#like covid forced me to get way better at being adaptable but my brain still Hates It

[dandp]

Excited to announce I think I'm officially an adult now (just turned off the lights in my room and had a sobbing meltdown at work)

[carriagelamp]

Book Review - Summer Summary 2020

I didn’t get around to doing an individual post for the books I read in June/July/August, so I decided to choose a dozen that I read over the summer... I’d separate the wheat from the chaff for you so to speak. Though like you’re about to find out, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were all good by any means...

Crave

My girlfriend got this for me to “tide me over until Midnight Sun”. Between you and me, I think she was taking the piss. Anyway, Crave is very... standard fare paranormal YA school romance with the added flare of being written by an adult erotica writer, meaning the rhythm and tone of this novel is fucking bonkers. If you want to read the novel without reading the novel, just take Twilight and the entire Vampire Academy series, shove them in a blend, and force down the sludge you get from that. Normal Average Girl Goes To Secret School In Alaska For Vampire, Werewolves and Dragons. That’s this book. It is so big and so so so bad. I finished it out of spite, please don’t do that to yourself. Unless you are really craving (hurr hurr) some top tier trashy paranormal romance, in which case... no judgment.

The Last Firehawk

The Last Firehawk is a Scholastic “Branches” series, written for beginning readers (grade 1-3ish, depending on the child’s reading level). It has short stories, big text, and awesome pictures on every page. Guys. I unironically am adoring this series. It’s simple and is introducing children to a number of classic elements in the fantasy quest genre, but it is so charming. Friends Tag and Skyla discover a firehawk egg, and species that is supposed to have disappeared long ago. When Blaze hatches from it, the three are tasked with going out and finding the magical ember stone which was hidden long ago by the firehawks and which could be used to defeat the evil vulture Thorn and his dark magic... I read the first two books to second graders who ate it up and read the next four books because I personally wanted to continue the series. If you have young readers in your life (or just want a fun kid adventure) then please try these they’re the literary equivalent of nibbling on a chocolate chip cookie.

Lupin III: World’s Most Wanted #3

All the kind people that still follow my tumblr and haven’t tried to murder me because of my Lupin obsession are not going to be surprised by this one. I finally read one of the manga for this series and honestly I’m delighted. Somehow even hornier than the show, but hilariously funny. I felt like I was reading a more adult version of Spy Vs Spy. It’s a bunch of short, individual bits/adventures with lots of visual gags and an artstyle that is really different and delightful.

River of Teeth / Taste of Marrow (American Hippo series)

I’ve talked about River of Teeth before, but I finally finished the American Hippo duology and need to sing its praise. This is an alternate history series composed of two novellas that explore the question What would have happened if the States had decided to import hippos as livestock...? Anyways, my pitch for you: queer hippo cowboys. That’s all it took for me to read it. You have a gay gunslinger who loves his hippo to death, a nonbinary explosives-expert / poisoner who is the main love interest, a fat con artist who spoils her hippo and is the only voice of reason in this entire series, and a latina mother-to-be who is the scariest assassin in the entire series and is obviously scheming. The four of them are brought together on a job to deal with the Mississippi’s feral hippo problem.

IT’S A QUEER HIPPO COWBOY HEIST NOVEL GUYS I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M STILL TALKING AND YOU HAVEN’T JUST GONE TO READ THIS YET.

Petals to the Metal (The Adventure Zone series)

The graphic novel adaptation to the McElroy family’s DND podcast The Adventure Zone. Most of you are probably aware of this? It’s a great adaptation, it hits all the important beats, shows off the characters really well, and still gets lots of good gags in even while condensing entire arcs into single book stories. This one is probably my favourite so far just because Petals to the Metal was one of my favourite arcs in the show... but you can also see how the art has improved and the chaos of the race is fun to see drawn out.

If you like The Adventure Zone but haven’t tried the graphic novels yet -- would recommend! If you’ve always wanted to listen to The Adventure Zone but don’t have time for such a long series or struggle to focus on podcasts then pick up the first book of this series (Here There Be Gerblins) and try reading it! It really is an enjoyable adaptation.

Pony to the Rescue (Pony Pals series)

I continued my April/May theme of reading old-school chapter book series to combat Covid Brain Fry, so I picked up a few Pony Pals books. I read these as a kid and always enjoy them -- there’s just something so appealing to a child about having a horse. It gives your child characters a level of independence and ability to explore that you wouldn’t get otherwise. These books definitely read young, but they were nostalgic to revisit.

Small Spaces

A really cool middle grade horror novel I picked up. Maybe it’s because I live around a lot of corn fields, but farm/scarecrow themed horror absolutely does it for me. One evening, after seeing a woman try to destroy a strange, old book, eleven year old Ollie doesn’t stop to think, instead stealing the book and running. That’s how she becomes wrapped up in the strange, sinister story of a cursed family and creature called the Smiling Man that seems to live out in the foggy fields. While unsettling, Ollie tries to remind herself that it’s just a story... but this becomes more challenging when her school bus breaks down one day out their own set of fields, and a fog is rolling in...

“Avoid large spaces. Stick to small.”

Snot Girl #1 - #2

A Canadian graphic novel series by the creator of the Scott Pilgrim series! I love his work so I decided to give Snotgirl a try, even though it’s not generally my genre. I’m glad I did! First book took a while for me to get into, but by the time I hit the second I was really wrapped up in the mystery and character development. Snotgirl is about Lottie, a self-consumed fashion blogger whose biggest struggles are dealing with her allergies, frustration with her fellow-blogger friends, and how entirely her self-esteem is tied to her “beauty” and how people view her. But everything shifts in strange and horrifying ways when Lottie starts taking a new allergy medication, meets a new friend... and then witnesses that girl’s death. Or does she?

Seriously, or does she? I have no idea, I need to read the third book. This book is full of intrigue, complicated relationships, murder (or not?), and a healthy dose of magical realism to keep you guessing. If you like slice-of-life, crime, and abstract reality then this series is world a try. Plus the art is gorgeous.

Summer Wars #1 - #2

I recently rewatched Summer Wars (still one of my favourite movies) and decided to read the two-book manga adaptation. It was a really neat little adaptation. The creator of the movie gave the writer free range to tweak things to fit better in a manga format, which means some movie elements were allowed to fade into the background, whereas other aspects were fulled into the forefront and fleshed out to a greater degree. It was very cool, it kept the same story but gave you new things to think about which I wasn’t expecting. Reading this as a stand alone works just fine, but honestly if you’ve never watched the movie Summer Wars you should give it a try! It’s a great mix of slice-of-life, sprawling family dynamics that I relate to a little too well, cyber adventures, and fantasy. Super feel good.

This One Summer

Okay, last graphic novel, I swear. This One Summer was... weird and intense. It’s a coming-of-age Canadian graphic novel that follows a pair of pre-teens who meet up like they do every year at their family’s summer cottages. You see them both in the awkward phases between childhood and growing up to become teenagers, as they’re confronted with things like maturity, friendship, self-esteem, family problems, and sexuality. A beautiful read, but probably the heaviest out of all the books on my list.

Wild Thornberrys Novelization

I rewatched The Wild Thornberrys movie with my girlfriend earlier this year, and decided I wanted to hunt down the chapter book novelization because I’m kind of a sucker for novelizations. Honestly, this was about what you would expect from the era. 90s/00s novelizations, especially young novelizations, are generally just a transcript of the movie without much thought or effort put into them to make them anything but. That’s what this was. It was fine, and it really let me revisualize the entire movie, but honestly you’re probably better off just rewatching the movie unless you also really deeply love The Wild Thornberrys.

The Willoughbys

I saw that Netflix had done a funky looking adaptation of The Willoughbys and I decided I needed to read the book first before watching the movie. This was a little bizarre, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Over all, I think it was a net-positive experience. It’s an obvious satire on classic children’s novels, especially the likes of Mary Poppins (real Mary Poppins, not the Disney version) and while a little heavy-handed, it does a Series of Unfortunate Events vibe that redeems it. The story is about a group of horrible children (The Ruthless Willoughbys) who decide they are sick of their parents and would rather become Worth Orphans... and to do that, they’re going to have to dispose of their inconvenient parents, obviously. Conveniently their parents are also sick of having children and decide to do away with them as well. The Willoughbys sets up three (or four?) different subplots that are gradually woven together through a series of schemes and exploits. It’s definitely more ruthless (hurr hurr) than the Netflix version, which tried to make the children more sympathetic, and in some ways I think that’s a definite point in the novel’s favour. I’m not sure I would go out of my way to recommend it, but it was a fun romp if you want something short and off the wall (and a lot more fleshed out than the Netflix version).

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

The End of Year Awards Are Back... and This Time, It’s Personal!

And so we approach the end of 2020, the year that never really began. On paper, at least, it looked incredibly promising. There were lots of great movies slated to come out; culture seemed slightly less paucity-riddled and pointless than usual; good things were in the air. Then COVID happened, and basically fucked everything. Actually, that’s not quite true: my personal year has been fucking spectacular. I’m in a long-term relationship with a gorgeous woman for the first time in forever- no more abrupt trysts and stolen moments for yer humble narrator: I’ve got a sumptuously plus-size lady-friend who actually wants to spend substantial amounts of time me (and has knockers you could sled down, were you so inclined). I also started a Youtube channel where I upload performances of magic tricks I’ve designed and a few people seem to quite like it. Oh, and I’ve written four novels, with a fifth well on its way to completion. Unfortunately, that’s my life, not the life of our civilisation and culture as a whole. The fact that bugger all happened in that makes this end-of-year round-up a little hard to write. With that in mind, I’m going to hand out the gongs for 2020, but I’m also going to do my usual dodge of giving end-of-year awards to things that I discovered in 2020, even if they came out the year, decade or century before. It’s not like any right-minded person gives a hoot about my opinion anyway. Right then, everyone clear on the rules? Then let’s roll up our sleeves and plunge elbow deep into the fetid trough of our decaying society to ferret out the best and worst of the Things That Humans Have Done Recently.

The ‘I Like It Because It Confused Thick People’ Award for Best High-Concept Sci-Fi Movie... … Goes to the sterling Tenet, a spy film that used entropy inversion and symmetric, opposite-direction timelines within the same physical space the way most spy films use hacking and guns. Christopher Nolan films are always intricately constructed and meticulously-executed, but this one must have had Japanese Master Puzzle-Box Makers crying into their breakfast cereal. Is breakfast cereal a thing in Japan? I honestly I have no idea. For some reason, all I can imagine is a sort of dry kedgeree where all the ingredients that aren’t rice have been removed. But I digress. For all its intricacy, Tenet is actually really easy to follow once you’ve grasped the basic premise that there’s a machine that lets people move backwards through time, and that this makes them appear to move in reverse to the rest of the world while they perceive the rest of the world as moving in reverse. Nolan maintains a mastery of cinematic visual language that makes even the most abstruse concept easy to wrap your head around. Nonetheless, following Tenet’s release, dumb people took to the Internet on mass to complain that the film was confusing and stupid, never once realising that their inability to conceptualise time in non-linear ways was their own failing, not Nolan’s. I find that refreshing. It’s nice to see a sci-fi film that’s actually made for smart-cookie sci-fi fans and doesn’t give a hoot if it alienate thickos.

The Award for Most Inexplicably Compelling Web Comic… … Goes to Questionable Content. I originally started reading Questionable Content because I’d heard that the female lead and love interest was a plus size lassie and that shit’s my jam. However, the art style makes everyone look like a skinny indie-type, regardless of their actual, in-universe size, so it doesn’t do much to titillate my Fat Admiring Titillation Centres. And yet, I’m over five hundred ‘episodes’ in and still reading. The thing is, I couldn’t tell you why for the life of me. Maybe it’s the hope that the art style will evolve to the point where the people look like actual human beings with different body types (but then, why would I care unless I was invested for some other reason). Maybe it’s the fact that when I get one of the many, many obscure band or pop culture references, I feel a little buzz of kinship with the writer. Maybe it’s the fact that it takes place in a universe where robots and superheroes are things that regularly happen, yet most of the strips are just normal people chatting shit in a coffee shop and the slice-of-life narrative/sci-fi setting appeals to my sense of juxtaposition. I don’t know, but I find it really compelling to the extent that I’ve pissed away entire days reading it. I have a horrible feeling that it’s a short step from this to really angsty hentai. If I start singing the praises of that, somebody please shoot me in the crotch.

The ‘Forest Gump Debating Peter Andre’ Award For Most Sustained or Elongated Instance of Stupidity… … Goes to Donald Trump. I was tempted just to award this gong to his entire presidency, but that wasn’t just stupid: it was also venal, corrupt, horrifying and punctuated by terrible moments of low cunning. So, instead, this award goes to his ‘soup’ rant. For those of you who missed it, the former President of the United States spent a really, really long time (in the run-up to the election) wittering on about protestors throwing cans of soup at police. What was dumb and weird about it was that he appeared to be extolling the virtues of soup as a siege weapon, going into really specific detail about how it was better than a brick because it could be thrown with more force, finishing with the utterance that protestors would just argue that “this is just soup for my family” if they were caught with the cans… which is phrased wrong in such a subtle and inhuman way it’s hard to imagine that anyone actually ever said it, at least in those words. I have no idea if protestors in America were throwing soup cans at police (which would be entirely justified considering how many innocent people American police have murdered in cold blood quite recently) or if this was a fantasy dreamed up by the former president in the cloudcuckooland that is his diseased little brain. Either way, the connected rant was balls deep in dumb.

The Most Disturbing Unintentional Impression of Vincent Price Award… … Goes to the narrator from One Step Beyond, a Twilight Zone-esque anthology of weirdness that purports to be based on true events and has to be seen to be believed. The stories are oft-disturbing instances of spooky-inflected human drama and can occasionally be quite disconcerting… until they’re book-ended by a dude who sounds like Vincent Price reading a children’s book in a really earnest voice. It’s weird and no, it didn’t hit our screens in Space Year 2020, it dates back to Ye Olden Times of the 1950s or 60s, when men were men, women were women and technincolour was a distant dream that could get you strung up for witchcraft. Nonetheless, I only encountered it this year, so it’s getting its prize. I warned you I was going to pull this shit, but you foolish fools didn’t listen.

The ‘It’s Not Gay If I Don’t Clench’ Award for Cognitive Dissonance… … Goes to Amazon Prime, the content-making branch of evil, tax-dodging, anti-monopoly-law-breaking megalith Amazon. You see, while Big Daddy Amazon is off being incredibly sinister and worrying, like a shifty vampire hanging off the economy’s throat, the creative people at Amazon Prime are busy making or acquiring some of the flat-out best TV ever committed to a streaming-service, from the extra-weird slice of fun-pie that is The Tick, to the entertainingly horrifying cultural dissection of The Boys to the utterly unique Carnival Row, to the superbly adapted American Gods. It’s a bit like discovering that Geoffrey Dahlmer single-handedly created a body of artistic work to rival Vincent Van Gogh’s when he wasn’t pouring acid onto the brains of emotionally vulnerable young adults. It gives me a headache.

The Clint Eastwood Award for Most Effective Older Gentlemen… … Goes to Joe Biden, for unseating dipshit in chief Donald Trump with the casual badassery of a Wild West gunslinger shooting a baddy (probably played by Leonardo Di Caprio) in the balls. I mean, he’s not the best Prez America could ask for but a) as a Brit I don’t have to care and b) anyone who ousts Trump gets mad props from me.

The ‘It’s a Pity Everything Else is Shit Now’ Award for Best New Ongoing Series… … Goes to my own Youtube series, Victor The Magician, in which I claim to be a reality-hopping, interdimensional wizard on an endless quest to… perform magic, basically. I’ll admit that the quality is super-variable (Youtube algorithms and their constant demand for fresh content be a harsh mistress, etc., etc.). However, when I’m good, I’m really good. If you’re looking for a punch-line other than the fact that this whole bit is a self-promoting plug, it’s this: my Youtube series really was the best thing to come out this year. Not because I’m great or anything, just by default. A promising year really did turn into a cultural wasteland the moment COVIDius Rex reared its scaly head.

The Zombie Ian Curtis Award for Most Crushing Disappointment… … Goes to Rick and Morty Series 4. As I think I’ve said before, it was still good, but it just didn’t reach the dizzy heights of nihilistic lunacy achieved in series 1-3. I think the problem is that the audience is meant to learn something from Rick’s poor choices, even if he doesn’t, because the creators saw the amazing success of Bojack Horseman and decided they wanted a slice of that sweet, tangy deconstructionist pie. It worked up to a point in the climax of Series 3, but having made their point, the showrunners probably should have moved onto a different point. They forgot that the appeal of Rick Sanchez is his combination of ‘entertaining car-crash of a human being’ and ‘unstoppable superbeing’. Push him through an arc and you risk breaking the thing that makes him and the show so endlessly watchable. Rick, unlike Bojack, just wasn’t built for heavy introspection. Also, the team hired on new writers who were less than familiar with the characters, setting and subtext, and that’s always an invitation to disaster.

The Special Sir Mixalot Award for Posteriority… ...Goes to… my girlfriend and glamorous assistant, Mystic Miss Terri, who’s arse is gorgeous and majestic.

The ‘Are They STILL Making That?’ Award for a Show You Forgot Existed And is Now Back… … Goes to Supernatural, which never technically went away and whose final series is apparently being broadcast on one of the 4 channels (though who knows which one, any more), It’s kind of nice to realise it’s still out there and be reminded that there are still people who care deeply about what happens to it. It’s like when you remember ‘oh yeah, [insert cute animal here] actually exists and isn’t just an internet meme. That’s nice’. Also, it’s good to see Jared Padelacki working steadily. It can’t be easy to find acting gigs when most producers just want to shoot you and mount your antlers over a fireplace.

The Irritating Magician Award for Something That Just Won’t Fuck Off… ...Goes to this blog entry, which is three pages long in Word. Good grief. Bye y’all! See you next year, assuming that the last few days of 2020 don’t culminate in a civilisation-destroying attack by giant space-ants. If that seems worryingly specific, let’s just say that- as Leonard Cohen would say “I’ve seen the future and, brother, it is murder”… by giant space-ants.

[teacherintransition]

Hold on, There’s more Change Coming

“It is not in the Stars to hold our Destiny but in ourselves” – Julius Caesar in Julius Caesar

Change is the universal constant yet we fear it or vilify it because it comes too quickly, too slowly or at inopportune times... but arrive it will and we are caught up by it. Be patient regarding the outcome.

Since Covid, since retirement my entire life has been about adjusting to change on sometimes monumental levels; as have all of our lives. This blog is not about politics, but the expression of a journey of transition to different stages of life... but political change is certainly part of current adjustments. We can truly never go back once change marches through our lives... but it’s magic will work best when we greet it with patience. Those that know me well, perhaps may be currently experiencing a sense of dizziness or cognitive dissonance at the thought of me extolling patience. Relax, sit down and get a drink of water or perhaps stronger libation to deal with this contradiction taking place and some wisdom to follow.

During some of the more stressful moments I experienced as a teacher was getting seven middle school Destination Imagination teams ready for competition,it was a tense, overwhelming situation. I would, to use the vernacular of psychological experts, lose it! This occurred for many reasons but none more prominent than my IMpatience. I had a brilliant young lady, who is so much like a daughter to me, attempt to talk me down from my agitated state. The now adult former student, who shall remain nameless, though not numberless (867-5309 some of you will get this) would look in my eyes and say, “breathe Mr. Rich...just breathe!” To which I often replied to her, “I DON’T WANT TO BREATHE!” I weren’t no patient feller and still struggle with it, but find some success now and then. Some advocate ambitious impatience as a quality of movers and shakers.... that is rarely the case in my view. Let us visit the bard again:

“How poor are they that do not have Patience?” – Iago in the Tragedy of Othello

-William Shakespeare

Shakespeare has wisdom for every situation and at the very least in this quote seems to imply that even in the best situations, lacking patience will cause us to miss something. Slowing down appears to be universal wisdom for much of what we go through in life. Often this blog has been advocating focusing on life’s moments for enrichment of the everyday. Often these experiences are of our own choosing, how does slowing down... being patient apply when situations thrust themselves into your life uninvited? A teacher in transition may face disruption far removed from any careful planning. This is a common phenomenon in the business world where change comes often to an unreceptive work force. Susanne Madsen in her article; “Why is Organizational Change so Hard?” explains the difficulty and resistance to projects and adjustments in the business world is due to the general reason we all resist change: fear. She writes:

Resistance to change is a phenomenon we frequently talk about in project management circles; it’s something we often quote as a major reason why projects and change programs don’t deliver the results they set out to. At its core, resistance to change is a label we apply to people who seem unwilling to accept a change. But for the most part, it isn’t the change itself that people resist. People resist change because they believe they will lose something of value or fear they will not be able to adapt to the new ways.

Business, education, personal lives, societal we all create a comfort zone or routine that we conform to regardless if it is effective or personally satisfying. “Better the devil you know rather than the devil you don’t,” is a cliche oft heard in countless arenas. How do we respond, adapt and get the most out of the inevitable? This is not a new dilemma for an impatient person who deals with anxiety... not new at all. The nature of experience that I’ve dealt with in my writing has been that of an organic, intrinsic, personal nature. I’m so incredibly right brained in my approach to life, referring to business philosophies to facilitate my personal changes would’ve have been the equivalent of getting instructions in Russian. How often can we surprise ourselves. Change is universal, so a right brained, spontaneous, creative sensitive empath can learn from those of the “logical” camp. While seeking advice in the world of personal change that involved retirement, pandemic, political upheaval, familial tragedies I came across some helpful suggestions from the Harvard Business Review, what’d I say about this being out of character for me? Nick Tasler suggests these approaches:

1. Find the humor in the situation. ...

2. Talk about problems more than feelings. ...

3. Don't stress out about stressing out. ...

4. Focus on your values instead of your fears. ...

5. Accept the past, but fight for the future. ...

6. Don't expect stability

Gold, pure gold and it didn’t come from Shakespeare, Tacitus or Buddha; just a gentleman who saw universal techniques to deal with change that worked in a field of constant change. Though not explicitly stated, all of these techniques require a slow over an impulsive reaction to sudden and disruptive events. Mr. Tasler suggests we focus on what we can control and basically who we are for strength; and touches on Eastern philosophy: do not expect ease in life. It’s odd that so often, so consistently we act contrary to the best approach. Slow down ... not just to smell the roses, but to get yourself free from the thorns.

Many of us have had an anxious few days regarding political change, an anxious few months regarding changes in our safety and health and possibly other unexpected changes in our personal dealings. I’ve been able to take away from this writing process that wisdom I’ve acquired over the years will definitely apply to any change that may appear unsettling at first. If we realize that changes are occurring, it means we are moving forward. If we have persevered though other challenges, we can through new ones. If we can find peace in the inevitability of a non linear path in our lives, it means we are taking time to process what lies before us. Reassurance obtained? Yes.... ease and comfort guaranteed? No, but the mystery is part of the excitement and the chances for success? Pretty good if we remember to slow down and realize ...

“We know what we are but know not what we may be.”– Ophelia in Hamlet

Madsen, Susanne; “Why is Organizational Change so Hard;” www.liquidplanner.com/blog/why-is-organizational-change-so-hard/; Liquid Planner; 11, January, 2018

Tasler, Nick; “ How to Get Better at Dealing with Change;” Harvard Business Review; Harvard School of Business; September, 2016

http://labibliotecacoffee.com/

[mattpitman]

Premiere.

Well, the countdown is now on to the first day of what is being called the “new normal” in education. Personally, I am not a fan of the use of “normal” in this case. What we used to have was “normal”. I want better than what we used to have...

A new reality for education. Meh. It’s getting there.

The point is, this is the premiere of the new educational landscape post-isolation. I say premiere because I miss new movies. What a first world problem to have. But I do. So I have been forced to look through my catalog of old movies. Some classics, some personal favourites and some randoms thrown in for fun.

The premiere of “new school” is much like what I imagine the premiere of a movie to be like for an actor or a director. You spend hours and hours trying to put something together that ticks all of the boxes, something that the community will get behind and support but ultimately, it could go either way. 

Will the premiere of “#school2020″ be a rousing success or a resounding flop?

The best way to look forward is in this case, is to look back at the astonishing remote learning period and the rapid adaptation of a whole system to maintain continuous learning. 

What better way to do that than with the help of the movies?

Apollo 13 🚀

In March we were stranded in an unfamiliar “space”, desperately contemplating “where to from here”. We looked at what we had on hand, what we had managed to pack from our offices and desks and started designing. Like the team at NASA we had to find a way to fit a “square peg in a round hole”. A way to keep the life in our learning programs. Many of us had a familiarity with the technology, the applications and the platforms, but never had we expected to completely rely on them. We had success early, but then faced a new challenge.

Groundhog Day ⏰

Like Phil Connors before us, we found ourselves in our own Punxsutawney, a repetitious environment characterised early on by hours of video conferencing, emails and quizzes. Every day we put in long hours to ensure we had differentiated our lessons, but each morning felt like waking up to the same tune on the alarm clock. As the weeks ticked over we found small successes in communicating with our students and like Phil, we learned the value of the little things. We come out of this remote learning period treasuring what we had before COVID-19, but understanding that there is greater work to be done. We came to appreciate the technology when it worked, but when it didn’t, well that was a different story.

Jurassic Park 🦖

When you have just managed to accept everyone into a lesson from the waiting room and then the internet drops out you start to feel a little agitated. It only happened a few times, but every one of them felt a bit like Dennis turning the power off and the letting the monsters out of the cage. When the video stream got a little bit laggy in the middle of a question and answer session, I felt a bit like the “blood sucking lawyer” sitting on the toilet about to be an entree. It was unpredictable at times, but we teachers adapt. “Life finds a way” and so do we, I wasn’t joking about the students being monsters though.

The Parent Trap 📱

I had the pleasure of contacting home quite often during this period. Quite a few students took a little while to warm up to the realities of learning remotely. It seemed like everything they had ever wanted; wake up late, watch TV at lunch, no more trains to catch. Unfortunately for some, the reality of being at home, surrounded by their creature comforts and their teachers confined to a box, was a little too tempting. Netflix seemed more valuable than studying the intricacies of Australia’s healthcare system. Like Hallie and Annie, they tried to pull a fast one on their parents using the tried and tested “I haven’t got any work to do” (at 11am? Nice try!) When the teacher came calling the truth came out and ultimately it brought teachers, parents and students a little bit closer albeit digitally.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back 🌌

What a great movie... moving on...

The Dark Knight 🦇

Small gains locally didn’t stop the “jokers” claiming that quote/unquote “homeschooling” had to stop and young people had to return to school immediately. The educational discourse has been a little bit chaotic and like good old Bruce, we teachers find ourselves in a battle we can’t really win. There is inequity across this great nation of ours and many students need to return to school. Is it safe is a big question I can’t answer, but I was hopeful this whole ordeal would increase the overall respect for educators in general. I am no Batman, but it does feel like we are being chased back into the classroom. This, despite our actions over the past few months proving that things can be different. We found a way to maintain order despite the whirlwind of chaos. Speaking of...

The Wizard of Oz 🤖

We now find ourselves in an educational world of opportunity. There isn’t necessarily a Wizard to seek out (or a giant head) and grant our wishes but we can still work to create a brain (creative & critical thinking), a heart (empathy) and courage (resilience). It’s time for us to band together and head off down our yellow brick road to the brighter future beyond the chaos. Sure, there might be a wicked witch or two, hopefully no flying monkeys, but if anything, school staff have proved that they can band together and work through anything. Like the random group found across the road, educators have collaborated without anything more to connect them than a Twitter account, that’s incredibly impressive. Let’s carry some water just in case.

Back to the Future 🚙

We can’t afford to treat this future recklessly like Marty did with his. We need to realise our past mistakes, identify what has worked recently and attempt to create real change for our students future. There is no Delorean for our students. They need our help now. We can’t afford to be looking at our remote learning programs like Marty looking at his photo, watching the gains we have made fade away. We need to take drastic steps (maybe not as drastic as his) to ensure we are preparing our students for their future. There is no going back and there is no almanac. We need to do this together.

This is it.

It is almost time to premiere. There is a mixture of nerves and anticipation. The big question: what will the future hold for education?

Time to decide. 

Are you one of the directors of this new future? Or are you in the audience?

Action!

Here’s a few things that have inspired me this past week as an educator and a leader:

President Obama’s Message to the Class of 2020

(https://youtu.be/H8Ego3_43lQ)

“With so much uncertainty, with everything suddenly up for grabs, this is your generations world to shape”. A powerful message for young people everywhere from a truly inspirational leader.

Staff 2030: Future-Ready Teaching

(https://lnkd.in/gYSQYC2)

Essential reading for educators who want to be the directors of this new future.

Image by Sabine Lange from Pixabay 

[batsaboutbats]

2021 Reading

I used the Calendar spread for this reading. While it’s not exactly how you’re supposed to use it, I make each card a corresponding month to predict the year and the events of each month. You start from left, and go around in counterclock wise direction. The center card predicts general influences on the inquirer. So let’s get started to see what a shitshow 2021 is going to be.

Card 1/January: ACE OF SWORDS reversed (could also be personality of the inquirer in traditional reading.)

FORCE, is the nature of this card. And not in a good way. Injustice, wanton abuse of power, misunderstandings, and malice abound. Mental stress and anxiety are going to be the name of the game in January for me. This tracks, especially considering the pandemic, the piece of trash littering the oval office, and our senate doing it’s best to murder and subjugate us. Fuck them, I’m too spiteful to die.

Card 2/ February: PAGE OF CUPS (money, possessions, material concerns)

Pale, fair haired with blue eyes, the Page of Cups is a gentle young person with kind heart and mind, both loving and artistic. They are also insightful. If female, somewhat tomboyish. They can be emotionally vulnerable and need affection to thrive. I’d suppose that it’s referring to myself as the physical description fits, and it means to be more concerned about emotional wealth rather than the kind valued by coin. God knows in this current climate that kindness is sorely in shortage. I’ll try to be understanding of others and not let my anger rule me.

Card 3/March: JUDGEMENT reversed (short journeys, siblings, learning.)

Opportunities will be ignored, and I might fall victim to stubbornness-- such as refusing to move on from a position. Fear of death, illness, and refusal to change when it is vital to do so. This card can delay outcomes.

Hm. I’m gonna hedge a bet that it means covid-19 might explode beyond imaginable grief in this month, due to the fact that it’s around this time that regular people should be getting access to the first round of the vaccines. I have little faith in people’s patience right now, so I have a feeling they’ll think one shot is enough and try to go back to life as before the virus hit. 9_9 Guess I need to be diligent and stay on my toes. Be flexible and roll with the punches!

Card 4/April: THE TOWER reversed (home life, childhood?)

False accusations, imprisonment, or oppression.

Definitely a volatile month full of trying challenges. I’ll most likely initiate a change of attitude that may shock or dismay those around me. Basically, I’ll become a rebel. Deal with it, I guess. Since this is focused on home life, I’m guessing that my family and I are going to be butting heads, a lot.

This is most likely the month I may have to finally have a showdown with my father-- who has shown himself to be brain damaged. Yes, really. He had a stroke a few years ago, and I don’t care that he’s still able to walk and talk just fine, he *changed* after it. His personality became a complete stranger to me and I don’t even recognize him anymore. The vile shit he says casually makes my skin crawl and I really worry about my safety sometimes.

April may be the month I have to decide what to do about my dad. Be it taking Power of Attorney, or placing him into a retirement/nursing home... It really is up in the air. I just know it’s going to be a bad month.

Card 5/May: THE WORLD reversed (Romance, leisure, fun, and children.)

Success has yet to be won in this month. Insecurity might be the thing standing in my way, while I’m lacking vision. I’m probably going to be too focused on what is, and not what could be.

Maybe my battle with my family will spill into this month, and my gentleness is going to fuck me over. I need to harden myself and do what is necessary even if people don’t like it. There’s no time for leisure of fun in this month it seems.

Card 6/June: KING OF SWORDS reversed (work, habits, health matters.)

The King is a distrustful, suspicious man. He plays mind games, and double deals to spite those around him. Sounds like it’s talking about my dad, here to ruin my birthday. Jesus fucking Christ.

Seems like his health and needs are going to take up most of my attention, while I’m in the middle of balancing work and trying to keep my sanity balanced. I will have to be careful of my own health and not allow him to drag me down into depression. This is going to be a rough month.

Card 7/July: 4 OF CUPS (partnerships, business or personal.)

BOREDOM is what this card means.

Stability will be achieved in this month. What more can be achieved anyway? Familiarity breeds contempt during this month. Which is to say, my Dad is still going to be his terrible self and there’s nothing I can do to change him. Most likely I’m going to accept that the father I thought I had doesn’t exist anymore...just take my fate for what it is.

To heal myself I’m going to need a new start-- either with a new activity or a few new friends. Maybe both.

Card 8/ August: 5 OF SWORDS reversed (sexuality, shared resources, inheritance, investments.)

DEFEAT is what the card means. Stubborn pride, and refusal to give in when all is lost. Most worrying is that this card more often than not signifies a funeral. Is this the month my father leaves the mortal coil? Possibly. I’m going to be careful of being too bullheaded, and learn to cut my losses.

I may need to keep an eye on my retirement funds this month.

Card 9/ September: 7 OF CUPS (Distant travels, religion, philosophy)

CHOICES is the meaning of this card. Important decisions will have to be made, with numerable options to choose from. I’ll have to be careful and pick the right one though. Doorways will open for me, but I must walk through the correct door. I’ll need to be extremely intuitive here. I’m guessing that I might inherit something after all, and will have to decide what to do with it wisely.

Card 10/October: THE SUN (career, status, direction)

SUCCESS is the meaning of this card. Oh thank fuck. Finally, some good fucking content. While glory is overrated imo, I’ll take happiness and achievement. It seems I really did pick the right choice in September afterall. Good news will come this month, and a possible birth of a child may come to my family. My sister? Might be the one it’s hinting at here, but as far as I know, the good news is probably financial related. Hot sunny places might be in my future. Is this the month I begin to prepare to head to Australia? Either for a visit or a new life? Not sure.

Card 11/ November: 6 OF SWORDS (friends, social life, hope for future)

TRAVEL is what this card denotes... Movement away from danger, discretion is the better part of valor here. I should move in company of others in similar circumstances, and luckily my immediate problems will be solved in this month, whatever those may be. There is only one direction to go in, and it’s thankfully positive! Hm. Maybe this is going to be the start of something more permanent.

Card 12/ December: THE FOOL (secrets, hidden enemies, where you may be your own worst enemy.)

NEW BEGINNINGS is what this card holds for me. Nothing can harm me anymore, no matter what I do. I can take a risk and start a new chapter of my life without fear. I should take the unexpected as it comes with open arms and embrace change. Unconventional people could enter my life and be what I need to finally be happy. I no longer have to look over my shoulder in fear that the other shoe is going to fall. The worst is over. Perhaps Covid-19 is finally tamed and the world is settling down again.

This is a good sign, and tracks so far with the others. I like seeing gradually progression in readings because it gives me confidence that it’s going to be a slow ease into change and I can roll with it all better. 

Center Card/General influences on me, the inquirer: 9 OF SWORDS

Cruelty is what this card means. Refusal to accept help or feel that improvements cannot be made. However their is light at the end of the tunnel, I just have to learn to adapt and rely on others sometimes. Not everything is horrible and there is good in the world. I just have to look for it a little harder is all.

2020 has left deep scars on me. I just have to remember that the future will be ok as long as I’m positive and believe in myself.

[enchantingduckwombatapricot-blog]

Quarantine Blues

Feeling a little iffy about my emotions right now so I guess it’s good to just really write things down and clear my thoughts when I feel calmer and not so steeped in my emotions. 

I guess the quarantine blues are really getting to me. In the first place, I’ve never liked working from home and was never really productive at home. At the start of quarantine, I was more driven and could skip lunch to do work, but I guess the motivation is dying off. I find it harder to focus now with no enjoyments in life or reward at the end of the day, which results in my lack of productivity and motivation.

The stress of making mistakes is getting to me now too, I suppose. With everyone’s patience stretching thinner, mistakes are taken to less kindly especially because people will have to pull their load, regardless of whether they’re new or not. The learning curve which was already not easy has been further made difficult. There is simultaneously less patience to answer questions. I feel bad harassing everyone, knowing they’re all really busy and neither am I very close to them. 

The whole covid fund business was what really broke me down I suppose. I guess its because I felt that I was really trying my best, and trying hard to kope but this effort was not getting seen and understood.  

I don’t think I could force myself to work till 12am everyday or at least I don’t think I am prepared to. And the difficulty in this is when people ask me “why are you so busy”, I find that my brain cannot sufficiently remember and articulate to them why I am so busy. This makes me insecure, and makes me feel that my emotions are invalid. When everyone else is so busy, who am I to say that I am stressed.  Why can’t I get through things that people are going through right now too. 

But I suppose everyone is different and everyone has their own strengths. Mine does not lie in working through the night and I have always known that. It is a struggle to adapt to my current work’s schedule. 

I find that sometimes people may not understand that things that are obvious to them would take me much longer to complete because I am new and I have to ask around before I finally get the answers. I am still adapting to the new workplace and its taking time. I haven’t had time to learn expectations and the stress has taken its toll on me. 

I suppose the only question now is some self reflection and what I can do better.  

1. I need to find ways to get out of my funk of working at home and increase productivity :-) That includes being prepared to work a bit later. 

2. Explain things to people if need be, that certain things takes longer for a new staff to do simply because I am still learning. I am also still trying to adapt and in the learning curve, some patience could help. 

3. Plan my work and time better, and deal with things as they come. Prioritise work and take things one step at a time.

I’m feeling so much better now in weeks now that I’ve cleared everything up. 

[existentialwannabe]

I’m just going to write everything down here because I  can’t write it anywhere else, I  guess it’s not safe.

The world is at its peak worst right now. Whether it’s due to the fact that COVID-19 has brought the absolute worst out of the American government and the American people while the rise of dead black bodies increase, it’s a fucking MESS. I  can’t help but write about this because it just seems that even during a world pandemic there can not be any clarity of human interaction, human communication, and human existence that can just exist on a neutral plane. I  rewind my thoughts back to September of 2019 and think about how abhorrent it was to have to deal with Kiley post Kiley-gate. I will openly admit that the way I  handled the “break” of our relationship was not fair to her because I  did not openly communicate my need to not want to be her friend. I  always kept her at ease by saying “I  need more time” which was just a buffer for the words that I  was afraid to say which were “I  don’t want to be your friend”, “You scare me”, and “You’ve manipulated me to the point where I  don’t feel comfortable looking at you”. It was overwhelming and the heaviness in my chest felt like a 20 pound weight that I consistently carried from Sept. to Dec. of 2019.

 I was overtly zealous in thinking that things could feel “normal” or “better” when she left even especially since I  had personally grown and cleansed myself as much as I  could. But it didn’t get better. The other problems that were gasping for air underneath the depth of what Kiley did resurfaced in a dramatic and suffocating manner. The next demon that I  had to fight in the apartment was Soph. I  always denied the comment that Kiley always made that her and Soph were really more alike than people assumed. Sadly it pains me to give this to her, but she was right. Soph was a less “in your face” version of Kiley. Her actions, her words, and her lack of action showed its face as swiftly as a breeze. MK and I  have a tendency to see issues as something ignorable, which is not a very positive quality for us earth signs. MK ignored the fact that she had to pee in water bottles/cups at night to avoid Soph’s wrath because she knew it would be better for her mental health. I  ignore Soph’s coldness and backhanded compliments as a way to just never leave my room to avoid confrontation. Our ignorance manifested into a mechanism that would later be weaponized in a way that leaves me and MK feeling so extremely tired.

I’m jealous of MK because she was able to escape the apartment and live with her boyfriend in a way that saves her the trigger/emotional drain of 116 Winthrop Road. I’ve decided to quarantine with my mom in order to help her out because she’s in NJ all alone and having to be an essential worker in NYC during this very scary time. MK found Kelly, a subletter and one of my students, who would take her place. Albeit the transference system of Kelly coming into our apartment was NOT healthy because Kelly lied about her partner being with her for a while... things felt very out of control. I  don’t know if I  have the heart to tell Soph that I  primarily left because I  couldn’t deal with having to run into her into apartment, or wait forever to go to the bathroom, or receive passive aggressiveness for trying my best to maintain a certain space... I  really left because I  couldn’t deal with her. I’m still now afraid to go back because I  literally do not want to look at her in the face. I feel horrible for saying that because that’s unkind to say about another human, but it’s how I  feel. 

I  feel like these past two years of just living with a situation of humans that “seemed perfect” has entirely broken me. I  lived with Kiley who claimed to be my best friend but really just used me. Naturally, used most of her very close friends as ways to stabilize herself that no one really consented to. When I  think back to our “friendship”, I  just think about the one time she told me that “I    have the responsibility to fix her when she’s depressed because that’s what a good friend/good person is supposed to do”. I  think about the times that she’s barged into my room and forced me to speak with her at all hours of the night because she knew I  couldn’t lock the door. I  think about how her definition of a friendship was just meant to be a transactional method of taking all of the good energy from others in order to make her feel something. I  constantly grind all of those gears in my head and the worst part about it all is that I  am a master’s psychology student... I “should know how to get all of it out”, but I  really can’t. 

Kiley is someone that keeps living in my head rent free alongside my ex and all of the others in college who gaslit me into thinking I  am a bad person. This quarantine is emphasizing the fact that these unconscious thoughts that I  used to suppress everyday are burning so ferociously inside of me. Quarantine is reminding me that I  really need therapy and that I  really need to grow more into a person. At this point in my life, I  think I’ve done just a phenomenal job pretending that I  have everything together... but I don’t. I’m not a fully grown emotional person who has self integrity and tenacity to face the world and others.

This notion brings me back to Soph. I know that I’m not a full person because she reminds me that I’m giving losing all of my humanity to individuals who make me feel small. She has power over me in a way that she doesn’t deserve. I  see her as a person and I  have my observations. In my brain, I’ve broken her down to a tee. 

Soph is a strong product of her environment. Her parents, who she does not “overtly” like, are capitalists who have shaped her to think, breathe, and really only treasure herself... and her money... and the fact that her work entitles her to think less of others who don”t work as hard. Her parents have such harsh understandings of reality and are trump supporters, but still provide her with an unconditional love that she rejects. This is the most strange quality about her because her parents have given her everything from therapy to full financial support... and that still isn’t enough for her to thank them for flowers, driving hours to give her food, or for being alive. The complexity of this relationship affects her ability to handle others. 

Romantically, she’s really had one “serious” relationship with a boy that cheated on her freshman year of college. From there, she does not know how to handle “intimate” relationships so she subjects herself to just sleeping around and keeping any form of male relationship casual. It’s so interesting to me that she does this BUT lets the men have power over her because she recognizes that she wants more... but with the wrong type of men and for the wrong reasons. She becomes obsessive while also experiencing a deep form of denial that affects her mental capacity to function and emote properly. She even let the last guy that I knew of who she was sleeping with, physically abuse her, and she still slept with him afterwards even though she had a complete mental breakdown.. even though MK and I  had to convince her that, that was domestic abuse and she should escape a situation she still has the privilege to do so... but she still slept with him and doted on him like nothing was a problem.

She is a really bad roommate. She keeps her pans and pots in her room because only she can use them. She has very strong affinity from making sure that every financial transaction is “fair and equal”. Even though she charged MK a $1 once because MK asked for and consumed one of her ginger candies that Soph frequently ate. Soph does not do chores. She barely cleans her own dishes. She has never cleaned any form of the apartment whether it was Linden or Winthrop. She does not take out the trash, buy communal supplies, or remove her goddamn hair from the shower drain. She leaves the toilet paper rolls empty. She lets trash and recycling reach full overflow and have the audacity to say someone should take it out. She uses the bathroom for 2 hours at night to do her routine and pick at her skin which leaves others holding in their bladder or needing to find another way to release or else she gets aggressive. She dismisses you if you acknowledge her if her door’s open and you don’t want to seem unkind when you pass by her room. She makes every conversation about herself or revert back to herself. No one is allowed to have an issue with her or else she is the victim. “Her opinion doesn’t matter and she might as well be quiet” because every time she vocalizes an issue that literally involves her need to change, adapt, or release some of her power/privilege she gets disgustingly defensive. She, at this point, has asked me to lease my room because there's no point of me having a room in the apartment if I’m not there. 

There are so many levels and now that I’m out of the apartment, MK is out of the apartment, and Kiley’s replacement Julia is out of the apartment... it is Soph, Kelly (a stranger to her), and to my fucking surprise Karley (a sublet for Julia who was never mentioned to me) in the space. So rather than handling her issues with being surrounded by foreign personnel who she can’t manipulate or know will submit to her actions, she is now becoming passive aggressive which puts me in MOM mode because Kelly is someone that I’ve known for years and I’m protective. I  know Kelly has made mistakes about not letting anyone know about her boyfriend’s temporary stay, but the way Soph is trying to evacuate her out of the apartment is out of proportion. Soph claims that she doesn’t want to “house a freeloader” until September even though this person comes from a very bad circumstance. She had the audacity to text me that her father was in the same situation and wouldn’t do what she did which PISSED me oFF bro. It will always revolve back to how her or her family are better in circumstances and doing things in a more/different “moral/fair” circumstance. 

At 213.9 miles away, I  have to diffuse fights and have conversations about living situations. It’s ridiculous that if Soph is not accomodate to the highest degree above everyone else, than everyone has to suffer. No distance limit required. Today I  texted her and said that I’m financially good, can handle my shit and that she needs to stop worrying about it forreal. I  can pay for my shit and me not being in the apartment provides less conflict????? BUT I  have to sublease or come back?? No way. I  know she’s struggling with strangers in the house, working from home, the pandemic, and the apparent “debt” that she is going through but I  can not physically fathom how she can still be such a domineering person over an apartment that she does clean, take care of, or respect only because she’s currently the only person there right now with her name on the lease. It’s just unimaginable. As I’m typing this and rewinding the conversations I’m having with Kelly, having with MK, and having with Soph. I’m tired man. I want this pandemic to be over, or more or less have it be august so I  can be free of Soph.. I  really hope she recognizes that we probably won’t have a relationship post quarantine and post this lease because we didn’t even have a stable one when we lived less than 6 feet from each other. It’s sad that I’m going to basically have to “Kiley” her because this person has taken away years from my life and gained them in ways that are abusive. It’s truly unreal for me and on top of not sleeping from the uncertainty of the future and the huge spike of white supremacy with the lives of black people at stake, I  have to have her own my mind as well. I   know I  have the power to control it for me, but I  can’t stop thinking about how unfair she is definitely being from afar to others who really DON’T deserve it. Welp, there's my mess of a thought process. 

[mikazukikannagisjourney]

Channeled (?) Message for these Tumultuous Times -  A Call to Arms for the "Most Unlikely" (timeless)

Abstract: Within the next 6-10 years, the need to self-isolate due to energetic effects from the Quantum field only increases. The community quarantines and the social distancing measures will eventually become the norm, and this brief Saturn in Aquarius season only gives the entire world a glimpse of things to come before retrograding back to Capricorn within May 2020 to do one final slide. Thus it is increasingly important to be even more self-reliant, and self-mastery our vehicle to keep on surviving and thriving, because in the future the group systems that were once relied upon will not be the strong and stable support for the energetically renewed generations. This message pertains to all, but most especially for the Pluto in Libra and Pluto in Scorpio generations, who are the bridges between what has been and what things shall become. 

Warning: Long post ahead. You have been warned.

Hi everyone, how are you all coping with the social distancing and the  community quarantine measures? And if you're an introvert, yeah how's the usual life lol but I'm not even kidding in that sense. I hope you're all doing well, staying healthy, happy and safe. But for the people who are losing their minds due to cabin fever, I hope this message brings you a level of comfort and empowerment after reading it in its entirety.

I don't normally put "channeled message" in most of my posts because I feel like it's redundant, I mean, most of what I post in here are stuff I get from the etheric realms and just write in here to provide information to those who need it. But this one has been bugging me each time I meditate so I figured this must be an urgent matter, and thus this early Aries New Moon message comes to you now. 

The Spiritual Implication of the Community Quarantines and Social Distancing 

Not sure about other people, but from the energies that I have been feeling ever since the Aussie Wildfires and the volcanic eruption that happened in Taal just hinted at me that such events are only a prelude on the things to come. Separations and isolations were only going to increase. I didn't dare post anything about it since I was too busy detaching from the collective and just focusing on channeling energy to the world. Honestly that should have been a light bulb moment for me but again, I thought it was nothing because I was already distancing not just from the chaotic collective but also from a lot of people, by conscious and energetic choice.

I felt like I needed to do what I was supposed to do here. And I guess for me, it was fine. I am in between jobs so might as well do something to energetically clear the world. Once the chaos cleared, I thought I could breathe a sigh of relief. So even if I was 80% pure anxiety, I tried to drown that through more meditations, energy healings and watching owls and crack vids. Spare me the judgment, I'm used to that lol. For a while, it was nice and quiet.

But... Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Lol I should keep that under wraps but still, the message is the same. 

Because when the Year of the Metal Rat came, that's when the COVID-19 issue started bursting from the seams (after being kept for so long. I mean, what else can you expect when trying to hide something that only keeps expanding, like bread rising due to yeast? ooops.). By then, things have been too much of a mess that fear and panic takes over, unless one is calm enough to detach and meditate. Because to be honest, staying calm and collected keeps our sanity readily available, and when we can decide with the combined forces of our two brain hemispheres we get to make the best choices, long-term or otherwise. Otherwise, fear-based decisions just lead to worse situations, and it's only going to snowball from there.

So what's the point?

Simple, in order to be free from the fear collective being built around this whole "pandemic" thing, aside from distancing from an excessive exposure to the news being bombarded faster than the speed of light, it is also important to carve out some time to learn new stuff. Like the mechanisms of disease transmission, how viruses multiply (that's my jam), how to manage epidemics, the pandemics that happened in the past century and what where the circumstances that made these dangerous or at the very least, slightly annoying.

Basically what I am saying here is to be informed by being strategic in how you gather information and using those to help you make better, more informed choices. Be more proactive in assimilating knowledge. Don't take the words of others as gospels of the truth. Heck, you can even doubt what I am saying in this post. Or let it tickle your brain to make new questions to ask the authorities, or create nuggets of thoughts and stuff that you might want to learn more of. Detach and make your own conclusions before you start sharing information in your preferred social media sites. Seriously, nothing is more important now than properly digested information because some people are not as strategic nor intuitive as you, and such sheeple will only eat whatever is tossed to them. But you KNOW you're better than that, which is why you are likely to start connecting dots and trying to make sense of things.

However, it is important that you first do these on your own before regrouping with people you trust and hang out with, otherwise the input from other people can cloud your own personal judgments, and could greatly affect the stuff you were already hanging on to, especially with regards to self-doubt. We don’t need that now, or ever. So serve yourself first, love that part of you first and do the inner work required before you go out to reconnect with people. That's why social distancing is so much more important than now: to improve self-trust and self-confidence in what you're doing. Whatever you're guided to do is what your soul wants you to engage in.

Why Call to Arms?

Because this battle is going to grow into a war, and that war is mostly going to be an internal war: war between what a person believes in deeply versus what the society tells this person, as well as the person's own social programming.

Now, more than ever is the need to remove ALL layers of programming and wounds and energetic blocks very relevant. Because by allowing our true selves to shine from within, can we all shine from the outside. But if blots of doubt and fear dot our existence, there will always be fears to run away from, triggers that can ruin our plans, low-vibrational thoughts that invade our times of peace. All that garbage can keep us stuck, unmoving, unable to move from the past and always fearing the future. And it is a well-known idea in nearly all spiritual communities that being in this stuck place prevents people from enjoying the NOW Moment and creating joy and love and abundance, which we all want.

This is basically a live or die situation for the next few years, and this is a war between who we are internally versus the external stimuli that we have to go through. No fret though, a good meditation and mindfulness practice plus facing our inner demons and turning them into our allies through healings and acceptance can really help get us through. It's a long process, but gaining stability and peace from such activities can really help reap in the benefits, especially in the long run when there is a need to keep calm and carry on, in all levels.

Why me though? Well, isn't the better question to ask is "Why NOT?" I mean, seriously, the times where relying on other people to do stuff for us in exchange for money or whatever is honestly only going to start decreasing, especially as we approach a great energetic shift. And that new shift is like the dot com boom and bubble bust period, where stuff just came and went in less than 10 years. So just imagine, things seem to only get better and better and then poof. Gone. Where do we go from there?

OK first of all I am not inciting fear in here, I mean, these are actual events that happened, probably even way before the Pluto in Sagittarius generation even understood or heard the first release of Backstreet Boys' Album MILLENNIUM. A lot of them were probably snot-nosed bebehs trying to play snake in their parents' NOKIA 3210 phones. Or something.

But back to you. Why are you being called?

Simple.

You might be one of those people who surfed the wave of that dot com bubble and burst. Here now, gone tomorrow. Or you probably panicked when the Y2K bug became a cultural phenomenon, or worse, the I LOVE YOU VIRUS got into your PC (an ancestor of all other computer AIDS right now). Maybe you were one of the kids who had to raise themselves because the old folks were out making money and you're mostly left at home, or you hang out with your friends after school just to find some sense of family in a way. Or it is possible that you just discovered some weirdly obscure niche such as Japanese Animation but can't share the joys of it because everyone else was obsessed with youth-oriented live action drama stuff, or F.R.I.E.N.D.S. (No judgement though) and whenever you mention Rurouni Kenshin, Yu-Yu Hakusho or Hunter x Hunter nobody batts an eyelash. Even if you stan Yukito and Touya (CCS) for some weird reason. 

If life just isn't making sense right now, just remember those times. Those were frantic times, everything was hanging on a moment, the unknown was just a heartbeat away, but even so, you were able to find some sort of joy and satisfaction to get you through all the crap. You were tested once, and you're still alive now, meaning you were never broken. It just means that in the game of evolution, you were adaptable enough to survive the chaos. YOU'RE WORTHY OF THOR'S HAMMER, so to speak.

How is this going to affect me? 

Well, remember the crazy times of the past? Since life's basically a cycle, the shitty times are going to roll over and make another visit yet again, but honestly, this time there is a bigger world that eventually gets affected a lot by these events. And truth be told, there won't be a lot of beacons of light once the older Pluto generations kick the bucket, especially the boomers that the whole world just can't get enough of (I am being sarcastic here, OK? Though some of them were really good musicians so it's hard to hate them all.). Within 30 years time, the Pluto in Libra and Scorpio people must grow into the sages that will help shape and stabilize the societies that were already changed by the continuous shifts toward self-mastery and self-stability. The younger generations will need more guidance than they will probably admit, and a lot of them will be so stubborn to even admit that they need any help because a large chunk of them were coddled and spoiled and made to think that they're right no matter what other people say, which is why a lot of them have grown to become very rude and selfish (and us millenials get the bad rep with what the younger bunches do, smh oh well). They're also used to bouts of impatience and wanting everything in an instant and perfectly done. Thus the impending need of the guidance of those who ACTUALLY HAD TO do things traditionally aka the hard way without cliffnotes and wiki how to's and all the hacks strewn in the internet. Doing everything by yourself, from scratch. Patience may not have been your virtue but trust me, the younger ones are probably a whole lot more impatient than you, so you're basically a patient person now whether you like it or not lol

But seriously, aside from that, the implications of these is that in the coming years, getting instant results will only turn out to be a lot more painful for everyone involved because the price of getting these through the "unclean" way will only lead to more chaos. A lot more people will rebel due to resentment because they will grow to realize that they're being overworked and underpaid and under-appreciated, plus they're being used as tools and then thrown out once after being used.

Never fear though, because in these times the over-looked members of the society will be sought after by those who will need their help, their talents, their assistance, not because someone says so but because their true, authentic, masterful nature becomes more apparent. Your strengths of making sure the job gets done correctly will be your strongest point, not just because you CAN deliver, but also because you have the uncanny capability of breaking down EVERYTHING into a logical process so that you can show and tell the entire method with everyone else. And people who only use other people because they're basically posers who actually have nothing on their name other than faking their way to the top will eventually be exposed. Thus, honesty and your sense of persistence to achieve your personal goals will be your best asset, and through this process the two generations can help provide assistance and guidance to the younger ones.

What can I do about these shifts?

Actually, it depends. I mean, to be honest it's easier to move with the shifts than force the energies to align to what you want. This is called the Law of Resonance. It’s like riding a wave when you surf, or going into the zone to do something creative. While nearly everyone else is doing their best to work miracles through the Law of Attraction, and getting frustrated because they haven't manifested that shiny new car yet, it is a whole lot better to just focus more on aligning your values and goals towards providing help and service to the world through your work. 

Of course, it's realistic to worry about where you'll live, what you'll eat for the night, or even dispelling the gnawing heartache due to loneliness. Yeah, I get you there fam. But, annoying as it sounds, Source, God, the Higher Powers, or whatever you call the infinite energies give away more energies to those who ask for blessings in order to help others and bless others more, rather than giving energies to those who only want their own lives to improve. This is likely why the Law of Attraction doesn't work for nearly 99% percent of the time: People kept asking to appease their ego or personal needs. 

Disclaimer though: This does not apply to those who are in dire need for food or shelter or protection, but rather to those who only want to be famous or respected by getting their material wants met. It’s because there's a huge energetic difference between those who resonate and those who attract. The resonators tend to find their life purpose quicker by resonating, while those that do their best to attract (under the assumption that they haven't done actual inner work) just keep getting stuck or even reverting to somewhere worse than where they were standing originally, thus making them believe that the Law of Attraction is a lie. But honestly, for everyone who did their inner work by healing and removing the low vibrational energies in their field can use either law or even both and still get some fantastic results.

So going back to your question, what YOU CAN DO with the shifts is to HEAL YOUR SELF. Focus on your own growth. Because you can't help others properly if you're wounded yourself. It's like the emergency flight instructions to put the gas mask on first before you help others. That's applicable and of utmost importance in the spiritual as well as in the 3D life. This ensures that you have enough high vibrations, as well as removing any agendas or resentments toward the people you help. Also, just to be practical, please give up on the notion of forcing everyone else to do this with you. You can only invite others to join, but it's just an option. At the very least, find a supportive person who can guide you to the entire process, but in the end this is a highly-personal journey that you must do ON YOUR OWN. No one else can do this journey for you. Thinking you can solely rely on one idea or guru to do the spiritual awakening journey by taking in your sins is like eating a whole bunch of food and telling someone to poop what you ate for you. That's just not gonna happen. So might as well start cleaning your own crap right now, it's for your own benefit anyways.

To start the process of working with the shifts, you can just shift your energies to instead RESONATE with your Higher Self, as per the Law of Resonance. If you haven't started already, the best thing to do is to go within, and clear as much of the old programming right away. Find out all of your limiting beliefs and reprogram yourself through the grace and power of self-love. This is the kind of love that encompasses your entire being and encircles the world, to the point that you have surpassed the idea of Duality and Polarizing views. You just start seeing everything as an expression of love from the Higher dimensional realms. 

But seriously, it's OK to do fun stuff to stay sane

I am telling you right now, nobody’s going to hold it against you if you still want to do some wholesome fun. And if any spiritual guru out there starts blabbing out  stuff such as watching horror movies or medical drama or whatever like that lowers your vibration, THEY'RE NOT ON MY ENRICHMENT TEAM. I just disagree with them wholeheartedly on that aspect.

Why?

Simply because despite being on the spiritual awakening journey myself, it was actually the opposite for me. After realizing that I'm a spiritual being having a human experience, that gave me a lot more courage to watch really gory and scary movies, because I know deep down, that shi* ain't real. So why should I fear? I'm supposed to live all aspects of the human experience, and watching something like the entire Conjuring franchise is an option that I can get on board with. Truth be told, after my awakening process and still walking this spiritual journey, I just get to enjoy a lot of the stuff with a greater depth of perspective. It feels so much different from when I was still living in the 3D consciousness state.

I actually found this to be true when I started binge-watching all of the Harry Potter books and movies, as well as the LOTR trilogy. When I compared what I felt and the stuff that went through my brain before and after awakening, I had greater appreciation for all of the characters, I simply saw each one as pivotal to the movement of the entire plot. Otherwise, nobody's going to learn and become stronger, and that creates character stagnation, which I honestly just think makes the hero’s journey stale. It's like setting up a character like Naruto, Ichigo or Saitama into overpowering mode right from the start without running into any obstacles. We all want our heroes to have that journey of growth, so why not see that into our own lives as well? Might as well be the cheerleader of our lives, right? So just enjoy this meatbody ride and to heck with the haters. You do you, have as much legal fun as you want.

The bottomline of this entire long-ass post is that self-reliance will become the new norm. And while everyone has some sense of self-reliance, those who were born around the Pluto generations of Libra and Scorpio will have their chance to shine, because this has been their thing since they were young. The lessons that they learned growing up will become even more relevant, as being the generations that were living between the boomer age and the internet boom age their skills of trusting their self, what they learned through experiences will be of great value in the times of information overload and the need to scour what works and what doesn’t.

Maybe you never had your shining moment because you let it pass you by. It's even possible that you're angry because everyone seems to be flying high and you're left on the ground eating dirt because you believed in yourself and not in the prevailing status quo. But I hope you still keep the faith alive, because there's a strong reason why you just keep sticking to your higher consciousness guns, and those will be revealed in the next 6-10 years. As to why this time period, you can check out this link from the Jovian Archive. Even if you're not too familiar with Human Design, the information here may have some value for you, or at the very least, give you some assurance that everything is cyclic and we're only moving forward with more shifts toward unknown territory. Just know that everyone who's been relying way too much on other people, whether they know it or do it deliberately will be greatly affected by the sudden shifts, and for the first time in a long time their ability to do things entirely by themselves will be tested. Spoiler alert: not everyone's gonna survive or even enjoy that ride. It's like separating the chaff from the grain, and if you're reading this right now, YOU ARE ONE AWESOME GRAIN.

I hope that this channeled message gives you support during these troubled times. As always, stay healthy and safe, and most importantly, use both hemispheres of the brain, your logical and intuitive side to stay sane. The time to play with both polarities in order to move beyond duality pretty much started already, and there's no better time than now, to begin seeing the two sides of everything and loving the entire thing because it's an all for one, one for all reality.

Thank you so much for taking your time to read this very long post. May you become the healing you seek. 

三日月🌙

Mikazuki

Links to Resources or Extra Readings:

Jovian Archive Post - Support During the COVID-19

How to get your Human Design Chart

My Pluto Generations Post

How to generate your natal birth chart wheel

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PS. If you found the information in this post to be very helpful, insightful, and of great value to you and your own personal journey, please feel free to reblog, share and heart/like, or if you feel super-generous, energetic exchanges are welcomed! Please click here and use this email address: may_chan_otaku@yahoo.com

Thank you so much and be blessed!