#things i need to remind myself with too

[the-jesus-pill]

You’ve got to forgive yourself for being traumatized and needing to learn how to function again. 

Recovery isn’t always nightmares and depression, it’s forgetting to eat, being scared of what others might see as completely normal things, it’s getting random panic attacks, not knowing how to take care of yourself, not knowing how to live like an adult, even if you’re twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, of feeling like you’re failing to function in a world where everyone seems to have their shit together. 

If you need help, ask for it. Go to forums and ask for advice. Take advantage of community resources. Buy pre-sliced veggies and fruits, eat instant meals if you can’t cook for yourself today. Hire someone. Ask a neighbor for a favor. Buy any item you think might make life easier, even if you feel like you aren’t ‘disabled’ enough to have it. 

Some of the depression posts (ie open your windows, take a shower, go outside, call a friend) are really helpful but they’re not always enough. I’ve found advice for spoonies, people with chronic pain or other disabilities have the best tips because they know what it’s like to be bedridden, out of energy, stuck in a brain fog. 

You may never return back to the energy you had when you were younger and you might always need to use crutches to help you through life. It’s the same with medication. 

Trauma is a real thing that happens to you, it physically alters your brain and it’s alright to have lasting scars. 

You’re not broken, your life is not over and you can still be happy. 

It’s not your fault.

[warmsol]

i love taking my time. i love working slowly. i love creating things at my own pace

[zorosdimples]

i think many writers (myself included) get stuck in the “free time must be writing time otherwise it’s wasted” mindset. but how often do you sit down to write, stare at the screen, and call it a day? or claim you’re writing while you’re actually just screwing around doing other things? we forget that a fundamental element of writing is simply reading. you can’t improve your craft if you refuse—willingly or not—to witness what others are doing. instead of bashing ourselves for not being productive or inspired, we should be enjoying great novels, poetry, essay collections, memoirs, and the like. a “good” writer doesn’t have to be writing all the time or even most of the time; a “good” writer should recognize the limits to their creativity and find joy in that which inspired them to write in the first place: reading.

[hballegro]

the clock is here. all hail.

i forgot to turn antialiasing to the right settings with my pen so it is. the little numbers are chunky. thats life sometimes. just dont zoom in too hard. if i fix it, i wont make a new post abt it ill just edit it on to this one or something [and state that i did so in the post]

prev post with noclock version

and as promised here is also progress pics, harvested from when i sent screenshots to friends as i worked. as a bonus ive also included various layer names and the 5 different names the file went thru. the parts i [very lazily] painted over with dark blue had not been done yet, ergo anything with dark blue over it is just the picture itself so do not regard it

i will now be nice to myself and work on my fanfic and smaller drawings for a while. i will do eye posts sometimes still when i get a slow day and wanna do some peepers for 3 hours, i have collected many eyes [klinger, fr mulcahy, trapper, margaret, charles, hawkeye, bj. ive been busy stealing eyeballs to paint on. theyre all on one document its pretty funny]. i will be doing my best to force the cast into my style so i can do quick stuff.

i also WILL do more paintings of full shots again, but. fellas. ive done 3 back to back full paintings with no other digital art projects in between.

this has been NOT good planning lol

not sure if i should tag everything again so i will just. do so? idk i have not been on tumblr hardcore since like 2018 and have never regularly posted so idk proper etiquette. im gonna leave off characters for this one ig

[fiction-podcast-lover]

This is your friendly reminder that Cecil is in fact, NOT a reliable narrator.

[brown-little-robin]

it went fine yesterday btw :}

[angelnumber27]

violently forcing myself to have better days

[faunandfloraas]

It is kinda funny seeing people talk about Seungmin lately because he definitely has gotten more bold and confident for sure. He's also just getting opportunities to be perceived as an individual on his own as well for the first time in a while but it's still jarring to see people be like Aw he was always such a quiet goodie two shoes little nerd and it's like...... he was the one to leave and seek out his own vocal coach and blatantly talk about it, which of course lead to I.N and Lee Know also doing the same, he was the one to go on bubble and tell off sasaengs who used to camp outside their old dorm for invading members privacy but also because it effected other residents and staff at the complex, something that i'm certain upper management wouldnt have been happy about, and he wasn't curt or nice about it either. like he's never actually been a wallflower, he's always had a pretty strong backbone and seems to stick to his principals, its not really new.

[lale-txt]

it's been over a week but i legit haven't stopped thinking about this

[shannonsketches]

He said "Fuck this shit, I'm out" I'm crying. Toriyama's Vegeta was so top shelf 🤌

(From Neko Majin Z Chapter 5!)

[ssruis]

Ruikasa don’t become more stupid when they’re around each other (they continue to operate at their typical levels of stupid) but they do lose all of their respective maturity. which is funnier. You put Tsukasa “my personality is so based on being a big brother that it has manifested as a person (KAITO) in my sekai” Tenma and Rui “described as mature by nene who has known him for like 10 years” Kamishiro together in a room & 20 minutes later they’re up to the most childish shit ever.

[seraphic-sibyl]

I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been

[edge-oftheworld]

how do i get rid of the need to make orchestral arrangements of all of 5sos' work and solo works too

[nocompromise-noregrets]

five good things, really quickly

before I head off to work, because I have a small handful of them right now...

Big one first: I am GOING TO FINLAND IN OCTOBER DAMMIT! Going for eleven days because...

PRIVATE LINE HAVE REFORMED AND ARE PLAYING A SHOW FOR THE FIRST TIME IN I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY YEARS! and although Japa is no longer in the band...

HIS NEW BAND IS ALSO PLAYING A SHOW THE PREVIOUS WEEKEND! so...

I am going to be in Helsinki between 18 and 28 October :D :D :D Been planning stuff to do (I have an Excel spreadsheet with all the museums and stuff and their entrance costs filterable by location oh god, spent yesterday evening doing that, now all I have to do is put opening days/times in cos I was too frazzled to do it last night) and if I buy a Museum Card which is currently reduced by €11 I can get into everywhere freeeeeee! Thus saving, if I actually go to everywhere on the list (it's a long list) several hundred euros. XD

Also one of the other bands I used to go and see at Trashfest lo these many years ago are finally playing this end of the country (they're from the east midlands and never play down this way) at the beginning of October SUPPORTING A BAND I LOVED IN THE 90S WHO I DIDN'T REALISE WERE BACK!!!

And and AND our local cinema is showing all three EXTENDED EDITIONS OF LOTR this coming weekend and I AM GOING. I cannot WAIT I am going to be sitting on my own in the cinema being an absolute ball of squee it's been OVER TWENTY YEARS since I saw those darlings on the big screen!

AND, just for the hell of it, the 20th anniversary event I'm hosting on here for King Arthur (2004) at the beginning of July is all kicking off! Prompt post and everything else at @ka20th for my beloved little fandom that could (and if anyone wants to prompt me for any of the themes do let me know!)

And my TRSB fic is coming on very nicely indeed. Can't talk about it but it's giving me the opportunity to develop someone I don't usually write as a main character AND throw in a lot of my favourite other characters to write, and the lovely @erathene's art is GLORIOUS. :D :D :D

Right then. Better go to work. Spending the day in the strongroom sorting out some minute books today, which is in fact a further Good Thing. XD

[sharkneto]

Hey, sorry if this is a bit of a personal question - and feel free to ignore it if it is - but how did you know you wanted to start hrt? I am someone who IDs as transmasc and knows in an ideal world, I would've loved to have been born a guy. But the idea of going on hormones is terrifying because I can't figure out if I really want it... I worry about regretting it, or it making me 'unappealing' physically, or my friends judging me for it. Did you ever struggle with similar worries?

I think every person thinking about and starting HRT goes through this. A rite of passage, if you will, and also not a bad thing to do. HRT is a big step, some of the changes (especially on T) are irreversible. It's good to think through if it's a choice that's right for you or not.

That said, it's also Just A Thing You Can Do. I first started really questioning my gender at the end of 2020 (thank you, Elliot Page, for coming out and making me go "oh shit, you can do that?"). I got a therapist to talk about gender... Mid 2022? And started hormones spring 2023, top surgery a year later.

Before getting the therapist, I spent over a year Just Thinking About It. And a lot of the thoughts were around the changes on T and if I'd like them or not or if I'd regret them. If I'd be ugly, after being conventionally attractive as a woman.

It hits a point, though, where eventually you have to pull the plug one way or another. I spent a lot of time thinking about how my body would change on T. A Lot. With longing. I caught myself putting things off Until I Knew For Sure and because I didn't want to do it while being perceived as a woman. I was sitting, treading water for a hypothetical Later that I could start moving towards at any time. I was scared for the Teenage Round 2 phase, and didn't want to spend months being "ugly and awkward", but then the months passed anyway and I was still in the same spot.

HRT isn't an all-or-nothing thing, you can ease into it on a low dose. My doctor started me on a low dose and we ramped up over months. Some T changes can start pretty quickly (voice dropping, bottom growth - this isn't true for everyone, but was true for me). If these changes excite you, make you feel good - great! Keep going! If they scare you, feel wrong - stop. Assess. Figure out what about it isn't right (a gender therapist for all of this process is a Huge Help). In early days if you stop T, the changes can revert, for the most part. But you can always stop at any time.

The bigger thing I actively worked to wrap my head around before starting HRT is - Who Cares If You're Wrong? What's right for you now might not be right for you later. The idea of detransitioning was scary to me, society has such a weird spotlight on it, the Right uses people who have detransitioned as props against transition. But it shouldn't matter. At the end of the day, if I do change my mind, I'll know myself better, and I don't think it's wrong to chase and find comfort in your own body.

A year+ on T, I've mostly made it through the ugly duck phase, I think. I was lucky, I didn't get bad acne or get too oily or anything (after having horrible acne in my first puberty). Most of what I dealt with was the chronic baby face, where I was getting read as male but a teenager - I'm almost 30 and a woman wanted to card me over a free T-shirt at a baseball game because it had beer logos on it. After some middle months of changes and going "oh my god what am I doing" and not feeling confident in how this was all going to turn out, I think of myself as relatively attractive and I think I'm just going to get more vain as my beard comes in. Some of that is physical, sure, but I think a significant amount of that is me feeling more confident in myself and liking the body I'm in more. I was never a selfie or picture person, now I am. I joke I'm like a budgie, always looking at myself if there's a reflective surface nearby. I'm more excited to exercise, I'm interested in lifting weights for the first time, I'm curious what my body on T can do and become. Keep your eyes on the pieces that are going well, the changes exciting you, and let the rest catch up.

My social circle helped a lot. I'm very lucky and blessed to have great friends and family, all of whom are supportive. If you don't have friends who are supportive of you, that are judging you for exploring yourself rather than lifting you up for it, it's a sign to expand the social circle and find ones that are. Family is harder, but that's a thing you have to navigate for yourself and find your own boundaries for.

So, there's no ~one moment~ where you're 100% certain that medical transition is right for you. It's a huge unknown and you're changing the body you've had your entire life. At some point, though, you just have to jump and see how it lands. Part of being alive is making mistakes and doing things you might regret.

That said, the regret rate for trans people is something like 3%. The regret rate for knee surgery is something like 20%. Trust yourself.

[livinginsunnyhell]

The wee woo show makes me feel fucking insane. ⛑️🚑🐝🌅Am I being gaslit? I can’t tell anymore.