#maybe i'll start throwing up my old text posts on this account...

[todayisafridaynight]

when more masadai art😔 pls, u have gotten me addicted to their dynamic and im hungry for more...

be the change you want to see in the world my brother..... i believe in you.......

[hangonimevolving]

The Iron String.

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

Here we are. It's August. Five months plus since the start of the U.S. pandemic, lockdowns, and general disruption to society. Over 5.26 million confirmed cases in the United States alone to date, and 167,000 deaths. Our world around us has changed.

Much of the last two months of summer for me were spent in an agonizing holding pattern concerning the almighty School Question. What would happen in the fall? Would schools be reopening? If so, how would that look - would we just act like life is normal, or would there be modifications to help prevent transmission of the virus? If so, what on earth modifications are even possible for young children that are reasonable, and to which little kids can even feasibly adhere given their ages and needs? If it proves too difficult to reopen schools, what would be the plan? Would there be some sort of virtual learning program, and how would it differ from the shifts that happened this past spring, with teachers scrambling to educate themselves on distance-learning technologies and teleconferencing utilities in order to teach a room full of kindergartners on Zoom? Surely, with several months to ponder the possibilities and plan for vairous contingencies, schools would be more prepared with better, more structured and thought-out plans for fall, than what they had in the spring... right?

Er, wrong. WRONG. The short version of how this situation ended, at least in our geographic area, is that the public school system (and my own kids' small, family-owned private school) made the decision to reopen to face-to-face teaching by the middle of July. Late in the game, both also hastily threw together a virtual option for students - but the virtual option was tantamount to a continuation of the fly-by-night Zoom teaching that had been put into effect at the very start of the lockdown.

I for one was entirely disappointed and disgusted with this. With SO much time to plan, this is really the best that could be done?! Bruh, NAW. I wasn't having it.

So blah blah blah, hem, haw, blah. Research, research, research. Reading, millions of review websites, forums, blogs, legal defense funds, Department of Education website, nonprofits, clubs and associations and collectives.... a phone call with an old friend from high school with over 10+ years experience, and a series of long and informative text message exchanges with two other friends, one a veteran with over 15+ years with three now-adult children, another a mom about my age of children about my kids' ages, facing this situation just like me and working through options just like me...... and, after all this, I knew exactly what I would be doing. What WE would be doing, in our family.

By June 13, it was official, and it was all systems go.

Ladies and gentlemen.... I am officially a homeschooling mom. Like, a LEGIT homeschooling mom. As in, I am doing a 100% parent-led homeschooling curriculum plan, FULL-time, with my two children.

I won't lie. In a million, bajillion, baskillion years, I don't think I ever intended to find myself in this place. I'll also say with honesty, that I have admired from afar the rare few homeschooling families that I somewhat know, and the flexibility and creativity with which they approach academics and learning in general.

I have also been increasingly dissatisfied and frustrated with the academic progress of my own children... Dr. Spouse and I have had long discussions where we've tried to speculate on the things that we haven't been satisfied about in our kids' schooling. The list has been long. But even as we were able to identify specific shortcomings in our children's particular educational environment, I've felt a rising sensation of control-freakism and bootstrapism in my chest, that has whispered to my conscience: "if you feel something is wrong here, don't sit around waiting for someone else to fix it. And, when you articulate your concerns in a constructive, non-threatening, but clear way, and people have smiled and nodded and claimed they'd follow up on those items, but in the end, they havent taken those concerns seriously - then it is time to man the f&* up and TAKE CARE OF THAT SHIT yourself. Because YOU are the only one you can trust. YOU are the only one who can do it right, in your own view. So either do it, or stop feeling dissatisfied about it."

So here it is. Our original plan, prior to the pandemic, was to switch the kids to the local (A-rated) public elementary school for this coming year. We had hoped that a change in environment, teachers, and the accountability of being a reputed school in the public school system, would mean more organization and oversight, and that hopefully this would translate into better academic progress in our kids.... but the pandemic changed all our plans, and besides, I don't know if more "in theory..." type things ever really translate to palpable, effective change at the individual level (at least not for me anyway, I never have such luck).

Rather than seeing this weird, surreal circumstance has having forced me into the homeschooling decision (which, maybe it sort of did) - - for reasons I can't explain, I dove headlong into it, with great excitement and hope. I can't really figure out how I have been as enthusiastic or jazzed about it as I have been - - but lookie, I'm jazzed! Seriously. From the moment we made the decision to do it, I felt like a 1,000-lb. weight was lifted from my chest. No more feeling anxious or on the edge of my seat about decisions that are being made outside of my control. In this matter - I stopped waiting for other poeple, and I TOOK CONTROL. For my own kids, anyway.

I'll write a detailed post at a later time about some of the particulars of the homeschooling plan that I am using, the research I did, the materials I ended up purchasing, the knowledge and insight I required while in the preparations phase, and other stuff. But, for now - I've droned on long enough. I'm gonna share some pictures now.

To bring it back to the start of this post - - with this homeschooling plan, I have found my iron string. I literally felt this resounding, reverberating sense of CONFIDENCE the moment that I decided to do this, and effectively brought Dr. Spouse on board. NEVER, in my life, have I felt so right about a decision. I feel a tremendous inner harmony about it - like I've come home to myself, if that's not too weird to say.

Sooo.... here are pictures of Week 1 of our great homeschooling adventure.

Obligatory "First Day of School" picture....

Our newly-tweaked home office - - now serving as our homeschooling classroom!

Particularly proud of our new training clock, our large-format calendar, and the "today's date/weather" board that I made with vinyl die-cuts from my Cricut, some chalkboard-surface Contact paper, and some rainbow sparkly duct tape :)

Spanish class: kids use a fun new app for two class sessions a week

Dey working on simple addition/subtraction with Teddy Bear Counters

Dey slaying his worksheets in Handwriting class - we're doing both print letters and cursive

Vev learning to tell time, and to recognize and convey the time in both analog and digital notation

After reading several history textbook chapters on the origins, diets, nomadic lifestyles, housing practices, and modes of dress among prehistoric humankind - we did a "History in action" lesson where the kids were given 10 minutes to construct a shelter out of a "mammoth skin" (blanket), "two tree branches" (pool noodles), and several large "rocks" (throw pillows). They didn't need the full 10 minutes :)

Vev enjoying one of his first chapter books - an "I Can Read" reader during a Language Arts learning block

After a week reading science textbook chapters about the earth's atmosphere, we conducted science experiments to better understand the properties of air! The boys had a "paper race" using construction paper and pieces of cardboard as fans, to race two paper structures across a finish line. They discussed their expectations and each articulated a hypothesis about which paper would travel faster, prior to conducting the experiment; afterwards, we determined whether our "guesses" (hypothesis) were accepted or rejected :)

This is just a smattering. There's been so much, and in only four days. I can't believe how much we are able to learn and cover in our homeschooling time. And the crazy thing is, we are able to do Phonics and Grammar, Reading, History, Read-aloud time, Math, Spanish, Handwriting, and Science in only about 3 hours per day. We integrate things like art, movement, current events, and practical life skills into pretty much everything we do, but on occasion we are even able to do a discrete, planned-out period of time for these topics too.

The iron string is taut, and secured in its proper place. We are ready for it to guide us through this school year.

[bakugou-ou]

Ik I'm anon and all, but I don't wanna get off it because the embarrassment would probably make it worse. I'm just tired of life… mines is pretty useless if you ask me, and according to everyone else who if ever met, I'm ugly too, I wouldn't kill myself because I'm too much of a coward to do that, but I don't know what I wanna do with my life and I can never be happy without someone ruining it That's why you and other creators' story helps me, it makes me think about my dram life I'll never get

Listen, friendo, whoever you are, you’re not ugly, and not useless. You don’t need to come off anon if you don’t want to, I get it. This is gonna get v personal here in a sec, so I’m putting the rest of this down under a cut in case no one gives a shit about my personal life and doesn’t wanna see my tragic anime backstory, but I’m sharing it with you because you said that you like my writing. This is the story of how I ended up running this blog, it’s got lots of talk about suicide, mentions of rape. It’s not pretty, so read at your own risk. Also, it’s long.

When I was four years old, I tried to jump off the balcony of my apartment, I wanted to die. It wasn’t a kid doing a stupid thing, I literally thought if I fall from this height and hit my head on the ground, I will die and then went for it. I fell onto a 7ft tall cinder block mailbox on the way down, four feet below my balcony, crawled off of it, and walked back upstairs to my parents like nothing had happened. 

What was wrong that someone barely past toddlerhood wanted to kill themselves over? I don’t know, maybe it was just that my parents were fighting all the time and hated each other, maybe it was because I have the genes for it. More on that last bit later.

When I was six, I tried to throw myself in front of a car, thinking that if a small child like myself got hit by a car going 25+ mph, I’d die. The driver hit the brakes, I played it off like I’d tripped into the road, no one knew how I really felt. When I’d told my parents I wanted to die, they thought I was being dramatic, they didn’t think a kid my age even knew what that meant, the finality of it. But I knew, and I craved it.

When I was eight, I tried to hang myself in my older sister’s bedroom with her sheets. She found me, took me down before I blacked out, and we never spoke about it again after that night. I was pissed with my sister for saving me, I cried and punched her as she held onto me.

When I was twelve, I tried to eat a bottle of Xanax, thinking it would kill me. It didn’t, it just made me really, really fucking sick. Not sick enough to go to the hospital, but very sick. I had no lasting organ damage, but I still wanted to die.

When I was fourteen, my boyfriend dumped me over the phone on a day he was supposed to come to my house, and ignored me while I cried. He had me on speaker phone, actually, and his friends were laughing about it and I could hear them. I could hear him laughing along with them. So, I decided to eat a bottle of asprin for dinner a couple of weeks later. I was stupid, it didn’t work, and I was hospitalized in the mental ward for 2 weeks.

When I was seventeen, I had just left an abusive relationship, graduated high school, and my mom told me that my ex raping me repeatedly for 9 months was my fault and that I was asking for it by continuing to date him the whole time. I was too scared to leave, I had been told by a counselor at school that no one would believe me. I tried to eat all of my antidepressants. I was hospitalized for 3 weeks in the mental ward.

When I was eighteen, I tried to do that same thing again, in conjunction to another thing my mom said about my abuser. My cousin had been raped while studying abroad, and she was talking about poor cousin, your poor cousin, it’s so traumatic, but when I mentioned that I’d been abused for three quarters of a year and no one batted an eye, she told me I was being selfish, and that my time for being the victim was over. How dare I detract from my cousin. So, again, I tried to eat a bottle of pills. I was hospitalized for one week in the psych ward.

Earlier this year, at the age of twenty, I was hospitalized because I felt like I was going to slit my wrists if I stayed home. So I checked myself into the hospital. I was there for a week while my doctor tried to find better meds for me because clearly mine weren’t working. My mom had told me that she was ashamed of my sexuality and my gender identity, and the rape issue came up again, with her saying I wanted it, that I let it happen.

I have bipolar II, borderline personality disorder, OCD, PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, and selective eating disorder. A lot is messed up with me. I get the anxiety from my mother, and the bipolar II from my father. The PTSD was a gift from my ex boyfriend, and the rest I just ended up with.

When I was a little kid, I loved books; my father read all sorts of books to me, all the time. Artemis Fowl was the first series we read, then Harry Potter, then my mother read me the Chronicles of Narnia, then my father read me A Series of Unfortunate Events. We also read other books, things that weren’t series. I loved reading, and I wanted to write things that made people feel the way I felt about the stuff I read. 

Both of my parents are naturally talented writers. At the age of six, I began to write fan fiction for Harry Potter. I was way too young to be on the internet, but I was online writing fanfics on snitchseeker. Some of the only validation I found in my life was from random strangers on the internet, encouraging me to continue writing and complimenting my plot lines, even if my grammar and spelling were atrocious; on the internet, no one knows you’re a little kid writing Drarry fanfic.

I was a really athletic kid, so I didn’t spend all my time writing, but a good chunk of my free time was spent writing if I wasn’t surfing, playing soccer, or skateboarding. I didn’t have a lot of friends, I wasn’t likable, apparently, and I had a really hard time in school. I got into a lot of fights because people picked on me, but I was always the one who got in trouble for defending myself. It pissed me off. I developed issues with authority. I wrote in composition books to escape all the crap around me.

By the time I turned 11, writing was my life. I had just moved to California from Hawaii, my life was basically turned upside down, and I was miserable. So, I made a myspace account, wrote fanfic on there, and threw myself headlong into it. I have a fanfiction.net account I’ve long since forgotten my username and password for, but it’s out there with dramione fanfic, sasusaku, things that I liked at the time. I need to escape everything happening around me. My dad, my best friend, wasn’t anywhere near me, my mom was a bitch, and my demented grandmother moved in with us. It was miserable.

By the time I was 15, the only hobby I had outside of practicing for orchestra, was writing. I laid in bed on days off and just sat on my laptop, writing. I stopped publishing things after I got a mean comment once, my first one ever. It bruised the ego I didn’t even have so badly that I refused to publish anything for three years.

When I was 18, I published my first fanfic in 4 years. It was a Criminal Minds fanfic, featuring an OC and Spencer Reid. I was so fucking proud of it, and while lots of people loved it, a lot of people said mean shit. So, I posted Loki fanfic, which got infinitely more love, and then I did an alternate version of my Criminal Minds fic, that one got even more hate than the original. Then I published a Wallander fanfic. I haven’t touched them in 3 years, despite people asking me for more.

Up until this time last month, I never showed my writing to anyone. I kept everything to myself, hidden, I was ashamed of it. It is my only coping mechanism, but I couldn’t share it with anyone. My parents had my computer passwords up until I was about 16, sometimes they’d look through my text files and come to me later and tell me how amazing my writing was, and encourage me to publish it. But I never believed them.

On a whim, I started this blog; I love Boku no Hero Academia, it has given me something to look forward to every week. I live Chapter to Chapter, episode to episode, I track my time with it, it’s a coping mechanism. I saw that there was a decently active fandom on here, and I wanted to be a part of it. I hesitated on making the blog for a few weeks, thinking that no one would want to read my writing.

A month later, there are nearly 600 people here, constantly asking me to write scenarios and headcanons for them, telling me they love my writing, and think I’m a nice person, and that they’re glad I’m here. Every time I get a message like that, I cry. I never thought anyone would ever care about my writing, let alone write it. When I got a single follower that wasn’t a friend I know in real life, I cried. I was so excited. When I got my first request, I was so, so excited. When people began sending more stuff in, when people started talking to me and wanting to be friends, I cried. I’ve made a dozen friends on here as a direct result of their writing, and my writing.

I love running this blog, and I love writing for everyone. I have felt useless and like a waste of space my entire life, I’ve been told that my entire life, I’m made to feel like that every day of my life even now by the people around me, save for my friends, but when I log on here, I’m reminded that hey, maybe I’m not useless. If I manage to make even one person happy with what I do, that’s all I want.

So, you saying that my writing helps you, helps me. All I’ve ever wanted in life is to make other people happy, to please them, and my writing is apparently doing that. I’m really, really lucky to be in this position.

Even if you don’t have something like this, you’re not useless. You should be here. I know you said you’d never kill yourself because you’re too cowardly, but I’ve never seen suicide as cowardly, but that’s probably because I’ve tried to do it so many times. I’ve made a total of 8 attempts in 21 years. I don’t think I’ll be trying it again, though. It’s taken me 21 years to find something that I’m kind of maybe a little good at, that makes me even a tiny bit happy, and that does some good for other people, too.

Shit sucks, life is really awful, and I completely understand the plethora of reasons any given person would feel like wanting to die. I’ve never thought it unreasonable or dramatic to feel that way, it’s just how some people feel. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life until 3 years ago, and even now I’m unsure if it’s really what I want to do with my life. I’ve got a lot going on behind the scenes that makes me feel like shite, and a lot of the time, the people around me try to ruin what little I have that I enjoy and that makes me happy…

Even with all that happening, somehow, I’m still here, and I’m writing this. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I get your feelings, I hear you, they’re valid, and I love you, stranger. Because I feel the same way as you all the time. This blog is my escape from that. It’s really the only thing I have keeping me from my intrusive thoughts.

If you never come off anon, that’s fine, but if you need to talk about things, I’m here for you, or anyone else who needs it. Really, if I can even try to help, I’ll do my damnedest to help. I hate seeing other people feeling as junk as I do on a daily basis, I want to try and make it better. If being a friend, even if I don’t know who you are, helps, I want to help. If writing things helps, I want to do it. But, for me, it’s not just helping other people, it’s helping myself. You coming into the box helped me. So, you’re not useless. You’re keeping me here, too.