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tuesdayx · 4 years ago

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So I thought it would be fun to do a song-by-song breakdown of our latest album Essential.

Essential started as some rough demos designated for a side project in late 2019, which then became our largest album to date in terms of song selection. Many of the themes deal with learning to cope with the changing world thanks to Covid, with a perspective of someone who had to keep working at an "essential" job with no option of self-quarantine. I was happy to continue working and being able to pay my bills over the past year, but there was always elements of stress, fear, and tension lingering over myself and everyone else in my position.

So here we go; starting from the top let's look at the Songs of Tuesday X's 6th album Essential.

1. Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams: the title was a reference to the 9/11 conspiracy memes, which as stated in the opening lines, "has nothing to do with this song." Written in January of 2020 before Covid had made any significant impact in the US, the song touches on many themes which happened to occur throughout the year, such as [another] Californian forest fire (Australia too), new diseases (Covid), a riot (the BLM movement over the summer, which I will state everything that movement has been fighting for is 100% justified and the United States is in desperate need of Police reform, as does our political system which has remained inherently racist to this day.), Civil War (and exaggeration for sure, but the civil unrest and political division in our country will soon split us apart further), more corporate giants(companies like Amazon profited more from this Pandemic than ever before and have helped further the gap between the American working class and the top 1%). Favorite line: "I won't get philosophical, I only wanted your attention."

2. The Only Difference Between You and Me is a Sense of Apathy and Your Brand New Nikes: This song is a blithing criticism of the American political system. Our two party system has left Americans with a choice between "the lesser of two evils" and allows politicians with no true interest in our needs to rise to power. The use of 3rd parties as an alternative is a overly simple compromise that would only just begin to alleviate the problems created in our political system. Both of our main parties are considered conservative parties to the rest of the world, and any progressive measures that would benefit society and reduce the effects of climate change are considered radical and preposterous by politicians with financial stakes in our crooked system where corporatations hold control and the people are treated as fuel for an otherwise worthless currency. Favorite line: "Listen to the radio, they played my favorite song. Now I'm bored and wanting more."

3. Blame it on the Elves: the title is a reference to an episode of the Podcast "Lore" by Aaron Menke (i can't recall which episode, but you should check it out anyway because it's great listen.) An instrumental interlude inspired by ragtime music of the 1920-30's, with an edge of course.

4. Class of Dropouts: This song was written when I was 16 during my sophomore year of high school and was originally featured on my now unavailable album "trees" before adopting the Tuesday X monicker. I brought it back 6 years later because I loved how raw and punk it was. The lyrics are dorky but I decided to leave them as is, it's a cool track for high school stoners to blare and let out their teen angst. Favorite line: "Walking in on my friends fucking."

5. Polaroids on My Bulletin Board: This is a song about growing up. As a 22 year old (now 23) who decided not to go to college straight out of high school, I felt isolated from my peers in a way. By going into the workfield right away I sometimes feel like I skipped a few years and missed out on a lot of opportunities. I regret not leaving my hometown sooner than I did and chasing my dreams of being a touring musician in a band. More often than not I reminisce of my youth playing shows and getting into trouble, as I now feel old and out of place in a scene I grew up in. Favorite line: "I know what it's like to be alive, I know what it's like to live a lie."

6. Labradoodle Underpass: Going back on the theme of growing up, this is about my recent experience with shows as an adult. When I was a teenager I felt ambitious and ready for anything, and I would drop literally everything to go to the nearest show. As an adult I feel introverted and constantly anxious about the world around me. I've missed out on a lot of great shows due to my own self doubt's and anxiety. Now that shows have been canceled for over a year I feel even more regret by not appreciating them more while I could. Favorite line: "23 years and a lingering fear that anything could happen, why am I here?"

7. Some Shit: This was me trying to be modest mouse lol jangly guitars and half talking/half singing vocals describing the world around me. I guess in a way it was an exercise in writing character description and setting, but otherwise it's just a chill track that almost feels aimless at parts. Favorite Line: "it's just some shit I learned from a friend. Just some shit I learned when I was trying to prepare."

8: Woe is the World: On the album this is a chorus snippet that barely a minute long (the full version is available as a bonus track on bandcamp, and it was actually a demo that turned out better than the final version.) I originally wrote this song when I was 15 with a different set of lyrics, but I came back to it while writing this album and re-wrote it to reflect my mental state and the world around me. Overall, just another melancholy track in a sea of melancholy songs. Favorite line: "you've never felt more alone than you do now, was everything worth it in the end?"

9. Then Why Was it Named Gideon?: the title is a reference to a line in Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour (my favorite series) and like the first track on this album doesn't have much to do with the song. "Gideon" is a simple love song, talking again about how growing up sucks but having the right person by your side can make all the shitty times worth it in the end. Favorite line: "it's time to move on, you're taking too long."

10. I am Here, I'm Looking at Her, and She is Beautiful: This song is entirely about the book "Perks of Being a Wallflower". That's it. Nothing else, let's move on. Favorite line: "Over Christmas I read them a poem about a brown paper bag and the boy who wrote it."

11. Try to Be a Filter, Not a Sponge: Like the previous song, this one is also mostly about "Perks of Being a Wallflower", but with elements of my own experience with toxic relationships. I like to think of it as the character Charlie's experience with Mary Elizabeth overall though. Favorite line: "She called my favorite book washed out trash, said I have no taste and I'm still too sad."

12. Lavender Spray Bottle: This instrumental dates back to 2017. I recorded the guitar part as a demo on my phone and forgot about it. Over time I forgot how to play the guitar part, so I used the demo as a basis and layered everything else on top of it. The title is a reference to a bottle of water with lavender essential oils mixed in that my ex used to fend away spiders in the house we lived in at the time.

13. Hindsight is 2020: I will admit, this is my favorite song on the whole album and was actually the last to be written and recorded. With a simple guitar part and layers of vocals, this song is a direct reflection of life during the peak of the pandemic. With curfews in place and rising case counts, I had to learn to cope with life at home during my late nights away from work. My partner was quarantined during this time and I reflected on the mental strain this put on her. Favorite line: "Don't go to work, you need the money but you're not happy when you're there. Sometimes life is so unfair."

14. I Don't Know How to Deal With Serious Emotions Without Turning Them into a Fucking Joke: the title came from a meme I found on my phone from high school. The song itself was about my own inability to handle serious emotions without coming off as sarcastic. In both the music and lyrics, the song starts as a simple confession before exploding into raw chaos. Favorite line: "it's so hard. I'm so scared, what have I become?"

15. Say Hello to My Little Friend: the last instrumental on this album. A short haunting tune that reflects the final two tracks. The title is probably a reference to Rambo or something, but I never watched it and I thought it fit the feeling of this song.

16. Minneapolis: What became one of the most emotional tracks on this song actually began as a joke. My partner was snap chatting a friend one night and they asked me to write them a song on the spot. So I improvised the first two verses and chorus of this song, referencing her going to school there at the time. I found I actually liked what I had written however, so I refined the track and changed it from a sassy country song into a melancholic lament of my experience in the twin cities and southern Minnesota. Favorite line: "I miss Camp Snoopy, and Paul Bunyon's log flume ride that went around the whole damn mall."

17. Before the Sunrise: the final song on the album is an intimate look at my relationship with my partner. Through past experiences i have become riddled with self doubt and always looking at improving myself as a person. With hopes that one day I'll be the person I'd like to be for mine and their sake, it's an optimistic tribute to my best friend. Favorite line: "the cycle ends until the sun rises again, you're my best friend."

Thank you all so much! Check out Essential and our other music on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple, and other places! I hope you all enjoyed this personal look at these songs that got me through the worst parts of 2020.

#tuesday x #emo #music #alternative #art rock #diy music #diy #midwest #underground #lyrics #essential #covid19

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pomeqraniqht · 4 years ago

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ship headcanon memeWho? What? When? Where? Why? (Rusty & Sofia. I literally cannot remember if i sent this already asdkjfjga I feel like I did but idk)

WHO? WHAT? WHEN? WHERE? WHY?

I’m procrastinating. If you fancy it send me a ship and a number and I’ll tell you my headcanon.

1. Who makes the first move and how? - Rusty made the ‘official’ first move between them but they were eye-flirting long before wearing a mask made it cool. But now? They BOTH make the first move when it comes to each other, they aren’t shy from one another and it’s honestly such a blessing to see Sofia come out of her shell for her inked angel because... *sigh* I never thought she’d develop the way she did and these two are just.. ~ugh~ <3 2. Who is the most insecure and what makes them feel better? - Sofia Patterson/Parker is the most insecure and a smile from her favorite inked angel makes her feel better. Honestly Rusty helps her insecurities but he also adds to them; a lot. I feel like the more serious they’ve become the more pressure she is putting on herself to be ‘perfect’ but then she has those moments where she remembers Rusty doesn’t love her because she’s ‘perfect’ he loves her for who she really is, and she’s the girl who cries whenever he plays their song and falls in love with mint chocolate ice-cream while pregnant with his kids. It’s such a hot mess for her but he always finds a way to bring her back to reality. 3. Who is the most romantic? - both? Maybe Sofia more than Rusty but by a smidge? They both are romantic in their own ways and I think it’s great it’s not the typical roses and chocolate bullshit (not that that isn’t great and all...) but they’re unique. They show their love in different forms, an example would be for valentine’s day she’s going to suggest they go and get tattoos, or that Rusty picks out a tattoo for her and she gets to pick one for him (if he even has any space left by this point.) 4. Who can’t keep their hands to themselves - Literally both of them, they can not leave each other alone at all. Sex anywhere and everywhere; it does not matter anymore. So long as they can fit they’ll fuck. They don’t know how to not touch each other anymore, especially when it isn’t sex. It’s always hand holding or he’s got an arm around her or something; they’re always touching somehow. 5. Who says ‘I love you’ first? - Sofia did the day she told Rusty about the baby, on her old kitchen table... literal hours before they broke up because he cheated on her. 6. Who would they ask if they ever had a threesome? - I don’t think they would ask anyone? Sofia’s insecurities wouldn’t allow it and I’m not so sure Rusty’s possessive and jealous nature would either. 7. What do they get up to on a night out? - Depends honestly. Before Rusty got sober they would go out on the town, drink, dance, fuck, and have fun any way they could find. Now? Probably movie night, dinner, sex in the car/bathroom of a movie theatre... 8. What do they like in bed? - Everything but especially cream-pies and Rusty calling Sofia his dirty little girl because she’s only dirty for him and him only. They’re addicted to each other in ways I didn’t think could be possible. 9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other? - I want to say for Sofia it’s probably pushing out a baby? If that even counts? Or maybe it’s trying to squeeze into spanx so she doesn’t look like she’s just had a baby. I feel like for Rusty it was the dance of his breakdown and his relapse, his behavior at the clinic and everything.. I think that was a pretty low-point for the both of them. 10. What two songs, two books and two luxury items do they take to a desert island? - Literally any song Rusty ever wrote; two books: How to Build A Boat for Dummies and What is poisonous and what isn’t. Items? Those reusable matches and a water purifier. 11. What do they hide from one another? - Sofia used to hide her damages and Rusty used to hide his drug habit (also Sofia hid a baby from him for about 6 months because well...marriage issues). 12. What first changes when it starts getting serious? - Rusty’s drug use and Sofia’s behavior. She’s like a little clown fish finding her own, she’s obsessed in a way without even intending to. She inserts herself around him and she just needs to be with him. But mostly? It’s the way the two of them think about life after they meet each other. They both LOOK so polar opposite but on the inside? Their souls mirror one another. 13. When do they realise they should get together? - Officially? The day Rusty gets jealous seeing Sofia talking to her ex-boyfriend. But like super officially? Individually? Rusty realized it the day Sofia told him she was pregnant and left, Sofia realized it the first time he looked her in the eye and he didn’t look at her like he wanted to fuck her... He looked at her like he was a blind man seeing the sun for the very first time. 14. When one has a cold, what does the other do? - Sofia turns into a private nurse/doctor, whatever he needs he gets. Sofia? She tries to fight off Rusty because they have two kids and moms never get a day off, ever. 15. When they watch a film what do they choose and why? Who gets the final vote? - Something funny over horror; Sofia can’t stand scary movies and she will have the final vote. 16. When the zombie apocalypse comes, how do they cope together? - This is a good question and honestly? If a zombie apocalypses happens I feel like they would fight for as long as they possibly could. I’m going to say it happens before they have kids because I can’t imagine their adorable children killed by zombies. I feel like Rusty would go to any length to protect Sofia and vice-versa... I feel like they’re the type who would either go and take over a prison for safe-keeping or go into the woods and fend for themselves that way? They’re not dumb by any means so I feel like they’d have a good chance. But if someone got bitten or died the other wouldn’t be far behind them because if the world was ending and they didn’t have each other? Then what’s the point in living. 17. When they find a time machine, where do they go? - Sofia would go back to the last day her dad was alive and force him to go to a hospital, maybe somehow they’d be able to save him. I imagine Rusty would go back and stop himself from cheating on Sofia... I don’t want to say he’d go back and never do drugs because I feel like if he wasn’t an addict then maybe they never would’ve met? 18. When they fight, how do they make up? - Sex. A lot of meaningful and emotional sex. 19. Where do they go on their first date? - I think their first ‘official’ date was a carnival Rusty had taken her too. They would get together and hook up, have meals and such but... never like an official date. 20. Where do they go on holiday? - Sofia has always wanted to go to Italy, so maybe there? 21. Where do they get nervous about going with one another? - Since Rusty is a popular musician, anywhere? But before that I feel like Sofia was nervous of him showing up at her job. It’s a bad thing to admit but he’s a little scary to look at for the younger kids and to be a school teacher a certain type of look is required. But more-so she never cared... she just knew if someone SAID something she would lose it. She’s protective over how people view Rusty and the way they judge him because of his ink, she thinks its bullshit. He’s beautiful. Accept it. 22. Where does their first kiss happen? - On Dynasty’s dancefloor during some dirty dancing. 23. Where is their favourite place to be together? - In a bathroom, whether it is in the bath, shower, a sink... Bathrooms are their kryptonite. 24. Where do they first have sex? - In a bathroom in a club. 26. Why do they need to have a serious chat? - Because Sofia’s pregnant, Rusty’s using drugs, or Roman said a bad word and said his father taught it to him. 27. Why do their friends get annoyed with them? - They abandoned their friends for each other, and it’s not one more than the other. They both literally ignored their friends in pursuit of each other. 28. Why do they get jealous? - Because they see the other talking with someone of the opposite sex. It’s unavoidable at this point, they’re both tangled like vines and without each other they’d both die. 29. Why do they fall a little bit more in love? - When Rusty touches her nose and calls her ‘Tiny’ in a certain tone of voice, or when he sings lullabies to their babies at night, or when he gets that certain voice as he is talking to their babies in her tummy. For him? I wanna think it’s when she fights for him because up until they met not many, if any, people ever fought for him. she believes in him, she sees the good and light within him even if others don’t. He’s amazing. Go buy his new album now. 30. Why does it work (or not work) between them? - It works because they even each other out in ways I can’t even begin to describe to you. He makes her feel good, she calms him down. They’re yin and yang, literally opposites but somehow they just work. @rustyparker

#Anonymous

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dreamercail · 5 years ago

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nanowrimo musings 2.0

so like five years ago I did a little nanowrimo retrospective where I talked a little bit about each story I wrote and what I thought about it. I’ve been thinking of doing another one while also avoiding other responsibilities so join me on this walk down memory lane:

PUTTING UNDER CUT CUZ IT’S A LOT OF WORDS WHOOPS

Silicon (2009) - Oh geez, I hate to even count this one, but it was my first ever nano attempt so I gotta. A story about Theresa Lee, a girl who unknowingly is an android (closer to a cyborg?), and the team running the experiment. I don’t even think I made it to 10,000 words. Features: first attempts at an intergenerational friendship and an interesting framing device. I don’t think I’ve opened the file in at least 10 years. This is probably for the better.

Relapse of Vernadora (2010) - my first NaNo win! Originally started off steampunk inspired but I have no idea what the final product was (there were airships?? and that was really it). A story about a half dozen Chosen Ones™️ who represent ~elemental abilities~ and they have to...save the country they’re in?? Because it happens every couple hundred years?? I don’t really know. Featuring: a fun first half of interconnecting stories and dialogue that sounds like bad anime fan fiction. Overall a yikes from me but I still love Chira Chronum as a character and will until I die.

Colossal (2011) - I will always label this one as the most read amongst people I know. It’s a pretty simple story about a group of teenagers who can see giants and have to go on a road trip to stop the guy who’s bringing them back from the dead. Featuring: a literal ripped from tv tropes 5 man band set up and entirely okay if not weak narration. In the end it’s hard for me to go back to and read because I’ve gotten a lot better but I’m still proud of it. Also the five main teens have such a special place in my heart and I’ll probably never be fully done with them. Also I think my only nano with a sequel?? (that took me like six years to write lmao)

Extinction Could be a Lot Worse (2012) - 300 years after global cataclysm, and humans have become a minority, giving rise to insect- and fish-humanoid hybrids known as Entosaps and Aquacrans. Arata is a kid with a guitar looking for one of the last major human settlements on earth. Featuring: half baked concepts, heavy handed and misguided messages about racism, and one actually decent speech at the end. Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh I’ve never felt great about this one. It didn’t take me long after writing it to realize my messaging was super mixed and not as woke as I thought. Also like a few super problematic parts that make me cringe hard. Not the worst thing ever but not one I go back to.

How to be an Urban Legend (2013) - oh thank god the streak of straight protagonists has been broken. A really fun deuteragonist set up! Aliya is a party girl in need of a job. Morse is a down on her luck, awkward girl with a penchant for local urban legends. Each encounter Mackenzie Fylan, an urban legend known as a parsinct, a person who goes through overwhelming tragedy and emerges with supernatural abilities, and chaotic teleporter. Through a series of events the two girls uncover some peculiar goings ons in the basement of their office building. Featuring: a plot where like not a ton happens and a fun chapter naming convention. In the grand scheme of things an entirely okay story. Not a story with a ton of stakes but it marked a turning point in my writing as far as description writing and narration go. Aliya and Morse are an unstable couple, but I think I take a little too much joy in their dysfunction.

Scribed. (2014) - Most famous for not being finished, rip. In a world where writers are assigned particular individuals to “scribe” their lives, Ariel Hess accidentally discovers he’s being written about by the inexperienced scribe, Maiara Snow. It would’ve been a fun kind of breakdown and commentary on the stories we consume and the protagonists we choose to write about but it never quite made it off the ground (partially due to life being a lot that year). Featuring: really not much but some fun with style/formatting.

The Incredibly Consequential Life of Charlie Zappala (2016) - After having to skip 2015, this was a fun one to write. Also, chaotic cuz I dallied the first half of the month then ended up writing like 22k in 6 days. Charlie is a disillusioned 20-something who always thought they were made for something greater until real life came and beat them with a stick. That is, until an interdimensional elf herald pops out of their refrigerator and claims they’re the Chosen One. From there Charlie has to balance the world of their dreams with the world they know and figure out which is really meant for them. Featuring: first nonbinary protagonist and a whole lot of swearing. Charlie as a character is such an outlet for a lot of processing of what it means to be an adult in this day and age. I love them a lot. Of course, in the manic way the story was written the pacing is wonk and needs some work before it’s the best it can be. Also the only nanowrimo (save the unfinished ones) that never got a proper edit.

a.u. (2017) - HEY DID I MENTION THIS ONE WON AN AWARD. I’m sure I have. To go from no one reading my stories to now thousands of folks having checked this one out is A Lot but also probably one of the coolest things to ever happen to me. Damian is a fresh out of college fuck boy, Alexander is a hipster barista. They meet in a coffee shop, we all know what happens then, right? If by that you meant that a mysterious earthquake comes every morning to the coffee shop and leaves the two with the only memories of it happening, then yes, we all know what happens. A story meant to be an exploration of fan fiction tropes and AUs, but also with an underlying message of what it means to find yourself when the world around you is constantly changing (#kidswhomovedalotproblems). Very admittedly nervous that I was gonna come across as fetishizing mlm relationships just by nature exploring the typical “””””BL plot””””” so that’s probably what’s stopped me from out right asking people I know to read it haha. Featuring: boys kissing and some actually damn good analogies that I have yet to replicate. Did I mention it won an award? And currently has 30k reads?? Anyway read it online. No shame.

Road to Arcadia (2018) - Boy does this one have my whole heart. Set in a very nearby future (about 30 years) in a world where we did jack shit about climate change (so like current trajectory), Kai Gilling sets off to the desert to look for something better. On the way he encounters a pair of siblings and a woman who says she has a map to Arcadia, an urban legend rumored to be the only city thriving during these hellish times. Cue: desert road trip story. I’d been wanting to write a desert road trip story for ages and the route the characters follow is nearly identical to one my dad and I took on a road trip the preceding summer, so it all came together. Featuring: a main cast where none of the characters are cis/het and Jeep Wranglers. The letters Kai writes back home have some of my favorite writing and some raw emotion and thoughts from me. It’s not perfect in its execution and it doesn’t have the playfulness that a.u. has, but it’s really special to me. Also available online! (not as many reads tho working on that one)

EXCAVATOR: Tales from the Twelve Vessels (2019) - Probably my first real big step into hardcore sci-fi and another deuteragonist tale. In the future, out in the deep recesses of space, flies the jaundian coalition, a group of twelve spaceships housing orphaned races from across the universe, most notably the sapiens (ya humans) and the nkrey (kinda like a mix between grey aliens and high elves). The story follows Meera, a wide-eyed Idealist looking to work planetside and Sauk, a convicted criminal who would like to do not that. Shenanigans ensue. It’s definitely out of my comfort zone to write something in a world so unfamiliar and it was hard to do a nanowrimo story when half the time needed was for world building. Also still not fully finished to this day. I got the 50k but still have a lot left to write in terms of plot. Featuring: ALIENS and sassy teammates. One that I probably won’t know how to feel about until at least another year or so.

Thanks so much for reading!! And oh man I’m only scraping the surface of a lot of this. If you ever wanna know one thing I could talk forever about it’s my stories and characters.

#i could go back in and add the book coverd i made for each of these but im lazy #cailin writes things #long post #i have a lot of feelings about my stories #and characters #and this is only a fraction of them

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xviistudy · 7 years ago

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Things to remember in Senior High

Well, it’s summer now and 11th grade is over. Next year I’ll be graduating High School, then I’ll be off to college. That being said, here’s everything I have learned from my first year in Senior High in a nutshell:

#1: Don’t take sleep for granted

When you hear your older sister/brother or your friends from the 11th and 12th grade telling you to sleep while you can, we actually mean it. The first quarter of the year is alright. There’s not much to do but when y’all really start to work, sleep is literally non-existent. Approximately, in a week, a student who strives for academic excellence will get at least 15-20 hours of sleep (since our school days range from Monday to Thursday and Friday is a free day, psyche it isn’t bc you still have to go back to school to finish whatever PTs and projects you have’t finished yet HAHAHAHHA). When the exams hit, it is what you literally call hell week since in the three days of the exam, I had approximately only had 8-10 hours of sleep. Imagine that? In three days. That’s why when we tell you to sleep, YOU SLEEP. It’s not fun being a coffee zombie all day, everyday.

#2: Don’t take your mental health lightly

I cannot tell you guys how many mental breakdowns I have had in this year. There was so much going on and it was so much. I went as far as telling myself that it was okay for me to faint/collapse, as long as I pass my exams. I would breakdown randomly in class for some apparent reason, I don’t remember it anymore. I would get so anxious and tired whenever I would think about all I had to do for that specific week and then proceed to have that breakdown. Please, my darlings, when it all gets too much, don’t push yourself if you can’t do it anymore. It will take a toll on your mental, physical and emotional health so much. You will regret it when the year is done, trust me. During the year, I repressed all my feelings bc I had to get all my work done in order to get a good grade. Now that it’s summer, I am an depressed, emotionally unstable and anxious mess bc all those repressed feelings are finally coming out.

#3: Don’t forget to eat and stay hydrated

Coffee can only do so much. Don’t drink that like water just so that you can stay awake to do your homework. During the school year, I lost so much weight and that is not good. The weight I lost was due to stress and lack of food intake. The lack of food intake was caused by being too busy to even eat my lunch and we obviously couldn’t eat in class. So please, bring at least sandwiches and a huge waterjub so that you can eat and drink the water you need.

#4: Don’t put off your homework

This is a mistake I made frequently which caused me to stay up late since the deadline was already the next day. When the homework is given to you, do it on the day because the next day you will be given new assignments. This sounds standard but we still tend to do this because we rely on the fact that the deadline is still next week or next month. Don’t do that because the month will go by and the next thing you know, the deadline is already tomorrow. If you don’t understand, please ask for help from your classmates. That will help you finish faster rather than spending hours going over material that you don’t understand at all. On the other hand, if you’ve spent just 10-30 minutes reading and rereading the material, take a break and go back later. There’s a huge chance that your brain is too tired and you need to rest before it can function. After that rest, maybe to your surprise, you might understand the material.

#5: Listen to your teacher

This is standard but you know when you get those days when you’re just out of it and you don’t listen nor copy the notes? Yeah, those days. No matter how out of it you are, you need to listen or else you will regret it. I suggest you listen rather than taking down notes because if you’re busy taking down notes, you might miss half of the lesson even if you did write it down because you might not even remember why you wrote it down or short cuts. If you can do both, then that would be great! If you’re the type to take down notes because you can understand it more, then go ahead! You do you, boo. If you’re being out of it is caused by your mental or emotional state, then please go to your guidance center. No matter how hard you try to listen nothing will happen because you’re not okay.

#6: Surround yourself with people who make you happy

No joke, this is a big factor since when you’re surrounded with people who make you happy, then you will be somewhat happy if not completely happy. When you’re happy, you have the motivation to do your work because being happy gives you more energy. They will also make going to school easier since you’re looking forward to seeing these people. These people will also act as your support group. They will push you to do your best and push you to grab the opportunities that you’re to scared to do on your own. I swear, if you find the right people, no matter how stressful Senior High is, you will have the time of your life.

#7: Get rid of the toxic people in your life

This is also a huge factor. If you still have toxic people in your life, get rid of them. All they’ll do is stress you out even more when there’s actually nothing to be stressed about. I started the year with a toxic person and it was hell. I felt like I was trapped and suffocated. I did not want to go to school and I did not feel wanted in school at all. All I was to this person was a personal slave. So when I decided to leave, this person got even more mad and gave my friends and I a harder time. You don’t need these kinds of people in your life at this point because you already have too much to worry about, you don’t need to add another one.This is why while it’s still early, get rid of them. To identify a toxic friend or relationship, click here. Click here to know how to deal with manipulative people. Click here to know the 10 differences between a toxic friend and a good friend.

#8: Enjoy your time while it lasts

Enjoy all this while it lasts. You may not know it now but you will miss everything about whatever you have experienced in all your years in school. Next year, I will be graduating and I regret not spending enough time appreciating everything that I had when I was in the years prior. Appreciate your teachers, your friends, your classmates, the lunch ladies/ janitors, the security guards you see and greet every morning and just anyone you see in your High School everyday because you will never find anyone like them in your new school for college. Appreciate how your school looks - the trees, the pathway, the parking lot, the classrooms, the canteen, the chapel - because you will miss the familiarity, how at home you felt in it, when you reach college.

That’s all I have to say for what I’ve learned this year. I hope you guys enjoyed the read and took my advice into consideration! To all the graduates this year, congratulations! I am proud. Good luck on your next chapter in life. To the people who are still far off, enjoy it while it lasts. Graduation will be here quicker than you know it. To my batch, one more year and we will be off. I hate to admit it but I’ll miss you all. Curious and curiouser, it feels as if yesterday was the start of 7th grade.

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easyhairstylesbest · 4 years ago

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Ella Hunt on Masking Sue's Grief and Playing Emily's Muse in 'Dickinson' Season 2

There’s nothing conventional about Dickinson, the Apple TV+ series that dramatizes the world and works of Emily Dickinson (Hailee Steinfeld) into a 30-minute sitcom-esque serial. Whereas season 1 gently blurred the boundaries between fantasy and reality (a Jason Mantzoukas-voiced bee visits the poet during an opium-induced bender; Emily imagines escaping to the circus after a vicious fight with her father), season 2 edges further into surreality, from regular visits with a ghostly manifestation of Dickinson’s famous “Nobody” to a hallucinated heart-to-heart with Central Park architect Frederick Law Olmsted (Timothy Simons).

It all culminates in a trip to the opera in episode 6, which represents an emotional juncture for the poet: on one hand, she’s scorned by her editor, Sam Bowles (Finn Jones), for perceived romantic advances (she just feels too much, you see!); on the other, she enters a near-religious rapture during the performance, imagining that her estranged lover and sister-in-law Sue (Ella Hunt) is singing her poem “Split the Lark” onstage.

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“I was really trying to write a version of a psychological thriller,” Dickinson creator Alena Smith tells ELLE.com of the episode, also titled “Split the Lark.” “A sense of angles and surfaces slipping under each other and nobody quite knows what anyone else is thinking or feeling—and the audience doesn’t know either.”

It’s a particularly destabilizing effect when it comes to Smith’s interpretation of Emily. She cannot divorce the emotional from the artistic, so even bruises like Bowles’ rejection can manifest in a sort of creative ecstasy. Whereas another character would sink into despair, Emily is soon distracted and overcome by the art she’s witnessing in real-time—so much so that it causes her to hallucinate Sue, her greatest muse, performing her own work.

For Hunt, the episode offered an opportunity to flex her own singing skills while building upon the version of Sue Emily idolizes in her mind. “It was exciting to enjoy the freedom that Emily’s surreal sequences give us, to do something that [the real] Sue would never do,” she says. “To be standing in that incredible gold dress and singing and looking into Hailee’s eyes was the most wonderful shooting experience.”

It’s a blissful interlude in a season steeped in private battles. As Emily wars with the prospects of fame and fortune, Sue masks the agony of a miscarriage by throwing the most glamorous parties in the county. For the first time in their relationship, the two women are incapable of giving the other exactly what she needs, and a distance threatens to engulf them for good.

Below, Hunt opens up to ELLE.com about transforming Sue for season 2, the grief her character carries with her, and why Emily has always been Sue’s endgame.

Last year you told me that Sue would be a completely different person in season 2. Can you talk me through transforming into “influencer Sue” and how you prepared for it?

I knew when I signed onto season 1 that the Sue of the history book was this infamous hostess socialite. It was a bizarre thing, actually, shooting season 1 and playing this very grounded, pained, mourning-stricken Sue when I knew that, at some point, we were going to get around to her being this fabulous hostess. She’s like a girl you knew in school who went home for the summer as this prim, quiet kid and comes back in September as the queen bee with the best clothes and the most money.

I had a lot of conversations with Alena about how we ground Sue’s transition in understanding why she’s doing that: what she’s been through and how the mourning she’s experienced in the past, coupled with the miscarriage, impacts her. I think the way she’s written Sue this season, the audience has a lot of windows into moments of Sue in pain and trying to hide it and push it beneath the parties, the clothes, and the house.

Did you bring any threads from season 1?

Oh, for sure. Hailee and I talked a lot about finding moments in the season, particularly right in the first episode and in some of the later episodes, where we see the original Sue coming out. And really, Emily brings out Sue’s true self. I love in the edit, there’s a moment in episode 1 where Sue’s looking at herself in the mirror. It’s like she almost doesn’t recognize herself. She takes a deep breath and puts a smile back on.

And there’s a moment with Austin in episode 4 when he comes in and tells her that the twins are going to move in with them. She’s so cold and vicious to him when he’s in the room, but the minute he’s out, she curls up in a ball and we have this moment of seeing how vulnerable and she is. I think Alena really, really carefully wrote and edited the story so we are constantly reminded that the old Sue is in there.

“Emily brings out Sue’s true self.”

What was one thing you wanted to convey between seasons 1 and 2?

The thing I came to set thinking about most each morning was, How do I keep the audience understanding why Sue is the way she is? How do I keep reminding them of her past and the difficulty of her life and how isolated she is? Lonely in a crowd is such a huge part of Sue this season, and actually, it’s something I haven’t been able to talk about much so far because I haven’t been allowed to talk about the miscarriage. It was a spoiler. But now that the episode is out, I can.

One of the remarkable and sad things about miscarriages is they are something women predominantly go through silently. It’s been really incredible recently, seeing how women in the public eye like Meghan Markle and Chrissy Teigen have both spoken publicly about their experiences. Shooting this arc of Sue, it was amazing to me how many women I had conversations with at work and in my family who had gone through miscarriages. They’re really not something we talk about very much. I took it as a great responsibility to portray this story of a woman violently grieving.

In the show, Sue has always existed as both herself and an image of perfection in Emily’s imagination. How do you separate those two characterizations as you perform?

Often, before we shoot a scene taking place in Emily’s imagination, I’ll have a conversation with Hailee and Alena about what they’d like to see of Sue, because at the end of the day, it’s Hailee’s Emily imagining Sue. So I often come to Hailee with questions of, “How do you think Emily is imagining Sue here?” It’s wonderful to be on a set that collaborative. And Sue is in Emily’s poetry as well, so finding the Sue of Emily’s poetry, the Sue of history, and the Sue of Alena’s imagination—it’s so many levels to be functioning on. I never get bored for a moment on the Dickinson set.

And the fallout that happens between Emily and Sue this season…Sue is responsible for a large part of it, but also Emily’s expectations of her. Emily’s so enraveled in her own personal quest to work out what she wants for herself as an artist and as a human, that at times she forgets the pain that Sue is working to suppress. She can be selfish in that way. They’re both coming at their relationship from selfish points of view.

Ella Hunt and Hailee Steinfeld in Dickinson season 2 episode 6, “Split the Lark.”

Apple

What’s going on between Sue, Emily, and Sam Bowles? We can see that Sue really wants Emily to be fulfilled as a creative, and to her, that means publishing her work under this major editor. But is Sue also self-serving? Is she trying to prove something? What was that triangle about for you?

In terms of Sue pushing Emily towards Sam, I see it as, there is a part of Sue that really believes Emily should publish. She thinks Emily’s poetry is extraordinary and wants to see it in the world, and she can’t fathom why Emily wouldn’t want that. Especially because in the first season, Emily is kind of youthfully excited by the idea of publishing her work without really thinking much deeper into the impact it could have on her as an artist—because she’s fighting the patriarchy and her father’s expectation of her. But I also think Sue wants to push away anything that makes her think or feel deeply. And Emily’s poetry is really the epicenter of that for Sue. It’s a huge responsibility to be Emily’s only reader and one Sue doesn’t feel emotionally able to handle when we meet her at the beginning of season 2.

And her own interest in Sam, I think, comes from a place of [how] women had so little power. Being a socialite was a form of power, was a way for her to get the intellectual stimulation she was craving in her life and a way of escaping, not only from the pain of her miscarriage and from the pain of Emily’s poetry, but also from a very unhappy marriage to Austin. I loved researching for this season. In the 1700s, there were these Parisian salonnières, they called themselves, and they were very wealthy women in unhappy marriages who threw these salons. They got to choose the guest list. They would choose the talking points, they got to control the conversation, and they would mediate between the men. It wasn’t only a form of intellectual stimulation; it was also political power that they didn’t have because they couldn’t vote, but they could get these men together and make them have conversations. It is an incredible form of power within a societal structure that doesn’t leave a place for women otherwise. Sue is interested in Sam because him reviewing her parties and writing about her in her newspaper gives her more of that power she otherwise wouldn’t.

Where do you see the breakdown between Sue and Austin this season?

Adrian talks about this so beautifully, that the pressure of toxic masculinity creates this environment where it’s very, very difficult for Austin not to feel like he has to tick the boxes of the grand house, the baby, the best job. He’s coming up against both wanting to be a different kind of man but also feeling the pressure of those expectations.

This is a super relevant conversation for couples now as much as then: He gets to a point where he realizes he does want to have children. Divorce isn’t something that exists in those times. They’re stuck with each other. So Austin is trying to find a delicate way of bringing children into the house, and Sue, having not communicated the pain of the miscarriage, leaves Austin in a place where he doesn’t understand why she’s so cold on the subject. If they could only communicate to each other and be honest with each other, they wouldn’t be in the situation they’re in. But at the heart of it, Austin and Sue are never going to be able to be honest with each other in the way Emily and Sue are.

Julie Kosin Senior Culture Editor Julie Kosin is the senior culture editor of ELLE.com, where she oversees all things movies, TV, books, music, and art, from trawling Netflix for a worthy binge to endorsing your next book club pick.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

Ella Hunt on Masking Sue's Grief and Playing Emily's Muse in 'Dickinson' Season 2

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magicrobins · 7 years ago

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Answer all the shepard asks for Duncan >:3

Questions 6+ under the cut!

1. How easy is it to earn your Shepard’s trust?

Duncan: “Depends on the person, mostly. I admit it was harder for Miranda and Jacob to earn my trust than Kaidan and Ashley, since they were from Cerberus. Honestly in war, you can’t really afford not to trust your allies, but you also can’t afford to trust them blindly. Trust them enough, but be prepared to step in and do something yourself if need be.”

2. What are they flaws? Do they like talking about them and/or do they acknowledge them and try work on them?

Duncan: “I don’t think anyone likes talking about their flaws, but you need to acknowledge them, if you ever want to grow as a person. I used to be pretty defensive mixed with a hot temper, but when I get really pissed - well, let’s just say my biotics react to that. So I’ve had to work on controlling myself, my emotions - not just anger - in order to control my biotics.”

Because of this, though, Duncan started bottling his emotions up, which can cause him to have a breakdown when it all becomes more than he can handle, which can trigger his biotics soooo he’s still working on it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3. What memory do they like to remember?

Duncan: “I have a few, mostly of my family. I remember my parents trying to teach my older brother to cook because he was moving out soon and, well, that boy couldn’t even microwave food correctly. They let him cook the meals for a week, but three days in, we all had food poisoning and Abe and his parents brought us some nice, actually well made food to eat.”

4. What memory/actions do they hate to be reminded of?

Duncan: “Well I mean dying’s not a fun memory… Neither is what happened to my colony on Mindoir or my unit on Akuze…”

5. What was your Shepard’s dream job before they became a soldier?

Duncan: “Oh jeez, that was… Well shit that was before what happened to my colony. After that, I just wanted to be a soldier. Before? Shit, I wanted to be a musician. And not like the crappy music we have now, but like the artists from the past. God, now that’s music.”

6. From what culture does your Shepard come? Do they have any traditions? If they’re Earthborn and/or don’t know much about their background: From what city/planet does your Shepard come? Did they create any traditions based on the city they grew up in?

Note: Duncan’s background is colonist.

Okay so like… He’s from a colony on Mindoir and I’m lame af and haven’t thought much past that. :’) Sorryyyyy

7. Did they want to be a part of the N7 program?

Duncan: “I had to think about it initially. I wasn’t sure if I was really worthy of it and I didn’t want to risk letting people down, letting myself down. I talked it over with my best friend, Abe, a lot. He was also invited to be a part of the N7 program. Eventually we decided to join together and [smirks] I never let him live it down that though we started out the same, I’ve come to outrank his ass.”

8. What embarrasses them?

Duncan: “Hm not much anymore. You learn to just let it go. When I was a kid, though, I’d get embarrassed all the time when I accidentally used my biotics. One time made cereal explode in my face. My brother laughed so hard, he fell out of his chair. I was mortified and refused to come out of my room for three hours. I was… eleven at the time, I think.”

9. What are their hobbies and which hobby is their favorite?

Duncan: [shrugs] “I don’t really do much for fun. If my friends or Steve want to go do something, I’ll go with them, but… I like collecting music from the past and old video games. I used to want to learn how to play these old instruments but… Well Alliance training came first. Honestly I… don’t know what I do for fun anymore. I’m not sure if I even do anything that could be considered a hobby? I collect model starships now… That’s about it.”

10. What animal(s) do they like the most?

Duncan: “My hamster.”

11. What is their favorite drink or cocktail?

Duncan: “Anything strong enough to make me forget my issues! …That - That was a joke. [clears throat]”

12. Are they more of a coffee person or tea person? Maybe both?

Duncan: “I honestly don’t know if I could function without coffee.”

13. What is their favorite kind of weather?

Duncan: “I like the winter, when it snows. [smirks] Though the summer is pretty nice with how it gets all the men shirtless.”

14. What’s your Shepard’s favorite weapon?

Duncan: “My sniper rifle.”

15. Which armor does your Shepard like?

Duncan: “I just wear my N7 armor. Used to wear it with a hint of red, but now I wear it all black.”

16. What songs does your Shepard sing in the shower?

Duncan: “Depends, am I alone? [grins] I think Steve likes it when I sing him a love song, no matter where we are. Though I admittedly did that once during a mission and he eventually snapped at me to focus on the bullets flying toward me.”

17. Do they like a specific music genre or do they usually listen to whatever song they like?

Duncan: “Depends more on the lyrics of the song but I genuinely like any genre.”

18. Which planet do they like the most? (besides Earth)

Duncan: “Who ever said I liked Earth all that much? Mindoir is my home.”

19. Which planet do they hate?

Duncan: “Some have been unpleasant, but I wouldn’t go so far to say I hate any… Though Tuchanka has way too many thresher maws for my liking.”

20.Can your Shepard cook?

Duncan: “Absolutely! My parents taught me. I’m a much better cook than my brother ever was. After what happened to our colony, Abe and I looked out for each other. We swapped family recipes and knowledge. We’re both pretty good cooks, actually.”

21. What is their favorite Disney movie?

Duncan: “Uh heh actually I haven’t really seen any, but I hear Mulan is kickass.”

Cue Katie making him sit through every Disney movie ever.

22. What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?

Duncan: “Hm I’d have to say black. Who doesn’t look cool and badass in black?”

Yes, he looks amazing in black lmao

23. What is their height and what body type does your Shepard have?

In my defense, I’m lame and suck ass at describing body types but he’s like slender/muscular not like hella beefy like the game has - I got a mod that makes him less beefy for ME3. uwu

He’s like 6′0″ tall though.

24. If you could change Shepard’s voice in-game, which voice actors would you choose for them? (if you think that Meer and/or Hale’s voice don’t fit your Shepard’s appearance)

I like the voice he has! :D

25. Who is your Shepard’s LI?

His endgame LI is Steve Cortez. In Mass Effect 1, he romanced Ashley - in his playthrough, she died in ME1 - in the dual AU, they simply drift apart between ME1 and ME2 and decide they’re better as friends (she later gets with Abe). In ME2, he romanced Samara. uwu

26. How does your Shepard like to spend time with their LI?

Duncan: “Anything Steve likes to do. I’m fine going out or just staying in by ourselves.”

27. Who is your Shepard’s best friend?

Duncan: “Hm well let’s see, out of the crew, I’d have to say I’m closest with Abe, Aaliyah, Kaidan, Jacob, Ashley, and Liara. Aside from Steve, of course.”

28. Does your Shepard like to relax? If so, what activities makes them relax?

Duncan: “I like to relax but I’m not very good at it. [shrugs] I’m almost always on edge.”

He loves cuddling with Steve, wherever they are, it relaxes him. Whether he’s holding Steve in his arms or being held in Steve’s arms. It makes him feel safe and secure.

29. How does your Shepard act like when they’re stressed? Do they hide it or do they make it obvious that they need to calm down?

It’s usually obvious to his friends, though he tries very hard to hide it. Strong emotions, including stress, make it hard for him to control his biotics in the moment.

30. How does your Shepard handle difficult situations?

Relatively well. He’s used to difficult situations. He bottles up his emotions (which isn’t healthy gdi Dunc) and deals with it. If he breaks, it’s usually later in private, though it is possible for things to become too much for him and for him to have a breakdown in front of the squad. Also difficult situations can become harder for him to handle, if there’s something involved that’s one of his triggers (such as thresher maws ‘cause of Akuze and zero g ‘cause of the beginning of ME2).

31. How do they handle jealousy?

Duncan: “It’s not fun but I can handle jealousy fine. Out of all the things that I could be upset over, it’s not at the top of that list.”

32. How do they handle guilt?

Duncan: “…Not that well, I admit. I was just a kid but I still feel guilty over the fact that I couldn’t save my family. I feel guilt over surviving Akuze. I feel guilt over Mordin and Thane’s death… Yeah, I don’t handle it well…”

33. Are they a genuinely funny person or do they prefer to annoy their squadmates with bad puns?

Duncan: “They seem to genuinely laugh when I tell a joke?”

34. Do they want to get married?

Duncan: [smiles softly] “Absolutely.”

I wrote this fic here where he proposes to Steve. :3

35. How do they feel about children?

Duncan: “They’re adorable! I’d like to have some, someday.”

#mass effect #shepard #mshep #custom shepard #oc #c: duncan shepard #s: mass effect #v: dual mass effect #me #ask anna #avaquetv2

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bisexualraplines · 5 years ago

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things about the gays from the unt*med that make me go absolutely unhinged: an incomprehensible list by my sleep deprived self (contains spoilers obvs)

1. the fact that they’re ancient china’s spock and jimothy equivalents right down to the chaotic bisexual dumbass and obedient grumpy energies. i am predictable ik but hear me out....

2. when they first meet (after lz’s Dramatic Entrance) they’re literally just standing there staring at each other. for like a whole minute. love at first sight is real I’ve seen it

3. for their second meeting they immediately start swordfighting cause wwx broke school rules

4. all the times wwx tries to get lz’s attention, even in class, and lz being Extremely Flustered But Annoyed About It. or when he straight up ignores wwx’s advancess and wwx is like “he didn’t hear me. he’s just hard of hearing” ajdjsjs

5. when lz’s uncle “punishes” them both by making them sit in the library for the day and wwx annoys lz to death by a) drawing a portrait of him (its really good) b) sneaking porn into his book and c) asking him to give him the honour of “Glimpsing His Way” okay babey...

6. when lz gets Wasted and passes out on wwx’s sofa and wwx laughs so hard but still tucks him in 🙂

7. when lz ties his headband around both of their wrists like its the String Of Fate (it is)

8. lz telling wwx he doesn’t like touching people yet still touches him every chance he gets.... i see you

9. lz’s brother side eyeing and shipping it so hard and being unable to not bring up wwx to him in like every private convo between them “you care him!!” “I Do Not >: (“

10. lz getting drunk and stealing chickens for wwx as a gift because he’s overwhelmed with romantic frusteration and then the both of them carving their names on a tree

11. wwx, jealous: “do u like miammiam” lz: [gay judgement and prolonged silence] wwx, bursting out laughing: i’m kidding imagine heterosexuality!

12. when resurrected wwx sees lz again for the first time and lz’s wearing pure white robes and wwx’s face is so tender and he says “always dressed in white. like he’s at a funeral” with the softest voice and it killed me dead

13. when wwx comes back to life and he plays the song lz wrote about them in their youth and lz recognizes it and therefore recognizing him behind the mask and he approaches him for the first time in 13 years and time stops and he touches his wrist and they stare at each other for like several long moments and it made me have a whole breakdown

14. when wwx is half unconscious in the cave and asks lz to play a song for him to comfort him and lz plays the song he composed for him 🙂

15. wwx giving lz bunnies cause he knows he likes them. and later a bunny painting and lz smiles at him for the first time and wwx points that out and lz gets flustered

16. “what am i to you” “i saw you as my soulmate in life” “i still am” do not look at me i am breaking down

17. when lz got drunk and passed out and wwx (again) tenderly touches his cheek & tucks him in. then the next morning lz is like “did i do anything dumb...” and wwx is like “i recall u saying ‘i like..’” and lz’s horrified Gay Panic

18. wwx being annoyed by lz’s clans endless rules and telling him lz would never find anyone that would want to marry him bc of those rules and being the whole circus when he marries him in the end

19. when wwx adopts an orphaned kid and they become dads (accidental baby acquisition)

20. when wwx dies and lz raises the baby alone. then later when wwx talks to lz about how their son would be a teenager now if he was still alive and lz looks at him like oh yeah raised ur son 😬

21. lz telling wwx his biggest regret was allowing him to die/letting him go and telling him he’s never leaving his side again

22. when wwx tells lz he wants to take him to his home one day and then a decade later they DO and they basically get married there under wwx’s clans customs 🥺

23. every single time one of their siblings or youth drinking buddies third wheel or Knowingly Side eye

24. wwx wearing lz’s undergarments and wwx taking off his overclothes in front of lz’s uncle and brother and lz’s uncle Noticing and his face is literally just [hand to mouth]. power move of the century

25. lz disobeying his own family to protect wwx even when wwx was too far gone and receiving severe punishment by getting hundreds of lashes

26. lz asking wwx to Run Away With Him when everything was getting bad and his location of choice is where they first met lol

27. when lz gives wwx a lotus when they’re (lowkey cuddling) on the boat in lotus pier (paralleling with wwx telling him he wanted to show him lotus pier and how he’d give him a lotus..... bro)

28. every single time wwx attempts to strip in front of him (there has been several times) and lz’s look of Gay Panic

29. Breakup In The Rain and wwx telling lz if he was to die he wanted to die by his hand and its the most beautiful and tragic scene in the whole show

30. when lz gets alarmed wwx reaches for his hand 🥺 every single time!!

31. when wwx takes the shot for lz during a lan clan ceremony (he doesn’t like alcohol) hottest scene of all time

32. this quote: “when everyone admired my power and wanted to flatter me, you’re the only one who scolded me. But right now, when everyone wants me to die and hates me, you’re the only one standing by me.”

33. *wwx is resurrected* lz: ah shit here we go again

34. sometimes when you grow up you become an esteemed scholar. and sometimes your boyfriend becomes a necromancer. its fine

35. the extremely predictable sun/moon dynamic. the contrasting colour schemes. I rest my case

36. the slowburniest slowburn of over 20 years with the best emotional payoff. i deserve to see it

more to be added cause your girl is only 20-something eps in 🤡

#2020 #mitski’s i will plays in the distance

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thefilmsnob · 7 years ago

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Glen Coco’s Top 10 Mega Man Themes of All Time!

Can you think of a game that has better music than Mega Man? You can’t because it doesn’t exist. Well, it might, but I’m not really thinking it through. Let’s just say the people who composed the music for Mega Man should all be billionaires and knighted.

Because of my love for Mega Man and the songs that accompany him on his robojourney, I thought it would be swell to list the absolute greatest 10 theme songs from the classic series. It wasn’t easy narrowing the field to just 10 tracks considering this music is better than anything Mozart put out, but I feel like I’ve chosen the best songs and supported my decisions well despite having absolutely no experience in music criticism. You’ll see.

But, that’s neither here nor there. I now present the 10 greatest Mega Man themes of all time. I’ve added links under the entries, so you can drool over the music, as well as three runners up. Omitting these three songs is torturing me, but making tough decisions like this is why I get paid so much for this job hahaha just kidding, no one gets paid to write. Here’s the list:

Runners-Up

Flash Man (Mega Man 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_osNdk1mKRs

Spark Man (Mega Man 3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP-Yjn1E05M

Tomahawk Man (Mega Man 6)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz-3Xd43OGo

Top 10

#10. Cut Man (Mega Man)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAeIMQierX4&t=1s

Cut Man’s theme is a great example of early Nintendo music that was more chipper and grainier in a charming way. This song makes you feel excited to control Mega Man and see where the adventure takes you. It’s uplifting, yes, but with a hint of darkness that says, “You can do it, but be wary.” The opening seconds of this song are really choppy, too, which is appropriate for this choppy kind of villain. In fact, the whole song brings to mind a pair of scissors flying around chaotically, slicing the air as they go. The original Mega Man had some great tracks, but this was the most lively and, indeed, the best one of them all.

#9. Plant Man (Mega Man 6)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN_7Wy0RT00

This song from Plant Man’s rather unique forest stage is pretty complex. It starts out as a pleasant and optimistic tune as if it’s the soundtrack to an afternoon cruise on your day off. You think this carefree lifestyle can last forever, but then reality sinks in and the song breaks down to a very different tune as if the music is telling you, “Hey, listen, it’s not all fun and games. You have work to do.” And then it starts all over again, but now you feel even more prepared to take on the challenges that await.

#8. Shade Man (Mega Man 7)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxSWjJmz1Dk

Shade Man’s theme is both scary and epic. I mean, when is something ever scary and epic? It’s almost unheard of. The song plays in a graveyard/haunted house themed level and it fits perfectly. It starts out slow and eerie, but as it progresses it becomes more upbeat, providing you with that extra boost you need to get past the monsters. If this song isn’t called ‘Mega Man Faces His Fears’ then I feel sad for the creators. You just know this is the anthem Mega Man has in his head while exchanging blows with ghouls and goblins. In an installment with mediocre music and no other entries on this list, ‘Mega Man Faces His Fears’ shines through.

#7. Flame Man (Mega Man 6)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKHVUupbqx0

For a Mega Man theme, Flame Man’s has an unusually long build up. Most of these songs sound like they were written by someone on crack; they start fast and insane and stay that way for 20 seconds until they repeat. This one progresses slowly and it doesn’t seem entirely thrilling at first. It gets a little more exciting and you start to think, “Okay, I’m biting” and then all of a sudden this magnificent chorus hits you like a punch in the face providing an immediate blissful high...much like the high the crack head composers felt while writing the music. The song also has a delightful Middle Eastern influence that matches the level and boss designs.

#6. Splash Woman (Mega Man 9)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7qcJwJfyyk

Splash Woman’s music isn’t an instant hit. In fact, its merits were really only recognized by this observer when he was doing his research for this unnecessary article. But this song gets you right in the heart and soul. It’s a rare Mega Man song that is actually gentle and soothing, but also entirely motivating. There’s even an unusual poignancy during the flute section that produces an unreasonably strong emotional response. After the flutes, the song continues in a similar fashion as the opening, but with a little more urgency. This is a perfect song for an underwater level or if you need to feel like you’re being nurtured by a dear friend or loved one.

#5. Galaxy Man (Mega Man 9)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdDbbzuq1vY

This song is crack cocaine. It’s crack cocaine in music form. It may be the most frantic song in Mega Man history. There’s just so much energy in this one short minute of sound and it takes you places you never thought you’d go. As soon as you’re accustomed to a section of the song and feel like it’s reached its prime, it switches on you instantly and becomes even more intense, constantly pumping you up to battle more spaceships in this crazy outer space level. And, obviously, Galaxy Man requires a theme that sounds futuristic, so guess what? That’s what you get, friend. Just try not moving your head to this sound cocaine. If you say you can, we’re not friends because I’m not in the business of associating with liars.

#4. Wood Man (Mega Man 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvAAOmoEftg

That drum solo. That drum solo that opens this song is pure bliss. This is the sound of my childhood as well as the childhoods of about 92% of North Americans and 107% of the Japanese population. If you don’t like that drum solo...you’re an asshole. This gets you pumped up to kill robot tigers in the woods before you even have the chance to move Mr. Blue Boy. Following the intro, there’s a sharp, but exquisite breakdown leading into some of the most pleasing, memorable and inspirational music of the series. Near the end of the loop, the same great melody plays but in a higher pitch with an incredibly crisp sound that feels like it’s coming from the heavens. Ya, it’s slightly repetitive, but beauty on repeat is A-Ok in this guy’s books.

#3. Wily’s Castle: Stage 2 (Mega Man 9)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K9-SwNBMSY

Where did this song come from?!? Is this Mega Man? This is more of a symphony for crying out loud. The theme has such a different feel and is far more complex than any other song in the Mega Man catalogue, but it’s entirely welcome. A song like this could only be found in Wily’s Fortress. It’s so urgent and magical and screams Nintendo. And, whereas most Mega Man themes repeat after 30 seconds or so, this one keeps going for days and changes drastically throughout as if telling an epic story. There are so many moving parts to this anthem it’ll blow your mind. Fans might overlook the song because it’s tucked away in the ninth game in the middle of Wily’s crib, but this is one of the most unique pieces of music from the series. Who wrote this, a wizard?!?

#2. Metal Man (Mega Man 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y82DgpgrC0

I’m sure many fans would agree, but I consider the first Mega Man as more of a prelude to the rest of the series. It’s a good game, but highly difficult and unpolished, feeling more like an intriguing prototype. To me, Mega Man 2 is the true start of the series and any fan who knows anything about anything knows that you play Metal Man’s stage first. Ergo, this is the theme that introduces you to the world of Mega Man. When you hear this theme, you know you’re about to go on an epic adventure and it sets the tone perfectly, especially if you’re looking forward to playing all the subsequent games. In many ways, it’s the theme that produces the most excitement. At first, it feels like a fairly straightforward tune, but then you start to notice all these delightful nuances beneath the surface. Like metal (ahem) this song is both smooth and choppy and the shifts between the two qualities work perfectly. Altogether, this is an energetic, inspirational and complex tune that’ll pump you up for what’s to come.

#1. Wily’s Castle: Stage 1 & 2 (Mega Man 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJRoRt155mA&t=92s

This should be no surprise to fans of the series, not only because it tops so many lists of best Mega Man themes, but because this is quite possibly the greatest song known to mankind. You’ve just defeated all eight robot masters and now it’s time to battle your way through Dr. Wily’s fortress. It’s the beginning of the endgame for the boy robot and this music adds a giant exclamation point. It’s the real deal. The music starts aggressive and maintains that relentless fast pace throughout. There are undertones of doubt in the song that threaten to surface, but the optimism within casts a shadow on any negativity and wins the day. And the frequent shifts in pitch just add to the epic nature of this musical equivalent of intercourse. This truly majestic work of art is inspirational, catchy, complex, and just plain awesome. If this doesn’t pump you up for the rest of the game or series or even life itself, you’re a shell of a human being. I want this theme played at my wedding. Would it be wildly inappropriate? You bet. But this song is so good that I’m willing to ruin my wedding and countless lives just to force it upon the people I love most.

#mega man #video games #video game music #nintendo

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ambitiouslyamanda-blog · 7 years ago

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MY SELF CARE ROUTINE FOR WHEN THINGS GET BAD — 07.02.17

Self care; often slated with tips of "putting on a face mask" or "getting a massage" or "going on a road trip!". However for someone who deals with anxiety and other mental anguish everyday, these stereotypical suggestions don't do me any good.

This post is for the people who can't get out of bed in the morning and face the world due to their mental disorder; for the people who are too emotionally exhausted to put on a face mask or get their nails done. This is my practical self care routine, one that really helps me feel better in the long run.

Hopefully it might make you feel better, too.

1. I sleep.

When I'm feeling absolutely awful, I will push everything aside and lie down. Sleeping is a regenerative process that honestly makes me feel so much better knowing that for a few dreamy hours, I can effectively put my problems on the sidelines. Even taking a nap of 30 minutes can be beneficial to clearing your head during an incredibly stressful week. Who doesn't want to relax and drift off in a warm blanket, alone in their room? No one, that's who.

2. I take a bath.

Baths are nice, because they make you get out of bed to go relax somewhere else while also getting clean; making you feel like you achieved something. Taking a bath with essential oils, cooling salts, or even just bubbles can make you feel a little bit better, emotionally and physically.

3. I take the train home to be with my family.

When things are hard in Toronto, I will take the train home to be with my parents, who always know how to make me feel better and put things in a greater perspective. Being back with my loving family and pets is nice, and instills a sense of familiarity and comfort in my mood. Going home and eating my Mom's cooking and watching wrestling with my Dad is the ultimate comfort for me to dispel my anxiety and distract myself from everything else going on.

4. I talk to really close friends.

I don't really like talking about my problems. Two years ago, I had someone I really trusted disregard all of my issues for "attention" and "teen angst" and ever since then I've been pretty private about my mental shortcomings. However, this year, I knew if I kept everything inside, I would eventually explode, so I told my close friends about what was going on. While it was hard admitting my problems to people, it did make me feel lighter afterwards and helped my friends understand why I was acting out and withdrawing during that time. Getting the feelings out is scary, but something that, at least for me, had to be done to start recovering properly.

5. I schedule an appointment with my therapist.

Previously this year as well, one of my friends suggested I go to therapy. I took his suggestion with reluctance and went, but it made me feel so much better. Talking to a person who you barely know and spilling everything out is so liberating: so if you aren't comfortable talking to your friends or family about stuff, a therapist is a great option. I was lucky enough to get mine for free because of my university's health plan. Make sure to check your local options.

6. I journal.

I love my moleskin. I write about everything in it, whether my words are filled with anger and sorrow, or positivism and hopefulness. When I'm depressed and withdrawn from verbally speaking, writing it out is the next best thing. If I let everything well up inside of me, I will have a serious breakdown; so releasing my emotions somewhere is 100% necessary. I also like journaling for self care because it helps me take my mind off of everything when I start painting pages and drawing things as well.

7. I go for long walks alone.

Putting in my headphones and strutting down the street has always been my favourite way to practice self care. Inhaling the fresh air of the city and marveling at the skyscrapers and buildings is pivotal for helping me focus on something other than my current issues. With a good playlist and a heavy stride, it's easy to daydream and think of better places to be.

8. I make to do lists of minuscule tasks to feel like I did something.

On days where I'm really out of it -- like "don't want to get out of bed at all" out of it -- I make a list of small tasks to try to do so it makes me feel like I did something. For me personally, sitting around all day and not achieving anything makes me feel worse -- so even if it's just cleaning my room or walking the dogs, it puts me in a brighter mode and a more readied stance to continue on with recovery.

9. I listen to depressing music.

I have a "dull" playlist on Spotify for a reason -- and it's for the days where I feel, specifically, dull. Sad music exists for a reason. So if you're sad, don't listen to happier music if you don't want -- listen to the saddest, most miserable songs you have. Connect with the lyrics and the melancholy sound and realize tons of other people feel this way too.

10. I cry.

You can bet if I had a bad day at school or work, afterwards when I'm home, I'm probably going to be a crying heap on my floor. But that's okay! It took me a long time of trying to be "strong" to realize that crying and sobbing is fine. It's something I have to do to get everything out or else it builds up and makes me feel worse. Faking a smile only works for so long; you are human. You're allowed to cry. You're allowed to feel.

As I wrote out this list, I felt nervous and afraid to be admitting some of the things that I do to the internet, but at this point, I realize that there is nothing for me to be ashamed about.

If you practice self care, I would love to hear your suggestions down below.

Ambitiously,

Amanda

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#lifestyle

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ai-da-ice · 8 years ago

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Fan Account: ai-da-ice at TOKYO SWISH

(Before I get started, I just wanted to mention that the overall concert-going experience in Japan is very different from what I’m used to in America, so I’m going to write a separate journal about how to attend concerts in Japan and what is common etiquette and behavior in live houses. This will mainly focus on the concert itself!)

Since this is Da-iCE blog, I want to focus on the Da-iCE portions of the show, but stay tuned for a later update showcasing the other groups because they were awesome and I want you all to love them, too.

In Japan, idol culture is centered of Johnny’s on one side and 48-project groups on the other. There are some outliers with mass appeal such as LDH and Hello!Project idols, but otherwise, idol groups can struggle to find their market and place in the spotlight separate from the big league idols the nation is automatically focused on through management reputation. The SWISH concert series is answer to that issue. It joins together both established and up-and-coming male/mixed gender groups, and unites the fandoms of the groups who don’t have the big league market recognition but still have a lot to offer the industry through their modern, more genre bending approach to J-pop. The event is the dream of the multi-fandom crowd, which perfectly defines me as a J-pop fan. I’m all for seeing J-pop evolve and branching out to support the new groups who give it unique color.

The venue, Tokyo Dome City Hall, was filled around 5:20 ahead of the scheduled 6:00 start, and by 5:30, the opening acts were already hitting the stage. We started off first with MADKID (MDKD), a dance and vocal unit from Tokyo which served up a powerful hip-hop performance to kick off the night. They were followed up by a-X’s (pronounced “A-Cross”), a mixed gender trainee unit from avex formed by the winners of their boys and girls dance and vocal auditions. On top of their standard group performance, they also performed a fantastic dance cover of The Weeknd’s “Rockin’”.

Next up was our “bonus opening act”. This changed depending on which location the SWISH event happened in, but TOKYO SWISH’s bonus was Yudai x Keisuke Murakami, Yudai’s former groupmate in his Fukkin Gakuen days. Usually the venue announced who was performing next via an overhead screen, but since Yudai and Keisuke were “the bonus,” they were presented in somewhat of a surprise fashion. The lights were dimmed too low to see the stage, but we could all hear Yudai’s voice in his microphone set, so everyone reacted to him immediately. The two performed an original acoustic ballad entitled “Futari dake no ai”. I really hope this song makes an appearance on Keisuke’s debut album because it was gorgeous and I want you all to hear it. Yudai and Keisuke also did the thing Sota and Yudai often do during “A WHOLE NEW WORLD” and “Boku no Kiseki”-- the intense staring at each other during the love ballad. After their performance was over, a member of the audience screamed out “YUDAI-KUN!” and Yudai responded by cutely going “Kei-chan~!”

Afterwards, the main acts quickly followed. Mixed gender avex group lol was the first performer of the night, and they were followed by my second favorite J-pop group FlowBack. Both groups really set the tone for the night, that this generation of groups isn’t about the stereotypical “cute and quirky” label J-pop usually gets from outside of observers. These groups have EDM, hip-hop, and trap influences which give them a Westernized feel, without even getting into how broad and diverse their dance skills are. Anyone who still thinks of J-pop as only “AKB48,” please point them in the direction of these groups.

Following FlowBack was Ebidan’s massively underrated but supremely infectious PrizmaX, then X4, who genuinely was X4 that day since member Shota was not there due to an injury. Here’s to hoping for his quick recovery in time for X4′s tour performance tomorrow! Next up was Tensai Bonjin, who delivered one of the night’s most diverse sets by going from comedic, pump-up hip-hop to a heart-wrenching ballad while slaying the performances of both. Next was BRIDGET, the underrated visual and dance kings of avex, and then WHITE JAM, the masterminds behind several of Da-iCE’s hit songs and the improv Kings and Queen. Gashima and Shirose chose an audience member at random, asked for her name, and came up with a totally amazing free style rap on the spot using her name as the starting theme. PrismaX’s Daiki also came back to join them on their song “OVERSIZE.”

Last up of the night was Da-iCE!! Even before they were announced on the big screen, the arena lit up with their lightsticks, which the majority of the arena seemed to have-- they were one of the biggest draws of the night by far! They came out wearing the red and black gear they’ve been sporting for their between NEXT PHASE and Tonikaku HEY! performances, as you can see below:

Their first song of the evening for Da-iCE was “NEXT PHASE,” which showcased their completely knock-out choreography at its finest. They wrote this song to replace “FIGHT BACK” as their tour opener anthem, and it does it’s job of hyping everyone up to perfection. The dance was explosive and the vocals just as dynamic as you would expect from Yudai and Sota.

To keep things energetic (and sexy), they moved right along to “Chocolate Sympathy.” Which, as they have mentioned in interviews, involves chair dancing. Yes. Chair dancing. I thought I had prepared myself, but I was not ready to witness this in person. When they call this the legendary song of their album, they are not lying.

The group did a short greeting for their MC, but naturally had a lot of charm points since they’re Da-iCE. Taiki started off by saying “I’m the leader, Taiki Kudo,” which Toru followed up with “I’m not the leader, Toru Iwaoka” and Yudai adding “I’m also not the leader, Yudai Ohno.” When it came to Sota, he was immediately trolled by the members per tradition, but brushed it off quickly to introduce himself. Hayate, naturally, received no trolling and remains the apple of the group’s eye.

Next up was my favorite performance of the night, “Koigokoro.” The music video leaves a heart-wrenching impression enough, but the in-person vocals and the way both Yudai and Sota portray them is almost physically painful in the most beautiful way. When Sota went for his high note, you could almost feel the raw agony coming from him. The dance line was also powerful during this performance, showcasing their high-flying turns during the song’s climax.

Keeping the atmosphere serious, they moved along into “TWO AS ONE,” their fan-dedicated anthem from their album. Once again, the emotions of this song carried over even stronger in person, especially thanks to the complex and interpretive choreography by the dance line. One of the point moves of the choreography involved putting their hands together in the shape of a dice, which was beautiful to see, especially since it perfectly matched the shape of their updated lightstick.

Last, they closed with their summer anthem and crowd pleaser “PARADIVE”. For this one, we were all waving our slogan towels and singing along with them, so I think this was one of the moments that best united all the many fandoms in the room. And I always thought the moment Hayate came to the center of the dance formation during the breakdown was iconic, and seeing it live just confirmed it. Everyone went wild for that part.

Of course, a concert isn’t a concert without an encore, but since there were so many groups, this one was unique. Sota, Yudai, Tensai Bonjin’s MiNE, WHITE JAM’s Shirose, and BRIDGET’s Shun, the night’s harmony masters, were selected to perform two original songs for the encore before inviting all the groups onstage again to do a final bow and take a commemorative photo. After a closing anthem from the DJ, the long concert came to a close.

SWISH was overall a exciting and energetic event which not only gives groups of varying public recognition a chance to promote themselves, but also unites the fandoms of these groups and gives them a sense of being family, much in the way that DANZEN TV does for boy group fandoms. The groups are all close to each other in real life, so to see them onstage together was a moving experience. I also think these groups are truly a new era for J-pop-- they represent a shift in genre that I think will really appeal to diverse audiences, if they are willing to give J-pop the chance it deserves. And, of course, seeing Da-iCE again was a heart pounding experience that I’m happy I had another chance to feel. They are some of the strongest live performers I have ever witnessed from their stable singing to their powerhouse dancing. Thank you, TOKYO SWISH, for giving me the chance to see them and experience the delightful lives of other fantastic contemporary performers, too!

#da-ice #fan account #flowback #x4 #lol #bridget #tensai bonjin #white jam #prismaX #madkid #a-x's

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jessicakehoe · 5 years ago

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These Celebs Are Destigmatizing Mental Illness

Many campaigns have worked to normalize the discussion around mental health (Bell Let’s Talk and CAMH’s One Brave Night among them). But one thing that really reaches the masses is when a celebrity speaks out about his or her struggle to spread the message that it’s okay to have a mental illness; it doesn’t make you weak.

Anyone who has ever suffered from depression or anxiety—whether temporary or chronic—knows the feeling of wanting to crawl into bed and stay there until things seem okay again. And somehow when these celebrities who seem to have it all come out and say that they actually don’t have their shit together, it is encouraging to us. By focusing on their health, it normalizes the conversation and gives us the courage to take care of ourselves (and be vocal about it).

Below, see the celebrities who are helping to fight the stigma against mental health by being open about their own struggles. Want to learn more about mental illness? Here are 5 myths about anxiety and depression, and information about different types of treatment.

Ariana Grande

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A post shared by Ariana Grande (@arianagrande) on Mar 30, 2019 at 9:57am PDT

In British Vogue’s July 2018 issue, Ariana Grande opened up on her experience with PTSD after the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing. “It’s hard to talk about because so many people have suffered such severe tremendous loss. But, yeah, it’s a real thing,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”

In November 2018, the singer/songwriter dropped a single titled “thank u, next,” dedicated to all of her exes, including the late-Mac Miller (who died this past September of a drug overdose) and ex-fiancé Pete Davidson, which resulted in fans wondering who her therapist is. “Therapy has saved my life so many times,” Grande tweeted in response. “If you’re afraid to ask for help, don’t be.”

photography via instagram/@arianagrande

In an Instagram story posted on April 11, Grande shared a side-by-side image of a healthy brain and a brain affected by PTSD. She also included an image of what is allegedly her brain, which appears to show incredibly high levels of PTSD. “Not a joke,” she captioned the story. In a follow-up story, Grande posted a selfie containing the captions “life is wild,” “she’s trying her muthafukin best,” and “my brain is tired.”

Prince Harry

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Day two of #SussexRoyalTour is underway, and The Duke and Duchess have joined young South Africans and @WavesForChange to focus on mental health and take part in ‘surf therapy’. • Hundreds of young people from Cape Town’s townships meet every week at Monwabisi beach to surf, but also share stories with mentors and talk through the daily challenges they face. Their Royal Highnesses were able to hear how the sessions are building trust, confidence, and belonging, and they also got to join in as children took part in ‘power hand’, which teaches them how to keep calm down reflect on strengths. While on the beach The Duke and Duchess met @TheLunchBoxFund – which was one of the charities they nominated to benefit from donations following the birth of their son, Archie. Almost 30,000 meals are provided by the charity every day across South Africa, including for three @WavesForChange projects. And before they left The Duke and Duchess joined the Commonwealth Litter Programme (CLiP) – which was teaching the surfers about the impact of plastic waste on the ocean. #RoyalVisitSouthAfrica • Photo ©️ photos EMPICS / PA images / SussexRoyal

A post shared by The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (@sussexroyal) on Sep 24, 2019 at 5:00am PDT

The Duke of Sussex has spoken out extensively about his own mental health journey, and the trauma he suffered as a result of losing his mother, Princess Diana, at a young age. In an interview with Bryony Gordon for her podcast about mental health, Mad World, the royal said, “I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well.”

“I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and sort of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle,” he added.

After seeking out counselling and learning to open up about his struggles with friends and family, the royal co-founded Heads Together, a mental health awareness campaign, with Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2016. While on a recent trip to South Africa with Meghan Markle, the royal couple met with Waves For Change, an organization promoting mental wellbeing through surf therapy, and spoke out about the need to counter the stigma against mental illness in our society.

“I think most of the stigma is around mental illness [and] we need to separate the two… mental health, which is every single one of us, and mental illness, which could be every single one of us,” he said. “I think they need to be separated; the mental health element touches on so much of what we’re exposed to, these experiences that these kids and every single one of us have been through. Everyone has experienced trauma or likely to experience trauma at some point during their lives. We need to try, not [to] eradicate it, but to learn from previous generations so there’s not a perpetual cycle.”

Selena Gomez

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I have a lot to be thankful for this year.. My year has been the hardest yet most rewarding one yet. I've finally fought the fight of not 'being enough'. I have only wanted to reflect the love you guys have given me for years and show how important it is to take care of YOU. By grace through faith. Kindness always wins. I love you guys. God bless

A post shared by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) on Nov 24, 2016 at 6:21pm PST

In August 2016, Selena Gomez announced that she would be taking a break from her career to deal with anxiety, depression and panic attacks associated with lupus (an autoimmune condition from which she suffers). She made a return to the spotlight in November that year at the American Music Awards, where she delivered an emotional, heartfelt speech, briefly touching on her battle with mental health issues.

“I had to stop because I had everything and I was absolutely broken inside. I kept it all together enough to where I would never let you down but I kept it too much together to where I let myself down,” she said. “If you are broken, you do not have to stay broken.”

The songstress also opened up about her issues with mental health in the April 2017 issue of Vogue (which she covered). “Tours are a really lonely place for me,” she told the magazine. “My self-esteem was shot. I was depressed, anxious. I started to have panic attacks right before getting onstage, or right after leaving the stage. Basically I felt I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t capable. I felt I wasn’t giving my fans anything, and they could see it—which, I think, was a complete distortion.”

She revealed she spent 90 days in a mental health facility in Tennessee, surrendering her cell phone and taking part in various forms of therapy. And while Gomez is the second most-followed person on Instagram, she told Vogue she no longer had it on her phone, and an assistant had her password.

“It felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn’t want to care about,” she said. “I always end up feeling like shit when I look at Instagram. Which is why I’m kind of under the radar, ghosting it a bit.”

Camila Cabello

Former Fifth Harmony member Camila Cabello made headlines in September 2016 after she left the stage early during a performance under the guise of a wardrobe malfunction. She later revealed, on Snapchat, that the cause was excessive anxiety, even tweeting, “just wanna sleep for 3 days.”

Cabello had already been open about her struggles with anxiety prior to the incident, however, telling Billboard that 2015 was a “low” for her, personally.

“I was having terrible anxiety, nonstop. My heart would beat really fast the whole day. Two hours after I woke up, I’d need a nap because my body was so hyperactive,” she recalled. “I was scared of what would happen to me, of the things my brain might tell me. I realized the stuff I thought was important isn’t worth my health. Now I write in a diary every day, work out and meditate.”

In March 2017, the Cuban-born star revealed to Latina magazine that she also deals with obsessive compulsive disorder. “It was just totally out of control,” Cabello told the magazine of her OCD. “I would wake up with a super-accelerated heartbeat and really negative, intrusive, compulsive thoughts. I was so inside my head, and I didn’t know what was happening.”

She continued, “I totally understand now, being in it, why there shouldn’t be such a stigma on mental illness, because it’s a pretty common thing for people. But you can get help. If you’re dedicated to making it better, you can—because I’m in a much better place now. I started reading books about it and it really helped a lot when I understood [the illness], and that [the thoughts I was having] weren’t real. Sometimes you have to remind yourself to slow down and take care of yourself.”

Zayn Malik

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A post shared by Zayn Malik (@zayn) on Aug 14, 2018 at 10:01pm PDT

In June 2016, former One Direction member Zayn Malik cancelled a U.K. concert due to anxiety. He made the announcement on Instagram, writing, “Unfortunately, my anxiety that has haunted me throughout the last few months has gotten the better of me. With the magnitude of the live event, I have suffered the worst anxiety of my career.”

Later that year, Malik revealed in his memoir, Pillow Talk, that panic attacks have stopped him from performing on more than one occasion. “I just couldn’t go through with it,” he wrote. “Mentally, the anxiety had won. Physically, I knew I couldn’t function. I would have to pull out.”

And while a member of his team offered to say he was sick, Malik insisted on being open about his struggle. “I was done with putting out statements that masked what was really going on. I wanted to tell the truth. Anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of; it affects millions of people every day,” he explained. “I don’t want to say I’m sick. I want to tell people what’s going on, and I’m not gonna be ashamed of what’s happening.”

Cara Delevingne

In 2016, Cara Delevingne took to Twitter to reveal she took a break from modelling due to depression. “I suffer from depression and was a model during a particularly rough patch of self hatred,” she explained. Later that year, she told Esquire she had been struggling with mental illness since she was a teen, more specifically, after she discovered her mother’s drug addiction.

“I was suicidal. I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I realized how lucky and privileged I was, but all I wanted to do was die,” she told the magazine, adding a six-month break from school and medication might have helped save her life at 16.

However, Cara stopped the meds at age 18, saying “I get depressed still but I would rather learn to figure it out myself rather then be dependant on meds, ever.”

Adele

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Auckland / Mt Smart Stadium / Mar 25

A post shared by Adele (@adele) on Mar 25, 2017 at 9:41pm PDT

Despite being a 15-time Grammy winner, Adele still experiences stage fright. In March 2017, she admitted to her New Zealand concertgoers that she may never tour again, due to the ongoing issue. “Touring isn’t something I’m good at–applause makes me feel a bit vulnerable. I don’t know if I will ever tour again,” she told the audience. “I get so nervous with live performances that I’m too frightened to try anything new. It’s actually getting worse. Or it’s just not getting better, so I feel like it’s getting worse, because it should’ve gotten better by now.”

Lady Gaga

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I felt like a princess in custom @tiffanyandco made just for me for the #GoldenGlobes 🤗 The Aurora necklace was named after the Aurora Borealis as an homage to #AStarIsBorn 🌟 #TiffanyAndCo

A post shared by Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) on Jan 8, 2019 at 10:29am PST

In 2016, Lady Gaga revealed she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after she was raped at age 19. “I suffer from PTSD, I’ve never told anyone that before,” she said on the Today show in December 2016. “But the kindness that’s been shown to me, by doctors as well as family and friends, has really saved my life.”

More recently, Gaga opened up about her mental health struggles in a conversation with Prince William, as part of the royal’s Heads Together #oktosay series, which aims to end the stigma with the help of celebrities.

“For me, waking up every day and feeling sad and going on stage is something that is very hard to describe. There’s a lot of shame attached to mental illness. You feel like something’s wrong with you,” she told the Duke of Cambridge via FaceTime. “In my life, I go, ‘Oh my goodness, look at all these beautiful, wonderful things that I have. I should be so happy,’ but you can’t help it if, in the morning when you wake up, you are so tired, you are so sad, you are so full of anxiety and the shakes that you can barely think.”

But despite her hardships, the A Star is Born actress told William “the best thing that could come out of my mental illness was to share it with other people.”

“I feel like we are not hiding anymore, we’re starting to talk, and that’s what we need to do really,” she said.

Demi Lovato

Demi Lovato is one of the most vocal mental health awareness advocates in the biz. The former Disney star, who has battled drug and alcohol addictions, bipolar disorder, self-harm and an eating disorder for years underwent rehab in 2010 and in 2013. Now, Lovato is much healthier and is committed to ending the stigma against mental illness. In 2015, she launched the Be Vocal campaign as a way to encourage individuals struggling with mental illness to talk about what they’re going through.

“I think the more people vocalize what they’re going through—their experience or just simply educating themselves so that they can learn more about what they’re talking about—that’s going to be the key to creating a conversation about mental illness and making it more understood,” she told HuffPost. “There’s a lack of compassion for people who have mental illnesses and there’s a lot of judgment. Once you make people realize that mental illness can happen to anybody—and it’s not anybody’s fault—then I think they’ll become more understanding of what mental illness really is.”

Jennifer Lawrence

Photography by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Jennifer Lawrence opened up about her struggle with anxiety in 2013, telling Madame Figaro that she began experiencing symptoms as a preteen. “When my mother told me about my childhood, she always told me that there was like a light in me, a spark that inspired me constantly,” Lawrence told the magazine. “When I started school, the light went out. It was never known what it was, a kind of social anxiety.”

She eventually went to seek help from a therapist and turned to acting as a form of self-therapy. She also revealed to the New York Times that she manages her anxiety with the use of prescription meds.

Emma Stone

Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Oscar winner Emma Stone told Rolling Stone in 2016 that she experienced bouts of anxiety and panic attacks as a child. “My anxiety was constant,” she said. “I would ask my mom a hundred times how the day was gonna lay out. What time was she gonna drop me off? Where was she gonna be? What would happen at lunch? Feeling nauseous. At a certain point, I couldn’t go to friends’ houses anymore–I could barely get out the door to school.”

She did reveal, however, that therapy and acting, specifically improv and sketch comedy, is what helped her work through it. “You have to be present in improv, and that’s the antithesis of anxiety,” she explained.

Chrissy Teigen

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My stoop buddy

A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Apr 29, 2017 at 6:47pm PDT

Chrissy Teigen is never one to hold back, but she shocked fans when she penned an essay for Glamour in 2017 on her struggle with postpartum depression. “I couldn’t figure out why I was so unhappy. I blamed it on being tired and possibly growing out of the role: ‘Maybe I’m just not a goofy person anymore. Maybe I’m just supposed to be a mom,'” she wrote, later adding “postpartum does not discriminate.”

Months later, Teigen finally saw her family doctor, where she got her diagnosis. She began taking antidepressants. “I’m speaking up now because I want people to know it can happen to anybody and I don’t want people who have it to feel embarrassed or to feel alone. I also don’t want to pretend like I know everything about postpartum depression, because it can be different for everybody. But one thing I do know is that—for me—just merely being open about it helps.”

Troian Bellisario

In November 2016, Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario revealed via a voting PSA that she struggled with an eating disorder when she was younger. She said it was early detection and mental healthcare that saved her. “If I had just been shunned to the side as not having ‘real problems’, I don’t know that I would be living today,” she explained. “I just want to make sure that everybody has the same opportunity for treatment that I have, and I think that we have to make sure that our government invests in those programs.”

Troian shared her story on her struggles with anorexia in her film Feed, which she wrote and directed. “It was not easy; it was like engaging with an addiction,” she told Interview magazine of revisiting her story, adding that working on the film was “like poking a sleeping dragon.” “One of the things I really wanted the film to explore was that once you have this relationship, once you have this mental illness or this disease, it never really goes away.”

And just like many others who suffer from mental illness, Bellisario said she feels like no one truly understands what she went through. “Still to this day, I couldn’t get anyone—even the people who loved me the most, even my boyfriend or my mother or my father—to understand what that experience was truly like for me,” she said. “It was about my eating disorder, and I found there were so many people who thought that it was about losing weight or being skinny, and I couldn’t quite get them to understand that it was about control on a very, very literal level.”

Gina Rodriguez

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One year after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, there is still work to be done. Thank you @ricky_martin for giving us all an opportunity to continue to contribute to the reconstruction of our beautiful island of Puerto Rico. #allin4pr #miislabonita ❤️🙌🏽 link in bio 🇵🇷🇵🇷🇵🇷

A post shared by Gina Rodriguez-LoCicero (@hereisgina) on Oct 26, 2018 at 4:12pm PDT

Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez got candid about her struggle with anxiety in a moving Instagram post. “I suffer from anxiety,” she captioned the video, which sees her makeup-free in a New York Yankees cap. “And watching this clip I could see how anxious I was but I empathize with myself. I wanted to protect her and tell her it’s ok to be anxious, there is nothing different or strange about having anxiety and I will prevail.”

Shawn Mendes

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Je t’aime France ! 🇫🇷 x

A post shared by Shawn Mendes (@shawnmendes) on Nov 10, 2018 at 2:31pm PST

It may be hard to believe that Canada’s very own heartthrob has had his fair share of anxious episodes, but he has. In April 2018, the singer-songwriter told The Sun in an interview that he had seen a therapist a few times. “I found I was closing myself off from everybody, thinking that would help me battle [my anxiety], then realizing the only way I was going to battle it was completely opening up and letting people in,” Mendes said.

Said anxiety was chronicled in his single “In My Blood” (Lyrics: Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in, sometimes I feel like giving up, no medicine is strong enough, someone help me.)

“All pain is temporary, and the thing is with anxiety, and why it’s such a hard thing for people who don’t have it to understand, is that it is very random and it hits you at moments you don’t expect it. Sometimes it lasts two hours, sometimes it lasts a day and sometimes it lasts five minutes,” he said.

Sarah Hyland

Back in December 2018, Sarah Hyland opened up about experiencing suicidal thoughts after her body rejected a kidney donated by her dad. The Modern Family star, who has had a slew of health problems her whole life, appeared on Ellen in early January 2019 and spoke about her depression.

“After 26, 27 years of just always being sick and being in chronic pain every single day—and [you] don’t know when you’re going to have the next good day—it’s really, really hard…” she said.

“I would write letters in my head to loved ones of why I did it, and my reasoning behind it, and how it wasn’t anybody’s fault,” the 28-year-old revealed, adding that she was “very, very, very close,” to taking her own life.

When asked how she overcame her suicidal thoughts and depression, Hyland said that she confided in a close friend (“I finally said it out loud to someone… just saying it out loud helped immensely, because I kept it to myself for months and months at a time.”) who urged her to see a therapist.

The post These Celebs Are Destigmatizing Mental Illness appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

These Celebs Are Destigmatizing Mental Illness published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

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lindyhunt · 6 years ago

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These Celebs Are De-Stigmatizing Mental Illness

Many campaigns have worked to normalize the discussion around mental health (Bell’s Let’s Talk and CAMH’s One Brave Night among them). But one thing that really reaches the masses is when a celebrity speaks out about his or her struggle to spread the message that it’s OK to have mental illness; it doesn’t make you weak.

Anyone who has ever suffered from depression or anxiety—whether temporary or chronic—knows the feeling of wanting to crawl into bed and stay there until things seem OK again. And somehow when these celebrities who seem to have it all come out and say that they actually don’t have their shit together, it is encouraging to us. By focusing on their health, it normalizes the conversation and gives us the courage to take care of ourselves (and be vocal about it). One can’t help but wonder whether more openness could’ve helped musical wonders of the past who turned to addictions and those who had publicly documented breakdowns.

Selena Gomez

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A post shared by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) on Nov 24, 2016 at 6:21pm PST

Camila Cabello

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#BGT here I cooooome !!!! gonna b singing #cryingintheclub woooop

A post shared by camila (@camila_cabello) on May 30, 2017 at 5:06am PDT

Cabello had already been open about her struggles with anxiety prior to the incident, however, telling Billboard that 2015 was a “low” for her, personally.

Zayn Malik

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A post shared by Zayn Malik (@zayn) on Aug 14, 2018 at 10:01pm PDT

Cara Delevingne

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Had the most incredible time at @finolhu_maldives this holiday. Thank you @gentlemonster for hooking me up with the shades 🕶 📸 by @james_suckling

A post shared by Cara Delevingne (@caradelevingne) on Jan 10, 2019 at 12:26am PST

However, Cara stopped the meds at age 18, saying “I get depressed still but I would rather learn to figure it out myself rather then be dependant on meds, ever.”

Adele

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Auckland / Mt Smart Stadium / Mar 25

A post shared by Adele (@adele) on Mar 25, 2017 at 9:41pm PDT

Lady Gaga

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I felt like a princess in custom @tiffanyandco made just for me for the #GoldenGlobes 🤗 The Aurora necklace was named after the Aurora Borealis as an homage to #AStarIsBorn 🌟 #TiffanyAndCo

A post shared by Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) on Jan 8, 2019 at 10:29am PST

But despite her hardships, the A Star is Born actress told William “the best thing that could come out of my mental illness was to share it with other people.”

“I feel like we are not hiding anymore, we’re starting to talk, and that’s what we need to do really,” she said.

Demi Lovato

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A post shared by Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) on May 9, 2017 at 2:42pm PDT

Jennifer Lawrence

Photography by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Emma Stone

Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Chrissy Teigen

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My stoop buddy

A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Apr 29, 2017 at 6:47pm PDT

Troian Bellisario

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Thanks @coveteur I truly am a creepy eavesdropper. 😉 (📸 by @weston.wells )

A post shared by Troian Bellisario (@sleepinthegardn) on May 10, 2017 at 6:53am PDT

Gina Rodriguez

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A post shared by Gina Rodriguez (@hereisgina) on Oct 26, 2018 at 4:12pm PDT

Ariana Grande

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A post shared by Ariana Grande (@arianagrande) on Nov 6, 2018 at 7:11pm PST

Shawn Mendes

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Je t’aime France ! 🇫🇷 x

A post shared by Shawn Mendes (@shawnmendes) on Nov 10, 2018 at 2:31pm PST

Said anxiety was chronicled in his single “In My Blood” (Lyrics: Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in, sometimes I feel like giving up, no medicine is strong enough, someone help me.)

Sarah Hyland

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Velvet dragon scaled 🧜‍♀️ dripping in 💎 for the #goldenglobes @instylemagazine #instylewbglobes

A post shared by Sarah Hyland (@sarahhyland) on Jan 8, 2019 at 9:29am PST

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jakehglover · 6 years ago

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The Benefits and Potential Risks of Lucid Dreaming

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By Dr. Mercola

Healthy sleep consists of several stages, and you cycle through these stages four to five times during the nightly sleep cycle. As a result, you’re progressively descending into deep sleep and ascending toward lighter states of sleep several times, and this cycling is tremendously important, both from a biological and psychological perspective.

During stages 1 and 2, your brain remains active as it begins the editing process where decisions are made about which memories to store and which to discard. During stages 3 and 4, you enter into a deeper, almost coma-like state, during which the actual physiological cleansing and detoxification processes in the brain1 take place.

Your brain cells actually shrink by about 60 percent during this deep sleep phase. This creates more space in-between the cells, giving your cerebrospinal fluid more space to flush out the debris. Lastly, in stage 5, you enter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, where dreaming takes place.

All of these stages are important, and it’s important to cycle through them enough times each night — especially the deeper stages, and the longest and deepest REM cycle typically begins around six hours after falling asleep. If you only sleep five or six hours, you completely miss this important stage, and when deep sleep stages are missed, your brain gets clogged with debris associated with Alzheimer’s disease. You also forgo the psychological benefits of dreaming.

Why Dream?

Even if you accept the idea that sleep is important, you might not consider dreaming to be very high on your list of biological imperatives. Alas, you would be wrong. Dreaming actually serves a number of important functions. (Later I’ll also address the potential benefits of lucid dreaming, i.e., when you become aware that you’re dreaming, while dreaming.)

Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and a sleep and dream expert, suggests thinking about the stages of deep sleep and REM sleep as different kinds of nourishment. “Sleep and dreams are a bit like water and food to the psyche, to the soul, to the mind,” he says, and for health, both are necessary. According to Naiman:

“Dreaming is essential. In recent years, there’s been a lot of research underscoring the fact that dreaming has functions very different from sleep. I think of the dream as being a digestive and assimilating process for information ...

If we think about all of the information that we’re exposed to in the course of a single day — the conversations, the things we read, the things we see, hear and think about, and the things we just experience all-around through our senses — all that information can be understood as something we consumed.

What happens in REM sleep is all of this information that we’ve metaphorically swallowed is digested and assimilated. It’s sifted through. Again, in its wisdom … the brain decides what it’s going to keep and what it’s going to let go of.

As this information is digested, that process of assimilation shows up metaphorically in the dream, in the images of the dream. The bottom line here is that if you don’t dream well, it has a profoundly negative impact on your memory. In a deeper sense, it’s as if you stopped growing psychologically. You stopped adding to who you are.”

Dreaming Benefits Creativity and Protects Mental Health

Professor Matthew Walker, Ph.D., founder and director of the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science and author of "Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams," takes it a step further, noting that “Dreaming is essentially a time when we all become flagrantly psychotic.”

However, while this may sound disconcerting, it’s actually a good thing, as it both unleashes creativity2 and protects your mental health. When dreaming is suppressed by chronic sleep deprivation, that’s when you run a very real risk of experiencing a psychiatric breakdown.

In a very real sense, when you forgo sleep for extended periods of time, your brain enters the REM cycle while you’re awake. In other words, your brain is dreaming even though you’re awake, resulting in wild hallucinations, delusions, mood swings and paranoia. While this is perfectly healthy during sleep, it becomes extremely problematic during wakefulness.

Less extreme cases of sleep deprivation typically involve short-temperedness, moodiness, illogical thinking and irrational behavior. The reason for this is because activity in your prefrontal cortex — the “CEO of your brain” that rules rationality and logical thinking — is dampened. If you frequently feel emotionally off-kilter or struggle with a short fuse, chances are you might manage your emotions a whole lot better were you to get more sleep on a nightly basis.

Deep Sleep Aids Problem-Solving and Provides Life Meaning

Research3,4 suggests non-REM sleep and REM sleep contribute to creative problem-solving in different albeit complementary ways. During non-REM sleep, your brain replays memories that are thematically related and organizes new information into useful categories or thematic schemas.

Then, during REM sleep, your brain starts to combine these categories, creating novel points of connection between them, however farfetched or unlikely — hence the “impossible” aspects of many dreams. On the other hand, this random linking of information is also how many new inventions are conceived.

As old and new memories are integrated to form a new whole, new possible futures are also imagined. This is what you actually perceive as “the action” of your dream. The sum total of these processes also allows you to extract meaning from life events.

Enter Lucid Dreaming

But what about lucid dreaming? As mentioned, lucid dreaming is when you suddenly become aware that you’re dreaming. It’s like waking up, albeit you’re still in the dreamscape. When this happens, provided you don’t fully awake but stay in the dream, you have the ability to shape and alter your dream at will.

While this may sound like a novel concept, an estimated 20 to 30 percent of the population are natural lucid dreamers, and research5 has found about 77 percent of adults will experience it at least one spontaneous episode of lucid dreaming. Medical News Today reports:6

“The very first record of lucid dreaming appears to feature in the treatise ‘On Dreams’ by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. In it, he describes an instance of self-awareness during a dream state.

‘[If] the sleeper perceives that he is asleep, and is conscious of the sleeping state during which the perception comes before his mind, it presents itself still, but something within him speaks to this effect: 'The image of Koriskos presents itself, but the real Koriskos is not present,' he wrote …

For some people, it occurs spontaneously. However, others train themselves to start dreaming lucidly, or to become better at it … Other people may be able to influence their own actions within the dream, or parts of the dream itself …

An experienced lucid dreamer might be able to ‘go on an adventure’ and interact with people and things in a way that they may not be able to do in real life.”

Is Lucid Dreaming Real?

In the featured video, Walker discusses lucid dreaming, noting that researchers have been able to objectively confirm — using fMRI scanners — that when someone claims to be doing something in a lucid dream, they are in fact doing it.

In one study, participants were asked to clench their fist, which lit up certain parts of their brain. They were then asked to go to enter a lucid dream state, and clench their fist again, which resulted in the same brain regions being activated.

Other recent research7 cited by Scientific American8 discovered that when you are lucid dreaming, your eye movements are near identical to the eye movements you make when you’re actually viewing something. Called “smooth pursuit” or “smooth tracking,” these eye movements do not occur when you’re simply imagining an object or scene. According to the authors:

“Our findings suggest that … the visual imagery that occurs during REM sleep is more similar to perception than imagination. The data also show that the neural circuitry of smooth pursuit can be driven by a visual percept in the absence of retinal stimulation and that specific voluntary shifts in the direction of experienced gaze within REM sleep dreams are accompanied by corresponding rotations of the physical eyes.”

Therapeutic Aspects of Lucid Dreaming

According to Denholm Aspy, a lucid dreaming researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia,9 lucid dreaming is not only fun,10 it can be quite therapeutic, especially if you struggle with phobias, recurring nightmares and/or post-traumatic stress disorder.

It can also improve quality of life for those with physical disabilities that prevent mobility, and improve athletic performance or physical rehabilitation after injury through dream rehearsals. On the other hand, it’s best avoided if you have certain mental health problems. Schizophrenia, for example, can be exacerbated by lucid dreaming. Aspy tells Medical News Today:11

"If you can help someone who's having nightmares to become lucid during that nightmare, then that gives them the ability to exert control over themselves or over the nightmare itself. [L]et's say you're being attacked by someone in a nightmare.

You could try to talk to the attacker. You could ask them 'Why are you appearing in my dreams?' or 'What do you need to resolve this conflict with me?' Some people take on superpowers or special abilities, [so] they can fight back against the attacker … [or] escape …

If a person has a particular phobia, then their lucid dream environment ... provides an interesting opportunity to do things like exposure therapy, where you gradually expose yourself to the thing you're afraid of, in an attempt to gradually overcome that fear."

Lucid Dreaming Techniques

Can you learn lucid dreaming? Yes. Aspy claims more than half of the people he’s taught his lucid dreaming technique to are able to have lucid dreams within one week.12 Before you even begin your lucid dreaming experiment, it can be very helpful to simply become more aware of your dreams in general, by keeping a detailed dream journal.

Each morning, write down everything you can remember from your dream or dreams. Aside from training your dream recall, dream journaling can also be helpful by showing you any recurrent themes, which later can act as triggers to help you realize that you’re dreaming.

Mindfulness meditation also trains your mind to remain aware, which can transfer into your dream state, allowing you to become aware that you’re dreaming. Following is a quick summary of three lucid dreaming techniques that have been scientifically identified as being the most effective:13,14,15

1. Reality testing — Perform reality checks during your waking state. Every couple of hours, ask yourself, “Am I dreaming right now?” Over time, this habit will enter your dreams as well, cluing you in to the fact that, yes, you are dreaming. At the same time, perform a physical reality check.

For example, you might try putting your hand through a wall, or look at an object, look away and then look back. When you’re dreaming, items will tend to look blurry and/or look different each time you look back at them.

2. Mnemonic induction — Before bed, repeat to yourself “Tonight, I will notice that I am dreaming.” Consistently repeated over time, your mind will become accustomed to the idea of becoming lucid while dreaming.

3. ‘Waking back to bed’ — This technique, which I do not recommend, involves setting an alarm to wake yourself up after six hours of sleep. After staying awake for 15 to 20 minutes, you then go back to sleep. The idea is that you will then go right in to REM sleep, and if you intend to remain lucid, it will be easier to do so.

The drawback is obvious — you’re disrupting your sleep, which will have health consequences. So, I cannot in good conscience recommend this strategy. It doesn’t seem worth it to disrupt your sleep cycle just for a chance of lucid dreaming. Instead, work on the first two techniques.

Potential Adverse Effects

While Aspy has not found lucid dreaming to impinge on sleep quality or produce adverse effects in those who are otherwise mentally stable, at least one recent study16 found that “Use of deliberate induction techniques was positively associated with psychopathology and sleep problems.”

What’s more, when participants continued with regular lucid dream induction for two months, it resulted in an increase in “dissociation and schizotypy symptoms.” According to these authors, “We conclude that lucidity should not be considered as necessarily suggestive of well-being; lucid dreaming may be positive or negative, depending on lucidity characteristics. Additionally, deliberate lucid dreaming induction may harbor negative long-term risk.”

Also keep in mind that sleep paralysis typically occurs during REM sleep (to keep your body from acting out the dream), and if you enter a lucid state between dreaming and wakefulness, you may find yourself unable to move. This can be very distressing, depending on the nature of your dream. Once you wake up fully, the paralysis will dissipate.

Regardless of whether you feel like getting into lucid dreaming, remember that sleep is a foundational aspect of good health, and so is dreaming. Most adults need about eight hours of sleep each night, and again, your deepest REM sleep doesn’t occur until you’ve been asleep for about six hours. So, if you’re only sleeping five or six hours, you’re missing out on this important sleep cycle.

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/10/04/lucid-dreaming-benefits-and-potential-risks.aspx

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ronaldmrashid · 7 years ago

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Financial Samurai Goals 2018: Back To Early Retirement Life!

My biggest disappointment in 2017 was pushing my mind and my body past their limits. At the age of 40, I no longer have the energy to do what I’ve been used to doing all my life, yet I worked more than I ever had before. I was a stubborn mule who couldn’t accept the fact that I had aged. As a result, I injured my ankle, back, elbow and quads.

I also had a breakdown one evening when I couldn’t put my son to bed after the third try at around midnight. Hearing my baby cry is a heart-stinging experience. After an hour and a half of singing and cradling, I gave up on giving my wife the rest she needed and texted her to relieve me.

I felt like such a failure. I had spent years building a lifestyle business in order to be able to be a good father. Yet I lost it because I was working way too much on the business instead of storing up energy reserves for the late night shift.

It was at this moment I realized that going down the path of full-time caretaker with my wife while also keeping Financial Samurai going at a fervent pace wasn’t going to work out. I was no longer my happy go lucky pleasant self. Here are some goals that will make life better in 2018!

Goals For 2018

1) Return to early retirement life. As this site has grown more people are reaching out for help or contacting me with business opportunities. It’s become overwhelming. No longer is Financial Samurai a casual, unknown site where I can say and do what I please.

I want to respond to everybody but I can’t. Therefore, I created a massive out of office e-mail with answers to my most frequent requests. But it was ineffective. One business partner e-mailed me on Dec 22, then again on Dec 26, then again on Jan 2. It’s good he’s hustling, but what happened to boundaries, especially during the holidays?

In 2018 two of my goals are to publish only 100 articles (from 175) and to start having more fun with the topics without stressing about the quality of the content. While the business component of this site is exciting, it has become too much. Just like with day job income, after you make a certain amount of business income, there is no more additional happiness. Instead, misery often ensues due to increased demands for your time.

Early retirement life is all about being carefree and only doing what I enjoy.

2) For six days a week, provide an average six hours of JOYFUL assistance to my wife. For the seventh day, provide four hours of joyful assistance for a total of 40 hours a week.

As a stay at home dad, I provided around eight hours of support to my wife in 2017. For example, I would always relieve her for 2-3 hours in the morning, depending on how difficult the night was so she could shower, go to the bathroom, catch up on reading, and do her own thing. Then I’d provide care for 2-3 hours in the afternoon, and another 3-4 hours in the evening.

After a while, I realized that a lot of my assistance was not 100% done with a smile because I was always sleep deprived and sometimes frustrated after having already worked so many hours that same day on the business. As a result, tension sometimes ensued. Thankfully, she started doing the entire night after the third month and things got better. And now that my publishing goal is 35% less, things should get even better.

Providing six hours a day of happy care is better than eight hours a day of grumpy care. I know I’m not alone with regards to relationship tension during the first year of a baby’s life. More than 80% of couples experience a huge drop (40% – 90%) in marital quality during the transition to parenthood. Research also says folks who are sleep deprived typically suffer a 91% loss in their ability to regulate strong emotions, while the decline in general cognitive skill is equally dramatic. Just think about how dangerous it is to drive drowsy.

3) Increase business productivity. In other words, find a way to do less and maximize my existing content to boost traffic and revenue. I will never spend more than four hours a day on the business in 2018. Further, I will cease responding to comment and e-mail questions whose answers are obviously discernible in the post and encourage readers to use the search box on my website for answers.

Not bad for 10 days of work over the holidays

With time freed up from not responding to obvious questions, I plan on building new readership by answering questions on Quora, a Q&A social platform. I’ve always known about the benefits of Quora, but never bothered to try until the Christmas holiday when a reader asked whether I was sleep deprived in my 2017 review post even though that’s what I wrote I was in my intro. Instead of answering his question, I responded to a question on Quora that ended up bringing in a lot of new traffic.

I plan on building up my authority on everything San Francisco, Real Estate, and Investing related. Even though I’ve lived in San Francisco for 17 years, own SF real estate, worked in finance, consulted for startups, and have this site, very few people in the SF media have reached out. If I can become a go-to resource, then productivity should increase.

After 10 days of trying, Quora has ranked me as a “Most Viewed Writer” in Real Estate and San Francisco. The ranking only lasts for 30 days, but I’m sure with consistency, the results will grow.

4) Spend more time doing work in the hot tub. Through voice dictation, I’m actually writing this post in my hot tub right now. Not only am I utilizing my hot tub investment more, but I’m getting some stress relief while also producing work. Of course I’ll still have to do all the editing on the laptop, but this is a good way to really focus on living the early retirement lifestyle. Whenever I can knock out two or three things in one activity, I get very happy.

5) Aggressively spend more money on help. Until recently, we’ve always done all the lawn work, housecleaning, and childcare. There’s something therapeutic about gardening and cleaning. But now that we are tired parents, we need to prioritize! I really need help at this stage because my lower back is still tender. It’s kind of torturous to crawl around and chase a baby for a couple hours with a bad back.

Finally, I’m looking to hire someone who has a disability do some freelance work online. Roughly 15% of the world’s population, or one billion people experience some form of disability. Not only will this person get paid a fair hourly wage, this person will also gain some valuable insights about the online business world. Leave a comment with a brief intro about yourself with your e-mail address if interested.

6) Continue to help people of all types in different ways. This means publish two times a week, produce at least 30 podcasts, see my foster child mentee at least 24 times, coach high school tennis, and participate in more fundraising events. Actively helping others by getting involved in their lives is one of the best benefits of early retirement.

7) Stop feeling so damn guilty for not doing more. I have a tortured soul. Since I was 13, I’ve always had the belief that if I can, I must because a friend of mine died in a car accident and was never given the chance. But with this attitude, I feel a tremendous weight on my shoulders to be the financial provider and a caregiver for my son, even though my wife is a stay-at-home parent and we should be enough money.

I sought some advice about getting rid of guilt from a father who told me, “Raising a child is pretty easy if you can go away for 12 hours a day. Out of sight, out of mind.” In other words, he was suggesting that I find a day job like many fathers. But I don’t want to go that route.

Whenever I feel bad for not doing enough, I will remind myself that being able to provide my wife and me the freedom to take care of our son during his crucial first five years of life should count for a lot. There are many parents who reluctantly have to go back to work after 1-3 months.

8) Get regular physical checkups. One in three people will get cancer. And one in four people will die from cancer. The closest thing to curing cancer is early detection. However, most cancer is detected only after a patient feels symptoms. By stage three, only 8% of cancer patients live past five years. I bring up cancer because an old colleague of mine died of breast cancer at age 44. She leaves behind two children and a husband. I cannot imagine the pain of leaving Earth before I see my son grow up to be a strong and independent man who finds someone who loves him as much as we do.

As much as I hate full physicals, I will get one. And I will ask my doctor to do more blood work tests to see if they can find any anomalies. If I feel pain, I won’t be afraid to see the doctor. After all, I’m paying close to $700 a month for healthcare! Good thing I did some blood work in mid-2017 for my life insurance policy. After checking for 22 variables, the only anomaly was a slightly elevated cholesterol reading.

9) Find a way to grow net worth by $2 million. What’s a personal finance site without a concrete financial goal. With the estate tax threshold doubling to $22 million for couples, why not shoot for more wealth while taking things down a notch. The more you have, the more time and money you have to help other people. I assign only a 30% chance my investment returns plus savings will achieve this goal. Therefore, the only way to get a $2 million boost is if I invent something that takes off, get some kind of huge JV offer for my company, build a new revenue channel, or get really lucky with an investment. As always, I’ll be tracking my net worth closely to make sure my risk exposure is appropriate.

Excited About Early Retirement

One benefit about returning to the kick back early retirement lifestyle is that I’ll be writing more about early retirement. It’s really a wonderful stage that I think everybody should shoot for. It just didn’t last longer than a year for me due to my strong desire to maximize Financial Samurai’s potential.

2018 is the year I’ve been waiting for. To finally relax and be a present dad after spending so much time growing passive income and building a lifestyle business. Our little one is growing up so fast. We’ve got to cherish every moment. It’s highly likely he’ll be our only child given our advanced ages.

Here’s to letting go in 2018! May your money work hard for you so you don’t have to.

Readers, share with me some of your goals for 2018. How do you know when enough is enough regarding money and building a business? How are you able to let go and not maximize your potential? If you are a stay at home parent, how many hours of help do you get from your partner a day on average?

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