#work life balance book

[soup-du-silence]

"In Jamil's dream, Kalim won't exist. "In Jamil's dream, HE'LL be housewarden and Kalim will be his servant." Actually I think he's too codependent for all that, maybe he just wants a break and a fruity drink and then he'll be right back on his grind. That's my theory, anyway.

[biblioartsbyemma]

I haven’t mailed this card yet because I don’t know anyone who needs this message more than I myself do. If these books were real books, I would totally read these books.

[markantonys]

i'm thinking about nynaeve's line to egwene in the testing vision about how egwene will be a better "servant of all" than nynaeve ever could be. i love that moment so much! because it plays into one of my very favorite Themes from the books: the difference between heroes who focus on the greater good, sometimes at the expense of individuals (egwene, rand, moiraine, elayne) and heroes who focus on individuals, sometimes at the expense of the greater good (nynaeve, perrin, mat). and neither is inherently better or worse than the other, it's just two different ways of looking at the world! for each character, we see moments where their outlook is a strength as well as moments where it's a weakness/flaw.

i saw someone say that nynaeve undersells herself in that line because throughout the show we've seen HER be a servant of all. and that's very true............IF we define "all" as "the two rivers." nynaeve would die & kill for Her People, and for any other individuals she comes across who need her help, but she doesn't care so much about broader causes or ideals. her arc is really unique because it's an inverse leadership arc, i.e. she starts off in a leadership position but then as the story progresses, she realizes that she is not suited to leadership on the huge scale that's needed for the last battle and steps aside to let people like egwene and rand, who ARE suited to it, take up that leadership.

(if you will allow me a bit of #gawynposting, gawyn actually has a very similar arc in this respect: he starts off expecting to become first prince of the sword, but then when he gets his first real taste of large-scale leadership as the leader of the younglings, he's miserable. he doesn't care about the younglings' cause, he just wants to protect his specific loved ones, elayne & egwene, because at heart he is an Individuals Guy, not a Big Picture Guy. and so in the end he rejects his role as first prince and dedicates himself to protecting one specific person, egwene, as her warder. but the tragedy of his character is that even after all this he still can't shake the My Duty Is To The Big Picture conditioning that's been drilled into him since childhood, and thus focusing exclusively on protecting one single person during the last battle makes him feel selfish & guilty about "wasting" his fighting abilities and he decides it's his duty to sacrifice himself for the greater good. sob!)

anyway, i love this line because it's not true and also it's true. nynaeve IS a selfless servant of all, but egwene will be a better servant of all-all than nynaeve could be. because egwene is more able to set aside her personal feelings to focus objectively on what's best for the greatest number of people, whereas nynaeve just can't stomach the ruthless calculus of war (which, again, is not a knock on either character, they're simply different kinds of people and BOTH kinds are needed to win the last battle). and that's why it could only ever be egwene who got the amyrlin arc, even though you might initially expect it to go to nynaeve due to the setup of her being the most powerful aes sedai of the age.

[gymncpdie]

03.17.24. Finding balance is proving to be more difficult than ever. Some days I wonder if what I need is to establish more work-life balance, or if I'm actually burned out and just need to somehow recover from it. Thinking about how many more times I can hear "wasted potential" before I start believing it. It's funny because I know it's only a 2-minute passing thought to people, but I sit with it for weeks and months on end.

By the way, I'm hosting a podcast! It's a project that my team and I have been working really hard on, so I'm pretty proud and wanted to share it here too, in case anyone's interested. A new episode's coming out this week, would be really cool to hear your thoughts if you decide to give it a listen :) also super grateful to those who helped me find royalty free music!!

podcast

[genericpuff]

I’m pretty sure you mentioned your day job is being a tattoo artist, which I think is so cool! Do you have any favorite tattoos you’ve done?

Ahh I have so many favorites! I'm actually working on compiling them for new books that we're printing for the shop (which is so wild omg), here are some of them!

(hit the jump to see them! CW: traces of blood can be seen in some of the following photos!!! nothing super crazy because they're just tattoos but it can still be seen in some spots esp with the colored pieces ~)

I love my job (´ ∀ ` *)

[kentosbutterfly]

I need the nanami writers to write this man but in a Brigerton AU please and ty

[theoptimist5556]

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Well, I had hoped to spend the past couple of days pushing The Everyday Naturalist manuscript to at least 50,000 words, but that ended up not being the case thanks to an early morning visit to urgent care (I'm fine) and preparing for the incoming winter storm, both of which ate up significant amounts of time and sleep. So I'm sticking a pin in the manuscript til Monday at 43,883 words, after starting this week at 30,101. On the bright side, the toughest part of the "How to Identify Plants" chapter is done, and my goal is to get it done sometime next week.

Sometimes I am far too much of a perfectionist for my own good. It's been a long struggle to give myself some grace and breathing room, something that is especially difficult with a high-pressure, big-stakes project like writing a whole book. Not every day is going to be a 6000+ word day; yesterday was barely a 600 word day, and today not much better. I am still well on track to get this manuscript done in plenty of time, and in spite of health issues and other upsets I've been chugging along really well over my winter break.

And that has to be okay, because even as much as I absolutely love what I do for a living, work is not life. Remember that.

[roses-and-elixir]

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[turnthepagevn]

(sorry for mistakes) Could MC (hypothetically) get a job working at Robin's library? If so, what is it like to work there?

At some point, Josh's younger sister, Jules, ends up working there! (The reason behind it is spoilers tho) Depending on the choices the player makes, the MC can end up working at the library as well.

Robin, despite being a down atrocious yandere, is surprisingly professional when it comes to anyone he employs! He makes sure to provide more than adequate compensation for the work they do, as well as making sure they have solid benefits, and gives crazy good yearly bonuses and raises. He's also very generous with paid time-off, and encourages those who work for him to make sure their mental health and physical well-being come before their job at the library. He's also very patient, especially while training them.

He's very much of the mindset that life happens, so he isn't particularly bothered if someone needs to take leave for some reason. When it comes to the MC specifically working for him, he generally refrains from flirting with them while they're on the clock, though he does still treat them more affectionately than he would anyone else.

He also helps with getting scholarships for his employee's education. Robin places a lot of importance on schooling, and is always happy to encourage his employees and help them study if need be. He thinks it would be weird if they couldn't do schoolwork at a library of all places. He genuinely likes making people happy and helping them achieve their life goals.

I'd say the worst he's ever been to an employee is snapping at Rigel for slacking off, but he only does that because Rigel is his brother. Rigel also does not care when he does this, and will continue to slack off. He does a good job when he isn't being a brat though.

[dontsearchformyaccount]

Your sign to design your own journal! Will be posting journal ideas soon...

[livvyofthelake]

the thing about being into movies is that it's like. really hard to be into movies AND books AND tv AND have a job. like i fear women actually cannot have it all....

[oliviam112]

knowing that i’m not going to be stuck at my job place ,, is amazing. i finally did get that promotion.

[phagodyke]

ah shit only just realised its september now.... lets hope the rest of this month isn't like this.....

[rosesutherlandwrites]

I have bold (but entirely achievable) ambitions of finally finishing revisions on the chapters that I've been stuck on this morning and then going for a really long fall walk in the ravine, and maybe skipping some rocks in the river while I'm there.

[nellasbookplanet]

While I enjoy romantic imodna and would celebrate with the rest of you were they to become canon, my preference leans toward platonic, largely because we so rarely get to see relationships this deeply intense and all-encompassing as platonic. A character's significant other, their life partner, their Person, is almost always also their romantic partner.

But you know what’s even rarer? Romantic and platonic being portrayed side by side, co-existing and equally important, because you can love and share your life with more than one person. Most of the time, the characters have to choose. Vex and Vax split to live with their romantic partners long before Vax's untimely end. Caleb and Veth separate to different cities. The narrative forces Yasha and Molly apart.

Imogen and Laudna are each other’s People. But they have also talked about attraction toward other's in the past (and more recently, Laudna's crush on Ira). What would it look like if one or both of them got romantically involved with someone else, but without letting it change their connection? Could we see something almost like a polyamorous relationship, with one romantic life partner and one platonic, where they are never made to choose one over the other?

So many stories and fan-metas uplift the romantic as superior. The few that don’t instead uplift the platonic. But they don’t need to be pitted against each other. You can have more than one important person in your life. I'd love to see that portrayed.