#so i will get to live through 4 toddlers too for a brief period

[woodsies]

just passing time in game until everyone ages up - the infants have a week left and the toddlers have 2 weeks left GUHH

[melancholic-pigeon]

Too Short For Ao3 Fic #3? 4?

SO this is the extended edition of the bonus wip I did with Sally's birthday. The overall fic it belongs to is Extremely Smutty, so I went in and revised out the brief references and I'm posting the family-centric g-rated stuff for anyone who wants that but not the smut! Cough.

Also, I felt bad about missing WIP Wednesday again. Lolsob.

Percy rouses at around eleven PM to a sketch of himself on Jason's pillow. There's a note on the other side. 

I wanted to wake you up to say goodbye, but you looked so comfy I didn't have the heart to. your mom's presents are in the bag by my desk. say hi to everyone for me. I'll call tomorrow anyway.

love you to the moon and back.

-J. ❤

Complete with a little red heart. He doesn't even care that the doodle of him next to it, burritoed in a pile of blankets, includes a little spot of drool— he can tell by the rest of his cartoony, ballpoint features that Jason put it in because he thinks it's cute.

(And by the fact that he's said so, several times.)

Percy gathers up his junk. The cornflower blue sweatshirt he steals goes halfway down his fingers. He's come to accept that at six foot three and counting, Jason is the taller of them and always will be— barring some sort of horrible wood-chipper accident or curse from a grumpy deity. 

Fortunately, there's something about looking up to meet someone's eyes that Percy finds incredibly attractive. He has since Annabeth outgrew him for the first time in eighth grade. 

He heads out in his own jeans and the boxers he packed and the sweatshirt that smells like cinnamon. Once he boards the train, he stands with his arm around a pole and the other holding the bag against his chest, and tries to stay casual and keep the grin off his face.

It's almost midnight when he gets home. His mom, of course, is still awake, so he heads into the living room to greet her.

"My other half says hello."

There's a pile of presents on the coffee table. He puts the bag with the rest of them and sits down, kissing her cheek.

"He didn't have to get me anything." She closes her book and eyes the bag with a fond sigh. "How is he?" 

Percy's the same way she is, always happy to do favors and give gifts, but feeling pretty awkward about receiving them. Jason's even worse, the three of them in an ongoing and circular competition to never let any of it go reciprocated. 

"Working too hard, as always. Pulling As and winning games and barely sleeping to do it. His stepmother's up his ass and his father's a bully, so, you know, news at eleven." He leans his head onto her shoulder. "That's why he gives you stuff. He's trying to show you how much he appreciates you." 

She sighs, and Percy knows it's because she's just as frustrated by the whole thing as he is. 

"He knows I appreciate him too, I hope." 

"Without a doubt." Percy smiles at her, watching as she goes a little pink and smiles back. "You have a talent for making him feel appreciated." 

"He treats my baby like a prince," she says softly. "That's why I appreciate him so much in the first place. How could I do anything else?"

Percy turns his face into her shirt collar, another futile attempt to hide his goofy expression, 

"He really does, doesn't he?"

Holding doors, pulling out chairs, offering an arm on unsteady streets. Jason's never laid his coat over a puddle, but Percy's pretty sure he would, if the option presented itself. 

His mom starts playing with his hair, her fingers light and familiar.

"I'm just happy you're happy, sweetheart."

He knows that feeling too. 

Half asleep from the petting, Percy lets himself be a little babyish. It's after midnight now, which means it's her birthday, and he knows that sometimes she misses when he was Estelle's age and little enough to curl up in her lap. He's way too big for that now, obviously, but he can still slide down the couch and rest his head there. 

"You too, Mama." 

She looks at him, her eyes misty with emotion and almost green in the light.

She's smiling, too. 

She smiles a lot, these days.

—

In the morning, Paul makes coffee while Estelle helps unwrap the avalanche of presents. She's at the age where ripping paper makes her squeal with hysterical laughter, which worms its way into Percy's heart and melts it into pudding. 

Several of them are from Percy's friends, including a handbound book of original recipes from Leo, a lovely silver bracelet inset with mother-of-pearl that Beckendorf made himself, and a huge sheathed knife with a matching decorative handle from Clarisse. The last one makes his mom snort as she gets up to put it on the bookshelf, out of reach of curious toddler hands. 

"Decorative. Sure." 

"I bet she'd teach you how to use it if you asked." 

"I know how to use a bowie knife, dear. Your father and I used to catch and cook our own fish when we went camping."

"Which reminds me, he still hasn't taken me out," Paul cuts in, frowning. "I've been saving up dad jokes and embarrassing stories for four years."

"I'll bug him about it the next time we talk," Percy promises. "It's probably the ADHD." 

"Do you want me to bug you about bugging him?" 

"If you haven't set something up by blueback season, yeah." 

Percy and Paul went in on a pound of jasmine tea, which his mom reaches for next. She immediately asks for a cup— it's one of two days out of the entire year where she lets other people wait on her, for a change, and even that took a lot of cajoling. 

Paul makes the tea, since Percy usually scalds the leaves and it turns out tasting like grass. She probably wouldn't complain anyway, but it's her birthday, and she deserves to have the best tea that can be made in their kitchen. 

"Is the last bag from Jason?" Paul sets the mug on a coaster in the middle of the coffee table, and Percy scoops the baby into his lap so she doesn't try to grab it. She mashes her tiny hand against his cheek.

"And Thalia. I'm not sure if they went in on stuff or he just packed them both in one bag to make it easy." 

Either is a possibility. He watches as his mom reaches in and pulls out a large wrapped frame, Thalia's spiky handwriting answering the question. 

Whatever's inside, it makes her shut her eyes and exhale deeply through her nose. 

"Please pass on that I am absolutely furious."

She turns the frame around. An autographed vinyl EP of Sign O' the Times by Prince— one of the albums Percy grew up on, though she skipped a number of the songs when he was little. Thalia must have spent a fortune on it. 

"That woman is incredible," Paul breathes, lightly touching the glass. "How does she get this stuff?" 

"See!"

"She has friends in high places." Percy grins as Estelle reaches for the album, and holds her over the glass so she can touch it too. "She's also really good at barter chains."

His mother shakes her head, but he can tell how delighted she is— the two of them have spent hours animatedly talking about music, Thalia hanging on every word and groaning with jealousy over the concerts his mom went to in the eighties. 

"I know exactly where I'm going to put it." 

Thalia got her a turntable for her fortieth birthday last year, as well as a full set of replacements for every worn-out record in their collection— and had the originals framed too, since they had sentimental value. They're currently occupying the better part of two walls of his mom's study. 

There's a blank spot by her bookshelf, right underneath the first copy, that the autographed album will fit into perfectly. Percy grins. 

"I'll hang it up for you later."

She doesn't argue. There's only Jason's left, his careful print written out across the same paper Thalia used. The crinkling draws Estelle's attention, and she gleefully reaches over to help tear it off.

Their mom gasps at what's inside and puts a hand to her mouth, her eyes going bright.

It's a watercolor portrait of Percy and Estelle, laughing by the shoreline. She's dressed in a little bucket hat, a ruffled swimsuit patterned to look like a clownfish and the coolest shades in the world— sparkly blue frames shaped like seashells that he kind of wishes he could get in his size. He's in a wetsuit, having spent the morning surfing, and he's holding onto her hands so she can jump at the waves. In the distant background is the Montauk lighthouse.

It's beautifully done, like everything else Jason's ever put to paper, but Percy's never choked up like this over one of them.

"You remember that, Beluga? That was on my birthday, when you came and visited me and Jason at the beach."

"Beach?" she asks, expectant. Paul bursts into laughter, sounding as rough-voiced as Percy feels.

"You're your mother's daughter, sweet pea."

"Beach!" Estelle insists. Percy noses her pudgy cheek.

"It's too cold to swim, baby." His mom's eyes are sparkling, still a little teary. He can see Estelle in the smile on her face. "But we could go for a walk and visit." 

"Brunch first." Paul kisses her— Percy averts his eyes, wrinkling his nose at his sister to make her giggle again— and gets up, heading back into the kitchen. 

It's a lovely way to spend a late morning. Pale blue araucana eggs courtesy of Grover's new hens, a blueberry coffee cake from Nico by a fantastic hole in the wall in Hell's Kitchen, Paul's signature home fries made with blue potatoes and seasoned to perfection; all of it delicious.

Jason calls while Percy's doing the dishes. After his deep, resonant performance of the happy birthday song, the five of them chat on speakerphone for a little while, though he has to excuse himself pretty quickly to keep banging through his reading. 

"Maybe next year," Percy sighs. His mom puts her hand on his hip, then crouches down to help Estelle with her light-up sneakers. 

"He's always welcome for a rain check."

"He's always welcome, period," Paul adds. For the second time, Percy gets dangerously close to sniffling. 

Montauk is a little far for a day trip, so they head to Brighton Beach instead. Estelle's shrimpy legs get tuckered out more quickly than the grownups' do, so Percy ends up carrying her on his hip, snuggled into his jacket to block the chilly breeze. She points at seagulls, shouting triumphantly every time. 

"More bird!"

"That's right. A whole flock of 'em."

They watch for a while as the gulls fight over a discarded pizza crust. Then Percy feels an arm around his back and a head against his shoulder.

"I don't know how I got so lucky," his mother murmurs, barely audible over the rushing of the waves.

Percy's eyes sting. 

For most of his life, her birthdays had been spent without fanfare. He was rarely actually there for them anyway, and Gabe complained so much it was easier to just ignore the day and focus on survival instead. 

She'd been triaging like that since before she even met his dad, keeping herself afloat when nobody seemed to care if she drowned. It would have been easy to lie down and give up. Percy's pretty sure he would have, in her place. 

He turns to hug her with the obligatory proclamation of a Stella Sandwich. He catches Paul's eye over her shoulder, and gets a wide, sentimental grin in response. 

"Luck's got nothing to do with it," Percy tells her, leaning his cheek against the top of her head while his sister wriggles with delight between them. 

"Listen to our son," Paul adds. "He's very wise, as you raised him to be. This is all on you, honey." 

Within moments, she's surrounded by her whole family on all sides, and Percy has another arm around his back, and he's getting a little choked up over it all. 

When she first started dating Paul, back when Percy was still in middle school, she'd spent weeks all aflutter. It was the happiest he'd ever seen her at the time. They'd sit outside and work on her car together, and she'd slip into song like a grease-stained fairytale princess without even thinking about it. 

Seeing them interact is like cool water on a burn, Paul's devoted kindness soothing a lifetime of sitting back and watching people treat her like dirt. He worships her, just like she deserves and long overdue.

"I love you," she says, tearful and muffled in someone's shoulder. "All of you, more than anything." 

"Love Mama," Estelle replies, and that's it— Percy's blubbering.

It'll never undo the damage, but it's about time she got a chance to heal and thrive. 

-here in our bed, chapter 7, ~6200 words

[novaent]

** This episode was uploaded at 12PM on Nova Entertainment’s official YouTube channel.

It all starts with the happy song chosen as the opening theme. After the animation gets its moment of shine, the trainees appear again in their broken line. The news of what their positions meant was already shared and now they all knew what the risks were for the following weeks. The only thing left to share was what exactly they’d need to do.

Hyun Bin leans back, looking around at the coaches beside him. “You must be curious what will be given to you this month, so I’ll let the coaches take over.” Yonghwa nods along before speaking. “Unlike the previous month, every week will be completed with a group performance instead of a solo. Your group mates are the ones in the same zone as you are, totaling in four different groups. The theme for this week is time travel.”

There’s a grin on Hyemi’s lips before she takes over. “That’s right. No one will be traveling through time, but we will be attempting. Each week, the groups will have to choose a song from a different time period to perform. Since the '10s are coming to an end with this year of 2019, it’s the best time to do it. The first week will have to be from the ‘90s, the second week from the ‘00s and the third from the '10s.”

“The fourth week, of course, will be explained on a later date,” Minsoo adds in the finishing details. “We’ll keep monitoring you, of course, and assisting you on your training. If I were you, I’d make sure to work extra hard.” Hyun Bin prepares to say the finishing words. “So work hard, or it’ll be your last month here and a missed opportunity at debut.”

A voice somewhere screams cut, a part of recording never showed before in the other episodes. The cameras zoom in a couple of staff members as they rush towards the trainees while holding colorful things in their hands. While they start handing them out, Hyun Bin’s voice takes over until the scene eventually completely changes into a drawing. “To differenciate the trainees between SAFE and DANGER, each of them will have to wear a colorful vest that represents their current position. RED means DANGER; BLUE means SAFE, and GOLD shows who did the best the previous month. It impossible to wear red twice as such thing leads to elimination, but the vests may still change owners after the next evaluation.” Different scenes show the trainees putting their vests on for the first time and then it all just cuts completely.

Ricky appears on his chair wearing the bright yellow as it was his right. “How does the gold vest feel?” The voice questions it. “Ah, this…” The boy lets out a quiet sheepish laugh, gaze falling somewhere below the right corner of the screen. “It’s heavy, to be honest.” He nods. “Not actually heavy, but… it feels really symbolic… maybe of my time training. It’s sort of like a big sign that says I have to do extra well or what’s the point? I mean… we all have to do well but it’s sort of like I have to do perfect. It’s not burdensome, but I feel like I have to keep working to prove, to myself too, that I deserve it.”

This time its Chaeyoung with the same colored vest on to indicate the title that she had won. “How do you feel about the results last month?” They ask her and she crosses her arms. “When I was standing there, I was feeling uneasy at first. During that time, I kept thinking, ‘is he going to leave me last?’ or ‘maybe I wasn’t surprising enough?’. I really didn’t like those doubts but I think it’s because anything he would say, everyone in the room would hear.” Lowering her head, she drops her arms and continues with her response after a brief pause. “Then when it came to me, I thought that if he had anything negative to say that I should view it positively and take that negativity as motivation to do better. But once he mentioned how impressed they were with my singing and rapping, I was so happy that I couldn’t stop smiling.”

A brief scene shows the exact moment she mentioned when she was still back in that room standing in line. “This vest…” Chaeyoung points to the piece of clothing. “To some people, they may think of it as something you would want due to the symbolism it holds. To others, they may see the person wearing it as a threat - a rival they have to overtake. But to me, it has a very unique meaning.” Shaking her head, the girl tries to explain herself. “MVP means ‘the most valuable player’.” Chaeyoung does her best to speak in English before shifting back. “Valuable is something that has great worth. We have P for ‘player. So that means we are a team and the MVP is someone who has significantly helped the team succeed. For me, I think wearing this reminds me that despite this being a competition, we need to work well as a group and I have to do my best to be the glue that can help make it possible.”

When her smile starts to fade along with the rest of the scene, something that has become familiar appears. The camera shows an image from the top of the girls living room, as it did before, and then it changes to the boys. While the images play on screen, the words on the bottom change from ‘Month 1, Week 4’ to ‘Month 2, Week 1’. It was the start of a brand new month.

Solji and Wendy sit together as they go through the lyrics, both of them wearing blue. “What did you think of the song when it first came out, unni?” The younger, Wendy, asks. Solji’s brows automatically furrow. “Yah, are you calling me old? The song came out in November of 1997… I was only four,” she noted. The years of their birth appear below them. While Wendy was born in 1998, Solji was from 1993.

“Unni~” The girl adds playfully. “I’m not calling you old~.” Wendy tries a pout for full effect. “I was only wondering whether the song was one of your childhood favorites.” The screen keeps showing Wendy, except now she is in the middle of her interview. “What do you think of this week’s concept?” They ask her and Wendy lets out a laugh. “Admittedly, the 90s were difficult, since at least three of us grew up aboard. Most of the unnies were still toddlers when majority of these songs came out, while Chaeyoungie and I were born toward the end of the decade.”

“How do you feel about the results” She sighs. “I was mostly thankful that CEO Hyun Bin and the rest of you considered my performance as sufficient enough to be considered safe,” she says with a soft smile that instantly fades. “However, I felt like I was complimented on my singing before being slapped in the face. Figuratively, that is. I mean, I’m thankful that I was given a direction on what I must improve on this month. But at the same time, a little bit of validation would have been nice.” Wendy smiles. “Being in the safe team motivates me to work even harder to show that I deserve to be kept in the project.”

The one next on the seat is Solji. “I feel really good,” she admits. “I mean, I know there is still a lot to be worked on, but I’m very happy with how the first month went as a whole. Honestly, to hear the comments give to me… I’m very thankful.” A smile appears on her face. “To hear Sajangnim himself telling me that he wasn’t expecting me to impress him…” she chuckles softly. “Well, it’d be a lie if I said that I wasn’t nervous when he started with those words.”

“How do you feel about your placement?” It is Sunmi now, another member of the SAFE zone. “I don’t feel like I deserve my spot in the safe zone.” They ask her if she’s insecure. She shakes her head. “My performance this first month wasn’t the performance of a five-year trainee and for that, I should be in the danger zone. It wasn’t a good performance and honestly, the group performance, in the end, didn’ help my standing much either.” When they ask her if she thinks she did worse than everyone, she shrugs.

“I can’t really say if I was really the worst of the group but you have to evaluate everyone fairly. The fair thing would be to evaluate me as someone with more experience than half of them there. So for someone with my caliber of experience, I did badly. It’s just the reality.” Sunmi looks off for a moment. “I think people should learn to be more self-critical.”

The girls in red sit together in their own circle. It’s not easy to know you’re in danger and that much is evident in their faces. “So-” Yongsun decides to be the first to speak. “This is unfortunate but at this point, we got nothing to lose and everything to gain,” she nods her head. “How do you feel about the results?” The voice asks her this time and the girl leans back on the chair, glancing down. “Somehow, I felt lacking- Hyuna suggested the song for the last week and I thought it wasn’t a bad pick but none of the other songs were good picks either.” She smiles anyway. “I wasn’t eliminated but punished because I had been a trainee for a less amount of time. Not prepared enough and then I don’t stand out enough.”

When it’s Hyuna’s turn to speak she doesn’t sound too enthusiastic. “I have nothing to say. I feel the same as I did when I started this show.” She shrugs, reaching up to pull onto the blue vest. “I’m safe. There is nothing else to it. I suck at dancing. I’m good at rapping, which is something the public already knew.” After that, she takes a deep breath. “Can I leave now?

There are two girls now side-by-side. The cameras stare at them while they stare at their own lyrics sheet. Meiqi knocks a fist against her head to her to focus. “Sorry, I zoned out for a second,” she laughs dryly before continuing. “Are you sure we should give me that many parts? Hyun Bin said my singing isn’t that good so maybe you should take one more part of mine…” Yongsun is the one sitting with her and she quickly shakes her head. “No, I won’t do that. You need to prove Hyun Bin and everyone wrong - practice makes perfect and I’ll support you to the best of my own abilities. You just gotta remember the lyrics and I think you will do just fine.”

While she gives the other a smile, the background music clearly gets more serious. They focus on Meiqi’s reaction. “Was that supposed to be a joke or…” She looks down at her paper, taking a deep breath. For those who didn’t remember it, a flashback to the girl forgetting her lyrics during rap week plays followed by the CEO himself sharing his thoughts about it at the end of the month. “Yes, joke.” Yongsun nods her head, but the editing team makes it clear that the air feels much denser than the type you’d have after a joke.

Meiqi pulls the sleeves of her shirt over her knuckles when it’s time for her interview. “It was hard to hear,” she admits through a heavy sigh. “I’ve never… been criticized so heavily. But he’s right. It’s disheartening to hear it, you know? But it’s even worse when you know it yourself. When you think you’re decent, but then you make all these mistakes that you know aren’t you. When you let  nerves get in the way and you start doubting yourself at a level you never have…” Tears start piling up in her eyes but she doesn’t let them fall. “I know I belong in the danger zone,” Meiqi’s voice cracks, forcing her to take a deep breath. “But I don’t like being in it.”

The girl appears again in front of a camera inside her empty room. She runs a hand through her hair, pushing it back even when it’s not falling into her face. “You know that saying? ‘New year, new me’?” Meiqi switches to English for the common phrase and then goes back to Korean. “I want to change it to ‘new month, new me’ because that’s how I feel right now.” She giggles, tosses her hair over her shoulder and continues. “Cam, do I look good in red? I’m going to do my best to look good in another color. Make sure to cheer me on, okay?” The girl pouts. “To everyone who believed in me, I’m sorry for disappointing you. I’ll work hard so that I can be a Meng Meiqi that you can proudly say you are a fan of.”

Someone else is fidgeting with their vest, and it is still very red. Kaeun tries to straighten it out, but it proves to be difficult. “Honestly, I thought that was the end for me. I wasn’t expecting this division, per se, but I’m glad to stay a little longer. I think I’m starting to grow attached to this place and the training, a little. Sajangnim’s words… aligned with my thoughts. I’m still searching for what I truly hope to do as a trainee, and it’s not easy.” She smiles, hands resting on her lap as she speaks. “And I was thinking maybe, just maybe, I want to rap and dance. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and there probably isn’t enough time to become an amazing rapper, or dancer, all at one go. How many steps I can progress, I’d be happy with that alone.” The girl nods, leaning against the chair slightly. “Also, this red vest isn’t all that bad looking either. I think it stands out.”

Chaeyoung walks inside an empty practice room and remains still momentarily while closing her eyes. While she does so, a text appears on the bottom of the screen to let the audience know that was not a still picture. The girl finally opens her eyes and looks at the came, getting a bit closer to wave. “Hi! I don’t know if the other member told you, but we’re going to be performing ‘I’m Your Girl’ by S.E.S.” She chuckles. “But before I resume practice, let me end this talk with one of my favorite parts from this song.” Chaeyoung takes one of the water bottles and uses it as a microphone. She starts by humming the melody before saying the first line. “I like S.E.S y’all!” And so she turns the bottle towards the camera as if it would sing the missing line. The trainee does the same thing again before laughing.

The SAFE girls are the firsts to perform and the same song Chaeyoung had given the pleasure of introducing is the one that plays. It’s a famous song that even recent female idol groups made sure to cover. Being formed by only the best trainees, they make it a good and cute performance. The DANGER girls ended up choosing the same artist as the last group, but still a different song. The angelic aura of S.E.S takes over the segment and all the girls get to shine with their talent and dreamy visuals.

The week returns to the past, right after the results are given. Hosung heads straight to his room, climbs up to his top bunk and buries himself under the blanket with his face towards the wall. He’s clearly crying, but he doesn’t want to show that. “I’m fine,” he whispers it loud enough for the cameras to catch.

Someone else follows him into the room and the same path the boy had taken before. Hugo carefully slides in beside him, wrapping an arm around him. “Hey…” The other shifts slightly so that they could both fit a bit better but he’s still facing away. “Hey… congratulations on being safe. You deserve it. Blue never was my color…” He tries to lighten the mood with a joke but it trails off weakly. “I really messed up, didn’t I?” Hugo buries his face into the back of the other boy’s shoulder. “Blue is your color, it will be. Don’t give up hope, yeah? Show them why they need you, like you showed me.”

Leaving their bed behind, Hugo is the one who appears sitting in front of the camera. “I’m safe,” he tries to say with a smile but it proves to be hard. “I feel very conflicted right now. Last week when I was here, I was saying I couldn’t leave Hosung behind, and now that’s exactly what has happened. I don’t know what to do. I wish I could help him… I hope he can move up to the safe team with me. Then everything will be good.” He nods.

Hosung shows again, except this time he is with Haknyeon, another member of the DANGER zone. “Hyung,” the younger says. “This feels familiar, huh? Cat dog from the MGAs.” Hosung looks away from the mirror and towards him with a smile. “Yeah, cat dog from the MGAs.” Haknyeon continues. “Could you… help me a bit more with my singing this month? I don’t want to bring you or BamBam hyung down… I want to be useful!” He says, determined.

The smile on Hosung’s face turns a little brighter and a bit bigger. “Of course I’ll help you with singing. Although, are you sure you want me to? CEO-nim pretty much told me I sucked.” He shrugs before pulling Haknyeon into a one-armed hug. “Better than being told that you’re frankly an awful sing,” the boy tried to impersonate Hyun Bin to the best of his abilities. “I think you’re a good singer, hyung, that’s why I want you to help me.” He smiles. “Yeah, well, I think you’re a fine singer,” he replies patting the other’s cheek affectionately. “And thank you for thinking that I’m a good singer. If just one person likes it then it’s all worth it.”

Hosung’s interview is next to air. “What are your feelings after last week’s review?” They ask him and Hosung picks at the red vest to show them. “As you can see, I’m wearing red. Normally I love a good strong accent color but this time…” He takes a shaky breath before continuing. “Was I surprised by my critique from Hyun Bin CEO? Yes. Am I happy to be on the chopping block? No. I take full responsibility for not training my vocal techniques to the level that they’re supposed to be at.”

“So who in your group will take responsibility if you all should fail?” He opens his mouth but it takes a moment before the sound comes out of it. “I will take responsibility. We are all working together in a democratic fashion but I will say that I am the one who is trying to keep them on task.” When they ask him if he’s the leader, he denies. “I wouldn’t use that label, no, more like… manager? I take notes, make sure people are eating, drinking, and resting…”

It’s a practice room this time, and the people inside aren’t wearing red. Jungwoo holds onto his water bottle while he approaches Ricky with a smile. “Feeling good? I would’ve picked you for MVP too. You helped me a lot during the group week.” Ricky looks over to him. “Oh… I think so… I guess so. Thanks… I’m glad you’re here. You did good.” He glances down. “To be honest, I’m nervous. The expectations are really high for us. It’s important that we do well.” While he speaks, Ricky fiddles with the hem of the vest. “We can’t just show a better side of us than the other teams and leave it at that, we have to be better than ourselves. Always.” Jungwoo sucks his lower lip between his teeth, chewing on it. “I know.” There’s still a smile on his face. “I feel the same way. There’s not any less pressure on us being on this team. I feel like we have to work even harder now to prove we belong here. We deserve this.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t… offer to help sooner,” Ricky utters. He pauses, leaving an awkward breath suspended between them. The scene fades over to Jungwoo’s interview. “Haknyeon is on the danger team.” His brow furrows deep. “He’s got such talent for dancing and I thought his rapping was really good! I’m really worried for him.” The boy clasps his hands together tightly on his lap. “Of course I’m worried for the others too. I don’t want anyone to go home. But Haknyeonnie is my best friend. I want to debut with him.”

Jungwoo goes quiet for a moment. “I’m glad Ricky got MVP, though. He really deserves it, especially after last week. I was going to drag the whole team down, but he really helped me with my part, and he did his own amazingly too. Wow, he’s really a force to be reckoned with.” Meanwhile, Haknyeon appears to share some similar feelings to Jungwoo when it comes to him. “It’s tough. Terrible. I let myself down.” He pauses. “If I’m being honest, I feel angry at myself. At the start of the week, I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror because seeing the red uniform made me so sad.” He looks down at his uniform and grips at it. “But I felt that… I should channel that anger and sadness differently. You know, to not let myself down again. I want to debut.”

SAFE boys start to follow along about the same path as the girls did as they take on a bright concept to start things off. The song picks are quite a contrast to what’s famous nowadays and the style change is quite apparent. The DANGER boys go for something more intense instead. The rap-heavy song features a demanding choreography which the three boys manage to handle through most of the song. It’s only the first week, but things were already getting interesting.

The camera shows an image from the top of the boys living room, and then it changes to the girls. While the images play on screen, the words on the bottom change from ‘Month 2, Week 1’ to ‘Month 2, Week 2’.

The girls are shown enjoying their meal at the common room as it’d be expecting them to. It cuts to the inside of one of the bedrooms where Sunmi sad with a packet of chips in her lap and tears in her eyes. She turns to the nearest camera and wipes her tears. “I’m alright,” she says. On the other side of the door, Wendy leans closer to the door and appears to understand what was happening inside of it. The girl returns with a cup in hand and enters their room. “Sunmi unni? Are you okay? I brought you some tea.” The girl sets the drink on top of the dresser. Sunmi doesn’t appear too interested in it. “I know that fate works mysteriously but it sucks, you know?”

“How do you find working with the girls from the safe group?” They ask Hyuna. “I love it,” she replies in a heartbeat. “I really, really like it. Everyone has something they add to the group and it’s really refreshing to see them all work hard and adapt, help each other. It’s a motivating environment. I wish we wouldn’t change. Is that selfish?” She asks, grin pulling on her lips as she laughs. “Being in the safe group is a first for me. Nova likes their dancers, and I’m… I’m working on it, but I have quite a long way to go before I even manage to get on the level of some of the trainees here, like Sunmi, for example.”

Wendy is the one to appear after her. “What’s different about this song compared to the previous weeks?” The girl looks pensive before she gives her reply. “We rarely get to do playful and flirty songs,” she says with a fond smile. “This is our chance to show off our fun and sexy side!” She bursts out laughing. “What’s the biggest challenge for you this week?” And she replies making a face. “I’m not sexy enough,” she answers flat-out. “I mean, you’ve seen the girls I’m with, right?”

The scene changes to Wendy as she tries making flirty faces at the mirror. She giggles at herself before winking. “Unnie~” She whines at Hyuna who is beside her. “How do you do it?” The other lifts her eyes from her lyrics sheet. Hyuna blinks for a second before moving closer to the younger. Instead of doing a wink, she looks at Wendy and lifts her hand to gently grab her chin and make her face her before winking at her. Wendy blinks and maintains eye contact until she starts to laugh.

Chaeyoung appears on her seat sporting the golden vest people aimed for. “I felt that I was experiencing so many emotions at once, especially this week? I couldn’t help but wonder a lot. For example, last month we were evaluated on whether we could sing, dance, and rap well, right?” The girl begins to explain her train of thought. “Then on the fourth week, we were given a task where we had to incorporate that because that’s what you see some idol groups do. But this week, I kept contemplating moreover what is the purpose of this month’s missions? Was it a review for us to see the history of music throughout the decades?”

She purses her lips as she shakes her head. “Then during the song selection process, that’s when I began to think ‘what if Hyun Bin sajangnim is testing us to see if we can adapt to various concepts?’. If we stuck with the same one throughout this month, that would be a boring performance, wouldn’t it?” Chaeyoung confesses out loud. “At some point, I even asked myself ‘what if he wants to see us adapt in general? Both in concepts and roles?’ Like rappers singing and singers rapping?” The girl tilts her head. “I thought about that a lot and it reminded me of theatre. When the actor cannot perform on stage, you have the understudy. They have to be ready for anything that could happen. Throughout this week and last week, I imagined myself as that.”

“It’s been… interesting,” Solji nods her head. “When the mission was first given, it didn’t seem that difficult, but then, as we got to picking out the songs, we realized that we didn’t know the earlier years as well as we thought. And then, of course, the later years are just so jam-packed with music that we’re much more familiar with so it was decision overload,” she chuckles. “But I think having more options is good. After all, we can talk through why something would work better than something else.”

Kaeun takes her sit, a girl with a red vest. “I liked this week’s challenge a little more, I think? S.E.S sunbaenim’s song is a long-time classic, but this week’s song was something that I sort of grew up with a bit more? It fits us, or that’s what I like to believe. Always be confident in yourself, right?” She shows a smile with a finger gun. “There’s more of a strong rap focus this week. I think that makes me nervous but, a little heart fluttering? Being in a smaller group really made me realize how much work one had to prepare because we all want to come out of the performance doing well. Since there’s only 3 of all, each of us has to do our roles really well, that’s how we help the group”.

One of her groupmates appears next. “How was our performance last Sunday?” Meiqi chews on her lower lip. “I think it went well…?” She raises her tone slightly at the end of the sentence. “I don’t want to jinx myself though… I know I’m not supposed to be proud or happy of this thing,” she says while pinching at the material of her red vest. “But I’m grateful for it, in a way. It put me in a group with two hardworking, talented, truly beautiful people. I’m really happy to go on stage with these two by my side.”

It’s the same girl, but she approaches the camera with her hoodie over her head, concealing her hair. “Cam, have you ever wondered what I would look like if I was a boy?” Her voice comes out muffed and one tug on the string unravels it and her hood falls to reveal a dark, short wig. Meiqi does her best to imitate a smoldering look. “What do you think? From today, tell people that I’m your boyfriend.”

The DANGER girls start things this time around. They’re all dressed up exactly like someone would to cover a boy group song. Their choice is strong and intense unlike their choice for the previous week. It’s a good contrast and the three girls make a good job out of their challenge. The SAFE girls also went on an opposite route from the first week, but still different from the DANGER girls. Instead of strong and intense they went for sexy and flirtacious. It’d be hard to compare the two now that their concepts are different, but people always enjoyed picking sides.

Jungwoo is laying down on the practice room floor, chest rising and falling in desperate rapidity. “How are you doing?” He calls over to his practice partner and lays still for a moment longer before stretching out to reach for his water. “Feeling good about the trick yet? I’m not.” Hugo hobbles over and descends, laying half on top of Jungwoo, head resting on his chest. “Hold me,” and he drapes a jelly-like arm over Jungwoo’s frame. “Gross,” the other complains. “I sat here to cool down. You’re not helping.” Yet he does nearly nothing to push Hugo off, just a half-hearted little shove at his floppy arm that does not nothing.

“I hate this. Dancing is so hard, especially for me with no natural ability to speak of,” Hugo complains. “It is hard,” the other agrees. “But we’ll be okay. We gotta be.” Hugo starts to move around, sitting up. “Alright, let’s get back to it.” He sighs, and Jungwoo sits along with him. “I want to debut,” he admits. “And I don’t want to leave anyone behind. But we can’t all make it, can we?”

The boy sits in front of the camera and stifles a yawn, obviously tired. “Our teamwork is great,” he smiles. “Picking songs was hard, of course. We had a whole decade of music to go through, but we all seemed to be on the same page. Last week, I was sad about who I didn’t have on my team. This week, I’m excited about who I do have.” His practice looks about just as tired on his own interview. “I’ve been working extra hard. This week’s performance is no joke.”

Hugo proceeds. “I’ve worked hard for performances before, but not endlessly like this. You get through one week but it doesn’t stop, becuase you have the next week to worry about. I imagine this is what an idol’s life must be like during promotions.” He gives a nod. “Huidong hyung has been helping us a lot with our dancing. With his help, I think I’m improving a lot faster now. He’s a good leader and a good dancer, too. It’s really comforting to be on his team.” The man smiles.

“What are your thoughts on this week’s theme?” They ask Hosung this time. “I think the song for this week is… different than what people would’ve expected of us. More mellow and not as upbeat but it still does a good job on showcasing the rap skills of our two members. Originally, the vocal parts are really high so I had to adjust it to fit my range but overall I think we fit well together.”

Haknyeon shares the same color of vest as he does and proceeds with his own answers, nodding before he speaks. “I’ve been working hard. Last week we did a song from the 90s… I was born in the year 2000 so that was interesting,” he says. “We’re doing a song from the 2000s this time. I was nine when it came out, so I know the song.” Haknyeon pauses for a moment. “Honestly, it’s still a little tough, but I’ve come to accept the reality of things. I’m in danger but being sad and angry at myself won’t do me any good. I’ve been trying to channel all of… what I’ve been feeling into putting on a good performance.”

“It’s been a month and a half. Do you miss anyone?” He doesn’t have to think much to reply. “I miss my mum. I miss having her homecooked food, I miss hearing her voice… I even miss fighting with her,” he lets out a weak laugh. “But I need to make her proud here,” the boy smiles.

The DANGER boys go first, as the girls did. As metioned by the members, their choice is more mellow instead of upbeat but also allows them to show their skills well. Meanwhile, the SAFE boys are the one going for intensity this time around. It’s a nice contrast and it’s interesting to see how every group followed the same strategy, but each one of them decided to take a different path. After they’re all done, there are still two weeks left and the fourth remains a secret.

EPISODE FIVE TEASER: It’s the end of the second month, and the possibility of eliminations leaves anyone nervous. Flashes of red and blue go by the screen as the trainees give it their best. But there’s a twist, it seems, expect it’s nothing that can be confirmed through a teaser. As the show goes by its halfway mark, will your favorite contestants make it until the end?

**Note: None of the performances were shown fully, but separate videos will be posted IC on Nova’s official YouTube channel during the week of each trainee’s full performance.

[typologycentral]

Death by Thesis

I first encountered my trickster before I knew anything about Jung. I was studying comparative literature in graduate school, which meant studying languages and literatures, ancient and modern. Many of my peers were bilingual or trilingual from birth, so I felt disadvantaged from the start. All of us, however, were in awe of one Professor Ulrich K. Goldschmidt (anglicized to Goldsmith), a German émigré who had fled the Nazis and who spoke numerous languages, both living and dead—we could never figure out how many because he kept surprising us with new ones. I had the dubious distinction of being his guinea pig in my cadre of grad students, having foolishly volunteered to give the first oral report in his class. The reason that I volunteered was not a good one: I couldn’t stand the silence that greeted the professor’s question, “Who will go first?” This was the classic extravert’s mistake, and I paid for it. My topic was rhetoric, which the ancient Greeks raised to a high art so that eventually it became synonymous with verbal manipulation. I was a wordsmith. I had made my way through school with verbal manipulation. I thought I knew the topic well.I gave my report on Day Two of my grad school career. Goldsmith debated every word that came out of my mouth, accusing me of using terms imprecisely. I was from then on notorious as the example of How Not to Succeed in Grad School. This and my language handicap made me decide not to bother with a doctorate but to take a master’s degree and run. To leave with a master’s required writing a thesis. Goldsmith’s known areas of expertise were Germanic, Slavic, Nordic, and East European languages, so I decided it would be prudent to stick to western European topics for my thesis. I consulted a professor who had given a seminar on satire, asking her to suggest novels in, say, France, Spain, or Italy. She suggested looking at Rabelais and Cervantes. Only two authors, I thought. How hard can that be? I promptly submitted the proposal, assuming she would be my advisor. To my horror, I was told that Cervantes was one of Goldsmith’s areas of expertise, and “Wasn’t I lucky to have such an expert for a thesis advisor?” This was the early warning sign for me that something trickster was afoot. I was learning, like Oedipus, that you meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it. Cervantes’ Don Quixote is 940 pages long—a book of tales forever unfinished and unfinishable. John Beebe (2009) has an essay on the hero and the post-heroic attitude in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Early in the essay he describes how he was invited to give a talk at a Congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology to be held in Spain, and how it seemed apt to give the talk on Quixote, Spain’s most famous contribution to literature. The trouble is, Beebe observes, then he had to read the thing. As he put it: “I discovered that if I was to have a paper to include in the advance proceedings of the Congress, I was going to have to start to write about the massive novel even before my reading of it was complete” (p. 4). Beebe observed in a footnote that, “Frustration might even be described as the archetypal field that emanates from the novel itself” (n. 29, p. 21). “Frustration” is an understatement. Once I got into La Mancha myself, I thought I would never get out. And this was only one of my focus texts. The other was equally gargantuan and is, in fact, the source of that word in our language: Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel. This verbal monstrosity is actually a series of five novels. Don Quixote comprises two very long ones. I had to read all of them in the original languages, the sixteenth-century versions of Spanish and French. These two masterpieces spawned my own permanently-in-progress unfinishable work. Both of them, I now realize, epitomize trickster works of literature, seducing and abandoning the reader, and turning the world upside down. And my own trickster was clearly at work here: I had tried to take the easy way out of grad school and now I was faced with an avalanche of work. Here, I must admit, Dr. Goldsmith was inordinately helpful. I had to meet with him to officially launch my research, and at that meeting he suggested that I focus on the topic of judgment and pointed me to a critical chapter on this topic in each work. The topic did not interest me much, but I was so intimidated by him that I did not resist. That turned out to be fortunate, because he had handed me a bite-sized, digestible chunk out of a huge torrent of words. The Jungian connotations of Goldsmith’s name have not escaped my notice. Moreover, Goldsmith’s suggested topic held even more Jungian irony, though I did not realize it until years later: Judgment is one of the two categories of Jung’s mental processes, the other being perception. It is a central theme of Jung’s (1921/1971) Psychological Types that we must balance our use of perception with judgment, and vice versa. This plays out in our personality type in our dominant and auxiliary functions: one is a perceiving function, the other a judging function. When we over-rely on one or the other, trouble occurs. I was going to discover something that Goldsmith probably knew intuitively—that I had a dearth of judgment and an oversupply of perception. My dominant function was a perceiving function, and it was much more fun than my auxiliary judging function. As I was to discover, it would be a judging function that would send me into a tailspin with this project. I spent more than a year doing research on judgment, judging, and judges, without understanding the first thing about the topic. These were the pre-computer days, and I collected a huge stack of four-by-six note cards containing my research results covering 400 years of literary criticism and thousands of pages of source text. Some people are afraid of flying; others are afraid of heights. I have a paperwork phobia. My worst nightmares involve a visit from the IRS asking for receipts. So, creating and maintaining my archive of notes was an agonizing task. This is fairly typical of individuals of my personality type, ENFP, though I’m a bit extreme on the subject. It relates to the inferior function of ENFPs (see Fig. 1). The inferior function, the fourth function, is the site of our inferiority complex, so each personality type has a weakness around the fourth function. My inferior function, introverted sensation (Si), is the mental process we use to record, to recall, and to archive our recollections. When introverted sensation is in the inferior position, our recall is not good. Mark Twain described well how Si inferior manifests for my type, when he made the following comment in his old age: “When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.” (Mark Twain is thought by some to have had ENTP preferences, a type that also has introverted sensing as an inferior function.) When introverted sensation is our fourth and most primitive conscious function, we don’t remember things well and we don’t even know we don’t remember them; we confabulate. If forced to remember things, we get bored. The psyche knows our points of resistance and will take us there unerringly. My psyche led me to blindly choose a subject guaranteed to trigger my paperwork phobia, my inferiority complex, my animus. To have to spend a year in one’s inferior function is like a yearlong time-out for a toddler. I got so bored and desperate with my inferior introverted sensing (Si) function, required to gather and document the data, that I spent many hours asleep in the library. I could have asked Dr. Goldsmith for help, or maybe a mercy killing, but I was too proud to admit difficulty. I had arrived in grad school in a state of unconscious incompetence, to use Noel Burch’s term from his “Conscious Competence Ladder.” According to Burch’s analysis, an individual in training must progress from the stage of unconscious incompetence to a stage of conscious incompetence if he is to learn anything. Those who resist becoming consciously incompetent get stuck on the first rung of the ladder forever. My grueling Day-Two experience in Dr. Goldsmith’s class was his effort to move me out of my state of unconscious incompetence to a state of conscious incompetence—to show me the limits of my knowledge so that I could actually learn something. This movement is always a humbling experience, and those who do not endure it humbly are ripe for trickster reversals. The thesis research in the library was tedious and laborious, but working in my inferior function was nothing compared to what came next—being plunged into an unconscious place: my trickster function. Our unconscious functions are not just uncomfortable; they sometimes seem not even to exist—until they rear their ugly heads in a neurosis. Being plunged into our less conscious functions resembles that old joke about high school: long periods of excruciating boredom punctuated by brief moments of abject terror. When I had dragged myself through every available research source, there was nothing left to do but write. The trouble was, I was drowning in theories. I normally began a paper by organizing the ideas into neat categories, then arranging them into a logical sequence. But now, whenever I tried to organize the stack of note cards, I could not decide on a sequence. The whole thing seemed so circular that I couldn’t find the beginning. I would decide on a starting point and spend an entire day trying to organize the cards appropriately, promising to write the next day. I kept redefining the thesis statement, continually reconsidering it from different angles. Sequencing is the operational forte of introverted sensation, my baby function. If I had slept a lot in the library during the research phase, I was now nearly comatose. I couldn’t maintain the required concentration long enough to sit, let alone write. Each morning, I would see that my previous day’s decision was wrong, and I would reconsider the thesis statement again and re-organize the whole thing once more. The hypothesis was a moving target that I never hit. Jung would have noted that Goldsmith’s critique of my first oral report—my imprecise use of terms—pointed to inadequate introverted thinking (Ti). Introverted thinking is the function we use when constructing theories to make sense of something, and so it must be engaged in academic research, which aims to create new knowledge. As Beebe put it, the Ti function “reflect[s] on whether a particular construction … accord[s] with the conviction of inner truth” (2017, p. 31). Introverted thinking seeks ever greater precision in expressing that truth. According to Beebe’s eight-function/eight-archetype model, introverted thinking falls in the seventh position for my type, the trickster position. Introverted thinking is a judging function, but if undeveloped it may fail to reach a judgment and simply circle the drain. I did not know then that this is often how trickster Ti manifests: continually redefining, refining, and going in circles to the point of total confusion. I spent about six weeks stuck in this “paralysis by over-analysis.” I couldn’t move forward and I couldn’t go back. I was stuck in a trickster’s double bind. I was trying to write about judgment, but I was completely unable to muster a judgment. Eventually, I reached the point of being unable to face those note cards. I put them out of mind for a while. And that’s when disaster struck: I lost them. All 300 cards. My inner trickster had helpfully rescued me from the odious research cards by rendering me unconscious while it threw them away, thus ridding me of a loathsome task. I spent several days searching the campus for that gigantic stack of note cards, wrapped with elastic bands. I looked in all my usual haunts: classrooms, library carrels, favorite café tables. I even asked the campus janitors to look for them. The cards were gone. A thousand references, quotations, and page numbers had succumbed to the second law of thermodynamics. I went into shock. The shock was followed by humiliation. The loss was a painful confirmation of my inferiority in the realm of record keeping, memory, and all the other details for which introverted sensation is known. It seemed to corroborate my bottom-of-the-class status. I told no one about the event, not even my closest friends, but endured it silently and alone. I suspected that my psyche had played some kind of grotesque trick on me, the kind that Pantagruel and Gargantua are known for. I had morphed into the buffoons Rabelais satirized. I had become Sancho Panza and Don Quixote in one, the butt of all of Cervantes’ jokes. A huge lesson seemed to loom nearby, though I could not see what it was. My mind seemed to have disappeared along with my research. For a while, I thought I had no choice but to drop out of grad school. Finally, after days of depression, I understood that I had one other option, though not a pleasant one: I could try to re-write from memory everything that had been on those cards. This meant going back into my inferior Si again! Though memory would never be my strong suit, the previous six to eight weeks of doing nothing other than shuffle the cards like Sisyphus in Vegas had had some effect. And so, in a big hurry to get everything out while I could still recall it, I threw the words onto the page as fast as I could, writing in longhand on lined paper. I wrote like a fiend. Of course, there were no references, no sources, and no footnotes. I couldn’t bother with anything as trivial as accuracy at this juncture. I was in a race against the growing black hole of forgetfulness in my mind. I didn’t care if the logic was circular, I didn’t care whether I was writing from the beginning point or not, and I didn’t care that Goldsmith would assassinate every word. Terrified of stopping lest I forget it all, I simply regurgitated everything I could recall. When I drew a blank on a topic, I didn’t brake to look it up; my dominant extraverted intuition (Ne) just made something up. And this is when something peculiar began to happen: These space-fillers were often jokes, puns, or other odd tidbits that seemed to come straight out of my unconscious because they were so unlike me. Maybe my Ne dominant took me into my 8th or demonic function, extraverted sensation (Se); extraverted sensation can be a great joker and storyteller. My conscious mind told me this would not qualify as “academic discourse.” Academe requires gravitas, my inner critic argued. These jokes will get you thrown out of the department. “Good!” I snapped back at myself. “Let them throw me out! That would be an improvement of my life!” In retrospect, I see that the new Ne ideas and the crazy Se jokes that popped out played an important role in the process: They kept me from getting bored with the Ti writing style and falling asleep again. I even grew curious to see what would come out of my pen next. Beebe (1981) has compared possession by the trickster archetype to bipolar disorder (pp. 24-37), a comparison I can understand after my brief episode of dealing with the trickster. I had gone from depression to mania during my trickster crisis, albeit these were not clinical or pathological states. Nonetheless, I feel sympathy for those who suffer bipolar episodes. In my trickster episode, I began to sound logical, cohesive, and authoritative to myself. I was writing fluently in an academic-sounding mode that resembled introverted thinking (if you squinted your eyes), although the trickster energy around my seventh function made it feel like a huge fraud of pretend research. Still, I was in love with my flights of fantasy, and I cackled like a hyena at them. I didn’t realize it, but those jokes were signs of an emerging trickster. The trickster is a prankster who doesn’t take anything too seriously. Thus, in sabotaging me, my trickster severed the grip of my paralysis. It liberated me. It was still tricking me (with delusions of grandeur), but I was at least enjoying the trick. I was now conscious of being a trickster. Eventually, to my surprise, I had a complete first draft. All I needed were references—no big thing when you’re in the manic phase. I airily breezed back to the library, re-researched the whole thing, and tried to retrofit the data to what I had written—the opposite of standard research procedure. Of course, the data did not fit. Remarkably, this did not alarm me. It seems that once I had jettisoned perfectionism, I was completely unfazed by the grossest imperfections. I had reached a stage of acceptance of my incompetence. Moreover, I was curious to see what I would find, rummaging in the black hole of my mind. I did not realize it, but I was starting to access the data-collecting mode of my Si inferior in a constructive way. Introverted sensation verifies accuracy in a fact-checking way, and my Si function began to lure me toward accuracy. I enjoyed the library work this time through. Far from falling asleep, I couldn’t stop working. I was salivating to discover what the evidence actually showed, as opposed to what I had confabulated. I corrected the first draft to accommodate the evidence I uncovered, reversing some hypotheses and modifying others if the data so directed. More importantly, as I revised the thesis, I could easily engage introverted thinking (Ti)—defining, refining, and analyzing—without becoming paralyzed. Finally, at the end of the academic year, it was done—under the deadline. I delivered it to Goldsmith’s office at about 5:00 p.m. one afternoon. He raised an eyebrow and said without a smile that he would get back to me. It suddenly occurred to me that I had probably committed a huge faux pas in the academic process: After our first meeting, I had not spoken a word to my advisor. It had been a full year since we had met the first time. I believe now that his restraint and withholding of unsolicited advice allowed me the space to discover my own thought process and to develop my own voice. This is what introverted thinking needs in order to find expression. It operates independently of the collective voice that guides extraverted thinking. I went to bed that night with peace of mind. I expected that Goldsmith would hate my thesis and would nitpick every line, and that I would have to spend months revising. I didn’t care. I had passed out of the stage of Good Student that had been my chief persona for many years and was now willing to be Mediocre Student if that was my fate. This is what Goldsmith had been trying to teach us smart-alecks in the first place: You can’t learn if you don’t know how ignorant you are. Goldsmith surprised me by calling at 9:00 a.m. the next morning—only hours after I’d dropped off the manuscript. This could not be good. I steeled myself to hear Mr. Punctual tell me of some major flaw in the manuscript that had prevented him from even reading it. Maybe I had used the wrong format and would have to re-type all 200 pages. To my shock, he told me that he had stayed up all night reading my thesis, unable to put it down. I was stunned to hear him say that he had “laughed and laughed” all the way through: He loved the jokes! Who knew Goldsmith had a sense of humor? Then he said in his punctilious, Germanic, back-handed-compliment way, “Even zough you completed your thesis in order to leave viss a master’s, I must insist zat you stay for a PhD. Viss just some additional vork, you can turn zis into a doctoral thesis.” It’s lucky he could not see my face over the phone. The last thing I could stomach was more Cervantes and Rabelais. But, surprisingly, I did want to stay in the program and write a doctoral thesis, and I knew the topic I wanted to write about: Twelfth-century chivalric romance, the source of Don Quixote’s mania. (This would require me to learn some new languages, medieval ones, but nothing looks impossible once you give up your ideals of perfection.) Like the hidalgo, I was infected by romantic notions, but unlike Quixote, I had grown aware of the hidden satire within those naïve romances—and within my own life. In writing my master’s thesis about two master satirists, I had stumbled onto enantiodromia in both literature and life. Jung defines this term as follows: “In the philosophy of Heraclitus it [enantiodromia] is used to designate the play of opposites in the course of events—the view that everything that exists turns into its opposite” (1921/1971, ¶ 708). I had transformed from being a prolific writer able to write about anything whether I understood it or not to being a blocked writer unable to form a single sentence. My doctoral thesis was a quest to understand whatever it was in my psyche that had emptied my mind and disappeared my master’s thesis research. Beebe (2014) offered a succinct solution to the problem of enantiodromia: “By letting go of our expectations, we will find that some of our expectations will be met.” He was pointing out that the American addiction to mastery is a poison. We have to relinquish our determination to develop competence in all things in order to have satisfaction in anything. Perfection is static. It imprisons the psyche. Growth and progress are imperfect, so when we aim for perfection, as we always do, the psyche must sometimes trick us into relinquishing it in order to grow. By forcing me to confront my imperfection, my psyche led me along a circuitous route that involved completing two theses in order to get a PhD. Dr. Goldsmith became my friend and staunch supporter. He even gave me private tutoring in German and art history. I think of him now as I think of Jung: a demanding but caring guide, one who, like Jung, never presumed to tell someone what to do but merely pointed out inconsistencies with reality. It was no accident that I had chosen rhetoric as my first topic in his class, and no accident that he saw the appeal it held for me, the ability to persuade others through word-weapons—a classic example of unconscious trickster introverted thinking. His detachment and relentless truthfulness broke me of my addiction to that most primitive definition of rhetoric and my insatiable need for approval. Pleasing others had motivated me for so long that I had nothing to replace it when it was pulled away. Losing that as a motivation, I had to develop my own internal motivation. If no one was going to applaud, then who was I performing for and why? That was my real crisis. The thesis was only the form it took. Beebe (2009) said of Quixote and his companion Sancho Panza, “As their own haplessness dawns on them, they see the realistic limits of a life lived to perpetuate the myth” (p. 17). I had tried to perpetuate my own heroic myth of child prodigy. My pseudo-self had to die in order for a more whole, more mature self to evolve. This death helped me escape the box I had inhabited for so long. I had to give up trying to be who I thought I should be in order to become more of who I really was. To state this in the terminology of the eight-function model, I had to give up the simplicity of my eternal child function (tertiary extraverted thinking), and be mature enough to access the complexity of my trickster function (introverted thinking in the seventh position). Beebe made a radical proposal when he suggested that the trickster and not the senex is oppositional toward the eternal child, an idea he first explored in his 1981 essay on the trickster. His eight-function model’s tenet that the seventh trickster function shadows the third eternal child function implies that we must surrender the innocence of the child in order to access our trickster defenses. The eternal child archetype and the trickster archetype are connected by a quality of youthfulness, but while the former is innocent and pure, the latter’s duplicity means it cannot be pure. The trickster is the dark embodiment of the creativity of the eternal child, and to access that creativity requires surrendering the halo of the divine child with its infantile omnipotence. It is the eternal child’s omnipotence that blocks anima integration, for the anima function is the site of our inferiority complex. According to Beebe, we have to make the descent into the underbelly of the psyche and get our hands dirty with the trickster before we can integrate the anima/animus. My extraverted thinking eternal child likes to play with ideas generated by my dominant extraverted intuition, putting them into piles and moving them around like chess pieces. I had gotten stuck in that game board of my mind, eternally reorganizing the note cards. Surrendering the puella aeterna Te function to access my trickster Ti function meant relinquishing the perfection of the illusory world of play that the eternal child believes is hers by right. Accepting the trickster within means acknowledging our own tendency to be deceitful about our incapacity. The eternal child would rather withdraw from the field than admit imperfection, let alone deal with it. The trickster lives in the nether world of the borderlands where purity cannot exist. We need to find a way to give expression to both archetypes, and we all tend to prefer the eternal child and the function it carries, as Lenore Thomson’s (1998) work on the tertiary has shown. If we do not voluntarily acknowledge our trickster, it may force us to surrender control. Grappling with the trickster is painful but rewarding; it enables us to accept our anima/animus, the seat of our inferiority, and to be re-animated by it. The trickster destroys us to save us. --- References: Beebe. J. (1981). The trickster in art. San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 2(2), 21-54. Beebe, J. (2004/2017). Understanding consciousness through the theory of psychological types. In Energies and patterns in psychological type: The reservoir of consciousness (pp. 19-50). London, UK: Routledge. (Reprinted from J. Cambray & L. Carter, Eds., Analytical psychology: Contemporary perspectives in Jungian analysis, 2004, pp. 83-115, Hove, UK: Brunner-Routledge). Beebe, J. (July 23, 2009). The memory of the Hero and the emergence of the post-Heroic attitude. Congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology held in Barcelona, Spain, August 29-September 3, 2004, Barcelona. Reprinted on IAAP site, Spring, 78, Politics and the American Soul. Beebe, J. (August 7-8, 2014). Selected topics in psychological type [workshop]. Sponsored by Type Resources. Jung, C. G. (1921/1971). Psychological types (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Series Eds.), The collected works of C.G. Jung (Vol. 6, pp. 330-407). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://www.proquest.com Thomson, L. (1998). Personality type: An owner’s manual. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications. Images: Adrian-Nilsson, G. (1929). Shadows, twilight. Retrieved from wikiart.org Bortnyik, S. (1921). The lamplighter. Retrieved from wikiart.org Hartley, M. (1939). Sustained comedy. Retrieved from wikiart.org Hokusai, K. (date unknown). Carp leaping up a cascade. Retrieved from wikiart.org Kandinsky, W. (1941). Untitled. Retrieved from wikiart.org Lewis, B. (date unknown). Trickster. Retrieved from commons.wikimedia.org Masson, A. (1942). The sand crab. Retrieved from wikiart.org Picasso, P. (1904). Woman with raven. Retrieved from wikiart.org The post Death by Thesis appeared first on Personality Type in Depth. RSS Feed - Link To Personality Type In Depth Article https://www.typologycentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95196&goto=newpost&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[annabgiles]

Moms, Stop Telling Other Women What To Do With Their Bodies: A Kind Rebuttal

Ask a young, twentysomething woman if she’s having kids - in fact, ask several, because people, no matter their age, gender, or sexuality, are individuals with a myriad of preferences, thoughts, and opinions. Chances are, you’re going to get several answers, ranging from, “No,” to “Yes,” to “I don’t know,” in some form or another.

Now, ask blogger Elizabeth Broadbent if she thinks millennial women are having children, and chances are, she’ll tell you, “No, and they should shut up and get over it!”

This is a supposition, and it would be a surprising response from a woman who writes articles with a progressive lean and has defined herself as “crunchy.” Yet, in her article on Scary Mommy, Broadbent states that having kids “doesn’t actually cost that much,” “overpopulation is a myth,” and that the millennial lady readers should “get out of your hipster jeans and into the bedroom.” This post is astonishingly anti-woman, illogical, and frankly, made me pretty angry. I’m guessing that was Broadbent’s intent - to write a “shocking” fluff piece in the hopes of brief viral internet fame. But propaganda under the guise of being a “tell-it-like-it-is kinda gal” is still bullshit.

My proposal is this - let a real, live, millennial mother break down this piece, point-by-point with a strong spoonful of scary mommy reality, and then, millennials, judge for yourself whether or not you want to have kids - because in the end, it’s not up to me or Elizabeth Broadbent what you do in the bedroom. You have autonomy (for now). Enjoy your life, whether that means having a baby, having a career, both, or neither. You are a human being. And you’re doing just fine.

Point #1: Kids don’t actually cost that much

Yes, they do. Kids do not need a bare minimum of “diapers, onesies, and boobs to survive.” Diapers get dirty, especially if they’re cloth. Onesies are outgrown within weeks. And many women cannot breastfeed (also, what do you do after a year? Just keep on latching them? They would die).

It is, however, true that for a brief period of time, babies do not care what kinds of toys they own, and, in my experience, love to make cardboard boxes into spaceships.

Point #2: The world has always kinda sucked

“Here in America, your kid won’t starve in the streets as long as you utilize basic social programs,” writes Broadbent.

It once took three months for my food stamps to go through, and this was after submitting the application online, speaking with a counselor, and going for an in-person interview. At best, you can survive 60 days without food. The state of social programs in America is a travesty, and the assumption that all is well below the poverty line smacks of white privilege.

Point #3: Consolidate your loans, and ask for a lower rate

This could work, if your credit is good enough to get a consolidation loan or lower rate. However, if you have experienced numerous financial difficulties due to hardships outside of your control, it may be a bit more difficult to explain to a lender why your credit score has dipped below 650 (here’s a hot tip: they do not care, and no loan for you!).

Point #4: Pregnancy is beautiful

I can’t argue with this one OH WAIT YES I CAN. I’ll concede that pregnancy is a really, really cool thing, but it’s also extremely fucking tough. There’s morning sickness,  your body is changing, your hormones are out-of-control, and don’t get me started on what happens postpartum!

And yes - keep your tight belly, as Broadbent sarcastically suggests you should do, stating, “it’ll fall down anyway when you get old,” because she has apparently never Googled Helen Mirren in a bikini. Seriously - keep those taut abs, girl. My stomach looks like a sad old deflated tire. There’s a flap of skin where my belly button ring used to be, and now it’s dangling into my belly button, like one of those white flags of surrender.

Point #5 Overpopulation is a myth

Not exactly - overpopulation is a somewhat broad term. The fact is, we don’t know how many people our planet can support, but logically, we can assume that too many people = bad for the environment, because with more people comes more greed and consumption. And since we’re throwing around fancy articles, like The New York Times one that Broadbent cited, this one from BBC Earth also offers an interesting perspective; to boil it down, if our population patterns continue, then our technological advancement in healthcare, food growth, and creating solutions to reduce our carbon footprint has to grow along with it.

At best, it’s a stretch to say that supporting the environment by not contributing to the population is nihilistic; at worst, you’re employing dangerous rhetoric by shaming women into thinking they should have children, because their main purpose is to contribute to “humanity.” What we should be looking at is the root of the word “humanity” - respecting one another is what makes us human; not strong-arming someone into your belief system.

Point #6 Of course you’ll ruin them with terrible parenting

Yeah, that’s true. Again - you’re a human being. You’re bound to screw up somewhere along the way, and that’s okay! Kids are surprisingly resilient.

However, there’s a difference between you making mistakes, and you being a terrible parent. Making a mistake is letting your toddler climb on top of the kitchen table so you can take a second to yourself to catch up on John Oliver; being a terrible parent is having a child, because you feel pressured by someone you’ve never met to do so.

The secret to being a good parent is owning your mistakes, providing for, and loving your kids - that’s it. If you make the choice to have them, then have them, fully and without condition. If you make the choice to not have them, then you go girl.

[cutemonstercare]

5 Signs That Your Tarantula Is Stressed And How To Help

Since tarantulas can’t talk or make sounds like other animals, figuring out if your T is stressed may seem like an impossible task. Luckily, the signs of a stressed tarantula are pretty specific and once you know them, you’ll be able to see when your T is upset and immediately fix the possible causes.

What are the signs that your tarantula is stressed?

Tarantula takes up a threatening pose

Bald spot on the abdomen due to flicking of hairs

Tarantula is hiding behind its legs

Excessive climbing, especially if you own a terrestrial T

Abnormally high activity levels

If you see any of the above behaviors in your T you should know you’re dealing with a pretty unhappy tarantula; and if you see your spider display all of the above, your T is close to a panic attack.

Read on to find out how to destress your pet tarantula – the big, hairy babies of the spider world who can have a full-blown anxiety attack every few seconds!

5 Signs Your Tarantula Is Stressed

Although tarantulas don’t have emotions, these neurotic loners definitely show signs of stress, and more often than you might realize.

The most obvious sign of stress is when a tarantula tries to bite, but if you can read all the warnings that come before fangs break skin, you and your tarantula will be much better off.

1. Tarantula takes up a threatening pose

When your tarantula is relaxed, it will sit on the ground with its legs bent and its abdomen level. This comfortable, relaxed state can, however, be destroyed by the slightest disturbance.

When that happens, and your tarantula is mildly annoyed that its peace was interrupted, you will see it go into a defensive stance, lifting one or two legs.

Your tarantula is already experiencing stress when it is in a defensive pose, but when it moves into a threatening stance, its stress levels are close to boiling (or is that biting) point.

In the threatening stance, your tarantula will lift its first two legs and extend its pedipalps fully into the air, basically flashing its fangs. On top of that, the T will also lift its thorax to show how big and scary it is and that it means business – one more misstep and it will strike.

This tarantula gives a clear warning!

2. Bald spot on the abdomen due to flicking of hairs

New World tarantulas have urticating hairs they use as a defense mechanism. But tarantulas don’t just flick these hairs when directly confronted by a predator; they do it when stressed. So, if you see a bald spot on your T’s abdomen, it’s time for some stress relief.

Do keep in mind that bald spots also occur when your tarantula is getting ready to molt. To tell stress apart from premolt, you will have to look for other signs that your T is nearing its molt.

This includes sporting a nice thick (sic) booty that looks like it is ready to burst, as well as refusing to eat.

3. Tarantula is hiding behind its legs

Don’t confuse this with a death curl! The main difference between a death curl and this “make me disappear” curl is that the tarantula pulls its legs over its head as if it’s trying to hide behind it.

It actually looks cute but is definitely not an “aww” moment – your tarantula is scared, and you need to figure out why and fix it.

4. Excessive climbing

If your ground-dwelling tarantula suddenly turns into an arboreal, then you know something is wrong.

Excessive climbing is usually an indication that something in your tarantula’s enclosure is not quite right and your tarantula is so stressed-out because of it, it’s trying to escape by scaling the walls.

For terrestrials, climbing is a dangerous business because a fall can be deadly, especially if the landing is anything but soft – for example, the rim of the water dish or some decorative rock.

5. Abnormally high activity levels

Tarantulas are often affectionately called ‘pet rocks’ – they don’t really move a lot, especially during the day since they are nocturnal. So, if your T suddenly turned into Dora the Explorer, something is up.

Something in the enclosure is most probably causing stress to your tarantula. It can be anything really, remember how I said Ts are actually big babies? Yip, new substrate, a new pebble, a noisy cricket, you name it, and there’s a possibility of it being a stressor to your T.

What Causes Stress In Tarantulas

Okay, we covered signs of stress and some of the things that may upset your T…but there’s more. Your T can experience various other stressors.

Shipping shock

You can imagine how it must feel for this relatively small creature (in comparison to the transportation vehicle) when traveling. It will be a constant battle to try to maintain equilibrium with all the vibration, bumping, turning and bouncing happening.

It must be very tiring and painful –with getting smashed against the container numerous times there’s no way a T will arrive at its destination unbruised. This is called shipping shock, and your T will require a lot of peace and quiet to recover.

What to do:

Place tarantula in its new enclosure.

Put enclosure in a quiet and dimly-lit part of your home.

Make sure there is a hiding place inside the enclosure for the T to take shelter in.

There should be a water dish in the enclosure.

Don’t feed it.

Go away, leave it alone except for a brief check once a day.

The tarantula below displayed this behavior after rehousing. As you can see, the new enclosure is not optimal at all.

Bright lights

Tarantulas are dark-dwelling creatures. Yes, you may see them outside during the day, but they will mostly avoid direct sunlight.

Evidence suggests that tarantulas do need exposure to a normal day/night lighting sequence as this helps them with their seasonal cycles but do not expose your tarantula to direct sunlight for any reason. This excessive heat will no doubt cause stress.

What NOT to do:

Do not place a bright light over your T’s cage; normal room lighting is more than sufficient.

Tarantulas should not be forced to endure constant daylight or darkness. They need a day/night structure to help them with normal functions such as molting, fasting, breeding, etc.

Do not expose your T to UV light. Tarantulas’ light sensitivity is most severe in the ultraviolet segment of the spectrum, so be kind to your tarantula and don’t force them to live under what is equivalent to a glaring spotlight.

Expressway fever

I know you want to see your tarantula all the time, and for this reason, might be inclined to put its enclosure in an area where there is a lot of traffic. But hang on a second and put yourself in your T’s claw tufts; it’s not nice when the waiter seats you near the entrance of a restaurant is it?

The constant movement and distraction can be enough to force you to go hide in the bathroom. Same can be said for your tarantula �� if it hides away in its burrow all the time, it may be suffering from stress caused by all the movement.

Give your T some privacy and peace and quiet for goodness sake!

What to do:

Move your tarantula to an area of the house where there is less traffic.

Stereo effect

Tarantula’s do not have ears. They ‘hear’ through the hairs on their legs. So, if you feel the vibrations of the sound form your stereo, imagine how it must ‘sound’ to your tarantula if it is in close proximity.

That guy with the jackhammer outside your window at 7 in the morning caused you a lot of stress, didn’t he? Well, you’re doing the same to your T if your music is loud enough to feel.

What to do:

Move your tarantula away from the stereo or alternatively, don’t play your music loudly.

Starvation

This is a no-brainer; excessive hunger is a great stressor. Although tarantulas can go for long periods without food, it does not mean that they’re not experiencing stress during that time.

What to do:

Feed adult tarantulas one cricket every 10 to 14 days. Baby Ts should be fed 1 to 2 times a week. Remember, if your T refuses to eat, it may be getting ready to molt.

Dehydration

Your tarantula can get dehydrated for various reasons, including incorrect humidity levels in its enclosure. This is sure to cause physiological stress. Luckily, it is something that can easily be fixed.

What to do:

Figure out what is causing the dehydration. Does the T have access to drinking water, is the humidity in the enclosure too low, etc.? If your T is very dehydrated, implement emergency measures by placing it in ICU.

Interesting fact: Tarantulas get most of their water from the food they eat.

Heat/cold stress

Much like humans, a tarantula’s temperature runs very close to its upper limit. That is why when things get too hot, Ts will quickly suffer physiological stress. For this reason, it’s best to ditch that heating mat the over-eager pet shop worker sold you.

A good indication of the right temperature for your tarantula is you; if you’re comfortable in your home, your tarantula will be too.

When it comes to cold, tarantulas can tolerate cooler temperatures much better than excessive heat. If the temp drops below 50°F, you can expect your tarantula to get stressed somewhat.

What to do:

Remove the heating mat if you used one.

If cold is the stressor, slowly raise the temperature to a heat you feel comfortable in. If you’re comfy, your T will be too.

How To Tell That Your Tarantula Is Relaxed?

If you find yourself staring at a pet rock, then you’ve nailed it – your T is ridiculously happy and so relaxed it couldn’t be bothered to move.

These big, hairy creatures are intimidating to many, but if you own one, you know that they can act like toddlers at times, throwing tantrums at the slightest.

But, if somehow you can get it right to provide them with stability and a calm environment in which all their needs are met, you won’t see them display any of the above signs. Ain’t that grand? You’ve cracked the secret spider code, and your T will live a long and totally chilled life.

If, however, you’re not that lucky yet and you wish you could just give your tarantula some Xanax to relax, don’t worry; some Ts are just born highly-strung grumps, and there’s nothing you can do but love them for the neurotic babies they are.

[themomsandthecity]

5 Simple (and Kid-Friendly) Places This Stay-at-Home Mom Goes to Maintain Her Sanity

The morning has gone well. My little girl and I are cool. We move through our day like well-choreographed dance partners. Like a feather bouncing on the breeze, our movement appears effortless, light, without burden or rigidity. We are all flow. She is in her room playing. I am making lunch, pausing periodically amidst egg-salad preparations to check in on her because toddlers are like the ocean: you look away one minute and the next, a tsunami-size wave is coming at you. But not this day. She has turned her pink CD player on, and I can hear "Bamboo the Bear," her new favorite song. My eyes are greeted with a delightfully eccentric view. She has pulled her pink princess backpack on over her striped shirt and yanked yellow rain boots onto the wrong feet. Her unicorn hair clip is still in, but her unicorn pants are off. She is dancing around in her Doc McStuffins pull-ups, wielding a purple magnifying glass as she sings about a "giant panda from Central China." We have days like this, and when they come along, it's easy to feel grateful for the gift of being home with my girl. The season we are in is vital, fortifying, life-giving. It is when the emotional foundation of who my daughter will be gets established. To be given such a mission is a weighty privilege. Related 13 Habits of Highly Effective (and Sane) Stay-at-Home Moms And yet, I have often heard my current parenting stage - the 0 to 3 years - described by veteran parents as the "trenches." Maybe that's why you can so often feel disheveled and dirtied up, bruised and battered by the early work of shaping a human. I don't always get the feather-dancing-on-the-wind days. Sometimes, I get the tsunami. In truth, so often during this period of my life, I go out into the world mentally and emotionally frazzled, with paint or glue-stick residue on my fingers and my arms, food on my clothes, consecutive showerless days, my hair knotted up in the proverbial scrunchie-encircled bun on top of my head, no makeup. These are the ugly, beautiful days, days where my thoughts are perpetually scattered like candy exploding out of a piñata, and I am utterly beat down by the effort it takes to get out the door (dressing a toddler can be like attempting to thread a needle while someone continually smacks you in the face). But, my child is flourishing, changing, growing, an inevitable rite of passage that somehow manages to fill me with awe and wonder every day I witness it. It makes me happy. And yet, I've realized, it's good to keep a lookout for an oasis during those days when your existence feels like a desert. I have learned that these places of sanity are usually very ordinary and simple. 1. The Neighborhood Park One such place for me is a small park a few blocks from where we live. Almost entirely enclosed, equipped with a large sandbox and a slew of abandoned but still workable toys, we made this our go-to locale throughout the Summer. Sometimes she'd sit in the sandbox for 30 uninterrupted minutes, mixing up culinary masterpieces of sandy delight. There is a large hill for running up and down. Pine trees dot the top of it, providing great hiding spots for my wee one who does not know yet how to play hide-and-seek without being adorably conspicuous. The train runs nearby; always popular with the under-3 crowd. There are swings, stairs, and a slide all tailored to her size. A noticeable shift in her physical capabilities and capacity for independent play seemed to culminate at the same time during one of our visits to this park, marking it forever in my memory as the little urban paradise where, for the first time in a long while, I was able to enjoy a coffee, a thought, a long sigh, all to blissful completion. 2. Wherever Other Moms Are "Look mama! I have a swinging buddy!" my daughter observes on any given day, as another mom deposits her toddler-size companion into the swing next to us. The other mom smiles. Our kids are side by side, grinning, chattering away as the swings grind out their loud metal creaking. "How old is she/he?" one of us asks, invoking what is often a standard mommy conversation starter. The days when this typical playground preamble transitions into full-fledged sharing about our mutual adventures in toddler world, perspective is suddenly no longer elusive, I laugh a little easier. It's like the first breath you take in a stuffy room after opening the window. Fresh air comes rushing through, and the space you're in feels less confining. These encounters remind me that other moms are my fellow comrades, and they are indeed a refuge for me. Some are veterans of the toddler trenches, others still knee-deep in the muck as I am, but all are well-versed in the language of survival, which is, simply put, encouragement. The mom with older kids or more than one can tell me with a knowing authority, "honey this stage will pass." The mom who is like me, wrangling a 2- or 3-year-old day in and day out, can say "Yes! Me too!" With those few words of validation, I am plucked out of soul-crushing isolation. Related This Is What Stay-At-Home-Moms Actually Do - For the Men Who Just Don't Get It As one recent conversation with a neighborhood mom taught me, it is just as important to create opportunities for yourself to talk about things besides your kids. As we shadowed our girls running throughout the playground, we talked about writing, the craft of it, our mutual interest in memoir and short-story writing. It was invigorating, and I came away from my time with her energized and inspired. Similarly, another mom friend of mine and I recently decided to try and meet up once a month for coffee, brunch, or even just a long walk without the kids. Sounds like a recipe for sanity to me! 3. The Local Coffee Shop Frequenting neighborhood coffee shops and cafes has also been instrumental in drawing me out of the mommy doldrums. My daughter and I built up a ritual around visiting such places. I get a coffee, she gets a muffin. We got to know the people who worked in the cafes. We learned things about them, like how the owner of one shop keeps a stash of Yorkshire Gold tea - the same kind my husband drinks - to remind him of his fondness for England. Or the barista who is a fellow singer and performer of musical theater. These places have been like my stay-at-home-mom version of Cheers, "a spot where everybody knows my name," or at least recognizes my face. The brief conversations, while not always deep, still engender a feeling of community. Sometimes that's all it takes to set me right again. 4. Outside on a Rainy Day The weather can often provide a place of refuge if you are willing to let it impress its natural pause on you. Travel becomes harder. Schedules get interrupted. Days like this are often declared pajama days. We hole up and build with blocks, or color, or crank out art projects with construction paper and glue. But if we do venture outside, our activity is slowed down. The world beyond our door is wet with snow or rain, limiting what can be done. But the limitation is where I find my peace. Rainy days are my favorite example of this right now. My little love's wearing and using her rain boots. And thanks to an affinity with Peppa Pig, muddy puddles are a must on a cold, wet day. We walk around the block slowly, chatting to one another, watching for puddles to splash in. It is a leisurely stroll without the pressure to entertain. I can breathe in the smell of the rain, the brisk cold of the air. I can listen to her tell me stories in her broken toddler English about the world as she sees it. I look on as she throws her 34-inch frame into a jump. She watches her boots lift off the ground and crash into pooled water. Bits of leaves, ejected from their previous homes by Autumn's arrival, fly every which way with the collected raindrops. We are content and unhurried. Related The 1 Thing to Consider Before Leaving Your Job to Be a SAHM, According to an Expert 5. The Library Sometimes, refuge can be found and sanity maintained in spaces designed with you and your kiddo in mind, like the children's area at your neighborhood library. The activities they provide, usually free and open to the public, bring in the community at large, fostering a cheerful, warm environment. We are all here, together, in the service of our children who simply want to play, explore, and be read to. I love going to the library. Beyond the gratitude I feel toward the communal, civic willingness to invest in my child, I am filled with nostalgia for my own childhood. I recall fondly a time when the Brown County Library, in my home town, Green Bay, WI, was indeed a place of refuge because it possessed one of the things I loved best as a child and still do: books. Books of every kind. Books with pictures, books with chapters. Books that I could check out over and over and over again. When I see how excited my little girl is by the same collective literary presence - one we have unlimited access to - I feel confident I am passing on a valuable pastime that will keep her company for years to come. I hope I am also passing on the importance of self-care. I hope my demonstration of this over time is consistent enough so she will see how everyday things, everyday encounters, can sometimes take you out of the quotidian of life. In those moments, it may not seem like much is happening. But like a seed in a pot of earth, waiting in stillness, the good stuff eventually gets awakened and really starts to bloom. http://bit.ly/2AHEJFN

[corneliussteinbeck]

GSS Spotlight: Concita Thomas

Name: Concita Thomas Age: 40 Location: Dallas, TX

What does being a Girl Gone Strong mean to you? Being a Girl Gone Strong means that I take ownership of my life and results — both the good and the bad. I acknowledge that my actions influence my outcomes. If I don’t like the outcomes that I am getting from the gym or from life, it is up to me to take different actions. It also means that I accept that outcomes aren’t guaranteed — even when I do my part. I get to balance determination and patience. The determination is to do my part and the patience is to allow God to do His part. The patience part isn’t my strong suit, but I am working on it.

How long have you been strength training, and how did you get started? I have been strength training regularly for the last 14 years. However, I started playing around with weights about 26 years ago — back when Step and Sculpt classes were popular.

What does your typical workout look like? Most times I am training to be able to keep up with my kids and feel good in my clothes so I don’t usually follow a strict training program. My aim is to get the most work done in the shortest amount of time. I stick to basic primary movements and get creative with my exercise stacking and rest periods to challenge myself. My workouts always includes some mix of squats, deadlifts, push-ups, pull-ups, and combination movements like squat and press or lunge and upright row. However, I do enjoy training shoulders and glutes for aesthetic purposes. So, sometimes I add extra isolation moves for those areas.

Favorite Lift: Deadlift! There is something so empowering about lifting heavy weight off of the floor. Plus, the skill carries over beautifully into real life. Moving furniture solo really is no big deal and I like that.

My second favorite is the Turkish Get-Up. I don’t practice it in the gym often anymore. However, when I became a mom, I really appreciated all of the TGU practice I had done.

There is something magical about being able to get off the floor with a 30-pound toddler who is fast asleep on top of you without requiring any help.

And, getting her into bed without waking her up makes me feel like a superhero.

Most memorable PR: I have two. Doing three unassisted pull-ups and doing deadlifts for reps with 215 pounds. These happened around the same time. This was during a brief stint when I decided to train for strength rather than for conditioning or aesthetics. It was pretty exciting to see how strong I could get in such a short amount of time. However, I didn’t keep training that way for long. At the time, I was more interested in training for obstacle races and keeping my workouts short.

Top 5 songs on your training playlist: What is that? Seriously, I have to admit that I don’t even have one anymore. Most days, I slip into the gym early in the morning as quietly as possible so that I don’t wake up anyone in my family. Most times, I just enjoy the silence before my family wakes up. Other times, I listen to a sermon from church or turn on Pandora radio. The station varies depending on my mood. Sometimes it is Instrumental Hip Hop or 90s Hip Hop. Other times, it is Neo-Soul. If my daughter wakes up and joins me, it is the Toddler Music station. Super weird selections but I just go with whatever mood I am in that day.

Top 3 things you must have at the gym or in your gym bag: My sports bra is the only requirement. No sports bra, no workout.

Do you prefer to train alone or with others? Why? I like a mix of both, but I train alone most times. I am extremely outgoing and give a lot of my energy when I engage with others. My workout time is my time alone to replenish that energy. Plus, my workout time varies wildly depending on my family schedule, work schedule, and my daughter’s sleeping patterns. I prefer not to add coordinating times to that mix.

I like to train with others from time to time though mostly to push myself. Every time I work out with someone else who is serious about training, it pushes me to level up even more. It isn’t about outdoing the other person but partner training helps me to see where I am holding back or staying in my comfort zone. I like that.

Most embarrassing gym moment: Well this has happened more than once. But, I would have to say I find it pretty embarrassing when I am really struggling on the last leg of a tough dropset. I promise no one ever walks by on the big bad heavy sets but the parade begins as soon as I am struggling with the lightest weight. It is kind of comical. The weird looks are hilarious.

Most memorable compliment you’ve received lately: The other day, my husband sent me a text to tell me that I was really doing a good job with life in general. It was right after I had screwed something up. So, it was the perfect little reminder that I don’t have to execute perfectly every single time. Doing my best and caring still trumps everything else.

Most recent compliment you gave someone else: I told my friend that she was better than she realizes at what she does for a living and that she can totally charge more. Funny part is that I am her client too.

Favorite meal: Any seafood meal that involves well seasoned crab or shrimp works for me.

Favorite way to treat yourself: Hands down… A VACATION! I love to travel.

Favorite quote: “To whom much is given, much is required.”

What inspires and motivates you? My ancestors and my family inspire me. When I remember all of the obstacles that those who came before me have navigated, it makes my day to day problems seem miniscule. I look at their sacrifices and triumph and know that I can handle what’s on my plate. Looking forward to the legacy that I want to leave for my family gets me going on the good days and keeps me going on the bad ones.

What do you do? I am a Food & Fitness Strategist. Sounds fancy but that means that I help women who are on a weight loss journey figure out how to move and eat in a way that gives them results without making the process a second job. I do that through my Coaching Club and one on one coaching.

What else do you do? Whenever I get a chance, I travel. Even if I just go across town to a hotel where someone else is responsible for making the beds. Outside of that, I enjoy trying adventurous activities. So far, I have tried speed boating, riding an ATV, stand-up paddleboarding, and indoor surfing. Skydiving is still on the list. I haven’t found that one thing that I do over and over again. Although, stand-up paddleboarding is the one that I have done most often.

Describe a typical day in your life: Most days, I get up around 4:30 a.m. That is my time for reading the Bible, drinking coffee, and working out. After my workout, I shower and get dressed and wake up my family. The morning is spent making breakfast and lunch and preparing to do morning drop off. After everyone is dropped off, I work. Depending on the day, work includes training clients in person, doing coaching calls with my online clients, writing articles or workouts, and interacting on social media.

I am usually able to squeeze in a leisure walk while I check in with clients online. I’m sure I look strange pacing up and down the street while staring at my phone but that works for me. Work lasts until around 2 p.m. At that point, I hop in the car to go get the kids. Pick up is followed by homework, after school activities, dinner prep, and family time. After the kids are all showered and in bed, I get to hang out with my husband. I am usually asleep by 10 p.m.

Your next training goal: I just signed up to do an Urban Dash. I haven’t done obstacle races for at least three years — definitely before I was pregnant with my daughter. So, I have included more running drills in my training and brought pull-ups back into the rotation.

For what are you most grateful? I am most grateful for choices.As I get older, I take that for granted a lot less.

Whenever I am struggling with a tough decision, I remind myself that I am extremely fortunate to have a choice. I am grateful that in many situations, I get to decide.

Of what life accomplishment do you feel most proud? I would say my first experience with natural childbirth felt like a major accomplishment. Pushing out humans without medicine was hard. It was one of the longest and most intense workouts I have ever endured. I went into it fully realizing that there were no guarantees but determined to do my part to make it happen.

So the backstory is that outside of the gym, I do not tolerate pain well. Actually, I just avoid it. For example, my doctor still uses pediatric needles on me whenever I get blood work because the bigger ones hurt. So, you can imagine the doubt that my husband had when I announced that I wanted to have a natural childbirth.

While we were going through our Bradley Method classes, he kept reminding me that I didn’t have to do this if I changed my mind. For some reason, I felt that this was the path for me. I couldn’t really explain it. I just knew it. The experience was a physical representation to me of what is possible when make a commitment and get the right training to do something you feel called to do.

I often draw on that experience when I face hard things or I am tempted to give up on something that I know I am called to do.

Which three words best describe you? Optimistic, Resilient, and Tenacious

What’s the coolest “side effect” you’ve experienced from strength training? I get a kick out of being able to do things that people assume that I can’t. So whether it is carrying all of my groceries and my toddler into the house in one trip, lifting my toddler and her stroller onto the rental car bus at the airport, or beating my son’s friend and his mom in a foot race after school, I just like feeling capable beyond expectation. That smile on my son’s face after we won was a nice little bonus too. To me, physical capability is a silent message to take me seriously — even beyond physical stuff.

How has lifting weights changed your life? I have always been tenacious, but I have always been a big rule follower. I tended to expect things to always turn out right if I took the right steps.

I think lifting weights has made me more comfortable with unpredictable progress.

Lifting weights has taught me that you can do everything right and things still may not turn out the way you expect. The process has taught me to accept that things getting ugly before they work is OK and sometimes a necessary and valuable part of the process.

What do you want to say to other women who might be nervous or hesitant about strength training? Try it. You may like it. If you don’t like it, you can always stop. There really is nothing to lose!

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[letstalkaboutsciencebaby]

For the love of museums

When it’s raining outside and you have a fidgety toddler (is there any other kind?), nothing sounds more appealing than the word ‘museum’. Well, to be more precise, ‘family friendly, interactive science museum’. I’ve always been a fan of art museums, but with a toddler in tow, those quiet, vast spaces lined with precious and fragile sculptors don’t have the same soothing effect they used to. 

Berlin

When my daughter was 6 months old, we moved to a small German town. It was lovely, but after some time, we craved the bustle of a big city. On her first birthday (to which I am sure she was oblivious), we made the 2 hour roadtrip to Berlin, and from then on we were hooked. Our go to entertainment between meals was playgrounds (Spielplätze) and the ones in Berlin are artworks in themselves. Unfortunately, when winter creeps up, we need entertaining shelter under the sheets of rain and occasionally, even snow. 

I first read about the Science Center Spectrum after searching for ‘indoor activities with kids in Berlin’. The write-up mentioned how the displays were interactive and even suitable for toddlers. Supposedly, there were also cars inside, which clinched it for my husband. 

I neglected to take any photos on our visit because I was too busy pushing my kid out of the way to have a go on the displays myself. My memory of the visit is a bit hazy, since it was 3 years ago and that period of my life still fell under the ‘sleep deprived’ chapter. 

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The right hand side of the museum is a sprawling ground floor composed of a large car display, including classic cars and cut sections to show the insides. There were lit up information pods, which could be pulled down, so the kids can do the hard work while the parents do the reading. There were displays that were off limits to touching, but this was more than made up for by the wheels to spin, levers to pull and buttons to press. Best of all was the orange Tribant which could be sat in and ‘driven’, although you have to provide your own brrm brrm noises. 

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The ground floor of the left hand side was a look through the history of communication. Of course, since my daughter knows nothing but touchscreens and swiping, the old school dial telephone did not hold her attention for long. 

The centre of the museum consists of 4 glorious floors of interactive displays. There are experiments involving pulleys and weights, water, heat, light, lasers, electricity and more. The top floor is dedicated to noise experiments involving air and movement. My toddler loved the range of noises (again, it there any other kind of toddler?), but I also enjoyed the scientific explanations behind each ‘sound machine’. 

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It was a remarkable few hours and only nap time could entice us away. This museum triggered our love of browsing science museums on holidays. 

Liverpool 

Once we had relocated ourselves to England, our first memorable science museum experience was the World Museum in Liverpool. This was five floors of anything science related you could think of. The first floor is made up of an aquarium that rivals many I’ve seen at famous zoos. Next, was a bug house, which, despite the thick glass, had me a bit on edge. I still can’t decided if it was the massive spider dangling over my head swaying to the air conditioning or the signs that warned against eating in case the crumbs were too enticing for the creepy crawlies. (You can probably tell by now that I am not an entomologist...)

There was also a natural history center, with a range of skulls as seen below, along with plant and rock specimens.

Fatigue had set in by this point, so we raced through the next three floors of world cultures, dinosaurs and the space and time exhibit. These are probably more suited to older kids. 

The museum also runs educational workshops and has a planetarium. The collections are amazing and deserve at least a whole day of wondering around. Amazingly, it is also free, although of course donations are always welcome. 

Manchester

We had originally planned to settle in Liverpool, but life often doesn’t play along. Instead, after a few months, we moved to a small English village. Which again, is lovely, but had us craving more stimulation on the weekends. Manchester then became our new Berlin. 

Our visit to the Museum of Science and Industry was mostly due to proximity to our favourite restaurant. It was not the best scientific experience due to the antiquated ‘interactive’ displays that did not work. Thinking back to my childhood, there is nothing that puts kids off science more than “this is suppose to spin when you press the button... but it seems to be broken”. 

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I’d say the museum focuses heavily on the industry part of the title. There are displays involving printing presses, textiles, trains, planes and cars. Mostly, they were to be read and not be touched. Which I can’t say attracts attention well at any age. 

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The top floor of interactive displays is dedicated to smaller kids. Here, are your puzzles and levers to spin. Unfortunately, most were only worth a few seconds of your time. Once you had pushed the button, not much else was involved, and it was time to move on. That was the vibe of the whole museum really, glance and move on. 

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We visited The Manchester Museum on an open day, when faculty members from the University of Manchester were hosting a ‘your body’ themed day for the public. It was extremely crowded, which bodes well for future scientific endeavours. 

The museum itself was impressive. Since it was so crowded, and many exhibitions were concealed behind the open day displays, it was not a very detailed trip for us. I do remember the stuffed animals and the giant hanging whale skeleton below. 

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There is a little bit of everything to suit all tastes: Archaeology (my daughter was surprisingly enthralled by the sarcophagus and the mummy inside), a Vivarium (the bright red poisonous frogs also happen to be the cutest), living cultures and earth sciences. We hope to go back and explore the museum in more detail. 

This is just a brief outline of some of the science museums we have been too. Some we loved more than others, but they were all interesting. And as my daughter gets older, I can only anticipate more visits and longer stays.