Izzy," Michael whispered, his voice nothing more than a whimper, "I did something bad."

Isobel lifted the corner of her blanket.

Michael crossed the room quickly, curling up against her. Isobel wrapped him up in her arms, cradling his head against her chest. She let her eyes close as she ran her fingers through his hair and ignored the fact his tears were getting all over her shirt.

"What did you do, Michael?"

He sniffled hard, trying to cuddle up closer as if it would give him extra comfort. They both knew it wouldn't.

"I-I didn't mean to, I swear I didn't mean to. She, she, she kept asking me about Max and my hand and, and, and us and‒" A sob cracked through him, his body shaking down to his fingertips. "I didn't mean to, Izzy, I didn't mean to. You know I didn't mean to, right?"

Isobel stared at the wall in front of her, cupping the back of his head and cradling him close. She wanted to throw him in the shower, to clean him up and yell at him to get sober. But that would get them nowhere. He wasn't getting sober for Max, he wouldn't get sober for anything.

She just had to handle it.

"Michael, is she alright?" Isobel asked as calmly as she could manage. Michael didn't lose control often, but, when did, it was dangerous. Maria was only human, she could only take so much.

"I didn't mean to, Iz, I didn't! I didn't! Izzy, I didn't mean to," he cried. The fear that he had done something she couldn't fix slowly began making its way through her system, clawing at her gut in warning. He's a loose cannon, it threatened, dangerous.

He's Michael.

"Michael," Isobel said, her voice slow and as she gripped him so tight that he gasped, "Is she okay?"

Michael whimpered, "Sh-sh-she said she was. She told me not to go, but… but I couldn't stay. I hurt her. I hurt her." Isobel let out a breath she hadn't been aware she was holding, loosening her grip on him and stroking his hair once again.

"What did you do?" she whispered.

Maria had done good by him, regularly putting up with his bullshit. There were multiple nights a week she would have to call someone to help drag him up the stairs or, on particularly frustrating nights, to get him home. He continuously would get so fucked up he couldn't speak or walk and nothing would sway him to slow down. In fact, if someone tried to get him to slow down, he'd get pissed. He'd lose control.

Part of Isobel was surprised it took him this long to take it out on her.

"She wouldn't stop, Izzy, she wouldn't stop and I know I should've stopped, I know I should stop, you know? You know I should stop, I've tried to stop, I-I-I-" Isobel shushed him, rubbing circles into his back. She felt him take a heavy breath and choke on it before trying again. "I threw her against the wall‒not my hands, my head. My head did it, I didn't mean to. She-she said it was okay, she was, she was close to it and stuff so, so, so it wasn't that bad. But, Izzy, Izzy, I hurt her. I don't want to be like that, I'm not like that, I'm not. I don't wanna be that way. I don't wanna be dangerous."

Somehow, he cried even harder.

"You need to get sober, Michael," Isobel whispered softly, closing her eyes as they began to burn. She hated how badly he was hurting, even if he'd done it to himself. "Everything is going to get worse if you keep this up."

"I know! You don't think I know?! I fucking know!" Michael snapped without bothering to even move from her arms. She tried not to take it to heart.

"Okay."

Michael gripped her harder, "Do you still love me?"

"You know I do."

Isobel loved Michael. She couldn't say she particularly liked him right now, though. She understood he'd been through shit‒but so had she. He left her to be the strong one even when part of her was missing, dead in some pod and leaving her longing.  She'd spend all day with Liz, trying her damnedest to figure out how to get Max back, and then she'd spend her nights dealing with Michael who couldn't stay sober. He was a fucking mess and he knew it. He was adding to everyone's stress and he knew it. He'd said many times in fits of tears that he wanted to stop, but every moment they attempted was shattered when he hated being in his own mind even more. She needed help to help him.

Isobel waited until he was unconscious before reaching for her phone, still combing her fingers through his hair as she clicked on the name that had slowly made its way to her favorites.

"Hey, is he with you?" Maria said, picking up after one ring.

"Yeah, are‒"

"Oh, thank god. I told him not to go, that he was too drunk to drive, but you know he doesn't exactly take orders well." Maria sounded so relieved that she once again felt she was too good for her brother. Or at least the person her brother had become.

"Yeah, but are you okay? He said he lost control on you," Isobel said softly, burying her nose in Michael's hair. It was greasy and musty, but it was Michael and she needed him even when he was the worst. Even when he fucked up.

"I'm fine, I know he wasn't in his right mind. I'll bitch at him when he is." If he ever is.

Isobel reached her finger over to rub her eye as she sighed. She needed to fix this, him. She needed her brother back.

"Can you do me a favor? Can you, like, ban him from your bar for real?" Isobel asked. Maria was silent on the other line for a moment. It was common knowledge among their little group that Michael had a problem, one he'd been nursing and growing for over a decade now. Everyone had made at least one offhand comment about how bad it had gotten since Max. They would help, she knew they would, she just had to be the driving force.

She was just so fucking tired.

"You wanna get him sober?" Maria asked slowly, a hopeful little lilt in her tone.

"I don't know how much more of this I can take," Isobel admitted. She didn't have to see Maria to know she was nodding, agreeing.

"Then… you should probably call Alex." Isobel's eyebrows pulled together slowly. "As much as I hate to admit it, I'm pretty sure he's the only one that'll be able to convince him to try to get better. And it's Alex so he'll help. Plus, I have it on good authority that he won't lose control on him." God, why did both of her brothers have to be so hopelessly in love? She was getting pretty sick of it. Even if it did give her some hope in this particular situation.

"Okay, I'll give him a call. Thank you," Isobel said, Maria humming in response, "And I'm still sorry he hurt you."

"I'll survive. But he might be single now."

They ended the call with the promise of meeting up in the morning and Isobel immediately moved to call Alex. She knew it'd make Michael angry considering he'd drunkenly cried about Alex more than once in the last few months. But she was running out of options. At the rate he was going, she was going to lose both of her brothers for good.

She didn't think she could survive that.

"Isobel? Is everything alright?" Alex didn't sound even a little tired. It made her feel a bit better that she hadn't woken him up.

"Uh, not really," Isobel said softly, gazing down at her brother. He looked a little too close to dead.  "I… I know you probably don't want to help, but I don't know what else to do and Maria said you'd probably be my best bet."

Alex sighed, "What's wrong with him?" Isobel huffed a laugh.

"You'll help?" she asked. Alex was quiet for a moment. Isobel didn't know too much about the two of them, but she knew that Michael loved him and she knew that he loved Michael. Michael needed a whole lot of love if anything was going to help. She, Alex, and Maria were the three that had most likely been in this position: cradling him to sleep after he'd had one too many and done something he shouldn't have.

She couldn't put a ballpark number on how many times Alex had done so, or what other things he'd witnessed in her brother that she hadn't. She didn't know how he treated Michael in times of crisis and she definitely didn't know how Michael reacted to that treatment. But, when he sighed heavily over the phone, she knew Maria was absolutely correct.

"Of course. He's family."

[kitcat992]

Identity Crisis  | Chapter 3: Grounded

“Beginning clinical trial 10.F—G in three...two...one...”

The liquid dropped from its contained, secured case the moment the buzzer went off, the sound piercing and sharp. The feel of it always got to him; dense, thick, slimy, and somehow worse than all the times that came before. Like a raindrop, it hit the back of his hand with a pluck.

It was hot.

It was always hot, burning against his skin, sizzling at the touch. He had lost count of the chemical burns that scattered along his body, scars that told stories of the many attempts he endured in the pursuit of health. Life. A chance.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. No, never in the battery of tests he subjected himself to was it ever lost on him. He was destroying his body in the attempt to heal it.

It wasn’t ideal, and certainly not his first choice in the grand scheme of things. But they didn’t have time — he didn’t have time. There was no animal testing or research studies that could be done before reaching him.

Not if he wanted a chance.

So he closed his eyes, tight. Tight enough to feel the muscles in his face twitch and scream and beg for the release that he wouldn’t give until he heard the word ‘success’. He held his breath and bit his tongue through the searing pain that spread across his skin, rendering his fingers numb and his wrist rigid with immobility, all as he waited.

It always felt like an eternity. He would often think of Emily in these times. Deep, mahogany hair that countered her smile of pure sunshine, one he’d still picture every night before going to sleep, accompanied with the purest, brightest blue eyes he’d ever witnessed before. Even now, decades after becoming nothing more than a memory to him, she kept him calm. As long as he had her memory —

“Host organism Symbiote cytoplasm results produce...another failure for organisms protoplasmic material in binding with subject.” The voice, albeit calm, professional and tame, was nails on a chalkboard to his ears. “The changes formulated to the cell structure from clinical trials 9.E—G appear to be unsuccessful.”

His eyes stayed closed, though the pressure on his eyelids lessened greatly. He could feel the burning begin to fade on his hand, the tell-tale sign that the liquid had dropped off, running down and off his skin like water in the shower. It would fall down into a drain placed beneath his feet, where the earth shattering disappointment made it feel like his legs had wavered despite the ground staying still.

His heart beat heavily and he fought to control the emotion, taking in three deep breaths to remain composed. Each lifted his chest high, pulled his shoulders back taunt. He kept those blue eyes in his mind, fighting to remember exactly what shade they were. Always close to sky blue, but never quiet so pale. Vivid, like ice.

“How would you like to proceed, Mr. Osborn?”

And with that, he opened his eyes to the world around him, no longer able to stay in the memory of a better time and place, a memory of warmth and content. His environment was sterile and cold, a lot like the expression he wore on his face. Because if twenty-eight years of owning and running his own business had taught him anything, it was to never show weakness.

“You are...highly credentialed, Doctor Frye.” Norman grabbed the towel offered to him by one of the many scientists standing nearby, slowly but confidently wiping his hands with it. “I have the upmost faith that you will figure it out.”

The towel was damp, saturated with a cooling gel to ease the burns that blistered on his skin. He smeared it generously across the back of his hand, stepping down cautiously from the platform where he stood. The other techs began to scatter, leaving all but one white-coated doctor standing amidst the departing crowd.

“Sir, with all due respect,” Doctor Frye started, “I have been surveying the progress on this project since day one. And since we’ve discovered that this Symbiote bio-structure won’t bond without the DNA markers of it’s original conception, you continue to try and change the cell nucleus of the genetic make-up with no success.”

Norman approached him with long strides, confident steps that spoke more than his words ever could. He cocked an eyebrow high in the air and discarded the towel to the side.

Doctor Frye held his tablet firmly in his grip as he continued, “This is the tenth failure, and the tenth time my team has played God to the membrane of an organism that cannot thrive without the mutation markers of its birth host.”

“And as we are both aware,” Norman was quick to respond, his tone smooth yet firm, “the birth host perished two years ago with an autopsy report that showed no remaining embryo fluid in the sack. Is that a fact you fail to recall or do you simply prefer that I remind you the cause behind our perennial struggles?”

There was something unique in Doctor Frye that Norman respected. For starters, the man was never afraid to stand up to him, talk science with him, throw equations back and forth. He had intense grit, a dedication to his craft, dare he say an unhealthy need to be present at the job at all times. It played greatly in his favor, the unfortunate passing of Frye’s wife, leading him to divulge all his time into his work. It kept the good doctor focusing on the cure Norman so desperately needed.

“That spider was our last chance at finding success with this project, Mr. Osborn,” he reminded, his voice going so far as to pitch with unnerve. “Without injecting the mutated cells directly into your bloodstream, there’s no way this Symbiote bio-suit will bind to your genetic DNA. It requires the mutated markers of that radioactive spider.”

As the doctor spoke, Norman began to roll down the sleeves to his white button-down, taking care in buttoning the cuffs back together on each arm. He never once looked down during the task, keeping his eyes focused intently on Frye, frowning a bit as he digested what was said.

“Your vacillation is disconcerting to hear, doctor. It seems you’ve forgotten that sitting beneath my entrepreneur credentials lays a scientific genius with doctoral degrees in chemistry and electrical engineering. So when I say this can be done, I say it with more than just words,” Norman’s words were even, clinical, nearly emotionless. “I say it with the knowledge and ingenuity to substantiate the matter.”

Aggravated, Doctor Frye shook his head with animated exaggeration, spinning around as Norman began to walk past him.

“You aren’t listening. You don’t — !”

Norman calmly turned to face him, so close that it physically startled the doctor, his muscles so tense it showed in his lips.

“This Symbiote is a living organism. And like all living organisms, you can work with its biology,” Norman insisted, his tensely knitted eyebrows the closest thing he had shown to frustration so far. “I would advise that you not allow any defeats to keep you from pushing forward onward to success.”

Deliberate to linger on a hard stare that created a sheen of sweat across Doctor Frye’s forehead, Norman gave a curt nod when the time felt right. Only then did he walk passed the man, careful to avoid bumping shoulders.

He made it to the door before a voice was heard again. It wasn’t unexpected. Norman would have paused there in anticipation regardless of what sound came his way; the doctor had grit, after all.  

“You have to give me clarification here, Mr. Osborn. Why can’t you lend my team the formula for the OZ Experiment Arachnid No. 00? We’ll create it from scratch, we’ll give the Symbiote the DNA markers it requires to bind and latch onto it’s subject matter,” he paused for a beat, his throat constricting as he stressed,  “You, sir.”

There was enough hesitation from Norman to make it seem like he had been pondering up a response. In reality, he had one ready to go long before the man had ever asked the question. It was a sore subject. It had become the bane of his existence. The loss of all his files, the OZ formula, the records of the arachnid experiment from years ago that could easily save his life — gone. And why?

“Because, Doctor Frye,” Norman said, swiping his badge to gain access out of the laboratory, “those records were recently loss in a very unfortunate...water-logging incident. Now carry on. I expect progress by the morning.”

The heavy weight of the door closed loudly behind him, an echo that shot through the air. Norman was walking down the halls before it had even slammed shut.

— — —

Can I just say...I’m really going to enjoy writing this character?

(¬‿¬)

[jj-ktae]

Millennials - Part 5 -

Title: Millennials Genre: Fluff, romance Pairing: Kim Yugyeom x You Summary: Life is made of stages and each of them is a hard push on the back, forcing you to forge ahead. You’re facing your biggest crisis, and then there’s him, who lives from day to day. Of course he does, he is just a kid. Words: 4601 Warning: Small age difference. Yugyeom x Noona Reader.

Please check my masterlist for previous chapters! 

Part 5

It’s a beautiful week. Yugyeom doesn’t know how, but he managed to memorize two choreographies in the span of three hours. He flies from school to home, footsteps light and feathery as he can’t stop thinking about his date with you.

He never expected things to go this well.

Yugyeom remembers exactly how ecstatic he was, how hyper he felt and how he couldn’t stop himself from going to Bambam’s to yell his passion. Bambam had laughed, merely praising him but still wary enough to tell him not to expect too much.

He had laughed, barely listening to his friend as he was twirling around, face smug. The days following came like a blur and he couldn’t wait to go back to work so he could see you again.  Half of him was scared, the thought of you being cold still clear in his memory but he was mostly eager.

You could beat him up and he would offer his face for more.

He doesn’t try to contact you. He found himself typing a text a couple of times, but stopped before he could press send. Jinyoung warned him not to get carried away and make a fool of himself so he followed his friend’s advice.

When Yugyeom arrives at the grocery store this Sunday, he takes a deep breath and enters the shop.

You feel weird.

It’s not like there’s anything to worry about; your date went well and you were even able to be nice for once. You ate well, had a good time and got a free scarf so everything should be just fine, right?

So why is it that you feel so ashamed with what happened? Why can’t you think about Yugyeom without feeling your face burn with embarrassment?

You don’t even know why you acted the way you did. It was all good, he was about to leave, but you had to be stupid and run after him. On top of that, you even pecked his cheek.

Oh god, he must feel so freaked out now.

Naya squealed when you called her the day after. She told you she was relieved that you finally opened to that lovely kid and that you definitely should invite him over to pay back for his kindness.

And the worst part is that you agreed. You even anticipate the meeting, refusing to believe that you actually enjoy the slow churn of your insides every time you think about his smile.

It’s fine, you think. Kim Yugyeom has no effect on you.

He just happens to be a very gentle and caring boy, with a dashing smile and a tendency to look at you like you are his most precious property.

When Naya tells you she was absolutely right from the start and that Yugyeom obviously likes you, you can’t find it in yourself to deny it like you always do.

Because the thought in itself isn’t disturbing at all.

You’re not one to become all mushy though, so you hope things won’t get weird once Yugyeom will arrive.

But everything you built goes down the drain as the grocery shop’s door opens and a smiley Yugyeom steps in, hidden into a long coat.

“Hi, noona.”

You nod, lips tight as you count the coins a little boy reunited just for a bag of candies. What do you answer? Hi Yugyeom? Just hi?

Yugyeom smiles brightly as he walks past the counter and enters the tiny staff-room to get rid of his coat.

You wave at the kid as he runs away, shaking the bag crazily.

“Are you feeling better?” Yugyeom startles you when you hear him from behind. You turn around and find him, proud and giant with his fitting long-sleeved tee-shirt – when did he start wearing such things? -  You freeze, his words registering at a slow pace because he is way too close and you can smell the subtle scent of his perfume.

“Better?” You speak, tongue rolling against you lips as you try to find an explanation to what is currently happening.

Yugyeom chuckles, surprised to see you so out of it when you always have everything under control. “You were sick, are you feeling better?”

Your mouth turns into a tiny round shape and a soft humming sound makes you finally realize what he is talking about. You really need to get a grip, right now. “Yes, I’m feeling way better.”

Yugyeom offers a smile, nodding and sending locks of hair over his eyes. “Good.” He stands there, silent as he looks at you. You usually tell him what he has to do but you seem…off? Maybe he is overthinking the situation.

When he takes a step back you snap out of your thoughts, coughing loudly to grab a piece of paper where your colleague wrote the tasks for today. You take a deep breath. “The floor needs some cleaning while the shop is not busy. I’ll be cleaning the tables and the microwaves.” You hurry out of his sight, grabbing the bucket prepared by your colleague to rush toward the eating area.

Yugyeom chuckles, shaking his head slowly as he sees you awkwardly walk. You’re really too adorable.

The eating area is greasy. It’s been like this for as long as you can remember. You’ve cleaned the high tables so many times but they always become thick with noodle juice and other snacks. You don’t like that task, but it’s better than staying around Yugyeom, who seems to be singing softly as he wipes the floor.

He sounds so happy.

It’s hard to act like he isn’t here. You see him from time to time, walking between the aisle and sighing because the mop is visibly too tiny for his body. He keeps on a concentrated face and sends a couple of smiles your way whenever he catches your eyes.

By the time you’re done cleaning, he seems to be talking to customers. You put the bucket back in its place and go to the counter in case someone would want to pay for their-

Yugyeomie!

Before you can see them, two familiar voices echo in the shop, thick with honey. You should have known they would come back with their hands full of food for Yugyeom.

The latter appears, bowing endlessly and thanking two ladies who are eagerly following him and laughing.  

Yugyeom is literally about to die from a huge piece of cake and whipped cream is smudged around his mouth. You raise your brow when he almost hides behind you, coughing and red with embarrassment.

“Oh my, we gave you too much! Can’t you see he feels uncomfortable?!” One of the lady tells you aggressively, her manicured finger pointing toward you in an accusing manner.

You turn around when Yugyeom takes your arm and you see him shake his head. He looks even more alerted now, cheeks full and mouth barely closed.

Usually you would have blamed him for being so mushy and you would have been right. He had been too nice with these two, always accepting the presents and getting fed. Now he can barely run away from them.

So against better judgement and as soon as the second lady adds a venomous “Well aren’t you going to move?” you turn around, hands on your hips.

“You shouldn’t disturb the employees. He is working and he has no time to deal with you. If our manager ever discovers what happens when he isn’t here, are you going to take responsibility for your actions? You’re not only monopolising his time but also mine right now.” You say angrily and go to the staff-room to grab your own water bottle.

When you come back, Yugyeom is still bowing at the ladies who look shocked and embarrassed. It seems he has finally swallowed the piece of cake because he is apologising endlessly.


You silently hand him the bottle before walking away. You’re not in the mood to deal with these two and you can’t even trust your own mouth anymore. Why did you even have to speak? If they complain to the manager, you’re never going to hear the end of it.

You let your head fall against a bag a bread, eyes closed in regret and scolding yourself silently.

“We shouldn’t have…you won’t lose your job, right?” You hear one of the lady, her voice now tender as she is still trying to sound innocent.

“No it’s fine. Please just don’t talk to my noona like that.”

You blink, head still deep in the soft bags as you hear the words, barely muffled and incredibly satisfying to hear from a determined Yugyeom.

A long silence follows during which you don’t know what to do with your body. You hear noises, the sound of the cash machine and a curt greeting before the place becomes quiet again.

You wait for a sound, anything that would indicate a moving Yugyeom but nothing happens so you peek a moment later, head appearing between the food.

Yugyeom is sitting. He looks incredibly disturbed and while you should be too, you can only focus on the whipped cream on his face.

Did he really try to be serious when he has pieces of cake on his face?

You walk from behind the aisle and Yugyeom gets up as soon as you appear, already bowing and apologising because oh god you’re going to get mad at him because of the two old ladies and he shouldn’t have been so nice with them-

“Sit down.” You tell him, trying to hide the amusement from your voice.

Yugyeom gulps, gawking as he takes a step toward the chair to rest on it.

You grab a forgotten pack of tissue left behind the counter and open it, shaking your head. He watches your every move, curious and uneasy.

You turn around with the tissue and approach him, making him back up further away from you.

He waits, blinks, but freezes when your hand grabs his chin to clean the mess left around his mouth.

“You would look way more serious if you didn’t have so much whipped cream on your cheeks.” You speak, determined not to look at him in the eyes.
 Which is good because Yugyeom is dying inside, face burning and hands moist with stress.

You clean the mess rapidly, fingers grazing over his reddening skin and it’s hard not to think about how adorable he looks. You try to stay away from his body, the warmth and delicate scent a tad too tempting to be too close to.

He sighs, his breath fanning your face. “Thanks, noona.”

You barely smirk when you’re done – and it feels like you spent forever on his face when it barely lasted ten seconds – before proceeding to throw the tissue away.

“I’m sorry. They were very rude,” He adds when you don’t speak. He searches for your face and when he finally gets your attention, a sheepish smile appears on his still reddish cheeks. “I made sure they won’t speak that way anymore.”

My noona.

You nod, his words echoing in your head and making you pinch your lips so you wouldn’t laugh. It’s so satisfying all of a sudden.

You knew Yugyeom could be adorable. He proved it to you numerous times but never did you pay attention to his features, too busy being cold and ignoring him.

But you’re starting to think differently and you’re not even bothered by that fact.
 “It’s fine, Yugyeom.” You whisper, bowing when a bunch of people enter the shop. You turn around briefly when the customers walk deeper in the shop. “Thank you for standing up for your noona.”

Yugyeom wants to disappear into the ground.

--

“You are disgusting.” Jinyoung refuses to believe such a thing happened. “You really said something like that?” Yugyeom has always been a weird kid, but he is starting to wonder if he’ll ever make it with his strange behaviour.

“I did. I don’t know why. I almost choked on a piece of cake, I guess I felt brave.” Yugyeom sighs, head on Jinyoung’s kitchen table as the latter is sipping on his coffee.

Bambam enters the kitchen, putting his phone back into his pocket. “You’re creepy.” He concludes, sitting next to a depressed Yugyeom.

Yugyeom nods against the cold material, lips into a pout.

“Anyways, it’s not the end of the world, did you try to get some sort of conversation out of her?” Jinyoung adds. His legs are crossed and he is leaning against the table. “Another date? Anything?”

“Obviously, he didn’t.” Bambam concludes when his friend doesn’t move.

“Stop asking so much from me. I already asked her once. Let me live.” He grunts as he sits back on his chair, arms now crossed over his chest.

Yugyeom doesn’t even pay attention when his phone vibrates in his pocket and his hand blindly reaches for it as Bambam is now telling him how he must attack the girl before it’s too late.

“He needs to be subtle. Don’t turn him into an even creepier guy.” Jinyoung softly kicks Bambam’s leg playfully. “By the way, who’s free this week-end? There’s this-

Yugyeom’s screeching makes them both jump on their seats. The latter’s mouth is wide opened and a hand is hiding his face.

“She’s...she’s...her place? HER PLACE?!”

Bambam sighs, leaning to grab the phone from a protesting Yugyeom.

“Ohoh,” he starts, eyebrows raising teasingly. “She wants to thank you for the other night and cook for you.” He finishes the message and lets an evil laugh leave his thick lips. “at her place. Bingo.”

Jinyoung claps his hands, a little bit surprised but still amused. “Now you know what to do.”

Yugyeom gasps, “What to do? What do I do?”

“You agree, you get prepared and you get that girl. Jeez, Yugs, don’t you know it’s jackpot when a girl invites someone to her place?” Bambam tells him, way too excited by the situation.

Yugyeom tilts his head, not getting where this is going. They can’t possibly be talking about that.

No, no no no.

Jinyoung rolls his eyes as his stupid friends. “Just go there and try not to mess things up and you,” he points at Bambam accusingly, “stop trying to make him jump the poor girl.”

Bambam pouts “Yep, sir.”

--

“Why did I do that. What do I do now? What if he doesn’t answer? Tonight? Why tonight? Naya, tell me I didn’t just sent that message.” It’s panic time. Naya came over after work and decided to hype you, resulting in you typing a very embarrassing message and sending it to Yugyeom.

“It’s a great message. You said you’ll pay for the food next time and what’s better than cook yourself? You live alone and you feel more comfortable at home, it’s a great opportunity. Plus, I doubt the kid is a creep who will jump you.” Naya plays with her spoon, making it cling against a creamy coffee cup. “If he agrees, we need to get you some groceries.”

“He is going to think I’m a weirdo. I can’t believe I spent so much time giving him the cold shoulder, only to end up sending such a pathetic message.” You start rubbing your face tiredly, wondering when on earth did you stop being so adamant.

When your phone tingles on the table, Naya doesn’t need to see what’s written.

Your bewildered face says it all.

She is incredibly fast when she hurries you out of your flat. She starts throwing ideas on what you could cook and what alcohol you should buy. Your friend flies toward ingredients, asking for your opinion and you end up with too many things to buy and an expensive bill.

“I can’t believe you’ve been working with him for so long yet you don’t know what he likes.” Naya mocks when you both get out of the busy place, hands full with bags and head full with regrets.

“It’s not like I ever paid attention to him. It’s all because of you.” You complain, face unreadable as you walk toward your apartment complex.

Naya scoffs, her head shaking. “Don’t act like you don’t enjoy the situation. You’re just scared because you have zero confidence. He likes you and you’re starting to like him too. It’s fine! There’s no need to be ashamed.”

“But he’s-

“He is younger than you? Like age matters when it comes to maturity. We both know age means nothing. Men will be boys all their lives.” Her laugh makes you want to hit her with your own bags but you decide to keep quiet.

Mostly because she is right, but you won’t admit it.

This is exactly how you end up cooking for Yugyeom. You’re busy with your pasta, one hand holding your wooden spoon and the other one your phone, checking out cooking tips and nodding at specific advices.

The table is set without it being too much – the mere idea of looking eager and desperate enough for you to cringe – and the wine is ready.

You remove your apron to look at your outfit, hands pulling on your shirt as a deep sigh leaves your lips in apprehension. Your heart is about to burst out of your chest and you’re quite sure you’re going to throw up.

You take a deep breath when your doorbell rings.

Everything’s going to be okay.

When you open the door and find an already blushing Yugyeom, you’re not so sure of yourself anymore.

He looks too handsome to be standing by your door, with a curious face and a single orchid in his hand.

He cannot be serious.

“Hi, noona.” He waves timidly, trying to find a way to stand without looking awfully awkward.

You blink at the flower, completely ignoring his words before tilting your head. It can’t be because-

“Oh, it’s for you.” Yugyeom hands you the flower hurriedly, eager to get rid of the silence and hoping you’d let him enter your flat soon because he can’t trust his knees tonight. “I heard you say Orchids were your favourite.”

You open your mouth, shocked and astonished because you remember saying this once to your manager when he asked you which flowers would be the best to beg for forgiveness.

Yugyeom was there that day? You don’t even remember yet he heard it and got you your favourite flower.

“Noona…?” Yugyeom leans, the flower still in his hand and it makes you go back to your senses to grab the flower before coughing.

“Thanks, Yugyeom. Come on in.”

You open the door wider to let him step into your flat and as he smiles sweetly and bows, you want to slap yourself for being so mean to him all this time.

“It smells good.” The younger states when he walks deeper into your flat. You follow slowly, now too conscious of your surroundings and hoping you cleaned the flat thoroughly so he wouldn’t discover how much of a messy person you can be.

“Thank you. I made pasta. Is that okay for you? There’s also wine…” You put the flower on your kitchen counter and grab an empty glass before turning around.

Yugyeom is looking at your flat with shiny eyes, like he achieved something big. He spins around and finds you waiting for him with an empty glass. “Oh, yes. I like wine.”

It takes two hours for the atmosphere to cool down. Yugyeom is stiff on your couch, his long legs resting on your carpet as he slowly sips on his third glass of wine. You’re on the floor, legs crossed and elbow on your living-room’s table as you’re digesting the huge amount of pasta you swallowed so you wouldn’t have to speak too much.

“Your place is warm.” Yugyeom says do fill the silence.

You laugh tiredly, not finding it in yourself to tell him that your flat is actually as lifeless as you. “It’s a pain apartment.”

Yugyeom shakes his head, the alcohol making him somewhat more daring. “It’s the place where you live.”

You don’t know what to answer. Despite your awkwardness, Yugyeom has been having a dreamy face ever since he arrived and looked nothing but amazed to be here. It’s difficult to deal with such a personality for you only know a few people and most of them aren’t like him.

People like Yugyeom scare you to the point of avoiding them and as he looks down at your tired face, you understand instantly the reason behind your past hatred and coldness.

Yugyeom is willing to accept you without asking anything in return.

“I have no confidence.” You start when weakness takes over you. He needs to understand your struggles in case you become weird again. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like garbage just because you can’t stand yourself. “I don’t know how to deal with my life. I’ve always been around people who despise the fact that I have no ambition and I guess I accept it now? It became normal to be considered like a loser because I do believe I am one.”

Yugyeom is about to protest but you lift a hand to stop him.

“But you’re making it hard for me to keep on hating myself. I don’t even know how you remembered I like Orchids. You’re always nice and gentle. I don’t know how to interact with people like you.”

Yugyeom feels himself sitting straight when you’re done. He can’t believe what he is hearing and he is torn between sadness and anger because how the hell did you end up feeling that way when he finds you amazing and strong and independent? He wants to shake you so you would understand, but he knows it’s the wine and he will regret being such a pushover.

Yet you’re on the floor and looking at him expectantly. He sees honesty and a hint of sadness you had never showed him before and even though it breaks him, he must smile.

“I remember every important thing. You like Orchids. You said you hate milk to our manager when he brought you a latte last month. You hate spicy food and one time you bought the wrong cup of ramen and your face became all red. Your favourite snacks are shrimp flavoured chips and strawberry yoghurt. You hate cleaning the microwaves but you still do.”

Each sentence swallows you to the ground, like Yugyeom is putting weights on your shoulders. He knows a lot of things about you just because he cares enough to remember.

Yet you know nothing about him.

“You didn’t really like me.”

He ends the sentence with a sad smile, not even mad because at some point, there’s nothing he can do.

You protest instantly, your voice dying in the process. “That’s not- I mean, you know so much, yet I know only a little, if not nothing about you. I never asked nor paid attention.”

You feel guilty, incredibly guilty for being that way. You feel like the worst bitch.

But Yugyeom laughs before putting his glass on the table. “It’s fine, noona. I’m not saying this because I want to make you feel bad. I’m not asking of you to know everything about me.”

You can’t believe it.

“Why?” It’s the only thing that comes to your mind. You’re not sure if you want to know the answer, though.

“Why?” Yugyeom repeats, head tilted to the side like he is surprised you still didn’t get it. Under any other circumstances he would have freaked out and ran away, but now he is starting to like the effect wine has on him.
 Maybe he will let it all out tonight.

“It’s definitely not because I am trying to be a good colleague.” His eyes go from the table to your face, just to be sure he isn’t about to embarrass himself more than he already did.

“I’m in love with you, noona. I’m sorry you had to deal with the annoying me all this time.”

It’s weird, Yugyeom thinks as he finishes his sentence. The evening had started well; you had talked about your parents and how busy they were. He had shared pieces of his childhood and you had laughed. You two had exchanged jokes in the middle of the general awkwardness and he had loved the food.

You’re silent now, blinking at the ground like he dropped a bomb on you. Maybe he should have shut his mouth. The boys are going to make fun of him for being so mushy and drinking to the point of turning into a creep again. He can’t wait.

Yugyeom is contemplating whether he should grab his stuff and go, he really is, but he finds himself frozen on the couch when you get up slowly.

“Noona…? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

You’re too fast for him. You’re too fast and surprising tonight, he can’t comprehend why the hell are you leaning toward him slowly. Your eyes are undecipherable yet focused.

You’re being serious.


He stops breathing when you grab his face. It’s a mixture of excitement and fear, with a touch of confusion but everything crashes when he feels your lips on his.

Is this happening? Everything is in slow-motion, like a movie Yugyeom wouldn’t mind watching every single night.

Yugyeom finally believes it when you peck his lips. His arms come back to life and reach for your nape to bring you closer and it’s like an electric shock putting him back on track.

You’re kissing him.

The slow-motion effect disappears; his skin finally tingles and his breath gets caught in his lungs when your fingers thread through his locks to tilt his head.

It’s the best kiss in his whole damned life.

He kisses you back after what feels like an eternity and when he does, you relax in his hands, finally comfortable with the embrace. Yugyeom takes everything he can, his lips tickling and face on fire but he doesn’t care anymore.

You’re the only thing worth focusing on in the middle of nowhere.

You end up kneeling on your couch but is that important? Yugyeom won, there’s nothing you can build to stay away from him anymore. Fighting would be pointless and mean and you don’t want to be mean with him.

So if he is willing to welcome your existence, then you’ll give him just that.

You part from his face with closed eyes and red lips. Your heart is surprisingly calm despite the intimate position so you smile.

You can’t believe you initiated the kiss.

Yugyeom is already staring at you when you open your eyes and he is searching for answers. He watches, analyses your movements, waits for any sign of discomforts.

And naturally, when he finds nothing, he smiles back and pulls you toward him to kiss you again.

You stay that way for a while – though you don’t know how long – before you sit next to him, finally embarrassed for being so bold.
 But unlike you, Yugyeom looks pleased.

“I know I’m younger than you and you might think I’m a kid, but I really want to be with you.” He stills tries, even though you both kissed, even though you’re holding his hand and playing with the rings on his fingers. “I want to make you feel like you are worth so much more than what you think.”

You want to melt. Correction: you’re melting.

You sit properly on your couch so you can face him. “I wish you’d do just that, Yugyeom.”

And he kisses you again.

[currentclimate]

Did You Hear About the Mars-Bound Raptor Engine

My colleague asked me, over tea and italian soda, at a local coffee shop: “What do you want to do about climate change?”

It’s a good question.

There’s nothing to be done about it, but at least doing something about it, like protesting or a lifestyle change, disarms the helplessness a bit.

We are helpless, you and I. There is nothing that you and I can do individually that will matter. You can sell your car and bike to work. You can disconnect the power to your house and install solar panels. You can eat only organic and locally-sourced food. You can grow your own food. You can do it all.

It still doesn’t matter.

Our species, homo sapiens, our entire civilization is built upon carbon.  Even long before, when humans were still situated around campfires, that heat and light source based on carbon, released carbon, as did the whale oil we progressed to after that.

Carbon is tied to humanity like a double helix.

No exaggeration. We are a carbon-based life form.

And now there’s too much of it. Way too much of it. Hundreds of billions of tons too much of it. It covers our earth like a blanket, like a baby swaddled in wool.

In a moment of clarity and complete honesty, I replied to my colleague: “I want to crawl into a hole . . . until it’s all over.”  That my response to any difficulty: disappear, only there’s no disappearing from climate change, and there is no waiting it out, unless you’re eternal, or undead.

It’s only going to get worse. These are the better days, the best days; right now. The days of the future will only be worse, and, get this, even if -- even if -- we somehow miraculously sucked all the human-produced carbon from the atmosphere in an instant . . . even if we did that, things still get worse.

We are experiencing the impacts of our carbon emissions from a decade ago, right now. Today is a result of yesterday’s emissions.  10 years from now, the globe will fully realize the warming effects of the carbon we release today. 2018 saw an increase in carbon emissions overall. 2019 is predicted to also be an increase overall.

And, we’re just talking about human sources of carbon.

If the earth takes over, through a mechanism called positive feedback loops (only these feedbacks are definitely not “positive,” in any imaginable way, for humanity at least).  There is many times the amount of carbon that is in the atmosphere today, locked away in permafrost across the northern hemisphere. If this carbon is released, slowly over time, or quickly in a burst, it will not matter what humans do with their own carbon emissions, even if we zero them immediately and send the entire world back to the Stone Age; it will not matter. The earth will release its carbon and continue to warm the planet.

It’s happening. It’s been widely reported, even in the mass media. Check out the Vice news episode where the journalist starts the methane seeping from arctic ponds on fire. She singes her eyebrows in the process. Anything for a story, I guess.

The permafrost in Siberia is melting. Giant sinkholes dot the landscape, some of them a decade old. This is from melting permafrost. Methane is already being released.

It means we’re probably already screwed, even if we were able to engineer a way, or many different ways, to capture carbon from the air and sequester it somewhere underground -- we are talking about billions and billions of tons of carbon. Humans have never, ever completed a project on this scale. The mass mobilization of the West during WWII is nothing, absolutely peanuts, compared to the scale of what sucking all of this carbon out of the air would require.

Do NOT imagine that technology will save us. This is not Star Trek.

The only mediocre hope we have, and this “hope” is quite frail, and very dangerous, only slightly less dangerous than extinction itself, is geo-engineering. We will get here, out of desperation, maybe this decade, maybe the next.  We could put trillions of tiny mirrors in space, to reflect incoming solar radiation, and thus manage the global average temperature. That’s the idea, at least, with geo-engineering.

The world is already dimmed by all the pollution, the particulate matter that humans are constantly pumping into the atmosphere. After 9/11, nearly all air traffic in this country was grounded. There was a noticeable uptick in the brightness in the sky, of the sun. This uptick did not need to be measured scientifically. A layman could see it. You may very well have seen it. No jets in the sky means no contrails.

It’s not just jets though -- it’s also particulate matter, like the smoke from coal-fired power plants. This particulate matter -- pollution -- swaddles the earth as well and provides a measurable cooling. We stop all carbon emissions today, or tomorrow, and that means, at least, a .5 degree increase in global average temperatures, from the loss of the dimming effect.

We are already doing geo-engineering, just not from space.

It’s here. It’s happening. The bad stuff is all around us, and we are not recognizing it. We are not connecting the dots. Come on, folks, half the Great Barrier Reef is already dead. It’s not coming back. The oceans have absorbed 90% of the additional heating the earth has experienced. The oceans are already in crisis, and not just because of plastic pollution.

Fish stocks are crashing. Whales are beaching themselves. There are no starfish left on the West coast of the United States.

California was on fire. It will be on fire again, after this latest freak storm rolls through with 10 feet of snow, causing power outages and mudslides. Or, maybe, another tornado in Michigan in December?

Sandy. Harvey. Irma. Maria.

Bats falling dead out of trees in Australia.

I can go on and on. Check out the evangelicals! They think it’s the End Times. Check-them-out! They do not say it’s climate change: they say it’s the Rapture. They are seeing something, seeing the same things as you and I, and nobody is talking about it.

We cannot keep living in this untruth. It is making us all sick, society sick, good people going bad, because it’s stressful -- damn stressful -- to feel this dread inside, to know in your bones that things around you are changing rapidly and that the environment, for which we all depend for our habitat, is under duress, and, this is the kicker -- nobody’s talking about it.

Nobody’s. Talking. About.  It!

There is this enormous, galaxy-sized white elephant, perched upon every single person’s chest, and nobody is talking about it. They just continue to gasp for breath, and hope this enormous metaphorical pachyderm will get off their chest, but it doesn’t, because it can’t, and it won’t -- the elephant is here to stay because the elephant is climate change(d).

The climate is changed and bad things are happening, people are suffering and dying, all over the world, stressed and poor and do not know where they will live or where their next meal will come from, so they set out, in rickety boats across an unforgiving sea, and they know -- absolutely know -- the odds that they might perish are high. They know the stories, of all the boats that don’t make it, and all the bodies that wash up on the beach, yet, they still do it, they get into those boats, knowing it might be their last day, because they do NOT have another option. There is nowhere else to go.

This is climate change.

It’s not that way for you and I, not yet, but it’s coming, and look at how we are treating these people, suffering through no fault of their own.

Did you know, if you cut out the emissions of the top-20% of earners in the world, you cut half the world’s emissions. These people who set out in caravans, they did not cause the problem.

I did. You did.

I have travelled across the sea, more than once. I use my A/C. I use way more than the people who are in boats or caravans. They do not know that it was my emissions that killed their coffee plants and forced them to flee north.

What do we do?

We could choose to just burn the whole damn thing down -- the hothouse earth. We could do that. We might do that. Lots more people will suffer if we do that.

I don’t suggest we do that.

There is still a fight against carbon.

I do suggest some honesty. We may need some civil disobedience as well. Things are not normal. The climate is in duress. People are already suffering and dying. The climate is already out of control. We need to grow up and look at this demon in the face. As a species, we need to grow up and face the physics and facts.

Some people will always be blind, imprisoned by belief, not facts, and unimpressed with experience, the first-hand experience of a climate gone awry.

Don’t be one of them.

That’s all I can say. There is no hole to crawl into deep enough to escape this terrible thing. There is no escaping at all. There is denial, of course, even as you watch your fancy condo wash away, but there is no escaping.

It doesn’t end here.

[kqduane]

 Here is an article that exposes the truth about the ridiculousness of following a feminist lifestyle. Nobody wins and everybody loses. Especially the innocent little children of working mothers, who have no voice.

Ironically this young reporter unearthed the truth about the difficulties inherent in young mother’s attempts to adopt a feminist lifestyle but she failed to find the only permanent solution to this crisis because, despite her feckless advice, these women’s lives are never going to improve by “writing in a journal”, “taking a walk” or “connecting with friends.” Those are just pointless band aids, recklessly applied to a major surgical wound. Tentative at best and pointless at worst.

Only a complete rejection of radical second-wave feminism’s push to prioritize “career” over family, will absolutely solve this ludicrous, frustrating, and exhausting problem. For mothers of minor children, there is no possible way on earth, to find a “balance” between family life and “career.” This irrational search is an unattainable delusion and unfortunately, neither their “careers” nor their children fare well. They both take the brunt of this irrational fraud called feminism, as neither is given the attention they need to thrive.

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So, the only answer is to stop brainwashing young women with radical, second-wave feminism’s ideology and get them back to the roots of their Christian faith instead! Motherhood is for women dedicated to their faith, not feminism’s fraudulent fantasies.

Women must stop believing in the “superwoman” PC BS invented by feminism and get their priorities straight. Their children should be the most important people in their lives, NOT their bosses! I mean, seriously, “Do you love your children or not?”

You either want to be married and have kids OR you want to have a full-time “career”, sans children. Don’t drive yourself crazy, because despite what lesbian-led, radical, second-wave feminists tell you, YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH, SUCCESSFULLY!

In case you are interested in some of the experiences suffered by young feminists fruitlessly trying to balance family and career, Jennifer O’Neill’s article follows.

State of Working Moms Today

Jennifer O’NeillWriterOctober 22, 2014

Photo by Offset

Every working mother remembers the moment — the first time she slips off the tightrope she’s been sprinting on between the two pillars of her life, career and kids. My fall to rock bottom was at 2am on a Tuesday. After toiling in the office well past midnight, I’d trudged home to prepare the lunch and snacks my children would need to bring to daycare first thing in the morning. Standing in the dim light of the kitchen while the rest of my family slept, I wearily steamed fresh apples and pureed them for the baby, boiled pasta and frozen veggies for the toddler, and reached into the fridge for milk to pour into their bottles. But the quart was empty. The kids would wake up crying for milk in a few short hours and we didn’t have a drop. I wanted to scream in frustration and smash the carton against the wall. What I actually did was shuffle into the living room, crumple into an exhausted heap on the floor next to a pile of toys no one had cleaned up, call for takeout of two bottles of milk, and weep.

According to new research, a great many women can relate.Care.com has given Yahoo Parenting an exclusive first look at its “Working Moms Tipping Point” survey, which reveals that one in four cry by themselves at least once a week due to household-related stress. “We wanted to understand what the point was where somebody raised their hand and said, ‘I can’t take it! I need help,’” Care.com cofounder Donna Levin tells Yahoo Parenting about the poll of nearly 1,000 employed women with at least one child under 18 living at home. “But just how far people push things surprised us.”

Working an average of 37 hours per week, respondents owned up to spending more than double that amount of time (80 hours per week!) slaving away at home on chores, childcare, and cleaning. No wonder a staggering 80 percent admit trying to keep up with it all is severely stressing them out.

STORY: The ‘Working Mom Penalty’ Hurts Us All

The worst part? Some of this pain is actually self-inflicted. Even though 11 percent of the women confess they’re afraid that their hectic schedules are preventing them from making lasting connections with their children, 29 percent refuse to hire any outside help because they feel guilty about not being able to do it all themselves.

What’s happening to their family life as a result isn’t pretty. Fourty-four percent of these women’s families sit down together for dinner less than five nights a week. And when they do, a third say meals last less than 20 minutes. Couple time isn’t any better. The women reported spending just six hours alone with their partners each week.

“We want to share the data so people can realize that they’re not alone,” Levin says. “The survey found that 62 percent of women think everyone else has an easier time getting everything done and somehow they’re the only ones having trouble. This grass-is-greener mentality has to stop.”

STORY: My Biggest Parenting Regret

Instead of comparing yourself to friends, health psychologist Dr. Alice Domar recommends commiserating. “People experience stress relief just talking about their problems,” Domar, the executive director of theDomar Center for Mind/Body Health in Waltham, Mass., and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, tells Yahoo Parenting. “There’s an Asian expression that ‘a burden shared is halved.’ If something is bothering you, tell a friend.”

It’s really not something you can ignore, anyway, considering the enormous toll stress takes on your body: Insomnia, headaches, neck and back pain, gastrointestinal issues, joint aches, and heart palpitations are just a few of the physical symptoms of stress that can eventually develop into hypertension, hastened aging, coronary artery disease, and suppressed immune function down the line.

Working moms may not be able to change the stressors in their lives, but they can change their body’s response to the stress by using relaxation techniques. Domar, whose book “Healing Mind, Healthy Woman” addresses just that, prescribes a few easy fixes that can make a big difference. “It’s hard to do,” she admits. “But you have to take care of yourself.”

Connect with friends. “It’s especially tough these days for working moms, because they’re so busy they don’t have the time for relationships with women that they used to have,” Domar acknowledges. “But lack of social support is actually more likely to kill you than things like cigarette smoke or increased blood pressure.” And it doesn’t have to be a two-hour heart-to-heart, she adds. “Little bits of conversation and connection throughout the day is fine too.”

Start writing in a journal. When you’re upset, writing about thoughts and feelings allows your body to interpret stress in a different way, says Domar. “Research has found that when we talk about things, they’re frozen in time,” she explains. “When we write about them, on the other hand, it helps us get over them.” So if you’re upset and only have five minutes to yourself to deal, write about it. “If you vent to someone,” she notes, “you’ll just get more agitated as you repeat the story.”

Lace up and walk. The women surveyed said three hours is all they have to themselves each day, but Domar says that’s still plenty of time to reduce stress with a short stroll. “Walk to the farther bathroom,” she advises. “Take a lap around the office. Do two-for-one specials and walk with a friend. You’ll get a bit of exercise and time to talk. Every little thing you do helps.”

Short Essay – Why Are Working Mothers, with Minor Children, Burning the Candle at Both Ends? Here is an article that exposes the truth about the ridiculousness of following a feminist lifestyle.

[gaiatheorist]

Cutting.

TW: Self Harm.

I haven’t deliberately injured myself since June 2nd 2013. I could have thrown myself an anniversary party for ‘Five years clean’ last year, but I had other things on my mind. Apart from the constant, incessant urge to ‘Do something.’ I did caution the last counsellor to think about his phrasing of “Doing something silly.”, with a flash of my eyes, and a very calm, clear “It doesn’t seem ‘silly’ at the time, does it?” I shook him more than I needed to, but if he continues to use that selection of words, with people less-resilient than I am, there’s a risk that his platitude could deter disclosures.

Five offices, probably over a decade ago, I printed out the attachment I’d sent to key staff, and stuck it to the wall, as a reminder for some less-calm, more-flappy colleagues. It started “Treat as first aid.”, and I’m still mildly surprised that I managed to get it past the tone-police, and out into wider circulation, as well as being given permission to run a training session for staff on responding appropriately to instances of self-harm.  

I was, at that point, the only member of staff at that secondary school ‘trained’ on self-harm. We had access to one free place on MIND’s carousel of training courses, and, as much as management knew that I was best-placed to attend, absorb, and articulate the content to wider staff, I did try not to ‘hog’ the places. Nobody else wanted the self-harm one. I can imagine the split-second ‘Yuck!’ face some colleagues would have pulled, and now I’m half-smiling, because I was frequently ‘reminded’ by one manager to try to maintain a neutral facial expression in team meetings. (It was eye-rolling at the ineptitude of one specific colleague, and they were so inept, I genuinely don’t think they ever picked up on it.) 

The ‘Yuck!’ reaction, much like my eye-rolling, is automatic in some people with regard to self-harm, that’s why I started the how-to guide with “Treat as first aid.” It’s an injury, if little Jimmy had fallen over in the playground and skinned his knees, the ‘yuck’ is pushed back by the need to check for bits of gravel, and hope the plasters in the first aid box aren’t those horrible cheap ones that don’t stick properly. Those of us that ‘did’ first aid had that ability to step-back and become very practical, blood, head injuries, vomit, and obviously-broken bones, it’s a version of the plane-crash/seat-belt scenario, you can’t help other people if you’re not safe yourself. (I was guilty of unkind thoughts about some colleagues who didn’t-do first aid, and would demand urgent-assistance from an advanced-first-aider. ‘Urgent’ was originally a code-word, for drop-what-you’re-doing-and-RUN. Over-use watered it down, in the style of the Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf!’, I may not have maintained an entirely neutral facial expression the 20th time I was called out on an ‘urgent’ first-aid to lift the antiseptic wipe and plaster out of the box, and hand them to the student.) 

Some people panic. Some don’t. I don’t, it’s one of the useful elements of my mental health issues. Useful in a high-end crisis, that is, it’s exceptionally draining day-to-day, to be alert and aware at-all-times, the body isn’t designed to cope with constant cortisol. 

The ‘panic’ was one aspect of unhelpful reactions to discovery or disclosure of self-harm. The platitudes were, in my opinion, more harmful. “Oh my God! What have you done that for? Your lovely skin! What would your Mum think?” All very natural, ‘maternal’ responses, to an incident that the observer had deemed unnatural, possibly abhorrent. (I’m parking the strand about ‘God-given, perfect bodies’, it’s too involved.) Self-harm is emotive, and it is difficult for some people to ‘disable’ the projection of their own emotions onto a person who has self injured. Yes, Linda, I know you find it disturbing, but we have an incredibly vulnerable student bleeding, and you’re telling them off for trying to cope the only way they know how, I find your eyebrows disturbing, I’m not mentioning it, am I? 

‘Coping’ is the element that a lot of people can’t grasp. Nail-biting, smoking, buying new handbags, that second glass of wine, that ‘naughty’ slice of cake, they’re coping-mechanisms that don’t involve cutting, so they must be OK, right? Every self-harmer has their own reasons, it’s a broad and sweeping generalisation to say we ‘control the only thing we have’, which is our physical body, but I’ll use it anyway, as an umbrella-term. For some people, self-harm ‘works’, and I feel the need to put a tobacco-style warning here “Smoking kills, don’t start.” (On the packaging for the product, hey-ho, I’ve just bought this pack of cancer, but the writing on it says not to start, so I’ll bin it.) Some people bite their fingernails when they’re stressed, some self-harm, there can be elements of subconscious-automatic to it, as well as the instances where it’s overload, or crisis-response. (Flashback to having to hide my hands under a table at work more than a decade ago, because I’d scratched myself until I bled, and wasn’t aware I’d done so until I noticed the blood under my fingernails. There’s the shame-element of “What have you done that for?”, we know we shouldn’t-do-it, that’s why most of us keep it covered.)    

Keeping it covered, ‘hiding’ it, is the reason I started writing this jumbled-rambling this morning. There is a risk, with vulnerable people, especially, but not exclusively young people, of ‘elective empathy’, of a sort of contagion. When I was at school myself, there were phases of ‘99 burns’, and ‘freeze-burns’ (I still have a scar on my arm from a freeze-burn, spraying aerosol body-spray directly onto the skin from too close a distance.) the phases were-and-were-not self-harm. We were deliberately self-inflicting injuries, but it wasn’t as a coping mechanism in poor mental health, it was a group-thing, and a kudos-thing, there wasn’t any social media, you’d show your mates your burn, or scratch, they’d either like it or not, and then you’d carry on as normal. We were showing off to each other, a really grim version of completing the football-stickers-album, in that we were collecting scars, by showing each other how ‘hard’ we were. (We were, in hindsight, idiots.) 

Instagram doesn’t want to be held responsible for contagion, copying, or a football-sticker “Got, got, need.” tasting menu of self-harm, so the company is taking measures to remove-or-ban content relating to self-harm. Fine business strategy, because there’s potential for legal action if people start saying they wouldn’t have self-harmed if they hadn’t seen someone else do it first. The UK government are pressurising all social media companies to follow suit, in an attempt to appear to be doing something about the current spike in mental health referrals. I AM an expert, if people want that content, they will find it. This is the twist in the tale. The platforms can cut the content, but the driving force behind many of the causes-of-cutting will be the other ‘cuts’. Austerity, in the UK, and the cutting-away of protective mechanisms here, and elsewhere. (Must NOT go off on a side-rant about how the last two years of blatantly damaging decisions by the US president have blunted our collective capacity to be shocked. He’s become normalised, and that shouldn’t be the case.) 

Water on a rock, we’ve absorbed austerity as a concept, as it has eroded us as individuals, and a society. When I left work in 2017, I was on the same salary band as I had been on in 2008, despite ‘absorbing the roles of others who had left through natural attrition.’ By the time I left, I was attempting to do three peoples’ jobs at once, within systems and processes that were stretched too painfully thin to have any hope of being effective. The school staff were fire-fighting, when we should have been preventing the fires catching hold in the first place. We couldn’t prevent them, because the agencies we needed for support were either being cut, or subject to such a high degree of pointless paperwork in the face of lessons-must-be-learned that they couldn’t spend time providing the services. Every single Serious Case Review concerning a death, or near-miss I’ve ever read has highlighted the same issues, time, and communication. If the government continues to cut funding, we will continue to see SCR findings that opportunities to intervene were missed due to time-constraints, and communication failed because there wasn’t the opportunity to repeatedly chase-and-check that actions had been implemented. 

Expanding out from then, to now, there’s a new level of cuts to deal with. I’m currently unemployed and disabled. I’ll always be disabled, the level to which it impacts on my life depends on the NHS. My brain haemorrhage was four years ago this month, and I have only just been referred for the Neurology and Mental Health interventions that really ought to have been in place from the start. We ‘cope’, until we don’t. The NHS is on its knees, I understand that my superficial functioning placed me at ‘the back of the queue’, it also placed me, and a lot of other people at risk. 

The UK disability benefit system hasn’t just been cut, it has been eviscerated. It took me 17 months of fighting to ‘qualify’ for assistance, ‘coping’-but-not-cutting, some people don’t manage that. It’s probable, but not prove-able that if my original application in 2016 had qualified, I wouldn’t be in this state now. It is irrefutably evident that the original decision that I was fit-for-work was incorrect, I placed myself, and others at risk of significant harm by trying to ‘get on with it.’ That length of time isn’t unusual, the deliberate stalling and obfuscation is part of the system, to cut the number of claims paid out. The recent government sound-bite that disability payments have increased will take into account the cost of the ‘Mandatory Reconsideration’ and tribunals, where those of us who can appear in court, to prove we are disabled-enough. In the majority of cases, DWP/PIP don’t even bother to send a representative to court to defend their incorrect decisions.

Universal Credit is absorbing the lower-level disability benefit of Employment Support Allowance. (The lower-rate ESA has been cut away completely, people who would have qualified for that historically now just have a box ticked, to say they have ‘limited capacity for work’.) Cuts. Job Centre staff will be faced with people who may never have been able to work, due to disabilities, and tasked with ‘empowering’ and ‘enabling’ them into employment. Good luck with that. The Work Capability Assessment, even in times of austerity, the government can find funds for that. The statistics on the number of people who die after being deemed ‘fit for work’ are horrendous, as are some people’s accounts of the assessment process. (Mine wasn’t too bad, the doctor decided he had enough information to be going on with when I had an episode of positional hypotension, I don’t suppose he wanted to take the risk of any of my noted brain aneurysms rupturing during the physical tests, imagine the paperwork.) The assessments are unpleasant, in most cases they’re unnecessary, and the ‘reports’ that come out of them are so removed from the reality of what happens during the assessment that people are starting to make covert recordings of them. (Don’t do that, it would likely be deemed inadmissible as evidence due to lack of informed consent. The paragraph on the forms about ‘approved equipment’ for audio-recording is there as a scare-tactic, tick the box to indicate you want DWP to record the assessment, I still haven’t checked my CD to see if there’s anything on it.) 

The number of people who die after being declared fit-for-work is shocking, but so is the number who don’t. We’re a whole different level of ‘Just about managing.’ The financial aspect is starting to be discussed in the media, an encouraging step away from ‘Life of Riley on benefits!’, it’s only enough to survive on if you’re very careful, paradoxical, because some of us have cognitive difficulties, mental health issues, or learning disabilities. It’s not a comfortable lifestyle, none of us would choose it if there was an alternative. In my case, I have a temporary reprieve from being expected to apply for ‘any suitable vacancy’, I’m using that time to try to access NHS provision, to make myself as functional as I can be. People declared fit for work when they really aren’t will be compelled into any kind of work the non-medically-trained Job Centre staff deem ‘suitable.’ Short-term cost-cutting, but at what long-term cost?  A high proportion will rebound back into the benefit systems, either through employers having to dismiss them because they’re not capable of doing the job, or through being in employment exacerbating the health issues, placing even more strain on the NHS.

The icing on the unpalatable cake, in the UK, is the omnishambles of Brexit. The money that has been thrown at it, the schisms and divisions, the pig-headed insistence that “We managed fine in the war!” Cutting ties with the EU has already been referred to  as ‘An act of national self-mutilation’ in the press. The uncertainty about potential outcomes, and the absolute refusal of the PM to consider a second referendum, now that the contingent who genuinely believed ‘No Deal’ meant ‘Nothing Changes’ are a little more furnished with facts is the polar opposite of ‘Strong and Stable.’ A lot of people are struggling with the uncertainty, and, in some, that lack-of-control will lead to self-harm as a coping mechanism. How very kind of the government to limit the ability of individuals to disclose self-harm, ‘for the sake of the children.’  

[wallythayer]

How Your Hormones Affect Weight Loss

If you’ve always had trouble losing weight and keeping it off, you may have a “hormonal clog,” which keeps your setpoint elevated.

In a nutshell, setpoint refers to the level of stored fat the body works to maintain by regulating your appetite and metabolism through your hormones, genes, and brain, regardless of the quantity of calories you take in or exercise off.

You see, there’s an invisible force inside you that is conspiring to cling to extra pounds, and it has nothing to do with calories, points, mail-order meals, cardiovascular exercise, or any of the conventional diet nonsense you’ve been fed — and that has failed you over and over for most of your life.

What’s truly holding you back — and what can permanently set you free — is your setpoint. Here’s the good news: It’s something you can control. And, when you control it, you stay naturally thin.

How Your Hormones Affect Your Setpoint Weight

You can’t hear it or see it, but there’s a whole lot of chitchat going on inside you all the time. Your gut, organs, muscle tissue, and fat tissue are constantly communicating with your nervous system and brain via chemical messengers called hormones. They “talk” about, for example, how much fuel they think you need to keep your weight stable at your setpoint. If they feel you’re at risk of your weight falling below your setpoint, they relay chemical messages that drive your appetite and cravings up and your daily calorie burn down.

When you eat high-quality calories, this conversation goes well. Higher-quality calories trigger fat-burning hormones. The right amount of hormones are used and the desired message is communicated: “Burn body fat.”

However, when you eat low-quality, processed calories, it’s like the phone lines break down. Your body doesn’t have a good idea of how much fuel you need. Hormones become “dysregulated,” and your body demands more food and hoards calories, because it does not know what is going on and errs on the side of not starving.

This “hormonal clog” elevates your setpoint and therefore triggers a 24/7/365 increase in appetite and cravings and a decrease in energy and calorie burn. More calories in and fewer calories out is what just about every cell in your body is telling you to do to survive. Even if you do grit your teeth and stick to your starvation diet and daily jog, this hormonal clog will cause your body to store more of the calories you eat as fat, while burning fewer off during exercise. In other words, you do what the “boot camp” instructor tells you: You “try harder,” but basic human biology causes your body to fight back by storing more and burning less.

Which Hormones Affect My Setpoint?

As you can see, hormones play a huge role in regulating your setpoint. Fortunately, you aren’t at their mercy. There’s a lot you can do to control your hormones and how they influence calories in, calories out, and setpoint. You just have to understand what they are and how they work. There are several main hormones that affect your setpoint and how well your body burns fat.

Leptin

Your fat cells produce a hormone called leptin, which signals your brain when it’s had enough food. As fat stores rise, more leptin is secreted, traveling to the brain with the message, “Your levels of body fat are on the rise so I’m going to make you feel full and fidgety so you unconsciously ‘eat less and exercise more.’” If fat levels fall, so do leptin levels, and your brain gets a strong hormonal signal to eat more and burn less. Leptin — not willpower — drives your motivation to eat and move.

Before you are victimized by internet ads for leptin supplements, please understand: Overweight people already have lots of leptin (remember, it’s secreted in proportion to the amount of fat on your body). The problem is, your setpoint gets elevated when you suffer from “leptin resistance,” in which the hormone is unable to get its message across. Therefore, increasing leptin levels to treat an elevated setpoint is as productive as adding water to a fish tank with no bottom.

You can ensure that leptin gets the job done by healing the metabolic breakdowns causing “leptin resistance.” Guess what makes the metabolic breakdowns worse? Conventional low-calorie, high-carb starvation diets.

Ghrelin

This hormone is all about appetite. Remember that when you cut calories and undereat, your body revolts. It starts defending a higher setpoint. As part of this defense, your brain signals an increase in ghrelin to get you to eat more. With traditional starvation diets, ghrelin increases. This is another big reason why traditional diets have failed you. They only make you hungrier and tell you to eat foods that caused the hormonal clog in the first place! Again, “you” are not doing anything “wrong.” Rather, ghrelin is out of balance, and you’ll be taking the right measures to get it back in check.

Insulin

We can’t talk about fat-burning hormones without talking about insulin, which is produced in the pancreas. For glucose to get into cells to be burned for fuel, it needs to open “doors” to the cells. These doors are the insulin receptors on the cells’ surfaces. Insulin’s function is to usher glucose into cells through those receptors.

When your body digests the sugars and starches you eat, it breaks them down into glucose, which gets absorbed into the bloodstream. Your insulin automatically spikes to shuttle the glucose into cells.

If you eat too much sugary, starchy, highly processed food, glucose levels stay elevated longer than they need to. More insulin is cranked out, and it has to work overtime. When insulin is elevated 24/7, insulin receptors on cells get so used to it that they stop recognizing it — a condition known as insulin resistance. Think of this situation like stuck doors; they (the cell receptors) just won’t open.

Insulin must still do its job of removing glucose from the bloodstream, however, so when most of the cells in the body won’t “open up” to it, the insulin has no choice but to take the glucose somewhere else: to your fat cells. Fat cells will always accept more energy for storage. This initiates the vicious cycle of high insulin, high blood-glucose levels, and, of course, more fat storage. If this cycle continues long enough, all the nonfat cells in your body scream, “We are starving!” This causes the body to respond by increasing its setpoint. In the wake of this increase comes obesity, insulin resistance, prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, and diabesity. Therefore, keeping insulin levels in check is vital not just for preventing diabetes, but also for maintaining a healthy, low setpoint and weight.

Testosterone

This hormone is commonly thought of as a male hormone, but both men and women need adequate testosterone levels to keep their setpoint low. Most adult women have about the same testosterone levels as a 10-year-old boy. That’s part of the reason it is harder for women to burn fat and build muscle than it is for men. Low levels of testosterone promote fat storage and inflammation. Excess testosterone in women, especially around menopause, is associated with insulin resistance and belly fat. You can see why having this hormone in the right balance is so important.

Eating lots of refined carbohydrates and soy foods will downshift testosterone and elevate setpoint, in both men and women. On the other hand, nutrient-dense proteins and whole-food fats as well as “eccentric” exercise optimizes testosterone, lowering your setpoint.

Estrogen

Like testosterone, estrogen is present in both men and women, though is higher in women. A few years prior to menopause, however, a woman’s estrogen levels begin to dip — which makes her body hold on to fat. The good news is that the same nutrition and lifestyle factors that optimize testosterone levels to favor a lower setpoint also shift estrogen in better balance for both women and men.

Stress Hormones

Secreted by the adrenal glands, stress hormones are involved in weight and hunger signals. One of the most influential on setpoint and weight is cortisol.

Among cortisol’s many functions is to trigger the release of insulin to get glucose into cells for the energy to deal with short-term stress. This is a part of your body’s survival response to stress. If a tiger starts chasing you (the typical type of short-term stress humans faced for the majority of our history), you need fuel fast. Then the crisis ends, the glucose is burned off, and a relaxation response gradually returns the body’s systems to normal.

This is a normal and lifesaving response from your body. The trouble is that your body responds to all stresses in the same way. If you are experiencing marital problems, financial worries, job stress, starvation, or worry, guilt, and shame over your weight, it’s all “a tiger is chasing you right now” from your body’s perspective.

This is not good because these chronic sources of stress cause your body to keep churning out cortisol as if you were always right on the verge of becoming a tiger snack. Because cortisol prompts the release of insulin, that hormone stays elevated, too, and based on what you just learned about insulin, this is all sorts of bad.

But wait, there’s more. The insulin resistance caused by this cortisol chaos triggers feedback to the brain indicating that cells aren’t getting glucose, which then leads to cravings for more glucose. Guess where you find the most glucose? Sugar and starches. Know what makes weight loss nearly impossible? Intense sugar and starch cravings. Also, now you know why when you get stressed, the comfort food craved always revolves around sugar and starch. Why? Your brain “thinks” it needs glucose to prevent a tiger from tearing you in half, so you end up tearing a bag of potato chips in half for your own survival.

In short, chronically elevated cortisol leads to increased insulin, insulin resistance, sugar and starch cravings, even more insulin, even more intense cravings, an elevated setpoint, weight gain, prediabetes, and then type 2 diabetes.

Thyroid Hormones

Restrictive, starvation-type dieting slows the function of your thyroid and your metabolism, thus elevating your setpoint. The thyroid produces the thyroid hormones: an inactive form called thyroxine (T4) and an active form called triiodothyronine (T3). The T4 is transported through the blood, and once it reaches each cell, it is converted to the active T3 form.

Both hormones regulate your metabolism, which, in turn, affects your setpoint along with your heart, brain, digestion, and other bodily systems. So if your thyroid isn’t rocking and rolling, it can affect almost every aspect of your health.

The most common problem is an underactive thyroid, or hypothyroidism, where levels of thyroid hormone are less than optimal. Among the main symptoms are fatigue, feeling cold, dry skin, weight gain (about 5 to 20 pounds), insulin resistance, depression, hair loss, and memory problems. More women than men suffer from hypothyroidism, largely due to fluctuating hormones during various life changes: onset of puberty, during and after pregnancy, at or just before menopause, and during postmenopause.

Other Setpoint Hormones

Cholecystokinin (CCK) is a hormone that is involved in satiety. Research has found that overeating can make receptors on cells less sensitive to CCK. This triggers another vicious cycle: The more low-quality food you eat, the less your body recognizes the signal to slow down.

Adiponectin is another hormone that affects setpoint. Secreted by fat cells, this helps regulate blood sugar and promotes fat-burning. In combination with leptin, it reverses insulin resistance. Levels stabilize when you lower your setpoint and replace starches and sweets with nonstarchy veggies and nutrient-dense proteins, and improve your fitness.

It’s Not About Calorie-Counting — or Willpower

I know this is a lot to take in. But understand that we all have a setpoint — and that’s what determines how thin or overweight we are long term. Not calorie-counting or traditional forms of exercising. When you increase the quality of your eating, exercise, and habits, you lower your setpoint — and get your body to burn fat rather than store it.

That’s what The Setpoint Diet is all about. It removes the willpower, shame, and guilt from the weight and diabetes equation. It ends the frustration and the yo-yo dieting. It stops the painful and expensive health consequences of diabesity, and does it with a proven system that will set the naturally thin person inside you free once and for all.

Adapted from the book THE SETPOINT DIET: The 21-Day Program to Permanently Change What Your Body “Wants” to Weigh by Jonathan Bailor. Copyright (c) Jonathan Bailor by Hachette Books.  Reprinted with permission of Hachette Book Group, New York, NY.  All rights reserved.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/how-your-hormones-affect-weight-loss/

[sustainability-organicproject-aa]

“An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” A Movie That We Should All Watch. A Climate Leader’s Perspective.

January 30, 2018

by Aileen F. Amador Ferrand

One of the most important and powerful documentaries of our times, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” is already available in HD digital version and DVD in Europe.  It is the second part of  “An Inconvenient Truth,” the famous documentary by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, which won an Oscar in 2006.  This new movie, establishes that the climate crisis is urgent, and that we should act fast to save our planet.  Fortunately, now more than before, there are viable solutions.  The importance that this documentary has in our lives is crucial.  Thus, if you did not see this movie in theatres, you must see it now.

In 2006 when an “An Inconvenient Truth” was released, this film captivated me. The world was in serious trouble and I had to act to save it.  As part of my job as an environmental advisor for the Government of Puerto Rico, in different occasions I had the opportunity to work and draft various laws, rules and public policies that promoted solar energy, green buildings, and energy conservation, among others.  In fact, while working with the then Energy Affairs Administration, I wrote, the first Rule on Solar Photovoltaic Equipment and Installers.  An act that significantly triggered solar panel installations in the Island.  

Nevertheless, I always wanted to do more so in 2017, I decided to attend the Al Gore Climate Leadership Corps seminar, in Denver, Colorado.  It was a wonderful experience. I had the opportunity to engage with other future Climate Leaders that had my same energy and enthusiasm.  We all shared an equal respect for Mother Nature and wanted to contribute to safeguarding it.

After several excellent introductory speeches the long awaited moment arrived: Al Gore came on stage to teach us how to do his famous PowerPoint presentation. Immediately, I was impressed by his vast knowledge on the subject.  Gore has more than 30,000 slides with crucial information about climate change, but somehow he has condensed his presentation so that it can be done in one hour. Without a doubt, in my opinion, he is one of the most knowledgeable persons on this topic in the planet.

I was highly impressed also by the humility displayed by this human being.  All throughout the conference he tried to limit any praise given to his persona even though in several occasions we gave him standing ovations.  At all moments he demonstrated great attention and respect to each person he interviewed or engaged in conversation, no matter the country of origin, the race, gender, age, social condition, or level of knowledge about climate change.

Gore has a clear mission and a great compromise with the planet and that is his focus.  His purpose with these trainings is to convert us into climate leaders so that we educate people that are not aware of the dangers of climate change and ultimately inspire change.

What are these dangers? While Gore started to explain these, suddenly, I found myself daydreaming, and imagining what the world would be like if Gore had been the President of the U.S…. I thought “what a contrast with what we are living today!”

A not so positive slide moved me out of my reverie, and brought me back to reality.  “Sixteen of the hottest years on record, since measurements began in 1880, have occurred since 2001,” Gore expressed.  “The world is cooking bit by bit,” I thought.  In fact, 2016 was the hottest year on record  since measurements began in 1880.  In tandem, 2017 was the second hottest year on record, according to NASA  and the European Union’s climate monitoring program. On average the planet’s surface temperature has risen 1.1 degrees Celsius (2°F) hotter than preindustrial era years. Scientists have seen this warming trend and are thus significantly alarmed.

In reality we should all be alarmed by this dire fact. In different parts of the world we are already registering extremely high temperatures above what the human body can tolerate. According to Al Gore’s presentation the heat index in Iran (Bandar Mahshar) reached 165°F (74°C).  In May 2016, India established a heat record of 123.8°F (51°C).  In response the Indian government distributed water to prevent dehydration and deaths, since 2,330 people died during the last heat wave in 2015.  Climate change will cause these heat waves to be more frequent. It is estimated that in 2100, 74% of the world’s population will experiment more than 20 days of deadly heat waves.

In June 2017, extremely dangerous temperatures soared in the western U.S. California, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona all registered temperatures that broke records.  For example, 127°F in Death Valley, CA, 122°F in Palm Springs, CA, 117°F in Las Vegas and 118°F in Phoenix, Arizona. Due to the extreme heat, flights in Phoenix, Arizona had to be cancelled.  

Parallel to the increase in temperatures, the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, obtained, in April 2017, a measurement of 410 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere, setting a new record.  According to scientists in an article from Scientific American, we have not reached this concentration of CO2 in millions of years, and thus they predict that we are entering in what is known as climate’s danger zone, where our own survival is at stake.

In 2017 the effects of climate change were indeed evident and dramatic. Every day on the news it was like “taking a nature hike in the Book of Revelation,” as Gore says. A gigantic platform of ice Larsen C broke off in Antartica in July of 2017.  The melting of the poles continued reaching historically low levels, contributing to sea level rise worldwide.  The Artic ice cap melted to hundreds of thousands of square miles below average in the summer of 2017, which was the eighth lowest year in the 38-year satellite record. The loss of Arctic sea ice is clear from space.

The 2017 California wildfire season was one of the worst and most destructive on record.  The Washington Post reported “[n]early 9,000 wildfires tore through the state, burning 1.2 million acres of land (an area the size of Delaware or the Larsen C iceberg), destroying more than 10,800 structures and killing at least 46 people.”  Forest fires also scorched parts of Portugal and Spain this past October killing at least 44 people.

It is as if Mother Nature is giving us a message. One that if not heeded can likely worsen.  It is estimated that in this century we may or will experience food and water shortages, a proliferation in pandemic diseases and an expansion of inhabitable areas. In turn these can augment the number of climate refugees and more disputes can unfold as a consequence.  

How does this affect Puerto Rico?

According to a study published in Nature Climate Change magazine, heat waves will affect tropical areas more, since warmer temperatures combined with humidity require a smaller margin to reach dangerous heat levels.  More humans in these areas will be exposed to heat stress.

Al Gore was very emphatic regarding the link between heat temperature rise and health. He spoke about the Puerto Rican Zika epidemic and how climate change has contributed to the propagation of Zika in the Island.  This is very revealing since many people ignore this connection.  Climate change causes mosquitoes to reproduce faster, bite more and the virus incubates faster inside the mosquito. I always remember how in his first documentary, he had warned us about the spike in diseases of this type.

Tropics will also suffer more frequent and stronger hurricanes. The ocean traps ninety three percent of excess heat generated by greenhouse gas pollution.  As Gore says, this is like putting storms “on steroids.”  We saw the devastating path of Katrina in 2005 and superstorm Sandy in 2012, later Haiyan in 2013, one of the worst typhoons to hit the Philippines.  The 2017 hurricane season, with the passing of Harvey, Irma and Maria, is a testament to what it is like to live in a warmer planet. Hurricane Harvey in Texas brought 82 deaths, surreal flooding in Houston and coastal areas, and the US record for rainfall from a single storm, dumping 51 inches of rain, in parts of Texas.

For the Caribbean and Puerto Rico the latter two were devastating.  Irma wreaked havoc in its path. I still remember the images of utter destruction and chaos from St. Martin, St. Barths, Barbuda, the British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, Cuba and Florida.  

Puerto Rico is still suffering the onslaught of Maria, a category 4 hurricane that left the entire Island without electricity, access to water, food and basic necessities.  Today, roughly four months after, there are about half a million people without electricity and thousands without water.

The excess heat also causes more water to evaporate from the oceans and the soils and thus the planet experiences more extreme rain episodes, floods and droughts. In September 2017 Italy suffered such an extreme drought, that it had to turn off its famous fountains.  Puerto Rico has experienced in the last few years both droughts and extreme rainfall.  We cannot forget the droughts that occurred during 2014-2016.  In particular the intensity of the 2015 drought, considered as the worst drought in the last 100 years. It was more severe than the 1994, 1967 and the 1968 droughts.

The International Scene

There are other climate change effects such as declining agricultural yields, intense droughts and the connection with the war in Syria, which are explained in the film, and this is why I exhort you to watch it.  Al Gore does an extraordinary job connecting world events related to climate change that people in general are not aware or see them as isolated.

Gore maintains an optimistic attitude in spite of battling for years for this cause and the reversal demonstrated by the new U.S. administration when they announced their exit from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. This international agreement, signed by almost every country on the planet, has a goal to maintain the increase in temperature well below 2°C, and ideally limit it at 1.5°C.  After all, in the U.S. more than 1,400 cities, states and businesses have professed their compromise with the Paris Agreement.  

Worldwide, he believes we are starting to experience a sustainability revolution. There has been a substantial increment in the use of solar and wind energy. Since 2011, investments in renewable energies have surpassed investments in fossil fuel derived energies. Today, 9.8 million people work directly or indirectly with renewable energy. Carbon is staying behind as a primary source of energy.  

There are other less optimistic points of view.  “The Uninhabitable Earth,” an article published by the New York Magazine on July 2017, read by around two million people, predicts a very depressing future for the planet.

Gore, notwithstanding, firmly believes that we are going to win this battle.  In the truth we have the power.  “Can we? Shall we? Will we?” he asks at the end of his presentation and cites the U.S. poet, Wallace Stevens: “After the last no comes a yes, and on that yes, the future world depends.”

End

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The Anatomy of Procrastination

By procrastinating, a person doesn’t know what they have done for around 218 minutes a day. In other words, more than 3 hours go missing every single day, and about 55 days — almost 2 months are lost every year. Imagine every night you put 100 bucks in your wallet, and the next morning when you open it, 30 bucks are missing and you don’t know where the money has gone. This is what procrastination does.

We all procrastinate, and we procrastinate a lot.

Even if you do make an effort to fight procrastination, the tide is against you.

Modern Living Has Made It Even Easier to Procrastinate

Not only is procrastination tough to beat – but it’s getting even tougher. The percentage of chronic procrastinators has grown from about 5 percent in 1978, to 26 percent in 2007, as shown in a study by University of Calgary.[1]

In today’s always-connected age, there are constant temptations to choose procrastination over action. Checking the latest news, updating social media accounts, and chatting digitally with friends from around the world. It’s literally a non-stop cycle of news, notifications and quirky YouTube videos.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. The internet is a great thing, and has brought about a communications revolution. The problem is that without control on your part, the internet can suck your life and energy – just like an electronic vampire.

And you don’t need to take my word for it either. A recent study by Webtrate showed that email and social media stole an hour of productivity per workday for about 36 percent of people, while 16 percent lost more than an hour.[2]

The trend towards procrastination is a powerful one – but technology is not the the only thing to blame.

At Its Core, Procrastination Is About Our Emotions

It turns out that procrastination is at the core of each of us.

Procrastination is strongly linked to our emotions. Let’s briefly talk about biology — the limbic system. This system acts as the brain’s emotional center. It’s developed to manage circuitry attributed to the fight-or-flight response.[3] In other words, the limbic system primes us to ‘feel’ first.

When our feelings are negative (e.g., when we hear bad news), we look for ways to distract ourselves. Usually, this involves giving into instant pleasures such as: chocolate, social media and TV marathons.

The same thing applies to procrastination. Say you need to complete a project at work that involves tons of research. Unfortunately for you, research is something that you don’t enjoy, so you find yourself constantly looking for ways to avoid starting (let alone finishing) the project. This might involve making lots of coffee or tea, chatting with colleagues, or working on anything other than the project.

Procrastination and emotions are eternally linked, and unless you discover how to step out of this union, you’ll be forever destined to be weak and hesitant. Fortunately, there are ways to break free.

The 5 Procrastination Personalities

Our instinct to navigate to instant pleasure first has led to five distinct ‘procrastinator personalities.’ Let’s take a look at each of these personalities – and see if you can identify yourself in the process.

1. The Perfectionist

Being perfect is the pleasure perfectionists want. But often this leads to them being too scared to show any imperfections. Because of this, they frequently fail to complete things, as they’re forever seeking the perfect timing or approach. Tasks end up never being completed, because in the eyes of the perfectionist, things are never perfect enough.

You’ve no doubt encountered these types (and you may even be one of them) in your day-to-day life. In the office, perfectionists can be found staring intently at their screens, as they continually make minor changes to their spreadsheets, documents and presentations. Instead of finishing something, they get caught up in a never-ending cycle of additions, edits, and deletions. Someone needs to tell them that perfection is rarely realized.

2. The Dreamer

Dreaming is fun when compared to real life – which involves lots of challenges and difficulties. It’s no wonder that a dreamer prefers to stay in the dreaming stage. That way, they don’t have to work for real, or deal with any negativity or stress.

Dreaming gives this type of people a false sense of achievement, as in their minds, they envision big, ambitious plans. Unfortunately for them, these plans will most likely stay as dreams, and they’ll never accomplish anything truly worthwhile.

You probably know someone like this. Every time you meet them, they tell you of their grandiose ideas and goals, but not once do they state what they’re doing to bring these dreams into reality. After years of hearing their stories, you come to a valid conclusion: they’re just dreamers.

3. The Avoider

Avoiders have bought into the line that ‘by doing nothing, bad things won’t happen.’

In reality, avoiders have developed a fear of making mistakes or doing anything wrong. Their way to avoid these mishaps, is to do nothing at all. In the end, they may make few mistakes – but they also see few accomplishments.

In the workplace, avoiders are easy to spot. They seldom speak, preferring to keep themselves to themselves. They also lack proactivity, instead, they favor the motto: ‘I’ll just do the bare minimum.’ They may regard themselves as solid and reliable workers, but in reality, they lack drive, ambition and the spark of life.

4. The Crisis-maker

Crisis-makers are those who believe that deadlines can push them to do better. Instead of having a schedule to complete their work – they prefer to enjoy time doing their own thing before the deadline comes around.

It’s most likely an unconscious thing, but crisis-makers evidently believe that starting early will sacrifice their time for pleasure. This is reinforced in their minds and feelings, by the many times they manage to get away with burning the midnight oil. Often they sacrifice the quality of their work because of rushing it.

Without naming the individual, let me tell you the story of a crisis-maker I used to work with. He was a party lover, and frequently came to work late – and not in the best state either. He was blessed with charisma, and so was able to come across in meetings as focused, organized and determined. The real story was that his work would be left until the very last minute, when he would then make a massive effort to finish it. Sometimes this went well, other times his work was littered with careless and costly mistakes.

5. The Busy Procrastinator

A busy procrastinator is certainly busy – but they lack the ability to prioritize their work. They do what they feel like they should do, rather than thinking through what they really need to do.

Prioritizing tasks is a step that takes extra time, so a busy procrastinator will feel it’s not worth it. In these cases, they delay doing what’s really important, because they don’t actually recognize it as being important. Because of this, they usually end up doing a lot of effortless tasks that don’t contribute much to a project.

I come across busy procrastinators all the time. They look super busy, but their output and results reveal their lack of organizational skills. They’re incessantly busy on low-impact tasks, but seem oblivious to urgent, high-impact tasks. It’s the equivalent to a thirsty cat licking the outside of a bowl filled with milk – its efforts are focused on the wrong place!

If you suffer from procrastination, identify which of the above personality types you most closely match. Once you’ve done that, take some time to reflect on how you became like that, and then think of ways to step outside of your conditioned behavior. For example, if you’re a dreamer, look for ways to turn your dreams into reality. In most cases, you’ll need an end goal – and a plan to get there. You’ll also make it easy on yourself if you take small, but certain, steps at a time.

Understand It to Beat It

Everyone has a different reason to procrastinate, but every reason points to our prime to feel first. By understanding how your emotions make procrastination happen, you can figure out the exact action to turn around the negativity.

Don’t let procrastination steal your life. Be active, be confident, and become a person of accomplishment.

Featured photo credit: Vimeo via vimeo.com

Reference

[1]^Gazette Times: Professor’s study gives procrastination a bad name[2]^The Week: Why we can’t stop procrastinating, according to science[3]^Boundless: The Limbic System

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[dimenovelsfromoblivion]

A Modern Woman’s Old Testament

Abby was sitting on the edge of her bed with her phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder while her hands held open her boot wide enough or her to slide in her foot. She was having an ill-timed conversation with her younger sister who grappled with quite a bit more uncertainty in her life than her ambitious sibling.

“I know there will be guys there, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to go,” said Abbey nearly falling backward as she pulled her boot up.

“Well, first off its a cow,” Abbey said with some annoyance in her voice.

“Oh, ok, whatever I’m sure this particular cow had a hand in the creation of the universe,” Abbey snapped. “Go ahead and pray to it I’ve gotta get to to work.”

“Ok I love you too,” Abbey sighed.

She tossed the phone on the bed and groaned in frustration. Her sister’s plethora of personal problems was more than she could manage at the moment. She was having a rare crisis of her own and sooner rather than later she was going to have to resolve it one way or another.

Her fiance Mark having once been an integral part of her before I reach 40 life plan was showing some very worrisome signs that she may have been on the wrong horse. The topic of reproduction was one that hadn’t often discussed at great lengths in their relationship. They both had promising careers and were both enjoying the disposable income and the waning years of what might be considered their youth far too much to consider taking on the responsibility of children.

That started to change when Mark’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. Now over the last few months, having kids went from something to think about at a later more stagnant stage of life to an emergency for Mark. Abby knew the pressure was primarily coming from his mother and she did feel guilty actively denying a dying woman the wish of cradling a grandchild at least once before it was too late. The truth was, though, for Abby it was just the wrong time, and nothing was going to change that.

At 33 years old Abbey was in what she considered her “golden years.” This was the time she would have as a fully cognizant and fully functioning adult to live the life and have the career she spent nearly fifteen years working to attain. This was the segment of her life where she would have the greatest opportunity to achieve as much in her field as humanly possible. It was a relatively small bloc of time, and she was determined to work harder than ever to make the most of it. She was not going to sacrifice that part of her life and that fulfillment of her existence to make someone’s final wish come true.

She went to the bedroom mirror and hastily ran a brush through her hair. She encountered some tangles and winced in pain as she tore right through them. She studied her face in the mirror and decided she looked fine, besides there was no time left for any touch ups. She grabbed her handbag and went to the kitchen to grab her breakfast smoothie. She saw Mark sitting at the table tapping on his phone. He didn’t look up at her, so she assumed he was still angry about last night’s argument.

She decided to try and break the ice “Ugh still more frogs and locusts,” she said with frustration. “I hope my umbrella holds up.”

“Yeah,” Mark curtly replied still not looking up from the screen.

“Make sure to pick up some lambs blood today to put on the door. Hannah said she heard the angel of death was probably going to pass through her sometime tonight,” she said before taking a gulp of the viscus breakfast drink.

“Why? We don’t have a firstborn to worry about,” Mark said condescendingly.

Abby was now too annoyed to continue her pursuit of reconciliation. She slammed the fridge door shut. “Ok Mark this is getting really old and really fucking annoying,” she hissed.

“You know what’s really fucking annoying is having a fiance who doesn't give a shit what I or my family, soon to be her family wants!” He fired back.

“Mark, you knew going into this I wasn’t going to be ready for kids for quite a while it isn’t fair to suddenly spring it on me like this,” she retorted sharply.

“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know this was going happen?!” Demanded Mark. “I’m sorry I didn’t consider how my mother diagnosed with fucking cancer might get in the way of your career path!” Shouted Mark.

“Do you even understand what you’re asking Mark?! Do you?! It’s not you who's going to have to give up your career, destroy your body, and spend an indefinite period dealing with fluctuating hormones!” Abby railed, her white cheeks now burning with a crimson hue.

“Plenty of other women have done it and lived,” Mark said dismissively.

Abby took a deep breath and composed herself. “Whatever Mark I have to go,” she said with a voice filled with the tension of restrained fury.

Mark rolled his eyes, “Yeah like always,” he mumbled.

She marched in a way that wasn’t stomping but still the impact of her step declared her anger. She closed the door firmly but couldn't be considered a slam.

Outside the air was saturated with buzzing clouds of locusts that flew through the air without regard of what they might smash into. Car windows were covered with their splattered bodies and severed angular limbs.

“Ugh,” her face contorted with disgust.

She reached into her handbag and realized she had forgotten to bring her umbrella. She looked back at the door. She felt she had left holding the high ground and she couldn't risk that by going back in. She was hesitant to walk through the storm of wings saturating the air. She held her breath, kept her head down, and her shoulders and went into the swarm head on.

She recoiled from the sound of their vibrating wings tickling her ear. She could feel them pelting her through her coat. She lifted gaze she was almost to her car.

She decided to abandon the cautious approach and make a break for it.   She got in her car and shut the door.  The sound of the swarm was muffled by the car and soon faded into white noise. She started her car and gripped the wheel. The veil of denial tired around her eyes had slipped. The futility of the conflict between her and Mark and its implications were now clear and undeniable. She let go of the wheel, shut her eyes, and started taking deep even breaths. An emotional torrent in her gut was trying to blast it’s way up but she pushed it back down, and soon it became mild nausea. She opened her eyes and checked her vanity mirror. She shot herself a practiced smile. She held the friendly expression for a moment until she was convinced it looked authentic enough.

She was started by the sudden thud of something hitting her windshield. Smeared on the glass was a red and pink mush with a bent and twitching from leg stick out of the muck.

“Shit it’s the frogs,” She growled. She put her car into drive and sped off down the road. She was working a bit out of town today, the clinic was considerably longer than her commute, and that added stress of running late was something she didn’t need. She took some solace in the full proof excuse the frogs and locusts gave her but what to do about Mark?

That was the question she had grapple with during her long quiet commute. Breaking an engagement was going to be hard enough breaking an engagement with a fiance with a dying mother was a complication she had no known precedent to turn to, no personal confidant to advise a graceful exit. It was going to be a long day.

A hot white flash filled her rear view mirror, and the earth itself began to tremble. She gripped the steering wheel and brought the car to a controlled stop and kept her eyes fixed on the floor. The buckling road settled and the car became still The light gave way to a city-sized pillar of smoke that was quickly swallowing the sky.

Abby breathed a sigh of relief. “Don’t look back,” she reminded herself as she shifted back to drive and pressed on the gas.

[trendingnewsb]

The Anatomy of Procrastination

By procrastinating, a person doesn’t know what they have done for around 218 minutes a day. In other words, more than 3 hours go missing every single day, and about 55 days — almost 2 months are lost every year. Imagine every night you put 100 bucks in your wallet, and the next morning when you open it, 30 bucks are missing and you don’t know where the money has gone. This is what procrastination does.

We all procrastinate, and we procrastinate a lot.

Even if you do make an effort to fight procrastination, the tide is against you.

Modern Living Has Made It Even Easier to Procrastinate

Not only is procrastination tough to beat – but it’s getting even tougher. The percentage of chronic procrastinators has grown from about 5 percent in 1978, to 26 percent in 2007, as shown in a study by University of Calgary.[1]

In today’s always-connected age, there are constant temptations to choose procrastination over action. Checking the latest news, updating social media accounts, and chatting digitally with friends from around the world. It’s literally a non-stop cycle of news, notifications and quirky YouTube videos.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. The internet is a great thing, and has brought about a communications revolution. The problem is that without control on your part, the internet can suck your life and energy – just like an electronic vampire.

And you don’t need to take my word for it either. A recent study by Webtrate showed that email and social media stole an hour of productivity per workday for about 36 percent of people, while 16 percent lost more than an hour.[2]

The trend towards procrastination is a powerful one – but technology is not the the only thing to blame.

At Its Core, Procrastination Is About Our Emotions

It turns out that procrastination is at the core of each of us.

Procrastination is strongly linked to our emotions. Let’s briefly talk about biology — the limbic system. This system acts as the brain’s emotional center. It’s developed to manage circuitry attributed to the fight-or-flight response.[3] In other words, the limbic system primes us to ‘feel’ first.

When our feelings are negative (e.g., when we hear bad news), we look for ways to distract ourselves. Usually, this involves giving into instant pleasures such as: chocolate, social media and TV marathons.

The same thing applies to procrastination. Say you need to complete a project at work that involves tons of research. Unfortunately for you, research is something that you don’t enjoy, so you find yourself constantly looking for ways to avoid starting (let alone finishing) the project. This might involve making lots of coffee or tea, chatting with colleagues, or working on anything other than the project.

Procrastination and emotions are eternally linked, and unless you discover how to step out of this union, you’ll be forever destined to be weak and hesitant. Fortunately, there are ways to break free.

The 5 Procrastination Personalities

Our instinct to navigate to instant pleasure first has led to five distinct ‘procrastinator personalities.’ Let’s take a look at each of these personalities – and see if you can identify yourself in the process.

1. The Perfectionist

Being perfect is the pleasure perfectionists want. But often this leads to them being too scared to show any imperfections. Because of this, they frequently fail to complete things, as they’re forever seeking the perfect timing or approach. Tasks end up never being completed, because in the eyes of the perfectionist, things are never perfect enough.

You’ve no doubt encountered these types (and you may even be one of them) in your day-to-day life. In the office, perfectionists can be found staring intently at their screens, as they continually make minor changes to their spreadsheets, documents and presentations. Instead of finishing something, they get caught up in a never-ending cycle of additions, edits, and deletions. Someone needs to tell them that perfection is rarely realized.

2. The Dreamer

Dreaming is fun when compared to real life – which involves lots of challenges and difficulties. It’s no wonder that a dreamer prefers to stay in the dreaming stage. That way, they don’t have to work for real, or deal with any negativity or stress.

Dreaming gives this type of people a false sense of achievement, as in their minds, they envision big, ambitious plans. Unfortunately for them, these plans will most likely stay as dreams, and they’ll never accomplish anything truly worthwhile.

You probably know someone like this. Every time you meet them, they tell you of their grandiose ideas and goals, but not once do they state what they’re doing to bring these dreams into reality. After years of hearing their stories, you come to a valid conclusion: they’re just dreamers.

3. The Avoider

Avoiders have bought into the line that ‘by doing nothing, bad things won’t happen.’

In reality, avoiders have developed a fear of making mistakes or doing anything wrong. Their way to avoid these mishaps, is to do nothing at all. In the end, they may make few mistakes – but they also see few accomplishments.

In the workplace, avoiders are easy to spot. They seldom speak, preferring to keep themselves to themselves. They also lack proactivity, instead, they favor the motto: ‘I’ll just do the bare minimum.’ They may regard themselves as solid and reliable workers, but in reality, they lack drive, ambition and the spark of life.

4. The Crisis-maker

Crisis-makers are those who believe that deadlines can push them to do better. Instead of having a schedule to complete their work – they prefer to enjoy time doing their own thing before the deadline comes around.

It’s most likely an unconscious thing, but crisis-makers evidently believe that starting early will sacrifice their time for pleasure. This is reinforced in their minds and feelings, by the many times they manage to get away with burning the midnight oil. Often they sacrifice the quality of their work because of rushing it.

Without naming the individual, let me tell you the story of a crisis-maker I used to work with. He was a party lover, and frequently came to work late – and not in the best state either. He was blessed with charisma, and so was able to come across in meetings as focused, organized and determined. The real story was that his work would be left until the very last minute, when he would then make a massive effort to finish it. Sometimes this went well, other times his work was littered with careless and costly mistakes.

5. The Busy Procrastinator

A busy procrastinator is certainly busy – but they lack the ability to prioritize their work. They do what they feel like they should do, rather than thinking through what they really need to do.

Prioritizing tasks is a step that takes extra time, so a busy procrastinator will feel it’s not worth it. In these cases, they delay doing what’s really important, because they don’t actually recognize it as being important. Because of this, they usually end up doing a lot of effortless tasks that don’t contribute much to a project.

I come across busy procrastinators all the time. They look super busy, but their output and results reveal their lack of organizational skills. They’re incessantly busy on low-impact tasks, but seem oblivious to urgent, high-impact tasks. It’s the equivalent to a thirsty cat licking the outside of a bowl filled with milk – its efforts are focused on the wrong place!

If you suffer from procrastination, identify which of the above personality types you most closely match. Once you’ve done that, take some time to reflect on how you became like that, and then think of ways to step outside of your conditioned behavior. For example, if you’re a dreamer, look for ways to turn your dreams into reality. In most cases, you’ll need an end goal – and a plan to get there. You’ll also make it easy on yourself if you take small, but certain, steps at a time.

Understand It to Beat It

Everyone has a different reason to procrastinate, but every reason points to our prime to feel first. By understanding how your emotions make procrastination happen, you can figure out the exact action to turn around the negativity.

Don’t let procrastination steal your life. Be active, be confident, and become a person of accomplishment.

Featured photo credit: Vimeo via vimeo.com

Reference

[1]^Gazette Times: Professor’s study gives procrastination a bad name[2]^The Week: Why we can’t stop procrastinating, according to science[3]^Boundless: The Limbic System

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