#without getting into the personal weeds I’ve been making overall changes while I’m gone to get my mental health on track

[vipier]

shockingly alive and not quite back yet but definitely looking to restructure my approach on my blogs when I do return, possibly in the next week or so! all that means for my mutuals is that I plan to focus even more on plotting and supporting consistent engagement through building out verses and dynamics with my partners. this goes for dynamics already established as well as those moving forward, for all blogs. if I reach out to you this week about a previously discussed dynamic and you’re no longer interested, please don’t be afraid to let me know! I will also likely be ( mostly ) clearing out my inboxes with a commitment to try to finish as close to everything as I receive moving forward.

[danceswithcybermen]

The Night Manager

Written for the X-Files Spooky Fanfic Exchange! It’s been on AO3 for a couple of weeks; click here to read it there. I’m just getting round to putting it here.

My spooky word was "satanic," and my recipient was @alienqueequeg​. She requested, “Horror and/or smut if you're comfortable going there! I also like UST/RST, angst, casefile, AU. I'm open to anything and everything except baby/kidfic :)”

I’ve literally had this idea in my head since the 90s, and since you asked for horror, I figured this was an opportunity to finally do something with it.

I hated the episode “3” because it was a weak story, and it gave us only a cursory overview of Mulder’s mental collapse after Scully’s abduction. I wanted to write another, hopefully better vampire story, so here we go. This effort is an AU that replaces “3.” While it is a stand-alone story right now, I may turn it into a series.

Someone is exsanguinating victims in Los Angeles. Mulder, reeling from Scully’s disappearance, reluctantly investigates, and meets a mysterious woman he knows he recognizes -- but from where?

Rated T / PG-13.

This is NOT A MULDER/OTHER STORY!

Tagging @xfilesfanficexchange​

Saint Petersburg, Russia, 1910

“But WHY? Why must we do this every day? It’s boring!” The little girl rose to a standing position and pouted. She was hyperactive and petulant, with no patience for daily meditation exercises.

The mystic shook his head. He had never before dealt with such awesome potential in such a young child. Usually, powers to this extent didn’t manifest until early adulthood. The girl was only nine, and he knew that her strengths exceeded even his own. “It’s for your own protection, Nastya. You don’t want to get hurt, do you?” What he didn’t mention was that others needed the protection more than the girl did. “You must learn--”

“To control my mind. Yes, I know. You say this every day.” She pointed at a nearby window. “Can’t we stop and go outside, just for a few minutes? It’s so nice.”

The mystic was firm. “One more set of the breathing exercises first. Center yourself, and then we’ll go for a walk.”

The girl rolled her eyes, but she sat back down on the floor pillow and acquiesced. The old mystic continued to watch her. It was clear that she had been given all of this power for a grand purpose, but he couldn’t fathom exactly what it was. He’d seen visions of what he assumed was her future, but he couldn’t make sense of any of the images. He knew he had seen a faraway place. Enormous steel and concrete structures rose from the ground in cities teeming with people wearing strange clothing and horseless carriages moving on the roads at great speeds.

In each vision had appeared a particular man. At first, he’d thought him her future husband or lover, but their relationship was -- something different. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. There was something about that man, and also a woman with red hair. They were important somehow.

He kept all of this from the child. How could he possibly explain it when he didn’t understand it all himself? He also knew that his time with the girl would be limited, and he didn’t know how limited it would be, whether he’d have another 10 years or only 10 months to tutor her. With a long way to go and an abbreviated time to get there, it was better to concentrate on the mind exercises. The visions could wait.

Yekaterinburg, Russia, July 17, 1918

She was running through a thick forest, with no destination other than away from her captors, away from the death squad that had just murdered her entire family. She didn’t even know she was capable of running. Under normal circumstances, the bunions on her feet gave her too much pain to even try, but the bayonet wound that had penetrated her bejeweled corset was proving a much more serious problem. She felt her lifeblood flowing out of her, seeping through her many layers of clothing.

I shouldn’t even be alive right now, she thought. Her mind was fogging, and she struggled to center it, the way she had been taught as a child.

She tripped over a branch and plunged forward hard, unable to suppress a scream as she hit the forest floor. She tried to center herself again and concentrate on getting back up, but she had reached the end of her endurance. She had lost too much blood.

It isn’t supposed to happen this way, she thought as she felt reality slipping away from her. My visions--

As she struggled to remain conscious, she heard a WHOOSH, then felt someone picking her up and turning her over. She forced her eyes open and saw a face she recognized. It was one of the night guards, one who was always kind. She had suspected him of being enamoured of her.

“Sebastian,” she whispered.

He smiled, and his eyes glowed. “It’s all right, my love,” he cooed, drawing her up into what she thought might be a kiss.

In the moments before she lost consciousness, she felt a prick in her neck.

Alexandria, Virginia, 1994

Fox Mulder woke up screaming and flailing, nearly knocking his coffee table over as he jumped to his feet, his arms positioned to ward off an attack from unseen aggressors. When he got his bearings, he sat back down again, picked up his pot pipe, and took a long hit.

The weed Langley had supplied was smooth, and if he smoked enough of it, he would drift off into a short but usually dreamless sleep, a brief respite from the hell his life had become. Usually. Not this time. Instead, he’d dreamed of a white room and his beautiful, loyal, funny, and kind partner strapped down to a cold steel table, evil-looking medical instruments doing ungodly things to her as he watched, frozen in place, unable to even speak.

She’d been gone for 45 days now. It had been forty-five days of sleeping little, eating even less, and overall letting the rest of his life go to hell as he chased every lead he got, no matter how shaky, all over the country.

He’d even driven up to Delaware because someone on an obscure Usenet group had sworn that a group of “devil worshippers” was holding her hostage in their “cult house.” He’d found the “cult house,” which turned out to be nothing more than a long-abandoned structure on a rural road. He’d found lots of evidence of teenagers using the house to drink and smoke weed, but there was no satanic cult, and there was no Scully.

Mulder exhaled. Drinking and smoking weed had seemed like a fine idea to get past this latest letdown, and that’s all he had been doing since returning the previous evening. He knew he could get drug-tested at any time, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about much of anything anymore. He ate little, slept even less, wore the same clothes for days, and showered and shaved when he remembered or when Skinner yelled at him to do it.

He was in the middle of packing his next bowl when he heard pounding at the door and Skinner yelling his name. He put the pipe down, not even bothering to conceal the pot or the paraphernalia, and wandered to the door.

Mulder had barely gotten the door open when Skinner growled, “Where have you been? It’s after one o’clock, and you haven’t been answering your phone.” He looked Mulder up and down, sniffed, then spotted the bag of weed and the pipe on the coffee table. “Jesus, Mulder. What the hell are you thinking? What if you get called for a random drug test?” Skinner pushed his way in.

Mulder shut the door and shrugged. “Then I guess it would be the end of my storied career.” He sat down on the couch, considered taking a hit right in front of Skinner just for spite, then decided against it and put his head in his hands. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered without her. 

Was that love? He didn’t know, but he was certain he didn’t want to live in a world that didn’t include Dana Scully. You could call it love, soulmates, or the Easter Bunny; the end result was the same. If she didn’t come back safe, he didn’t want to go on.

Skinner sighed. The apartment reeked of weed and beer. There were empty bottles all over the place, and Mulder clearly hadn’t showered or changed his clothes in days. Under normal circumstances, an agent in Mulder’s condition would be ordered to undergo a mandatory psychiatric evaluation, possibly paired with drug counseling. But these weren’t normal circumstances. The man was clearly out of his head with grief, having lost his other half. Skinner wanted to believe that Dana Scully was still alive, but he also knew that with every day that passed, the odds of her being found safe diminished. Officially, this was still a missing persons case. Unofficially, everyone knew it was a recovery operation, but he didn’t dare tell Mulder that.

“Clean yourself up now, Agent Mulder. You have a case.” He thrust a file towards the younger man. “A string of homicides in Los Angeles, could be the work of a cult. The victims are being exsanguinated.”

Mulder took the file and half heartedly leafed through it. “That doesn’t sound like an X-File.”

“The victims are the X-File. The coroner says the bodies are decomposing at rapid rates, and if the bodies are exposed to the sun, the skin starts burning as if it were in a frying pan.”

Mulder laughed bitterly. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me with this.”

“Is there a problem, Agent Mulder?”

Mulder threw the file atop the coffee table, and several empty beer bottles fell to the floor. “What do you expect me to do with those bodies? Autopsies aren’t what I do. They’re what my partner does. My MISSING partner. The partner that I know everybody in that goddamn bureau thinks is dead!” Mulder jumped to his feet and stalked over to the window. Part of him wanted to jump out of it, bust right through the glass. At least then, he’d feel something. He’d reached the point where he could no longer feel grief. He just felt nothing.

Skinner approached him from behind, the file in his hand. He threw it down on Mulder’s desk. “LOOK AT ME, Agent Mulder!” Mulder reluctantly turned his head to face Skinner. “I’ve been covering your ass for the past 45 days, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. People are noticing your behavior, Agent Mulder, people who aren’t as patient as me, people who make sure you’re called in for a random drug test if you show up at the Bureau smelling like weed! You will be gone, and the X-Files will be gone with you.

“For god’s sake, look at yourself! You’re drinking like a fish, you’re not sleeping, you’re not eating, you’re not even bathing or changing your fucking clothes. I know you want to find Agent Scully. Goddamnit, I want to find her, too, but when you do find her, shouldn’t there be something for her to come back to?” He didn’t specify whether the “something” was Mulder himself, the X-Files, or both, a purposeful omission. How Mulder chose to interpret it didn’t matter. He needed to clean himself up and get back to work, give himself a purpose, give himself something to occupy his mind.

Mulder nodded and took the file from Skinner. He was right. Scully wouldn’t want to see him like this; she hated it when he got like this. She also wouldn’t want to hear that the X-Files had been closed because of his behavior.

“So,” Mulder began, “We’re looking at a reverse-vampire case?”

The Marlex Motel, Canoga Park, California

The case was pretty much as Skinner had described: A string of victims, of both genders and of various ages, body types, and ethnicities, all exsanguinated, most having suffered severe burns due to post-mortem sunlight exposure. Mulder noticed that. The killer always moved the victims into the sunlight. Even the victims who were killed indoors had been dragged over to a sunny window. 

It was definitely an X-File, but without Scully’s expertise, Mulder didn’t understand what he was supposed to contribute. She was the only one who could do autopsies on X-Files cases properly. She knew what to look for.

It was after dark by the time Mulder approached a nearby motel that fell within the Bureau’s lodging allowance. He had thought of just not getting a room. There was nothing for him to do here, but he had to make a show of it, look like he was trying. One of the victims who hadn’t completely burned up by the time she was found, a young woman, had a stamp on her hand from the Blue Moon, a nightclub in this area. He’d go check it out.

At least they had alcohol there. Mulder fumed that he couldn’t bring his marijuana. Fucking airport security. Nothing helped him sleep better.

The front desk area was empty, and he rang the bell. “Just a minute!” a woman’s voice called from the back area. He heard what sounded like the same woman finishing up a conversation with a man, and then the woman emerged from the back. He noticed her eyes grow wide for just a moment, but then the woman quickly regained her composure. “May I help you?” she asked, and he thought he detected the slightest lilt in her voice.

He studied her for a moment. She looked so familiar, yet he couldn’t place her. She was small, about Scully’s height, with long brown hair and an exotically beautiful face. She was young, a teenager perhaps, and Mulder wondered if she was the owner’s daughter. But she wore a name tag that read “Anna - Night Manager,” and her demeanor was of a woman much older.

“Do I know you?” he finally asked. “I saw you look at me funny.”

The woman smiled. “No. For a moment, I thought you were somebody else, but I was mistaken. How can I help you?”

“One room, just for me. Three nights.” Mulder continued to look at her as she readied the paperwork and his key. Dammit, he’d seen that face before, but he couldn’t remember where. He realized he was staring and forced himself to look away. Maybe this is the owners’ daughter; maybe she’s older than she looks. Maybe he recognized her face from a file; maybe she’s an abductee and--

Mulder blanched, and the woman gave him a concerned look. “Are you all right, sir?”

He nodded. “Uh, yeah, just a sour stomach.”

“Well, I hope you get over that.” She handed him a key. “Room 6, straight that way. It’s next to the ice machine.

After Mulder left, the man from the back came to stand behind the woman. “You were very troubled by that man, Anastasia. I could tell. Why?”

“Sebastian, that’s him.”

“Who?”

Anastasia spun around to face her companion. “The man from my visions, from Grigori’s visions! I would know that man anywhere, Sebastian. That’s him.”

“So what does this mean?”

“I don’t know.” She turned back toward her desk. “I really don’t know, but that man is -- something terrible has happened to him. He’s overwhelmed with grief.”

Sebastian shook his head. “No, no, no, no. We don’t have time for humans’ problems. We have to find the people who are killing our kind before the humans do. You know that. The Council specifically requested that we take this on.”

“That I take this on, Sebastian. Me, not you. It’s my talents they want, but I’m going nowhere with this.” She pointed in the direction Mulder had gone. “That man has something to do with this case.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “The killer?”

“No, not the killer. I’d have known. But something.”

**************************************************************

The Blue Moon had been a complete bust. Nobody who Mulder tried to question knew anything, or if they did, they weren’t telling. He could have gone at a few of them harder. He would have, had Scully been there to examine the bodies and investigate what he’d convinced himself was the most important facet of the case.

Now he wanted to get drunk, but he wasn’t going to do it in a nightclub where he’d just been waving his badge around. Luckily, there was a dive bar a block away; he’d passed it on the way to the club. 

Mulder didn’t stagger out of the bar until the bartender cut him off. The nightclub he’d ostensibly come to investigate was only a few blocks from the motel, so he had walked. It was a sketchy neighborhood, and nearly empty this time of the night, but the temporary buoy he’d gotten from Skinner’s stern talking-down-to had worn off. Mulder was back to not caring about anything anymore. What was the worst that could happen to him?

He didn’t notice the mugger until the guy had his gun pressed into Mulder’s kidney. “You know what this is. Wallet and watch, man. Wallet and watch.”

Mulder sighed. “You don’t want to do this, kid. I’m a federal agent.”

“I don’t care if you’re the fucking President!” The mugger jammed the gun against Mulder’s back harder. “Wallet. And. Watch.”

Mulder thought he could turn around and take the guy, so he tried -- his second miscalculation that evening. His reflexes slowed down by the alcohol, Mulder wasn’t able to execute the move correctly or pull his weapon on time, and the mugger pulled the trigger. Mulder felt the bullet tear into his abdomen, and after he hit the ground, the mugger came to stand over him and aimed his gun at Mulder’s head.

Mulder closed his eyes. Scully, if there’s another side, I will find you there.

Instead of another shot, he heard a whooshing sound, and then the mugger screaming. Mulder opened his eyes and tried to position himself to see, but it was dark, and he found he couldn’t move. But he heard a woman’s voice; the night manager’s voice.

“None of this ever happened, and you never saw me. Now go.” Mulder heard someone beating a hasty retreat, and then, he saw the face of the night manager -- including a pair of fangs.

She looked around, concerned. “We don’t have much time,” she said, “so I don’t have time to explain this, but you need to drink.” She used one of her fangs to slice open her wrist and held the gaping, bleeding wound over Mulder’s mouth.

Fear breaking through his alcohol-induced haze, Mulder whimpered. The woman sighed and looked directly into his eyes. “You must drink. You must.” He still didn’t want to, but he couldn’t stop himself from opening his mouth and drinking the blood straight from the open wound. He thought he would be repulsed, but the taste was earthy and primal. It also relaxed him similarly to marijuana. Even before the night manager removed her arm, Mulder was falling asleep.

********************************************************

He woke up in his motel room, to the sounds of the night manager arguing with the man he’d heard at the front desk.

“Have you gone INSANE?” the man was yelling. “What if someone had seen you?”

“Nobody did.”

“But somebody could have, and then, you compounded your offense. Saving him was bad enough, but then, you had to make him a fucking Familiar. The Council will--”

“You know what? Fuck the Council and their bullshit fucking rules. They won’t sanction me, because they need me on this. They need my talents.”

Mulder didn’t completely grasp what these people were talking about, but he decided he liked the woman right then and there. He knew what it was like to go up against “councils.”

“Shit, he’s awake.” 

The man threw up his hands, and the woman came across the room to be at Mulder’s side. He sat up -- and it all came back to him. How could he possibly have sat up? He looked down at his clothes; they were covered in blood, but there was no wound. There was no pain. In fact, physically, Mulder felt better than he had in his life.

“I do know you, Agent Mulder,” the woman said, “But we’ve never met before. I think you have some sort of file on me?” She could feel him searching his tortured mind for the information. “My name is Anastasia Romanov.”

Oh my fucking god, that was it. The Anastasia Romanov file. That’s where he’d seen the face, but Anastasia Romanov was only 17 when she was allegedly murdered, and this woman looked … more like a teenager than a woman.

“You haven’t aged,” Mulder sputtered. 

Anastasia laughed. “Oh, I’ve aged, but my body hasn’t. It’s one of the perks.” She shot a strange look at the man, who pulled the curtain aside to look out the window.

“It’s nearly daylight. You need to wrap this little, um, reunion up.”

“That’s just Sebastian. Don’t mind him. Anyway, we seem to be running into situations where there’s just no time for me to explain things, don’t we, Agent Mulder?”

Mulder suddenly felt a chill go down his spine. If he was alive, and not wounded anymore, what did that mean, especially since Anastasia had hypnotized him to drink her blood. “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME?” Mulder jumped out of bed and looked in a mirror. He saw his reflection, but then he also saw Anastasia in the background, so…

“That’s a myth,” she said. “But no, I didn’t turn you. You were bleeding out from the gunshot wound, and vampire blood has healing properties. Trust me, you’re 100% human, but since you had to drink a lot of my blood, you’re also what we call a Familiar.”

Mulder’s head was spinning. He wasn’t entirely sure what Anastasia meant, but this was all too much. 

“Listen, I’d love to continue this conversation,” she told him, “but unless you want Sebastian and I hiding in this room all day, we need to go right now. I can come back after dark. Can I trust you not to get yourself shot again until then?”

She gave Mulder a sly smile, and he had to appreciate her wit. He nodded, and the two vampires were gone.

What the hell was a Familiar?

********************************************************

Another victim turned up the next morning, what looked to be an older man, no identification, the body burned beyond recognition.

Mulder reexamined the files on the victims who had been identified. With a slightly clearer head -- amazing that an encounter with vampires had cleared his head -- he noticed that all of the victims had led solitary lives, with no known relatives and few if any acquaintances. All of them either worked at home or worked night jobs.

Someone was hunting vampires. Vampires, Scully!

When his mind turned to Scully, he felt himself getting lost again. Thankfully, it was near nightfall.

That night, in the back office of the Marlex Motel, Fox Mulder was given a crash course on vampires, Familiars, and the mysterious Council his new vampire acquaintances kept going on about.

Since he had drank so much of Anastasia’s blood, he was now bonded with her, not as closely as Sebastian, who was her maker, but they now had a psychic connection of sorts. Anastasia told him that while he wasn’t indestructible, he would heal from injuries and illnesses more quickly than before. He also found out that as a Familiar, he was impervious to vampire hypnotism -- but he wasn’t impervious to Anastasia’s numerous psychic powers.

“It started when I was a little girl,” she explained to him. “First, I knew how people were feeling. I could tell if they were sad or mad or gleeful. Then, I started being able to see inside their minds, not just words but images. And if I concentrated, I could do things. I could move things, just by thinking about it hard enough.”

“And that’s when Grigori Rasputin started training you,” Mulder said.

“For my own protection. He said he’d never seen such power in a child so young. It scared him, the things I could do, and I couldn’t control any of it.” He saw a flicker of sadness in her eyes. “He taught me as much as he could before he was killed. He knew he wouldn’t have enough time to train me properly. He had visions, prophecies of the future. I started having them, too, and he taught me how to interpret them. We both saw you, with the red-haired woman, Scully, who was taken from you. I can see her in your mind.”

Mulder felt a pain in his gut at the mention of Scully’s name. He was surprised when Anastasia reached out to pick up the small crucifix hanging around his neck. She smiled at him. “That’s a myth, too, but if this were silver, I couldn’t touch it. That part is true. You’ve seen that the sunlight part is true.” She put the crucifix back in its place. “When I was turned, I retained all of my powers. All vampires have some psychic ability; that’s how we can glamor humans, but I’m uniquely gifted.” He saw something flash across her face that indicated she didn’t see her powers as gifts; quite the opposite. “The Council needs me to find this exsanguination killer before the humans do. He’s putting us at risk of exposure, and if they capture him, the risk is worse.”

“Believe me, Anastasia, nobody would believe him,” Mulder assured her. “Shit, nobody believes anything I say.”

“They won’t take the chance, and despite my misgivings with the Council, I don’t think they’re wrong on this one. Most humans don’t know about the healing properties of vampire blood. I think this killer knows, and that’s why he’s killing us. He drains all of his victims. I’ve seen some of the people in your mind, your own Council. What do you think they might do if they knew vampire blood could save people from gunshot wounds?” The desk bell rang, and Anastasia went to answer it.

Other than her looking too young to be a motel manager, she blended in well, Mulder thought. There was nothing unusual about her, nothing that would make people question her. That Sebastian guy, who apparently worked at the Blue Moon, looked rather ordinary, too.

“How is this killer finding his victims?” Mulder asked Anastasia when she returned. “If all of your kind live covertly, how is he identifying you?”

“We think he might be finding them at some of the vampire bars in the Valley,” Sebastian said as he entered the room. “At least three of the victims were customers at the Blue Moon.”

Mulder thought back to his unsuccessful interviews at the club; that’s why they’d gone nowhere. This community was very good at keeping its secrets. An idea occurred to him. “Did you ever think that the killer might be a Familiar?”

He could tell that the vampires had not. “Well, there aren’t that many of them,” Sebastian explained. “The Council frowns on us making Familiars these days. It’s too risky. They want us to stay away from humans, not get personally involved with them.”

Anastasia looked as though a lightbulb had gone on above her head. “But it happens, Sebastian. You know it does. This would all make sense!” She started pacing back and forth, reminding Mulder a bit of himself when he latched onto a theory. “An angry Familiar, someone who didn’t want to be made one, or someone who fell out with the vampire who made them. But why not just kill us? Why steal our blood?”

Mulder thought for a moment. “Maybe it’s not for the killer. Maybe he’s selling it, or he’s giving it to someone else. You said I had to drink a lot of your blood to heal, Anastasia. That means the amount needed corresponds to the severity of the injury.”

She nodded. “Or the illness. If the illness is really bad, like cancer that’s spread everywhere, the effect is temporary at best. I don’t know why. Even we don’t understand how our blood heals.” She stopped pacing. “My god. I think I might know how to find the killer.”

*********************************************************

The trio returned to the Blue Moon, and Anastasia made a beeline for a table occupied by a young dark-haired woman smoking a cigarette, someone who hadn’t been there the previous night. The woman apprised Mulder as he approached with Sebastian. “My, my, Nastya, you do attract handsome men. I haven’t seen this one before.”

“Cut the bullshit, Kristen,” Anastasia said as she pulled up a chair. “Whatever happened to Richard? I think he may be the one doing this.”

Kristen laughed as she stamped out her cigarette. “Richie? You must be kidding. He’s a sweet old man.”

“He wasn’t sweet when he was young, and you turned him into your Familiar,” Anastasia reminded her. “He wasn’t sweet when you broke things off with him.”

“Yes I did -- 30 years ago. I assure you, he moved on. Got married, had kids, and everything,” Kristen told her. “He came to see me a few months ago. He wanted me to turn him and his wife, full-on turn, so that they could live together forever. I didn’t want to take on that kind of responsibility. Some of us would rather steer clear of the Council’s watchful eyes.”

“A few months ago?” Mulder interrupted. “How many months is a few?”

Kristen raised an eyebrow, then gestured to Anastasia. “Well, you certainly have a live one here. Where’d you find this one, and what do you intend to do with him?” She gave Mulder a seductive smile, which he returned with a stony stare. She sighed. “Well, you’re certainly no fun. If you must know, two and a half months ago, but I don’t see what this has to do with anything. I told him no, he got mad, but then he left. I haven’t heard from him since.”

Mulder and the other vampires looked at each other. The murders had started two months prior. “Do you know where we could find him?” Mulder asked.

********************************************************

“What I don’t understand is how he’s getting the drop on you,” Mulder said as he drove the trio to Richie’s home in nearby Van Nuys.

“Vampire hunters have existed throughout history,” Anastasia explained. “You know that, and you know we’re not indestructible.”

“Because the bodies decompose so fast after death, he must be incapacitating his victims, then draining them while they’re still alive,” Mulder mused.

“Silver,” Anastasia offered. “It weakens us.”

They finally pulled up to Richie’s house, a small home on a quiet street. “Can you tell if he’s in there, Anastasia?” Mulder asked.

She looked at the house and concentrated. “No, I’m only feeling one person, a woman. She’s in a lot of pain, very ill -- dying. It’s cancer. It’s everywhere.”

Great, he’s probably out hunting, Mulder thought, but they couldn’t do anything about it now. The best chance of catching this guy was to wait for him to come back. They waited in an uncomfortable silence. Sebastian had been dead-set against Mulder coming. Their instructions had been to find and dispatch this killer before the humans could get hold of him, but he suspected that Mulder wouldn’t go for that. Anastasia had insisted he come because of her visions. Sebastian had told the petite vampire what he thought of her visions, which had been entirely the wrong thing to say. Mulder couldn’t help but smile through the pain at the sight of her dressing this much taller man down the way Scully often did to him.

“You’re thinking of her,” Anastasia said, interrupting his train of thought.

He fingered the crucifix around his neck. “Always.”

“Please don’t give up on finding her, Mulder.” Anastasia stopped short of saying he’d find her again. The truth was, she didn’t know. She could control her mind-reading and object-moving powers very well, but the visions either came to her or they didn’t.

Soon after, a car pulled into the driveway, and an older man got out, carrying a satchel. It was him, Richard Keenan. He entered the house. “Stay here,” Mulder told the vampires. “He might be able to hurt you.” 

Sebastian fumed as Mulder headed for the house. When the agent was out of sight, the vampire made to exit the car. “We can’t let him go in there alone, Nastya. You know that. This is our kind’s problem. We need to take care of this.”

Anastasia nodded and reluctantly got out of the car. Her lover and maker was right. Richard Keenan couldn’t be taken by the human authorities alive.

******************************************************

Mulder crept to a window with a light on and peered inside. It was a bedroom, in which an older woman slept on a hospital bed. Richard came in holding a large glass of red liquid and woke the woman. “Here you go, darling. More of that Chinese elixir that works so well.”

The old woman shook her head, and Richard looked crestfallen. “No, Richie. It’s not working anymore.”

“NO! It will work, Marion!” Richard sounded desperate, and Mulder saw a bit of himself in the older man. “It always has!”

Marion gave him a sorrowful but firm look. “No, Richard. It worked for a while, but not anymore. I can’t eat anymore. I don’t even want to drink water anymore. It’s time for me to go.”

“Maybe you just need to drink more. I can get you more! It’s not that expensive.”

“Yeah, what’s a few vampire lives in the grand scheme of things?”

Shit, Mulder thought as he watched Sebastian enter the room. I knew they wouldn’t stay put. He ran around to the front of the house, and as he suspected, the vampires had simply twisted the doorknob off. Superhuman strength wasn’t a myth.

By the time he got back to the bedroom, Richard was warding off Sebastian and Anastasia with a large silver necklace, the two vampires were arguing again, and Marion was in tears. Mulder approached Richard with his weapon drawn. “Richard Keenan, you’re under arrest. It’s over. Give yourself up.” 

Richard waved the jewelry at him, but Mulder kept advancing. “So you’re not one of them?”

“Would someone please tell me what’s going on?” It was Marion. She sounded very weak. Anastasia studied her for a moment, then looked gravely at Richard.

“She’s dying, Richard -- and I mean, right now. No amount will make her better now.”

Ignoring Mulder’s gun, but still clutching his silver, Richard rushed to his wife’s side. “It’s going to be okay, darling. I’ll get you more medicine. I’ll get you better medicine.”

“Please, Richie,” Marion’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Could you hold me, just for a minute?”

Richard climbed halfway into bed with his wife and hugged her. She put her head on his chest. “Always love you,” she whispered. And then she was gone. 

Richard clutched his wife’s dead body and screamed. Sebastian tried to make a move toward him, but Anastasia held him back. She could see into this man’s mind. She knew what was going to happen next.

That’s why she wasn’t surprised when, so quickly that Mulder didn’t have time to react, he pulled a handgun out of the nightstand, placed it under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

*****************************************************

Marlex Motel, the following evening

After Richard Keenan blew his brains out, Mulder sent his two vampire companions away and dealt with the aftermath. The official story he told the police was that Keenan had believed that having his dying wife drink blood would cure her cancer. Mulder had tracked him to his home and forcibly entered when he heard the shot.

He booked an overnight flight back to D.C. so that he could see the night manager again. She was alone. “Where’s Sebastian?” Mulder asked.

“At work. He’ll be around later. She looked at his luggage. “Checking out?”

Mulder nodded and handed her the key. She clutched his hand and gave him a very serious look.

“You cannot give up on finding her, Mulder. She still lives. That I can promise you.”

He felt drawn into Anastasia’s eyes, not the way he was drawn into Scully’s, but still drawn. She was a beautiful woman, but the feeling he got was more like what he would have for a sibling, perhaps if he’d had a twin. It was difficult for him to wrap his head around, but at least it was a feeling. He was finally feeling something again. “Thanks for everything. I think I needed this case.” He turned to go. The devastation was still there, but he’d gotten the boost he needed to carry on just a little while longer.

“I’ll see you again, Fox Mulder,” Anastasia promised him as he exited the motel.

She didn’t tell him about the vision she’d had after she’d left the Keenan house, the one where she’d seen Mulder, Scully, and an infant in a future that wasn’t so distant. 

She didn’t tell him that the infant could move things with his mind.

Author’s note: Yes, I know that it's widely accepted that Anastasia Romanov's remains were found and identified through DNA, but that hadn't yet happened when I first conceived of Vampire Anastasia -- and in my little AU, she survived.

[theloadedcouchpotato]

Deleting later

Just wanted to get this shit out of my head.

I started taking antidepressants in February. It'll be two complete months on Zertraline. I just increased my dose to help stretch out my refills.

It's been rough. I'm not as artistically inclined as I used to be, and my sex drive has decreased dramatically.

At first I doubted the meds would help at all. At first, I thought, "man idk, I don't really feel anything." But... that's the point. I realized that was the entire goal, to feel anything less fully.

I can't go too long without it now though. I can immediately feel my emotions going haywire after a week of lower dose or not taking them at all. The meds give me headaches, nightmares, and stomach cramps, but that's been the worst of things for a little while. Those things I can handle, after getting used to it.

I have been going through a lot of shit though. My struggle against myself is ongoing. I'm stuck between pessimistic realism and hopeful optimism. I've always had this horrible toxic habit of pushing people out, cutting them off after they prove to me they can't be trusted or relied on. I've had plenty of experience with liars, manipulators, and overall garbage people. But I still struggle with the walls I've built because of these experiences.

On the one hand, I hate wasting my time. The stages of getting to know someone, gaging their personalities, developing relationships, building trust, seeking refuge and reciprocity, loving with my whole heart, or at least whatever else is left of it: it all takes way too much time and energy. And every time, every single time I'm disappointed. Genuine people are nearly impossible to find.

On the other hand, I hate isolation. I hate constantly building walls around my emotions just to keep them from getting trampled on, hate shutting people out, hate robbing myself of experiences because I can't rely on others to be trustworthy, hate robbing myself of people who have the potential to love the worst parts of me just because those parts came from something someone else decided to break. I've gone from having house parties and meeting with friends every week to having little to no human interactions for almost 10 months straight. And I did all this without being sober.

I'd been self medicating for 8 straight years, and although it's pulled me out of some dark places, it never lasted very long. I ended up having my first self-harming experience as a full grown adult. So I decided. Fuck weed, shit hasn't been helping as long as I've been smoking. Fuck therapy, that's just another person I have to pay to give a shit about my well being.

It'll be two months on z next week. I've become much more focused, productive, and proactive. I set goals and make plans to achieve them. I attend things on time. I get out of bed without wanting to just give up as soon as I open my eyes. I remember birthdays and appointments. I get started on things much earlier so I don't have to stress about deadlines. It's improved my motivation to actually do things and to make some sort of progress. But something else has happened too.

I still have to separate myself. I have only kept one healthy, long lasting relationship afloat. Every single one before or after that has ended in disaster. Just a few hours ago, I had to burn another bridge because I'm just so fucking tired of going through this. Giving my heart to people who don't value it, don't even ask for it, who fought for it just to say they won something, who wanted to keep me captive or controlled, who mistook my kindness for weakness or stupidity, who only realized my integrity after they lost me, whether it be immediately or over a year after never hearing from me since, who pleaded & begged for chance after chance just to squander it, just to maintain access to me.

It's exhausting. I've had to look into these people's eyes and tell them I wanted nothing to do with them anymore. I'm a grown ass woman, I shouldn't have to keep doing this. I don't want to spend year after year having to choose between painful isolation and even worse company. I will never be able to understand what's so hard about being genuine.

The concept of treating others as if it would return to you seems so foreign to most of the people I've met. The world becomes so much more lonely when you realize you seem to be the only person you know who means what they say or learns from others. I hate the thought of living in a world where no one will be willing to love or understand me. I'd much rather lose my will to breathe.

The human gift is rationality. The human goal is happiness. But rarely any of us use our gifts or reach our goals. I can't honestly say life is worth the trouble of finding out. People get in the way of that. Everyone's got a motive, and you can never tell the difference between who wants to love you and who wants to harm you. The suffering is exhausting, and most times trying your best still gets you nowhere or in a place of despair.

I'm trying my best to stay alive for my siblings and my best half. The meds help with that. Usually I'd fantasize about different methods of sudden death throughout each day. Nowadays I find myself barely emotionally invested in anything. But I'm getting things done one day at a time, and that feels better.

My art came from my pain. I love my art, but I've had to fall in love with death. Life has hurt me in ways many would never comprehend. But it's changing, maybe not for the better, but it's still change. I have to keep myself alive long enough to say I gave it a shot. It's too early now, but if I have to sacrifice my creativity to gain some semblance of control of my life in any way, then that's what will have to happen.

I have to try. Things have to change. And once they do, then I'll decide whether to stay or go. But for now, I just gave to keep going.

[randomramblesandlearning]

10 Things I Loved About Mass Effect:Andromeda

Warning: Spoilers! And I wrote this on the spur, so there might be grammatical errors.

1.      I enjoyed the story. Yeah, people will say it recycles from the trilogy, but come on, people. Why are you surprised? Bioware recycles their plotlines all the time. It’s pretty much the same in all of their games. A protagonist gains special abilities and leads a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits team to defeat a big threat. And I’m not bothered by that. Sometimes familiarity in your franchise is good, just as long as you do new things to the formula, and I think they do.

What interested me the most was the theme of starting over. A lot of people in the Andromeda Initiative were former criminals or outcasts. The reason they joined was to start a new life, and it’s explored in the main questlines, the loyalty quests, and numerous side quests. I was worried about the game talking about colonization since humans are looking for a new home, but I was pleasantly surprised that the game made it clear that Andromeda is the angara’s home first, and humans and other Milky Way species will have to work with them. Thank god! No Mightey Whitey trope this time!

2.      Ryder as the player character. I honestly never thought I would love Ryder as much as I did when I played the game. Sure, no one will ever replace Commander Shepard, but Ryder isn’t meant to replace the Commander, rather show a different perspective in a new story. Commander Shepard is the hero we want to be while Ryder is more of a relatable character. Ryder has to learn through the entire game how to be a leader while going through the obstacles of their inexperience and youth so people will take them seriously. And it was compelling, uplifting, and at times amusing to see them become a hero in their own right and step out of their father’s shadow.

Also Sara and Scott felt like their own person. In the original trilogy, the player character is pretty much the same no matter what gender. But sometimes the dialogue can be different depending on if you play a male Ryder or a female Ryder. That’s because they are two different people who have had their own experiences and personalities. That really adds to the replay value!

3.      Female aliens everywhere! One of my major issues with the original trilogy was the lack of female Turians, krogans, and salarians. Sure we had asari an all-female race, and female quarians, but it felt weird that we met so many aliens with very few ladies. Not only do we get a female Turian squadmate, we also get plenty of lady alien NPCs gathered everywhere for random quests. We also have Kesh who works at the Nexus. And we get to see female salarians! And they kind of look the same as male salarians except with different voices. Thank god! It would’ve been horrifying to see salarians with boobs. Uh! And I’m pretty sure there were just as many female angara NPCs as there were males.

4.      The romances. Especially the queer ones. One of the things I love about Bioware games are the romance paths. Bonus points if there is a queer option. And as of patch 1.08, this game has the most number of queer romances in any Bioware game. I think my two favorite romance paths are with Sara and Vetra and Jaal and Scott. While representation for the LGBT community is improving in media, there’s no denying we still have a long way to go. And after again the crap year 2016 where we had a huge number of queer women characters die in tv shows, it was so wonderful to have a healthy and happy relationship between two women when I first played the game. And even if it wasn’t added until the patch, the romance between Jaal and Scott is absolutely sweet since we see two men show a lot of love and affection for each other which is rare to see in media.

5.      The Tempest Family. I adore every single character on the Tempest, and they really did feel like a family once you played further into the game. I am a sucker for found families, and to see these people who are trying to find a home ending up finding a home with each other just gives me so many feels!

Since there’s not really a huge crew in the ship like in the original trilogy when Shepard had an army of humans. In Andromeda, we have six squad mates, four additional crew members, and Ryder. And I think it made the family more intimate. It’s like our own little family lives on the Tempest.

Also I liked how there were more quests spread out throughout the game with the squad which I think was lacking in Inquisition. Plus. Movie Night is the best scene ever!

6.      In my opinion, the side quests were fun. I think this was one thing they improved from Inquisition. Inquisition side quests just felt like a bunch of fetch quests that got kind of boring pretty quick, and didn’t really add to the overall story. Some highlights from Andromeda were: Kadara, the angara reincarnation questline, the Turian jailed for murder, the anti-AI group, meeting Zaeed’s son, and those kids sending out a distress signal for a new light for their weed plant. HAHA!

They were compelling in their own right and included cut scenes instead of the Inquisitor going to some location like in Skyrim to do a thing come back to the quest giver saying, “I did the thing.” “Ok, good.”

7.      Unlike in Inquisition, there’s actual payoff for some of the quests you do. I don’t mean to be mean to Inquisition, I still love the game, but remember when we were promised that you had to build your forces up in order to defend against the main threat. Yeah, you built forces to get influence points to gain perks, and that’s it.

In Andromeda, while, yes. It’s not the same level as Mass Effect 2. When you actually complete quests and help out leaders, you can get different results during the final battle. Like, there’s a chance Captain Dunn may not survive.

Also, when you get 100% viability on all the planets, you get a special surprise on Habitat 7- being told that it will one day be habitable because of our efforts. Sure it was a side quest, but it just felt so rewarding!

8.      The climax was actually fulfilling and exciting. Again, something else Inquisition was lacking in. Seriously, when I first played Andromeda, I legit gasped when the archon was taking control of SAM node. The villain was actually living up to his threatening nature!

Just when we think we got everything under control, and are about to find Meridian, the Archon fucks shit up, and our sibling has to step up to save the day. Then we have to gather people we helped out and prepare for a final battle, and Ryder can finally prove themselves as a true Pathfinder and kick the Archon’s ass once and for all. People are saying the ending was as disappointing as ME3’s? Pfft…What are you even talking about?

9.      The angara. Bioware never fails to make me love an entire fictional species. Yeah, it feels a bit off that they pretty much have the same faces and the same 3 voice actors, but I really do love their culture. And I appreciate that they were clearly coded as POC while Andromeda didn’t go through with the whole Mighty Whitey Trope. The game wants you to respect their culture and to respect their home.

I love the angaran people are open about their feelings, I love how their religion believes in reincarnation, I love how we see angaran scientists, soldiers, merchants, mercenaries, and civilians. Also Aya and Hivraal are absolutely gorgeous!

And when Jaal finds out his people were created by the Kett, I was worried it was going to go the Dalish elves route, but Jaal points out that it doesn’t change anything about the angara. They are still their own people. And that was such an uplifting message.

10.  The overall light-hearted tone. I wrote a small post that got a good number of notes. (Probably the biggest number I’ve ever gotten), so to quote: “There was always this sense of hope and optimism about finding a new home. ‘Yeah, things may have gone totally wrong, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make them better’ was the overall message I got.

And really, with so many bad things happening in the world right now and too much of our entertainment supposedly being our escapism being dark for the sake of dark, this was something I think a lot of us needed.”

Mass Effect 3 had its light-hearted moments, and I love it, but man, that game was emotional draining.

It’s a bit discouraging to love something so much and get recommended videos on youtube pointing out the same flaws of that certain game, and why they thought it was a huge disappointment. Do I agree with some of their criticisms? Sure. Does the history behind the production explain the flaws? Oh absolutely.

           But people seem to forget that the original Mass Effect trilogy wasn’t without its flaws. I mean, sure everyone can agree on the Mass Effect 3 ending, but I could make a list of all the issues I have with the other Bioware games including Dragon Age: Inquisition (which despite winning Game of the Year, kind of suffers the same problems Andromeda had).

           So yeah, after the crap year of 2016, I was so excited to get a newly-released game that made me happy. And still makes me happy, and makes me in the mood to play another Ryder.

[streetlites]

What If Sims Tag!

Chosen OC: Emilia Beatriz Alenko Castellanos

I was tagged by @pixeltrashcan, @dinaswimmer, and @lovelychooser - Thank you for thinking of meeeeee. I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to get back on these. 😟

Answers hidden under the cut!

1.   What is your character’s favorite memory?:Probably the first time she held some sort of information over someone and had them do what she wanted to not talk about it. Or contacting Damian’s girlfriends in order to secure Rosalia’s old room for herself. 

2.   Who and what would your character give their life for?:  Right now? Honestly, no one. She’s very close to her family, especially her brother, Roman. But I think she’s shown when it comes down to it, she puts herself first over others; lightly blackmailing her father and asking Roman to lie to his boyfriend instead of just not saying anything. She’s not entirely sure that she’ll ever find something she’d die for.

3.   What is your character’s greatest fear?: Being powerless. She’s used to being able to manipulate the people around her for her own benefit that she’s terrified of being without that control. The prospect of going to jail gave her the first taste of that fear. I think she would have killed Mike even if Fermin hadn’t ordered her to do it. 

4.   What is your character’s proudest accomplishment?: Seeing Lifehacker become a successful app – all those people’s information freely given!

5.   What is your character’s #1 insecurity?: Emilia’s main insecurity is that there’s always someone better than her. She works hard at programming to get the information she gets but she’s aware that there’s people who does what she does that have more experience/are subtler about gaining information than she is. It makes her feel as though she’s easy to see through and it pisses her off.

6.   What will/can break your character completely?: Being trapped in a situation where she can’t really fight her way out of, one that leaves her vulnerable and she has to rely on other people to protect her.

7.   What would your character make a scene in public about?: Ah, jeez… Emilia would make a scene just to make a scene if the mood struck her.

8.   What can drive your character to do criminal acts?: HAHAHAHAHAHA….. heh. NEXT!

 9.   What Pet (mythical or not) would your character want to have?: I tried to think about this, but I’ve never paid too much attention to mythology to know who she’d choose. Maybe Cerberus or a Black Dog because it would unnerve people to see her with it.

10.      What is the cutest thing your character has ever done?: 

Seriously though, I don’t really think Emilia has done anything cute.

HOW

1.   How does your character feel about sexual intercourse?:��Very open, very forward about sex. She doesn’t understand the hang-ups over it – she doesn’t think it has to involve emotions. It feels good, why not enjoy it?

2.   How close is your character with family and friends?: Her family is very close, but being part of triplets stretched her parents’ attention thin. To that effect, she’s closer to Roman and Elena than she is to anyone else but she does care for her older siblings and parents – just not as much.

3.   How does your character react to pressure?: Emilia is stubborn. She doesn’t react well to pressure from others, or from herself. She is easily irritated when something isn’t going her way, and having added frustration from outsiders can make her insufferable.

4.   How religious is your character (if they believe)?:  Religion has always been part of her life, so she goes through the motions when she’s around her family but isn’t religious herself.

5.   How does your character’s personality change when someone gets uncomfortably close (relationship wise)?: Hard brakes. Tires screeching. Records scratching. What I mean is, her personality doesn’t change, she just gets rid of the person closing in.

6.   How does your character’s living space correlate with their personality?:I don’t know if it was obvious to anyone, but when she first moved, everything in her home was shitty except for her computer which I think shows what she prioritizes – work. But, overall, her living space doesn’t show her personality. Emilia won’t really go out of her way to fix up a place to reflect herself. When she moved into her apartment, she just grabbed whatever she came across on the curb even though she made enough money to buy furniture for herself. She very likely blew that money on drinks at clubs, cigarettes, and clothes.

7.   How well does your character act around with unknown and different people?: She’s very approachable and outgoing when she needs to be. She’s starting to see people she doesn’t know as potential sources of information/blackmail opportunities and realizes it’s easier to get that information if she’s friendly or flirty. 

8.   How much does your character value money?: Emilia sees money as a means to an end. Whoever has the most money has the most power if they know what they’re doing. So she places a high value on it; love for red bottomed shoes and leather jackets only furthers her desire for it.

9.   How would this character cope with losing someone extremely close to them? Depends on how she lost the person. If she loses them through natural, unavoidable causes she’d be able to handle it fairly well. Of course, she’d be sad, but knowing that nothing could be done to prevent it would make it easier for her. However, if she lost someone (death) due to something that she could have prevented, she’d probably crack.

10.      How long does it take for your character to trust others? It depends on what she’s trusting the person with. Overall, she’s slow to trust people.

SCENARIOS

1.   If your character could change one thing about themselves, what would they want to change?: Probably her inability to accept things as they are or her lips (but you’ll never hear her complain about them because that could possibly give someone ammunition to use against her in a fight). 

2.   If your character could go back in time at any point in their life, what would they do to change the present?: She probably would have ignored Gene at the beach house. If she had, she and Gene probably wouldn’t have gotten together.

3.   If your character was given a chance at fulfilling their dream, can they drop everything they have now to go pursue it?: She’s more or less pursuing it currently!

4.   If your character’s current spouse or partner cheated, would they try to make it work or leave forever?: She’d leave. She’s slow to trust and cheating destroys that trust forever for her. If she tried to make it work, she’d drive herself crazy checking up on the other person. 

5.   If a zombie apocalypse begun in the town your character currently lives in, what would they act like?:Go on a zombie killing spree while looting stores. She’d be part of a terrible group that goes through and takes stuff from smaller, weaker clans. 

6.   What if your character suddenly woke up to an unfamiliar place, and realize the life they lived was all a dream. Their family, friends, home.. all gone but still crazily vivid in their head. How would they react?: She’d try to reacclimate herself to her current life but would miss the excitement of her dream.

7.   If your character was thrown in jail, what would they be guilty of?: er, invasion of privacy, public intoxication, having weed in her possession/under the influence of, assault, battery, homicide, breaking and entering, distributing a class I narcotic, destruction of property, disorderly conduct, malicious mischief… You know, at this point I think it would be easier to list what she WOULDN’T go to jail for. I don’t think she’s stolen a car yet… so there’s that!

8.   Fast Foward 10 years from now, what is your character currently doing?: She has a network set up that is more advanced than what she currently has and a way to store and sort through information so she doesn’t have to be actively listening in. She’ll also have autonomy in which jobs she does and have people under her to carry out the more physical missions. 

9.   Your character is in the movie SAW, facing their worst fear. What is that fear, and how does he/she react?: Is she supposed to kill it? It dies.

10.      We regret to inform you that your character is dead. Where do they end up? Heaven? Hell? And how the heck do they react?: Hell, for sure. She wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. She’d try to find a way to be the one poking people, not the poked.

This tag has been out for a while and people that I may tag, I might have already read over one or you don’t feel like doing it, and that’s okay! I still ♥ you! @josiesimblr, @impishlyxpervertedxsims, @nervous---subject, @cat-nerd-sims, @neutralsupply (though I’m pretty sure you’ve done this...), @thefoxandhersimblr, @zauglom 

[totallyrhettro]

The Lone Jedi, Chapter 7

Word Count: 2206 Rating: This chapter: G. Overall story: explicit Warnings: None Summary: Jedi Knight Rhett McLaughlin managed to escape the purge of the Emperor to become one of the last of his celibate order. After years of a solitary life, he finds himself with a former slave for a friend. Despite his efforts to maintain anonymity and the jedi code, he starts to realize that doing either is easier said than done. Notes: Star Wars AU; Events take place between episodes III and IV

First Chapter

Previous Chapter

*See the end of each chapter for additional notes on star wars terms*

Link POV

The next morning, Rhett helped Link clean his wounds and change the bandages just like the day before. Unlike yesterday, however, he didn't bathe himself, leaving the brunet to wash and waited for him back in the kitchen.

‘He must have bathed already,” Link reasoned. He didn't mind too much, really. He did enjoy the feeling of self-reliance that came with heading back to the compound on his own afterwards. When he reached the kitchen, his roommate was at the stove, cooking away.

“I'm going to head out after breakfast,” Rhett told Link, as he entered. “I'll be gone for a few hours. Will you be alright on your own?” Link nodded.

“I'll be fine. My back feels so much better already.” He sat down at the table as he spoke.

“The waters have healing properties. There’s a large crystal at the mouth. It enriches the water for miles. We're quite close to the source, so the healing is very powerful. You should be fully healed in no time.”

“I've never heard of such a thing. Why don't more people use these crystals?”

“I'm sure they would like to, but they can be hard to come by. I think the former residence of the academy placed it there, a long time ago.” Link hummed in acknowledgement, running his fingers over the bandaged palm of his hand. He was glad his wounds would heal quickly. He didn't like feeling like a burden on his companion.

“I'm not sure what to do with myself, now that I live here.” He looked up at Rhett as the blond man set breakfast before the both of them.

“What do you want to do?”

“I'd like to help out, if I can. Be useful.”

“You don't have to-”

“I want to.” Link was so desperate to please. He owed this man so much but he had no idea how to repay him. He didn't think he ever could. Rhett paused, looking over his ward, regarding him quietly for a moment before answering.

“Well, alright. The garden could use some weeding, I guess. I can teach you that, if you like. It shouldn't be too hard on your back, now that it's on the mend.”

“I can do that!” Link smiled, enthusiastically, and his friend seemed pleased by his attitude. The brunet was glad to be useful. More than anything right now, he wanted to make Rhett happy; make sure he didn't regret giving the former slave a home.

After breakfast, Rhett gave Link a quick tutorial on weeding. It was a simple process. Pull up the plants that didn't belong, dig up the ones that made a fuss, and leave the edible plants to grow. Link was a bit worried about picking the wrong plants, but Rhett assured him that even if he did pick a non-weed, it wasn't a big deal.

“Just remember not to push yourself too hard,” Rhett reminded him, as he prepared to leave. “I'll be back before too long. If you get tired, feel free to rest.” The tall man climbed onto the kybuck easily, adjusting in the saddle before grabbing the reins and turning the animal towards the exit. He spared a last glance towards his friend who waved cheerfully. Then with barely a nudge Rhett maneuvered the beast, heading out through the stone archway and down the mountain path.

Link watched him until he disappeared into the trees below. The last time he was alone he had been attacked by two large, and very nasty, creatures. Before that he couldn't recall ever really being alone. It was a strange and unsettling feeling, but he felt relatively safe in this place. Something about knowing Rhett would be back gave him more confidence then he would have expected.

As he headed back through the front building and into the inner courtyard, Link looked out over the garden. Relatively, it wasn't a large garden, but he was just one man. One somewhat injured man, and he wasn't sure where to begin.

He moved over to the nearby table with various tools and things, picking up a dirty pair of thick cloth gloves. Link put them on before turning to face the garden and taking a deep breath. After looking over the whole area he nodded to himself and headed over to one of the closer corners. The task seemed arduous but, after pulling his first weed effortlessly, his hesitation faded, and he attacked the rest of the weeds with vigor.

The malignant plants proved to be little trouble as Link moved through the garden pulling them up one after another, being extra careful to not get his clothing caught on anything prickly. He made it through a few square meters before he started to get tired. Moving over to the fountain, he said down to rest, setting aside the gloves and placing them on the bench beside him.

The sun was starting to get unbearable now. Normally around this time, Link would be sitting down for a midday meal. His stomach was already starting to rumble and it didn't look as if Rhett had returned yet. Unsure when his host would get back, Link decided to have a look at the store room and maybe help himself to a small snack just to tide himself over for the time being.

Link had seen the door to the food stores several times. He had watched Rhett get supplies from within to make their various meals and figured he could find something simple to eat without much difficulty. What he didn't expect was for the door to the storeroom to be locked.

‘He doesn't trust me,’ Link explained to himself. He felt his heart sink a little bit at the thought, but of course it made perfect sense. They had only met a few days ago, why would he trust him? Link stomach growled again, louder this time. His hunger, combined with his sudden dejection, compelled him to find a way past the lock, despite never having stolen anything in his life.

After a brief, unfruitful search of the kitchen and dining area, he headed for their shared living quarters. He thought if the key would be anywhere, other than actually on Rhett’s person, it would be there. Hoping it was in fact not with his host, Link started carefully searching through Rhett’s sleeping area.

He didn't want to make it obvious that the bed and things had been searched, so the process was quite slow. He lifted the mattress, opened the small drawer in the nightstand, and looked under the small stack of datapads lying about. Finding nothing, he moved on to a small bag nearby. It was loosely tied shut and with a few pulls of a leather cord, the bag fell open. Before he could start looking for a key, he saw something else. On top of some loose rags laid a strange, metal object.

It was about a foot long and a few inches thick. The color of steel, it looked like it was made of metal, but it felt lighter. Black highlights and silver controls of some kind intrigued Link’s curiosity immensely. Turning the strange device over in his hands, he felt drawn to it. There was something about it that he couldn't quite place. His long fingers caressed the small controls set into its surface.

“Link?” Rhett’s voice called out from the courtyard. “Are you here?” Link placed the device back into the bag and closed it before quickly checking that everything looked undisturbed.

‘Good enough,’ he assured himself. Back in the garden, Rhett was looking around, obviously trying to find any sign of his roommate. As Link came into view, his worried expression faded into relief. He smiled broadly, holding up a small box before meeting up with the shorter man.

“I brought you something,” he said when they were close enough. “I see you've been busy.” Link nodded, trying to look casual but unable to hide his feeling of guilt for digging through his host’s things. “Are you ok? What's wrong?”

“I... The store room. I just… I wanted to get something to eat but it was locked.”

“Oh.” Rhett’s smile returned immediately. “Yes, I had to lock it after the kybuck got in, one night. Crafty beast. Ate up a whole month’s worth of food before I caught him.” He lifted up a small pouch on his belt and pulled out a simple key. “I must have locked it out of habit. What say you open it up for me while I unload the rest of the supplies I bought, hmm?”

“Sure.” Link felt a little better if Rhett was going to show some trust in him, and his explanation about the locked door sounded quite feasible. Still, that just made his guilt deepen as well. It seemed he had invaded his new friend’s privacy for nothing.

Doing his best to hide his shame, Link took the offered key and headed back to the kitchen. It wasn't too long before Rhett came in after him, his arms holding a large container of foodstuffs for the storeroom.

“I bought you some new clothes as well,” he informed Link. “I know you prefer your, uh, open air clothing, but you can't wear the same thing all the time. I tried to guess your size. Maybe you can try them on later?”

“That's very kind of you,” Link told him. “I'll have to take a look at them.” He still wasn't used to someone giving things to him just because they wanted to. When they finished eating, he thought he would try them on then, but Rhett had another surprise first. After clearing the table, he placed the box he had from before in Link’s hands.

“Open it.” Curious, Link did just that. The small, wooden box opened with a simple hinge. Inside, set into royal purple velvet, was a straight razor with a pearl-inlaid handle. Beside it was a matching brush with the softest, white bristles.

“A shaving kit?”

“Do you like it? I don't know if you've ever used one, but I thought maybe you could use it to get rid of that stubble.”

“It's beautiful.” A slight pink came over Rhett’s face as Link looked up at him with the biggest grin. This was the nicest thing anyone had ever given him. Not just a gift, but a personal gift. Bought just for him, for his needs. It was wonderful.

“I bought some shaving cream too. I wasn't sure if you'd want it, or… Let me get it for you.” As Link continued to look over his new present, running his fingers through the soft brush and along the smooth handle, Rhett got to his feet and went over to another, much larger box set nearby the store room. It had many things inside, but he pulled out just a small jar with a twist lid and headed back to his companion.

“I got a few dozen jars. I didn't know how much you needed.”

“I think that will be enough for a while,” Link chuckled. He took the jar and looked it over. He had, in fact, used a straight razor many times. When he was his master’s favorite, he had other, lower slaves assigned to shave his face for him and then it was with an XP 21 groomer not a real blade. Since losing favor, he had to fend for himself but the razors he was given weren't nearly as nice as this one.

Later that evening, Link sat down by the river, shaving kit in one hand and a small hand mirror in his other. Rhett had gone off somewhere, leaving his guest to his own devices. The brunet carefully removed the shaving brush from its velvet casing like it was made of glass, running his fingertips over the delicate hairs.

Earlier Rhett had boiled some water, pouring some into a simple mug and warming a small washcloth. Link had already spent a few minutes warming his face in preparation of shaving. Now he dropped a little bit of shaving cream into the mug and began lathering it with his brush. After covering his face with the white foam he moved slowly, maneuvering the sharp razor blade lightly across his skin, taking extra care around his prominent adam’s apple. It was perfectly sharp and he didn't want to cut himself. He needed less injuries, not more.

Once he was finished he rinsed the razor and the brush, placing them both into the case before using the mirror to more closely examining his handy work.

‘Not bad,’ he thought. Definitely a vast improvement to the thick stubble from before. As he closed up the case and poured the leftover foamy water into the river, he suddenly found his thoughts turning towards his new friend. ‘I wonder if Rhett will like it.’

He blinked. There was a small flutter in his heart, imagining his host smiling down at him. He still didn't understand why that man affected him so. Still it wasn't an unpleasant feeling. Link couldn't help but smile to himself. Whatever this feeling was, he wanted more. He wasn't sure if he could ever get enough.

Next Chapter

Additional Notes-

Kybuck: an animal originally from Kashyyyk. They look very much like the Tauntauns found on Hoth, if you crossed one with a horse.

Datapad: a small electronic device used for the input, storage and displaying of information.

XP 21 groomer: an electronic grooming tool.

More Fics

[theycallherchaos-blog]

Who was your childhood crush? The first crushes I remember were on a boy named Matt and a girl named Jessica when I was in kindergarten.

Do you like Red Bull? It’s not my favorite, but I’ll drink it.

Do you drink regular or diet sodas? Either one, but mostly regular.

Would you rather eat your pizza cold or hot? Either.

What are you doing tomorrow? Wednesday? Working. Cooking orange chicken. I live an exciting life. ;)

Are you over the age of 21? Yes.

Would you rather date a girl/guy with a British accent or an Irish accent? I really couldn’t care less.

Where is the biggest scar on your body? I have mostly small ones. I have one on my leg from a bike accident when I was nine, one on my forehead from picking a scab when I was three, one under my nose from falling in the shower while drunk in 2011, one on my ass cheek from falling onto the tub while drunk in 2007, and a few smaller ones from picking at my skin because of my dermatillomania (sp?).

Are you trying to avoid something by filling surveys out? I’m procrastinating on work.

Have you ever had fake nails? No.

Do you say the “f” word a lot? Yes. It’s my favorite word.

Has someone seen you naked in the past month? Yes.

Does everyone deserve a second chance? No.

How many concerts have you been to? I’ve never been to a big one.

When is the last time you wore a dress? 2012. I don’t like dresses or skirts much.

Do you believe in karma? Not really. Too many bad people never see it come back to them.

How many days until your next birthday? 8 months and three days.

What are your plans for this weekend? Working and maybe hanging out with my nephew.

Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby? Only if Greg does it.

What’s irritating you right now? My tooth won’t stop hurting.

Is there anyone you wish was still in your life? Yeah.

Do you get distracted easily? Very unless it’s something I actually want to be immersed in. Life of an Aspie.

Is this year the best year of your life? It actually has been pretty awesome. Maybe not the best but in the top five.

Do you have a best friend? Yes and no. My best friend was Amanda. We were friends since first grade but she died in 2014. I have two people whom I know are always there for me, Jessica and Jamie, but they both live far away. I wish I had a local best friend.

Do you think it’s right for straight guys to get their tongue pierced? Yes. It’s their tongue. Who gives a fuck? Besides, it feels good for me. ;)

Last thing you drank? 7UP.

Have you ever thought about getting your nose pierced? Yes, but I always chicken out.

Would you marry for money? Nope.

Have you had braces? No, but I wish I had.

You sleep more on your back, front,or sides? Sides or stomach.

Do you get along with your parents? My mom and stepdad. I don’t speak to my dad often. I suppose we get along when I do but only because I bite my tongue.

Have you ever had a birthday party? Yeah.

What should you be doing right now? Working.

How do you feel about your life right now? A little stressed about my physical health but good overall.

How’s this week been? Uneventful.

What happened at 11:30 am today? Its only 6AM.

How did you feel when you woke up today? I haven’t gone to bed yet.

Kiss on the first date? If there’s chemistry.

Would you ever donate blood? Yes.

Have you ever driven without a license? Yes.

What time did you go to sleep last night? I napped from 11:45 to 1:50.

Where did you buy the shirt you’re wearing now? Torrid.

Did you sing at all today? I haven’t yet but knowing me, I will.

When’s the last time you cried? I don’t remember.

Do you believe in love? Yes.

This time last year, can you remember who you liked? I was interested in a guy named Justin. It didn’t pan out.

Two days from now this time, where will you be? Sleeping.

Do you think anyone has feelings for you? My boyfriend.

Have you ever thought you were going to marry someone? Yes. I’ve been engaged a couple of times. I’m glad they didn’t work out.

Do you get butterflies around the person you like? Sometimes.

Who was the first person you talked to today? Greg when he woke up to get a drink.

Do you smoke weed everyday? No. I’m slightly allergic and I hate how it makes me feel anyway.

Could you go a month without cursing? Nope.

Have you ever ridden a horse? When I was 8. I fell off.

You can take one friend on vacation with you, who? Who has money for vacations?

You can only drink ONE liquid for the rest of your life, what is it? Water.

Have you ever been nice to someone who treated you like crap? Yes. I try to be nice to everyone.

Are you anything like you were at this point last year? Not particularly. I’ve changed a lot.

Have you lost contact with someone you wish you didn’t? Yes.

When was the last time you felt like your heart was actually breaking? When I found out Amanda died.

Who are your favorite people to talk to when you’re down? Myself. You guys, I guess?

Does the person you like, like you back? Yes. We live together.

When’s the last time you talked with the opposite gender on the phone? Who? A few days ago. Greg.

Do you think you are a good person? Yes.

What did you do today? Watched Supernatural, played Bingo Blitz, looked at Tumblr, wrote for work.

What will you be doing in 3 hours? Working.

Do you miss the way things used to be? Some things, sometimes.

Have you held hands with anyone in the past three months? Yes.

Does anyone call you baby? Yeah.

Are you a patient person? It depends on the situation.

What were you doing this morning at 8AM? It isn’t 8AM yet.

Have you ever thought you liked someone, and then found out that you really didn’t? Often.

Do you believe ex’s can be friends? Yes. I’m friends with a couple of mine.

What is the last thing you said out loud? Holy shit.

Are you ticklish? Yes and I hate it.

Has anyone ever mistaken you for someone else? Often.

Do you like to text or call more? Texting. I hate talking on the phone.

Do you have any kids? No.

What are you wearing right now? A white tee-shirt that says “Ok but first I need sleep” and blue Doctor Who leggings.

How was your day? It’s okay so far.

What color are your eyes? Green.

What are you listening to? Birds chirping.

[cancerousminds]

2, 8, 11, 16, 17, 24, 28, 29, 32, 33, 46, 52, 56, 58, 65 :-), 83, 87, 90, 99, 100

2 - do you like the feeling of the cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day?actually yes, I love it. I think its so refreshing idk.8 - what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?I'm not very artistic 😬 it's primarily writing I guess, and I listen to a lot of music. I used to draw but I've recently fallen out of the habit.11 - what's an inner joke you have with your friends?just all typos. we remember them forever. some of my other favorites include "hmm. that's unfortunate" ((reppin' you, trinity k. bonet)) and "I've never smoked only tobocco." long story. not to mention, "what if there was a monkey." whoo, that's waaayy back.16 - what's your favorite pasta dish?I really freakin love alfredo. god. 17 - what color do you really want to die your hair?I just continuously dye it black, nothing else. I've never done anything drastic and I don't long to, I'm pretty happy with black. I guess I've always wanted to pull off that instagram grey aesthetic. maybe in a different lifetime, I'm too scared to bleach my hair because it's never gone well in the past.24 - is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?nope. not a single person. the closest that comes to mind is this one random loser friend I have, her name is Norma, just because she's the one person in my life who I genuinely believe wouldn't judge me for the all the mistakes I've made and has always been willing to listen. I love her with all my heart ❤️✨28 - sunrise or sunset?sunsets!! they seem overall far prettier, but I think getting up early with a few friends to go hike somewhere and catch the sunrise is one of the coolest things to do ever.29 - what's something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?that loser friend I mentioned earlier has this weird thing about talking about her problems and feelings. like she wants to let them out, she's just scared to sometimes, so she'll rush and pack it all into one huge message and then send another one saying "anyway" and nothing else. she's like purging her thoughts haha and immediately tries to change the subject without discussing it or hearing any kind of consolation or advice, it's adorable THOUGH I WISH SHE WOULD FEEL COMFORTABLE AND CONFIDENT DISCUSSING SUCH MATTERS, it's too much to ask in this lifetime.32 - tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3 am when you were with your friends?"pull the trigger, Billy." that's all you need to know. also, it was in a child's playroom that we weren't allowed to be in, two new years ago, and Billy is not a human. Billy is a wooden snake. my friends are losers.33 - what's your favorite pastry?anything bready and flakey. croissants genuinely make me wet.46 - tell us the worst pun you can think of?that stupid chicken road one. I hate it. I only just figured out like a month ago that it's a suicide joke? WHAT THE FUCK? did any of you guys know that?52 - what are your favorite memes of the year so far?I'm really digging the student athlete memes because all the soccer players at my college fit the stereotype perfectly and that is not an exaggeration, they are their own caricature.56 - what are some of the things you find endearing in people?people who needlessly extend themselves without words. idk how to explain it. when people don't know how to comfort you and instead give you a little pat on the knee or an awkward hug. they just want to help but they're too awkward to know how BUT THEY STILL TRY. it's the sweetest thing.58 - who's the wine mom and who's the vodka aunt in your group of friends and why?my friend Sierra is for sure the wine mom. she goes to bed at like nine and her relationship stresses her out and she doesn't realize how better off she could have it. she's precious and I love her. I don't know any vodka aunts really, I don't have a wacky group of friends. the craziest thing we do is sit alone in my room and smoke weed and talk about chicken nuggets and David Bowie, are you catching my drift ((I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're losers)).65 - is there anyone you haven't seen in a long while that you would love to hang out with?I literally can't think of anyone who I want to see again. nobody at all. JK NORMA YOU CHEEKY CUNT, I miss you with all of my heart and I wishwishwish you could visit in April 😍😭😭 it would make my year; nay, my LIFETIME.83 - are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?yes omg, I'm an obsessive little shit. all my Stephen King books have their own shelf and all my CD's are organized alphabetically by band name, and then album release year. 87 - what are some movies you think people should watch at least once in their lives?Donnie Darko!! and Fight Club... idk I'm not a big movie buff.90 - talk about one of your favorite cities.Seattle is the best fucking city on Earth. not only is it my hometown, but it's so liberal and accepting and the underground art movements have changed history. it's where the riot grrrl movement started, it's the birthplace of grunge music. most all of my favorite bands and artists came out of there: Alice in chains, soundgarden, pearl jam, modest mouse, Jimi Hendrix, etc. plus it has the perfect weather and an amazing, hard-hitting paper ((the Seattle times)) which I adore and would kill to be a part of. ugh. it's just the perfect city.99 - list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them.no excuses and don't follow, both by Alice in chains; lives and perfect disguise, both by modest mouse; run by daughter. that's it I think, idk.100 - if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go five years into the past and one five years into the future, which button would you press and why?oh shit, I hate this type of question. it depends, really. is this, like, going five years ahead/back and living from that point on or just taking a lil peak at what's happening? is it having a quick discussion or giving/receiving advice from your past and/or future self? the last one makes the most sense but FUCK whichever button you pick displaces five years in both directions. I mean, like, say you pick into the future. but then you also consciously picked five years back because on the same timeline, just at a different period in your life, you are having a discussion with yourself from five years past. and vice versa, if you picked five years back then you, the same person and version of yourself, just at a different time, is talking with a you five years forward. it's pointless, the choice is irrelevant. it's just displacing five years. idk, does this make sense? maybe I'm thinking about it too much. never mind lol idc five years past I guess, but just a peak, I don't want to fuck with shit.

[andrewdburton]

Outsourcing my life: Why I pay others to do tasks I could do myself

When people talk about saving money, DIY is one of the first things that comes to mind.

Learn how to fix things around the house!

Change the oil in your Prius!

Make your own cleaning supplies!

Do all of this (and more) and you could save hundreds of dollars a year.

And that’s great. I know lots of folks that enjoy growing a lush garden resulting in delicious produce (that can be canned or frozen) in due season. There are people in my life that find doing laundry calming, and others that will happily take on any domestic project that comes their way. Personally, I enjoy doing the dishes.

While I’m happy spending time on the things that I like, there are certain things that I hate doing — and that I will happily outsource to others.

Am I perfectly capable of cleaning my home and mowing the lawn? Sure. But why should I spend the time doing these things when I can pay someone else to do them? Here are some reasons I spend money to outsource parts of my life.

I Can Make More Money

The number-one reasons I outsource tasks I could do myself is that by doing so, I make more money. Wait, what?

When I talk about spending $200 a month on lawn care or $20 an hour on house cleaning services, many people are surprised to find that I make money by outsourcing these mundane chores.

I’m a freelance writer, so any time I free up can be used to write an article, interview a source, or work on edits. Rather than spending two hours cleaning the house, I can pay someone $40 to do it instead — and make $500. That’s a net gain of $460 each week, or about $1,840 per month.

There have been times that I take my laptop with me to get the oil changed. Jiffy Lube takes care of it for $65 and I can do work amounting to about $200 in the time I’m sitting there. That’s a net gain of $135.

In the past, I’ve used services like Blue Apron and HelloFresh to plan my meals and deliver the ingredients. That saves me the time and hassle of meal planning and grocery shopping, and allowed me to focus on other things. However, with my travel schedule, these types of services haven’t been meeting my needs.

Instead, with Instacart now available in my area, I’ve switched to getting someone else to do the shopping, while I use a service like $5 Meal Plan to plan my meals and provide me with an ingredient list.

No matter how I do it, though, the cost of these services is much less than what I can make doing a little extra work. Whether you want more time to work on a side gig, or take action to grow your business, the investment you make in outsourcing can yield dividends later.

I Have More Time with My Son

I’ll be honest. I don’t spend every minute I save by outsourcing on work or business activities. I also use the time I save on things that matter to me.

In the past, my son and I spent a portion of each Saturday cleaning the house. That’s not a super fun way to make memories with your teenager. Now, instead of spending time on chores, we can go to the museum, take a hike, or ride our bikes. It’s possible to spend the whole afternoon playing board games if we want.

J.D.'s note: I once played Exploding Kittens with Miranda. When she saw that I liked the game, she simply gave me her personal copy. Wow. How cool is that?

Plus, now that my son is doing more with his friends and has the independence of a car, being able to spend time when we can is especially important. We can go out to lunch, and he can still have time to go to the movies with his friends later. Sometimes we work on our small herb garden together in the morning, and he plays video games with his friends in the afternoon.

When my son wants to talk, I don’t have to cut him off because errands are weighing on me. Instead, I can focus on my son, knowing that I’ve outsourced tasks like grocery shopping and cleaning to others.

I Have More Time (and Money) for Self-Care

Freeing up time also means I can make more money while having more time for me.

Let’s use my above example of cleaning the house. If I used all the cleaning time to work, that would get me an extra $1,840 per month. However, I don’t use all that time to work. I probably use about half the time to work. That’s still an extra $920 per month — and an extra four hours.

I can do what I like with those four hours. Maybe I get two manicures in that month. That’s two hours gone, and $100. I don’t have to worry about it, though, because I used half the extra time already to make extra money.

Sometimes all I really want to do is just lay in bed for an extra hour and read. Or go to a movie by myself. Or, instead of work in the evening, binge-watch Netflix. Because I outsource mundane tasks that would otherwise fill my time, I can use half that saved time to make more money, and the rest of the time to do more of what I want, whether it’s baking cookies with my son, going out to lunch with a friend, or spending a Wednesday volunteering with a local service organization.

Outsourcing gives me more freedom and flexibility in my hours and in my spending. In fact, I recently discovered that the time I save (and the money I make) by having someone else handle the grocery shopping is just enough to cover personal training sessions each month. So now outsourcing has freed up the chance for me to improve my health.

Investing Extra Time and Money

I see outsourcing as a way to buy more time. And that makes it valuable. After all, time is a nonrenewable resource. That makes time more valuable than money. Purchasing that time allows me to make more choices and make the most of my time. Rather than spending time mowing the lawn or cleaning the house, I can make more money in a fraction of the time.

Take the lawn care, for example. It takes me about two hours a week to mow the lawn, trim the edges, and manage the weeds. That’s about eight hours a month from May through September, or five months. That’s 40 hours. I pay $200 per month, so $1,000 total. If I work half those hours, I can make about $5,000 extra dollars — and still have 20 hours left over to spread across those five months.

Because I outsource, I have extra time and extra money. I can use the extra time to invest in relationships with my loved ones, and to take extra time for myself. Those things pay dividends in goodwill with people I enjoy being with, as well as mental and physical health dividends for me.

The extra money can be invested as well. I might spend some of it on a trip to the spa, or to buy new camping gear, but a lot of it goes into my investment portfolio. Now that money is earning money, without the need for me to do more work for it. Or, I could take some of the money and invest it into my business, growing it so that it offers better returns down the road.

The benefits outsourcing has brought into my life by allowing me to buy more time — and use it in ways that are more profitable — have increased my quality of life, as well as improved my overall financial health.

Outsourcing in My Business

I’ve also found outsourcing helpful in my business. Over time, I’ve gradually outsourced social media posting, scheduling, podcast editing, tax preparation, and other tasks. Some of these tasks are outsourced to people, while others, like scheduling, are outsourced to free or low-cost software tools.

Just the time I save in posting on social media alone provides me with the ability to earn enough money to pay my social media manager and still have time and money left over for investment in other activities.

When outsourcing business tasks, it makes sense to identify your weaknesses. Rather than trying to turn your weaknesses into strengths, outsource your weaknesses and leverage your strengths into better profitably and improved outcomes.

J.D.'s note: This is precisely what's been going on behind the scenes at Get Rich Slowly for the past six months. My strength is writing. That's what I like to do, and that's what I'm good at. The rest of modern blogging isn't my forté. So, I brought on Tom to take care of marketing and monetization. We're working with other folks to handle social media, etc. I'm focusing on my strengths and outsourcing the rest. Speaking of Tom, he interviewed Miranda about this very topic on his MapleMoney Show podcast.

How to Start Outsourcing

I didn’t start by outsourcing everything all at once. I couldn’t afford it.

Instead, I chose one thing to outsource — one thing I could afford. At first, it was house cleaning every other week, while my son and I continued doing the weekly cleaning in between. However, after a few months of making extra money with the freed-up time, I was able to expand to the weekly house cleaning service.

Review the time you spend on various tasks. What could you be doing instead? Could you use the time more profitably? If so, consider outsourcing the task and using your newly-freed time to make extra money. Pretty soon, you could discover that the extra money allows you to outsource the next time-consuming and mundane task.

However, if there are things you like doing, even if they take up time, there’s nothing wrong with continuing to do them. Do what makes you happy. And outsource the mundane tasks that hold you back from a better quality of life.

The post Outsourcing my life: Why I pay others to do tasks I could do myself appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/outsource-your-life/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[ouraidengray4]

I Can't Stop Pulling Out My Eyelashes (It's a Thing)

A few years ago, I saw a girl named Rosie, who I’ve known since I was five years old. We’d fallen out of touch but met again at a party, where we reminisced about our time co-creating the most popular club in first grade: The Teddy Bear Club. (I’m still not sure exactly what we did in this club—appreciate teddy bears)? Together, laughing, we wondered if our elementary school gym teacher, who must have been 100 when she was teaching us how to square dance and lift a giant parachute, was still running the gym classes.

"Remember," Rosie asked, giggling. "When you pulled out all your eyelashes in second grade and then cried at morning meeting about it?"

I froze. I actually didn’t remember. Chances are, I blocked out that particular meltdown; in the early years of my trichotillomania, which started when I was six, I’d had many of them. I cried to my mom after I realized my eyelids were yet again bald after plucking every last one out by the root during a family viewing of the movie Blank Check. And another when Babs Bunny from Looney Tunes pulled out all her eyelashes from stress, and my cousin, in front of everyone, yelled, "Look, it’s Lucy!" If I’m bored or stressed—anytime my hands find themselves without something to do, really—I pull. And when I was a kid, after I’d pull them, I’d break down soon after.

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I wanted to scream at Rosie. Not because I was mad, but because without knowing it, she’d revealed my biggest secret to a party full of people. I knew what she said would instantly make anyone who heard look at my eyelids. I could feel their eyes start to raise a fraction of an inch from my pupil to what should be my lash line, where they would notice the black streak across my lids isn’t three dimensional, just one: A layer of eyeliner that I’ve cast to play the part of eyelashes, which I draw on every morning. I haven’t left the house without it since I was 13.

Instead, I said, "Yeah, that was weird." Like me pulling out all of my eyelashes wasn’t something I’d been dealing with for the last 20 years of my life, but a weird fluke that happened during a particularly stressful portion of second grade (long division, probably). "Cool tattoo," I said, changing the subject.

Later, I crept away to the bathroom and did what I do five or six times a day: turned on the light that most brightly illuminated the mirror and put my face up to the glass. I stared at my bald eyelids, checking for any new growth. I looked at my eyes in profile and tried to imagine if the 10 or 11 eyelashes I did have, the ones that had been spared an untimely death (for now), were enough to convince people I had a full set. Maybe people with very blurry vision would be fooled, but it was pretty obvious, overall.

...Once my brain decides my eyelashes need to be removed, [my hands] work without my input, like a very determined gardener weeding a vegetable patch.

Some nights, I stay up until morning because I can’t fall asleep until I pull the perfect eyelash. There are differences in the way an eyelash feels: Some are deeply rooted and pull out with a thick, wet tip. These are good ones. Some, the ones I’ve pulled out over and over, have flimsy, black tips. These are disappointing to pull.

On nights like this, I get up to wash my face over and over again, trying to straighten out the lashes I’ve curled into corkscrews with my fingernails, the way ribbon on a present curls with scissors. I try to tell my hands to stop, but when it comes to my eyelashes, my hands only half belong to me. For most tasks, I’m in full control of them, but once my brain decides my eyelashes need to be removed, they work without my input, like a very determined gardener weeding a vegetable patch. My arm gets sore, but I can’t stop.

My eyes are always full of cat hair, dust, and sand. A giant scar runs down one of my corneas from a scratch I got from one of these foreign bodies my eyes could not defend themselves against without a barricade of eyelashes. I see it all the time.

I get out of bed and read online forums for people like me: trichotillomaniacs. I don’t talk about it with anyone. It’s not really something you chat with your friends about over brunch. "Is anyone else getting another mimosa? Hey, by the way, I can’t stop ripping my own eyelashes out of my head. Can someone pass the hot sauce?"

For a while, I wore fake eyelashes, which seems like an obvious solution. But fake eyelashes are made for people who have real eyelashes—they often flop over your eyes like Snuffleupagus’s when you have nothing to support them (last summer, at a wedding, a friend had to pull me aside to tell me my eyelashes were dangling off my face).

And when you do find falsies that stay up straight, they are almost never made to look natural: They either have gaps between the lashes where your real lashes are meant to fill in, or they look so gaudy and huge that wearing them on a daily basis makes everyone wonder if you just returned from dancing at some sort of daytime nightclub.

I turned 30 this year, which marks almost 25 years in my quest to remove every single eyelash from my head. Doctors have told me that eventually, they won’t grow back. A few months ago, for the first time, I noticed they were finally right—the tiny buds that usually showed up a few weeks after pulling were making less regular appearances. I secretly snuck onto Sephora.com and bought a $75 eyelash serum, which I told my husband only cost $50. Because while he is the only person I can talk about my trich with, I knew he wouldn’t understand that I’d literally be willing to pay any price to have real eyelashes: $75, $100, $1,000, seven years of hard labor abroad a questionably sound sea vessel, literally anything.

I wonder sometimes why I had to have a compulsion like trichotillomania instead of a weird birthmark shaped like Yoda, or strangely small ears, or anything less embarrassing them my own lack of control plastered on my face, right in the eyeline of everyone I have ever met. It seems a bit harsh.

But then again, it doesn’t cause me any real harm besides how I look, and occasional minor eye damage. I’m healthy, despite this minorly broken part of my brain. Even as far as trichotillomaniacs go, it could be worse. Some people pull out all the hair on their heads, and I’ve never touched my head hair. Doctors have told me that it’s only cosmetic.

The way you know if a cartoon character is a male or a female is this: Look for the eyelashes. Minnie Mouse is just Mickey with three curved lines drawn above her eyes. Lola Bunny sports a flutter of eyelashes, while Bugs only rocks his expressive eyebrows. Daisy Duck would just be Donald in a dress—if it wasn’t for her long eyelashes. Maybe it’s only cosmetic, but it’s hard not to feel like eyelashes are what make the girl.

I hope that one day I can stop, that I will grow a whole set of eyelashes and not have to wear a protective layer of eyeliner like armor. I’ve tried therapy a few times, and while I know other people have had good results, for me it never seems to help. The only times I’ve been able to grow my eyelashes back were when I’ve pushed myself hard for a specific reason: I grew them back once when I was long distance from my boyfriend to surprise him. I grew most of them back for my wedding.

But eventually it takes too much mental energy to hold my hands at my sides, and I give in again. All the milestones I set for myself have come and gone without permanent change. I used to tell myself, "By the time I graduate college, I’ll stop." "By the time I’m 25." "By the time I have a real job."

At some point, maybe I should change the goal: Try to leave the house bare-lidded, embrace being Donald in a dress instead. But for now, I keep the shame nearly secret and blame myself for what my hands can’t stop doing.

Maybe when I’m 35.

Lucy Huber is a writer, multiple cat owner, and sufferer of Reverse Dawson's Creek Actor Syndrome, which is a disease she made up for when you are 30 but look 15. To see her other work or ask more specific questions about her cats visit lucyhuber.com. from Greatist RSS http://ift.tt/2DlK1VO I Can't Stop Pulling Out My Eyelashes (It's a Thing) Greatist RSS from HEALTH BUZZ http://ift.tt/2p47tno

[drginarprince]

PART TWO of Side Chick Fever ~ The Bible says Those without sin cast the first stone (John 8:7). Jesus was speaking to the men who were accusing the young lady of being a whore. Even though it is stated in the Bible as truth……. I often wonder how many of those men accusers participated in the whorish activities with her. I think about the lady at the well Jesus had conversation with. He knew how many men she had been with and even stated that the man she was with at that time was not her husband (John Chapter 4) Was she one of those women who had a man according to need? I need help with my bills! I need help with my kids! I need help with food! Or I just need help! In comparison to today’s world I wonder???? The puzzling thing to me, is we are to assume the position of holiness even if it challenges our flesh. We are expected by God to fight our flesh! Even if we fall….. we are expected by God, to get back up and fight! And Protect our souls by any means necessary!! When I got caught up in something as a Minister of The Gospel…… when I found myself too weak to end a situation….I would sabotage that situation, until the other person starts thinking I was crazy and then they would walked away. Lol I’m gonna save myself by any means necessary! Whatever it takes to get out!! I would Pray! Fast! And show a little Koo Koo….. and it would work every time. Lol….. I’ve grown a lot stronger against those temptations but the devil is always busy. It’s a daily fight for us all. Especially for us in Ministry and Believers overall. Lust! Perversion!! Pornography! Is sweeping the internet! It is the number one seducers overall!! You can get all you want on your cell phone! Watch and play secretly in the same room with you spouse! Kids! Even at Work! It’s so easy to get to! It’s pretty much thrown at your face every time you go on the internet. Prostitution: a woman that sales her body for money! bills! college!! property! Etc. You can call it an exchange or whatever you want…..but it’s still Prostitution! This has been going on for centuries! But for some reason women are giving there body parts now for weed! A good time! Attention!! Or just to say they were with someone famous. Or even worst….. JUST FOR FUN!! It doesn’t matter if the dude is living with someone or if he’s married! Now if that isn’t bad enough…… men don’t care either… they don’t care if they are married and you married too! They don’t care if you are dating other men. As long as you are with someone, you won’t need much from them or expect anything. Not all men but……… it’s a lot! It’s some loyal! faithful! Lovin them some God, Holy Spirit and Jesus, men out here! Who are devoted to covenant. Females are willing to be faithful now a days to men who are married just for a DM! TEXT!! Or a IINBOX! I’m sorry but if I was still in the world! In them streets!!!!!!!!….. You not getting nothing from me for free! Now I’m serving the Lord…. I had to adjust to my new mind! Be DELIVERED into My new life! My mind had to be transformed! My heart had to be renewed! And I had to make a decision to REMAIN!! I have to Fight everything to REMAIN!! All while some men are willing to get a piece being married and all….. the misconception is that women Believers are sooooooo THIRSTY we would be willing to be in an unconventional relationship for FREEEEEEEE!! Jesus told the lady at the well she would thirst no more after experiencing Him (John 4:). So if we are struggling in thirst……. we have not had enough of a taste of JESUS!!! And we NEED MORE OF HIM!! And I’m sorry……but the way we have diluted our worth….. it is enough to help me keep my legs closed!!!! I just can’t give no man alllll of that! The value of self has gone down even more than times past and this is why God is dealing with this subject RIGHT NOW! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!! A STANDARD has been raise! Now is the time for a major change! Before He had me write this blog series……. it started with me! I had to do some self inventory!! Check my desires! my wants! my motives! My flesh!! So at this time God had me bring this to light because it’s time to wake up CHURCH!! It’s time to come out of the daze of perversion! It’s destroying our relationship with God and with one another! It’s blocking our opportunity to live in God’s FULLNESS! If you are in any of these examples…….. GET OUT!! Believe me…. the temptation is reall! Folks get lonely! Folks get overwhelmed! Folks feel unappreciated!! Folks have general curses and don’t know why they do what they do! But I’m telling you GOD IS A DELIVERER!! He’s got this! He’s got you! Now again…… Those without sin, cast the first stone!! Lovin you, Dr. Gina❤️

#BornIntoSinTransformedIntoDestiny #Author #Blog #Writer #Transition #Transformation #Healing #Wholeness #Results #Protein #Excel #Television #Radio #Chat #LetsTalk #Talk #Listening #Certified #MotivationalSpeaker #Minister #MotivationalCoach #HeathLiving #HealthNSoul #HealthCoach #DrGinasRadioChat #DrGinaRPrince #DrGinaPrince.com thekeysagainsttheenemy

[jprologic]

I have no affiliate links in my posts…yet.  When I do, you’ll be the first to know. Or rather, the second.

Here recently I’ve had some major epiphanies when it comes to what my purpose in life is.  As such, life is about to become very full…I mean fuller, and this forced me to evaluate my current life systems.  I considered both of what I am being called to do, as well as things that I would like to build upon habit wise.  Since we are all given 24 hours in a day, and some of us accomplish a ton, and some of us don’t, I had to look at my current productivity systems if I wanted to remain in the former category.  I knew that no matter how much I chose to take on, I would still want time for rest, connection with my family and creativity.  I’ve learned over the past 15 years that you can do and accomplish a lot of things while still having a ton of time left for unwinding.  The only way to do it however is to keep things simple and not to waste time.

Much like your computer needs updating, so does one’s daily life habits.  Each upgrade should produce pleasure and make life even more fun to live.  I genuinely love the gym so when I went to upgrade my workout habits, I re-joined my preferred gym, but chose a location closer to my horses since that’s where I am in the morning.  Now I enjoy my coffee while feeding and grooming my horses, and then head to the gym down the road to get a good routine in and can get home after work instead of getting a workout in.  Now, if I hated gyms then maybe I would have added trail running or yoga instead.  The point is, if you don’t like doing something, or if being around a certain person is close to painful, then stop spending that time in that way.  We must be prudent, and good stewards of the time that we do have in a day.  More pleasure and less bitching can solve a lot of problems.

I have found while living in simplicity that many opportunities present themselves, or I can actively pursuit them.  This is because without clutter, chaos, distraction, and toxic relationships I’ve made the room in my life for me to “see” them.  Without these things, I couldn’t handle the 9 very different irons that I currently have in the fire.  Irons that I love by the way.  Irons that made the somewhat painful weeding out process well worth it in the end.  By the way, the process of weeding out can be it’s own journey.  In fact, it can even be brutal and you’ll have to be courageous enough to allow that process in order to get as healthy as possible.  It was something that I struggled with, and I took a decent amount of heat from people who are not only hard to be around, but have zero intentions of ever changing themselves and would rather bring you down for doing so.  If that is the part of your life’s journey that you are in, then honor that.  It has many gifts to share with you.  If you would like some emotional support for while you’re going through it, then I invite you to see how I and another talented writer went through these processes, and continue to as it’s a life long thing.  It just gets easier the more that you accept it as part of life.  I promise.  Check it out: liveyourpositivelife.com

Here I’ve taken my very short list of powerful personal actions for living a simple life  and show how I personally implement them.   As basic as these actions are, they are called “personal” for a reason.  They are subjective and it’s up to you to make them your own.

Alas, things do not always go according to plan or the way that you want them to in life, but what is great about these powerful actions in particular is that once you build upon them for yourself, they are there for you to fall back upon while you re-position yourself. This keeps you fresh and organized for when you’re ready to try again at seizing opportunities. No worries if things go awry, when you’re living a simple life with any sort of dedication and intention, it’s not IF the opportunity comes, or IF things fall into place as they are meant to…it’s WHEN.  Therefore, keep yourself prepared for the life of your dreams:

    Feel Feelings

  Dun Dun Daaaahhhhh.  Yeah, I said it.  Listen, the pain and suffering actually comes from avoiding it.  If you sit with feelings you often can come to the root cause of them and work to release whatever it is that you are feeling.  Please remember that feelings are not facts.  They are just passing through our experience and the only thing that can give them power is our action and reaction to them.

As I have written about in the past at liveyourpositivelife, there was some in-law nonsense/trauma that I suffered through a few years back.  Here recently though, some residual sadness and anger bubbled up and I almost chose to ignore it.  Since I know better, I did all that I could to clear it by feeling it.  I also went and spent about 5 hours talking to my parents about it and other family things, which is something that I never really did before with regard to this topic.  Then with the combination of just allowing the feelings, coupled with the venting it out into the open, the feelings were gone.  Just like when you turn on a light switch and it’s no longer dark, it was over.  With the ickies out of the way, and back to feeling good, better decisions and clearer thinking can be had.

    Acknowledge Fault

  This is character building and it takes some practice, but once you are able to assume responsibility for actions, life actually gets easier.  Have you ever tried telling a lie, and then had to tell another and then one more after that to cover for the first? Not only did it not work out in the end, the entire process was exhausting and probably got a lot of people angry and it ruined their trust in you.  Learn to mean this: “I am sorry. It will never happen again. These are the actions I’ve taken to correct the action…”

I got the chance to practice this when I lost one of my client’s monthly boarding checks.  This is a check that covers the boarding fee for two horses and are funds that I draw from to pay the landlord, as well as their grain and supplies.  Of course it happened on a beautiful Sunday after I had a wonderful early ride and lovingly groomed all of the horses leaving my world to feel perfect and complete.   When I realized that my check pouch was missing out of my purse I was so upset at myself.  I was able to immediately pin point why it had happened, all because I had fallen out of organization that week because I had not realized until that moment that my systems were out of date to the changes I had recently undergone.  I had to email her, apologize, ask her to reissue the check, and deduct and then cover her cancelled check fee.  In the end it was more than ok, and it will never happen again.  But blaming, coming up with a story, covering your tracks, it’s all needless and it will cost you much more overall than accepting responsibility ever could.

    Create REALLY Healthy Habits S-L-O-W-L-Y

  For me personally it all began about 10 years ago and it was a domino effect.  Once I started working out, I didn’t want to eat bad food.  Once I stopped drinking and hanging around party-all-night kind of people, I only wanted enriching experiences with close friends.  Once I started meditating, I only wanted more quiet to connect to my creativity.  Paying attention to my new found desire to live my life with intention had me actually living that way with only small changes a little at a time.

Wanting to build a gym routine can begin with a few walks around the neighborhood.  Eating better can start with cutting take out one day per week.  It’s the intention that matters the most and by asking yourself the below questions you just may find where to begin. Once you find a start place, start small.  Want to meditate? Read about it, watch something on YouTube, or download an app, and aim for 2x in a week for 5 min each.  From there gradually bump the time and frequency up.  While in the process of creating healthy habits, think about these questions:

With What Do You Fill Your Head/Heart/Sub-conscious?

Since I’ve cut cable, you can find me on YouTube or Netflix under documentaries.  I recently loaded Stitcher on to my phone so that I can listen to some awesome podcasts; both while I’m in the gym, and even while I’m riding my horse! It’s free and it’s awesome.  Below is a few snapshots of my playlists.  Please believe that Gary Vaynerchuk is on there!

When it comes to reading, I only read self improvement, spirituality, financial and business books.  I have so little time that every moment that I do have I maximize with putting the most beneficial things into my thinking systems.  You can find my essentials for your bookcase or reading device right here.

2. With What Do You Fill Your Vessel?

This is one that I’m constantly working on.  I mean constantly.  I have plenty of posts on here about meal planning and perfect grocery shopping but what I do 97% of the time is just make the best choice that I can in the moment.  I go out of my way to remove all of the chemical laden sugar stuff from my existence by not buying it at all.  Of course this leaves me with only whole foods that then must be prepared.  On the nights that I run behind and don’t prepare my lunch for the next day, there have been times that I resorted to the fried chicken wings from the bodega down the street from work.  Know what? I’m still alive. I didn’t get upset about my “poor choice”, I just resolved to do better next time.

When it comes to my mornings, I be sure to start off the way that I intend to go with the best of the best.  Coffee: I make it as healthy as possible.  It’s organic and I use unsweetened almond or coconut milk and then put in cinnamon for the added health benefit.  I’ve nixed sugar and flavored creamers all together.  Water: It’s the first thing that I drink in the morning, and I have it at room temperature so not to shock my system.  To grow this habit, I will be adding organic lemons to it.  Smoothie: I practice intermittent fasting and therefore only eat from 11 am to 7pm.  But I do need nutrients so I mix up spinach, banana, almond butter, flax seed and coco powder with almond milk.  If nothing else, then at least I have this great start to the day.

Most dis-ease can be avoided in the first place with better diet and lifestyle practices.   Care enough about yourself to really do the homework about what you ingest.  Understand how it moves through the system and that everything we swallow ends up as part of our anatomy.

3. With What Do You Do With Your Vessel? 

Are you working out? Walking? Praying? Playing? Do you have quiet time? Are you reading things and viewing shows that add benefit to your life by making you think or inspiring you to do and be more? Do you plan trips to rest and recharge? Are you connecting in kinship with a supportive community?

I recently became very active in helping to start up my neighborhood’s civic association.  The people that I’ve met and talk to weekly are amazing.  We are all so very diverse and yet all of us have learned from and enjoy one another.  I love walking around my city blocks meeting people and spreading the word.  I’m forming community at home and that’s very important to be successful in life.  Reach out, get involved. Start something, join something.  Pay close attention to what thrills you and move towards that.  That’s why we’re actually here on this planet.  It’s not just to pay bills and then die.

4.  Do You Have Morning & Evening Routines?

Crucial.   SO crucial.  Things can get away from us in the middle of the day.  There’s so much that isn’t within our control; traffic, late starts and early dismissals from school, getting sick, other people’s tardiness.  Yet the start and the end of our days are totally up to us and well within our control.

I used to sprint out the door about 20 minutes before I was supposed to be somewhere.  I was tired, not prepared, and constantly chasing my tail through out the day.  Now a days, I’m up at 4:30 am, done feeding and grooming my horses by 6:45 and at the gym by 7.  I’m showered and heading to work by 8:15.  I have everything with me, I know what I’m doing that day and where I have to be by what time.  There is such a sharp contrast to how things are now as compared to how they used to be, that I can never go back.  Once you taste the sweet freedom of the simplicity of granting yourself proper time in the morning, you won’t go back either.

My night time routine really exists to support my morning routine; prepare gym bag, do I need my riding clothes for after work? Is there lunch in the fridge for tomorrow?  This is still a work in progress for me as I want to add nice things like stretching and also more things like more cuddles with Dylan and connection with Michael.  To begin, Dylan and I started a new routine of going down to the river on certain weeknights.  We look at the ducks, we sit on our rock and watch the sunset, and we just BE in the nature.  I’m a firm believer that it take baby steps and I know that I will add even more great family connections because it’s small changes in a habit over a long period of time that makes them successful.  (See what I just did there?)

  Take Care Of The Small Things

  Mow the yard if it needs it.  Always wash, dry and put away the dishes at the end of the night.  Make your bed every single day.  These things reflect maturity, self-love and they build discipline.  To lead the life of your dreams, you need to have your shit together and you can’t tackle the big things without taking care of the little things.   Will you fall off from time to time? Yes.  But then you take a few hours, or a day, and restore the balance in anyway that feels right to you. You’ll feel better and can move forward.

Of course there are some little pesky things that have to be done but we want to put them off.  In those instances, I find it best to just do them as little as necessary.  Don’t like paying bills? Make it a point to only have to do it once per month by making a budget and paying bills in advanced, or put them on auto pay.  Hate the doctor/dentist? Make all appointments in the same week and just get it done.  One thing that I’ve noticed by making sure all of the necessities are taken care of, I’m able to relax much more.  The peace that you feel is palpable.  Everyone deserves to feel that way.

  In conclusion,

Simple living is simple…if you allow it to be.  These actions one by one can build something magnificent. I’m living proof as the more that I practice these actions, the better things get.  The key to it all is to allow.  Allow yourself to have a lazy day without punishment. Allow yourself to adjust life practices so that they suit better.  Most importantly, allow yourself to let go of the need to control or your need to keep doing things that are no longer working.

  Jenna

      I’m a blogger who is addicted to simplicity.  My next goal is furthering my  minimalistic habits by getting rid of 10 things per week.  You will be hard pressed to find clutter in my home, yet I’m always able to find at least 10 things to pass on.  I’m curious with just how little I may actually need to live life well.  This blog documents my life journey thus far with simplifying all aspects of my life.  As a former habitual shopper who was constantly in a rush to partake in nonsense, I hope to show others that simplicity is where it’s at.

And no, the picture isn’t recent; it’s 5 years old actually, but I had done my hair myself.

            Powerful Personal Actions That Lead To The Simple Life Of Your Dreams I have no affiliate links in my posts...yet.  When I do, you'll be the first to know.

[mimosajones-blog]

Storytime: The Cheat Part 1

To all of my regular readers, this blog will be a tad different than most of my blog posts because I feel that this is a subject that should not be joked about in any way. The topic of cheating is very near and dear to my heart for several reasons:

Because I have never understood why people cheat

I have been cheated on by a guy that I was with for 5+ years

I’ve witnessed cheating completely destroy someone and it almost destroyed me

So, I guess I will begin by telling my own story...

My freshman year of high school, I met a guy named Dallas (for purposes of discretion, all names used in this blog or any of my blogs will be changed to protect the identity of myself as well as others) & I immediately fell in love. We talked (& when I say talked, I literally mean we talked to each other on the phone and when we saw each other) for a couple of months and really got to know each other to the point that we were actual friends. He was handsome, smart, althletic, and overall a loving guy. He was an older guy, but I was a bad-ass queen (still am, HELLO!) so that didn’t hinder me in the least bit. After a few months, he finally asked me to be his girlfriend (cause back then you became the girlfriend before yall were even dating forreal, which is bass ackwards, but we were kids so there’s that) & of course, I said yes. We continued to get to know each other on a deeper level (no sex included. we waited three years to have sex) and we really became best friends over the years we were together. We told each other everything, did everything together when we could (he ended up graduating and going to college in another state after my freshman year), & we just enjoyed each other’s company. Although he decided to go to an out-of-state college, we decided to stay together and work through our long distance relationship. This lasted for 5+ years. Of course some friends, as well as, my mother told me he was cheating on me every chance they got, but I knew that relationships didn’t last without trust & I was young and naive so I chose to ignore it and push through because I trusted him and knew that my best friend would never do that to me. Little did I know, I was very wrong.

Fast forward to several years later. 

I’m in college by this time and we are still together. Things have been rocky over the years, but because of our love for one another, we fought through it and came out on top and together every time. A storm was brewing though, and I had a bad feeling about it. We hit our 6th year, and life began to crumble around me. I was really going through hard times financially, emotionally, and mentally. Although I continued to keep a smile on my face, I was cracking on the inside and the one thing that could officially break me did exactly that during that same year.

 I was getting to a point where felt as though I didn’t know who I was anymore, and I definitely didn’t know who I was without him, so we talked and decided that we would take a break. We had an agreement that we wouldn’t be so attached at the hip and let each other breathe for a second, but we would not have sex with other people and we’d still talk as often as we wanted. We were still having sex and hanging out when we were together, however, we were not obligated to be down each other’s throats all day like regular couples often are. In this agreement, we also did not mind the other person hanging out with people of the opposite sex, but as I said, no sex & if you felt you wanted to have sex or move on, you simply had to tell the other person (this was similar to the agreement we had during our relationship: you can hang with your friends and go out cause you’re in college and who doesn’t do that but if you feel like you’re going to cheat on me, let me know beforehand so we can figure out where we’re going from there). So I had people that I hung with and so did he, but we were very open and honest about who they were and what our feelings were towards them (or well, I was).

 At the time, he had started hanging out with this female who we will call Ebony. After a while, I realized he was spending a lot of time with this girl and I confronted him about it. He proceeded to tell me that he felt nothing for her and she was nothing to worry about (as they always do). Months go by, Ebony is still around, but me and him are working on our relationship again. We aren’t back together but we’re working towards it. With that being said, I go to visit him during the summer. I had been to visit him once before (he usually came home to see me and my mom was strict on me until I went to college so I never really got to go see him), but this time was nothing like the last. He seemed so distant and every moment with him was awkward. At the time, I was experiencing the worst summer of my life, and I just wanted to run to him like I always did because he always knew how to make me forget my problems, but this time, I didn’t feel like he really cared anymore. I felt like an outsider and even more alone than I did before I got there, but I convinced myself that I was just trippin and continued on with our week together. 

Because of how I was feeling and how he was treating me, all I really wanted to do during the entire trip was get fucked up...so I did. I’m not gonna say I was shitfaced the whole time, but I smoked a lot of weed and drank before noon several days out of that week. I was still coherent, but I at least had a buzz and that made me feel better. When I tell yall this week was SO bad, I mean it. It was bad to the point that we had sex once (which was way out of the norm for us. we could say we weren’t gonna have sex one day and end up making love 5 minutes later just to fuck right after. That’s how much we enjoyed each other.) and it was the worst sex we had ever had. I had done everything I could to make the moment special for us. I had made a playlist of some of our favorite songs & even dressed up like a school girl (I think we had been talking about it before or something. Can’t remember). 

He came back from walking his friend home, and when I opened the door he simply looked at me and said “ready to go to bed”? My face fell, and in that moment, I felt so stupid and unattractive. I guess he realized it cause he tried to play it off and act like he was playing, but I knew he wasn’t. That was the first and last time I faked enjoying sex. I cried myself to sleep that night right next to him. He blamed it on his friend who he had walked home, saying she had been talking about babies on the way to her dorm, but I later found out that wasn’t it at all. There was no connection. No love. No us. So after that week, I knew things were heading in a downward spiral, but I kept trying because I loved him and I wanted to be with him. Unfortunately, trying to be with someone who has mentally, emotionally, and physically checked out on you is redundant & it backfired on me in a major way...

Because this story has so much detail, I am going to do it in parts. I’ll be able to finish the story in 3 parts (maybe 2) and get my point across in the 4th part, so I hope yall hang in there with me. The next part will be posted tomorrow instead of Friday because I have to work & then the next post on Saturday. If you have a friend going through this or who has gone through this, I urge you to share it. People need to know that being cheated on and having your heart broken is not a fault of your own. It doesn’t mean you’re stupid or clueless. It means that you love & sometimes, people don’t know how to truly love back.

Unapologetically,

Jones