#you to can make a 16 year old laugh real hard via a well placed vine reference

[brainrotzora]

these things are always happening to the ones i like :////////

anyways the lighting in this dungeon is so nice

didn't get any good pics bc i was too busy dungeoning but so pretty...best dungeon music so far goes to snowcloak though btw

[nat-20s]

If anybody's wondering what the Kids These Days find funny great news! It's still vine references!

[zrtranscripts]

Home Front, Mission 15: Phil & Zoe’s Cinderella Story

Once Upon a Workout

~

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Hello, ci-ti-zens, and welcome back to Radio Lock-In. I know last time it was Radio Phil, but since Zoe’s contributing via ROFFLEnet from the kennel where she's riding out the zombie horde, this felt a bit more apt. Also less likely to end in my having to fend off an attack by a pack of trained murder cats. Not that that's something I worry about late at night or anything. [laughs]

Anyway, it's time to start your warm-ups. Running on the spot, bit of stretching, whatever floats your boat. Oh, um, and uh, grab a yoga mat or um, large towel. You're going to be needing them. Because today, Radio Lock-In has a special treat: your very own Phil and Zoe-style fairy tale, with music breaks, ministry workouts, and a few minor updates to one of Ye Olde classic tales.

Uh, why fairy tales, you may ask? Well, obviously Zoe's a fan, what with all the talking cartoon animals in the Disney versions. But um, I just find them comforting. Have done since I was a kid. They're simple. Good wins, evil is vanquished, love is eternal, and magic is real. Well, I don't know about you, but all that sounds really good right now.

So without further ado, drum roll please! [taps hands rapidly on knees and makes a cymbal crash sound with his mouth] Cinderella! Or as Zoe calls it, the one with the posh outfits and the horse mice and in need of a rewrite from someone who has a better sense of women's shoe sizes.

But before we get to that, we'll start our story the way Cinderella starts hers: cleaning while wishing she was at a ball. Grab the nearest household item you can find and dance away while I play an appropriately jaunty tune. Ready? Dance!

~

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Wonderful! Now to catch you up, as our tale opens, everyone's looking forward to a lavish royal ball in the kingdom of... whatever it's called. But Cinderella can't go. Instead of dancing, her stepmother forces her to constantly tidy up.

I'll be honest, this sounds a lot like what I did as an excuse to get out of school discos. Well, at least until I learned a few slick dance moves from Daniel “Snake Leg” Simons. And uh, no, Zoe, I will not be showing you the patented Simons kick and slither. Luckily, Cinderella has her own snake legs: a fairy godmother who will whisk her away to the ball with some special fairy dust magic.

We'll be helping the fairy godmother out by distributing magic dust of our own with a few uppercuts! Get into a magic stance. Boxing stance, really, but we're in a story here. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, your knees slightly bent, fists up as if you're holding tight to a handful of fairy dust. Now you're ready for your magic uppercut. Rotate your body towards the arm in front and punch upwards with your back fist. Magic! Now rotate back to your starting position and you're ready for your next uppercut of magic.

I'd say it'll take about one minute to get Cinderella ready for the ball, so get to uppercutting. Start now. 15 seconds in. The dirty rags have transformed into a dress. Halfway there. The old pumpkin has become a magic carriage. Switch legs so that your other one is in front and keep the magic coming. Only 15 seconds left to go. The mice are horses now! All she needs are magic shoes! Let's turn those everyday shoes into glass slippers.

All done! Time to admire your handiwork. Feel free to keep doing magic uppercuts during this song or just twirl around as you do your own imaginary transformation.

~

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Now fully transformed, Cinderella heads to the ball, which I'd call a glamorous spectacle of light and gold and at least four different types of hors-doeuvres, but Zoe considers to be probably pretty boring, what with all the ball gowns and lack of a proper DJ.

Yeah, I'm fairly sure our Zoe always spent a lot of her youth in roller discos and is probably holding our imaginary ball to unreasonably high standards. But in honor of her anti-ball sentiments, we'll do some wall sits, just like the bored ball-goers.

For this, you'll need a wall that you can stand in front of. Stand with your back to the wall and lean back until your back is pressed against it, but you're still standing upright. Adjust your feet so that they’re shoulder-width apart and about a step in front of the wall, then slide your back down the wall until your thighs and calves make 90 degree angles with your back, head, and backside still against the wall.

We're gonna stay like that for 60 seconds, if we can, starting now. 15 seconds in. Why Zolinda, so lovely to see you here this evening. Halfway done. I know, such a boring ball. I'm too tired to even eat these delicious cheese canapes. Just 15 seconds to go. At least the prince is looking well. Maybe he'll meet his bride tonight, who decides to turn to a parliamentary system of rule! And done.

Stand back up and shake out those legs. A mysterious stranger has just entered the ballroom. Spoiler, it's Cinderella. All right, Cinderellas, I'll play an entrance song and you can do your best glass slippered red carpet walk, or another round of wall sits if you'd like. I'm gonna have some of those imaginary canapes. They imaginary sound imaginary delicious.

~

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And we're back. Just in time. Cinderella is now in the middle of an exciting tango with the prince, who wants to know more about her. Uh, naturally, per Zoe, they take the opportunity to have an in-depth conversation about ruling a kingdom in a way that allows for the voice of the people to be heard, gender equality, and whether avocado is a fruit, all while dipping and sashaying.

But uh, just as Cinderella is coming up with the excellent idea to test avocados’ fruitiness by putting it on toast, the clock begins to strike midnight. [a bell chimes twice] Once it hits 12 AM, all of that fairy magic will disappear, so Cinderella has to make a run for it.

That means it's time for high knees. Run in place, bringing your knees up with each step as if you're running back to your carriage before the clock strikes midnight. Let's go, starting now. 15 seconds in. You've made it out the front door of the palace, expertly dodging the guards. Halfway there. Uh, you're at the top of the longest flight of stairs ever. Head to the bottom. Only 15 seconds left to go. You've made it down the stairs, leaving a glass slipper behind in the process. That's okay, your carriage is just ahead. Made it! Now it's time to head home and pretend you've been cleaning all night. Practice looking casual yet hard-working during this next song.

~

PHIL CHEESEMAN: We're almost to the end of our tale. It's the next day and no one suspects that Cinderella was the previous evening's it girl, the talk of the town, the belle of the, well, ball. The prince, who Zoe notes foolishly left his glasses off while dancing and therefore couldn't see the face of the woman he fell for, is searching for her by trying to fit the glass slipper on everyone he sees. Uh, according to Zoe, that is only the fifth worst way to pick a potential mate, but she says she will not reveal one through four except to say that one of them involves lime jelly and exactly 16 eels.

And with that somewhat discomforting thought, let's help our prince out with some knee folds. They're just like lifting your foot for a shoe fitting. More or less, anyway. Start by lying down on your back. Grab your yoga mat or towel to put underneath you so you've got something comfortable to lie on. Now bring your knees up so that they’re bent and the soles of your feet are flat on the floor and your toes are pointing straight forward. Your arms should be by your sides, your shoulders relaxed and chest open. [sighs] Relaxing right?

Now as you inhale, use your abdominal muscles to lift your right leg off the floor while keeping your hips against the ground. Keep your knees bent and lift your leg until your thigh is at a 90 degrees angle from your body and your lower leg is parallel with the floor. They call this table position because, well, it looks like your lower legs are the top of a table. Now exhale as you lower your leg back down to the floor. Now do the same with your left leg, and continue alternating for the next minute.

Go! These aren't meant to be fast kicks. Keep the movement slow and controlled. Imagine someone trying endless shoes on your feet. 15 seconds in, but all the feet that the glass slipper has been tried on are too wide! Keep going. Halfway through, and now the feet are too narrow! 15 seconds of feet left to try. You're almost there. Done. That's it, that's the one. You've found Cinderella! And now you deserve a break. Shoe fitting and storytelling are both hard work. I'll put on a nice cooldown song so you can stretch out your muscles from all that fairy taling.

~

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And that's the story of a very active Cinderella. Fun! I almost forgot we were exercising. And Zoe says it went off more or less without a hitch, even if I did leave off a detailed epilogue about Cinderella teaming up with the fairy godmother to create a magical haute couture fashion line. Uh, she says half the fun of fairy tales is that they're so simple that you get to add your own spin to it, make the story your own. Works for me, as long as we still get to throw in a happily ever after. I miss those.

Anyway, let us know on ROFFLEnet if you like fairy tales as much as we do and we'll put our heads together to come up with another. Maybe... Rapunzel. [laughs] I definitely feel like I can relate to someone who spends half her life trapped in a tower and is rapidly growing a very distressing amount of hair. Whatever we do pick and however we remix it, I have to say, there's still something comforting about retelling a classic. These stories have lasted hundreds of years, through war and disease and love and zombies, and if they can keep going, so can we.

~

[wolffupdates]

Alex Wolff on 'Castle in the Ground,' Producing a Movie with Nicolas Cage and His 'Jumanji' Future

The actor also reveals the text his friend Cage sent him about playing Joe Exotic.

[This story contains spoilers for Castle in the Ground.]

At 22, Alex Wolff has already had a full 16-year career in Hollywood. From his supernatural horror hit, Hereditary, to his expanding role in the Jumanji franchise, Wolff has even written and directed his own film, The Cat and the Moon. Wolff’s latest role as Henry in Castle in the Ground checks another box that is consistent with most acclaimed actors as his grieving, opioid-addicted character required dramatic weight loss. Since he was already quite lean, losing 30 pounds took its toll on the New York native.

“I only had a couple weeks before I started shooting. I know that [my diet] just didn’t turn out very well, and it turned out to be super unhealthy at the end of it,” Wolff tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I had a lot of problems, but I’ve now found out since then that there’s some totally better, more healthy ways that you can do it. And a can of tuna and an apple is not that.”

At the end of 2019, Wolff wrapped production on Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, and the experience went so well that he’s already collaborating with one of his co-stars on another project. That co-star happens to be one Nicolas Cage.

“I have a movie that I’m going to direct that I wrote and I’m really, really excited about it. And without spoiling too much, Nic is actually producing it with me,” Wolff shares. “I’m going to be starring in it… But yeah, I’d say it’s a character drama with elements of thriller. It’s definitely a psychological drama.”

In a conversation with THR, Wolff discusses Castle in the Ground’s impact on him, his Jumanji future and the text exchange he had with Cage regarding Cage’s new role as Joe Exotic.

You lost 30 pounds for Castle in the Ground. Did you subscribe to Christian Bale’s Machinist diet of one apple and one can of tuna per day?

Oh God. Yeah, I’ve heard of that. I’ve heard of a lot of different diets. I mean, mine was really interesting because I only had a couple weeks before I started shooting. It was like two or two-and-a-half weeks. I know that mine just didn’t turn out very well, and it turned out to be super unhealthy at the end of it. I had a lot of problems, but I’ve now found out since then that there’s some totally better, more healthy ways that you can do it. And a can of tuna and an apple is not that. (Laughs.)

Does a character like Henry ever frighten you to the point of being more cautious in your own life?

Interesting. I think more than anything, it really made me have empathy for people who make bad decisions. More than make me not make bad decisions, it makes me have more empathy for the people who make these kinds of decisions with addiction and everything. I see them more humanly.

As Henry showed, one wrong choice can create a ripple effect that has complete control over you.

Yeah, it just seems like this kind of thing happens so quickly. That’s the scariest part of the whole thing. This can happen so quickly once you start dipping your toe in this pool of these drugs and this kind of lifestyle. You just get completely sucked in, swept up, chewed up and spit out.

When your characters go through a difficult experience and you have to play those feelings and emotions that come with the territory, has that ever prepared you, to some degree, for a similar experience in real life?

I think it’s more the opposite. I mean, there are certain eerie times when life imitates art, but it’s more that my life experience becomes applicable to certain movies and characters. I can do some transference, but I don’t really think that anything that I’ve done in a movie has prepared me for anything in life. What I’ve done in movies has been a collection of my own experience.

I loved the voicemail scene between you and Imogen (Poots). Did you guys rehearse that scene since the timing is so precise and comedic?

I love that scene. We didn’t do much rehearsal in this movie at all. It was pretty guerilla warfare. (Laughs.) We could just go for it. So, we may have run through it a few times, but really, the rehearsal was us just kind of figuring it out as it goes along.

At first, I thought Henry was angling for a romantic relationship with Imogen’s character, Ana, but then I quickly realized that he wanted to transfer the caregiving of his mother (Neve Campbell) onto someone else who was sick in her own way. Do you also think he was dependent on caring for a sick person, as opposed to some romantic fixation?

Maybe he had a crush or something, but I think it’s kind of deeper. He needed anything. He needed anything from her — whether it was romantic or to just be around her, I think he just needed somebody in his life to fill the void of his mom. I don’t think it’s as simple and as clean-cut as her replacing his mom, but I think it’s just that he needs something. He needs some family.

[This next question contains spoilers for Castle in the Ground’s ending.]

The movie ends on an ambiguous, full-circle moment, but given the unforgiving and relentless nature of the opioid crisis, I think history repeated itself in Henry’s mom’s bedroom. Was that your interpretation as well?

Well, I almost want to keep the end a secret for people who haven’t seen it. So, I kind of want that to be one of these big surprises. But I think you’re right. I mean, I’m thinking about it, but I think you’re right. He kind of gives into it eventually. I think he protests, but he lets her do it. I think it’s this moment where, yeah, it’s like history repeating itself. It’s like a prophecy or premonition that he’s going to end up doing it. I kind of want people going in, thinking that it’s going to go a different direction or thinking that it’s going to all come up daisies. You think it’s going to go that way, and then, I think it’s important that it’s like “nope.” It should end super hopeless and punishing because that’s how this actually ends. This is how these drugs usually end.

I loved how aggressively blunt Henry could be at times. He was pretty reserved for the most part, but he did not hold back when it came to Ana’s friends. For example, Tom Cullen’s character said to him, “You seem like a good kid,” and Henry responded, “Thanks, I kind of thought you were a piece of shit...”

(Laughs.) Yeah, I think it’s his only way of survival. I think he is shy, and I love that too. That was really a good element in the script, and I think we worked on beefing that up a little bit. He’s like a little boy, and I think little boys are like that sometimes. They put on a front of toughing it out, hence “I kind of thought you were a piece of shit...” But I think it’s also his way of giving and receiving love. I think it’s how he and Ana bond. I think it’s just his way of connecting.

Henry’s girlfriend, Rachel (Star Slade), had her own life while he was taking care of his mother. She was also going off to school soon. Was Henry’s decision to break up with her partially inspired by the fact that she didn’t need him as much as his mother or Ana did?

That’s interesting. That’s a really good question, but I didn’t see it that way. Maybe to a certain degree, but I would say that instead of her being more independent, I think it was about the fact that she was almost too good for him at a time when he couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t handle any kind of positive thing in his life. He wanted to be miserable. He wanted to follow the danger and follow his id, not what was healthy for him.

You started acting at six years old. Once you became old enough to make your own choices, did you ever sit down and assess whether you wanted to keep acting or not? Obviously, you made the right call, but sometimes, we hold on to things just because they’re all we’ve ever known.

I think about quitting acting every single day. I have a very love-hate relationship with it. The second I start a movie or when I’m not good in a scene, I’m like, “Fuck, I don’t want to do this anymore. This is hard.” You have to, in equal measure, be completely in love with it and need to do it. It feels like a need. It feels super deep and heartfelt.

Given the sad state of the world, have you done a screen test or chemistry read with another actor yet via Zoom?

Yeah, I’ve done a bunch of monologues and stuff with people, which has been really fun. I’ve been writing monologues and sending them to my friends, and I think that’s been really good. I’ve done some play readings on Zoom, but it’s not the same. It’s not great, but it’s okay. It’s better than nothing. The lag time is better than I actually expected, but it’s just still not perfect. It just isn’t.

You were an uncredited partygoer in Cory Finley’s Thoroughbreds, and you just had a supporting role in his latest film, Bad Education, which is excellent. Clearly, Cory felt guilty over the size of your Thoroughbreds part, right?

(Laughs.) He better have! He better feel guilty. No, I was shooting Patriots Day like an hour away from where they were shooting Thoroughbreds, and I knew the producer. So, I came just to hang out, and they just threw me in there, which was fun. But yeah, he’d better feel guilty for not giving me a bigger part. (Laughs.)

In Bad Education, I was quite fond of your outburst after Geraldine Viswanathan’s character pressures your character to publish her exposé, but he’s torn because of his recommendation letter from Hugh Jackman’s character.

That was kind of a fun day because Cory doesn’t usually have people improvising, but I kind of just went for it.

Jumanji: The Next Level left things in a very tantalizing place as the Jumanji game world has returned to the real world a la the original Robin Williams movie. Are you intrigued by the possibility of your real-life characters acting alongside the avatar characters for a change?

Oh my God, yeah. That better happen. That would be so amazing. I want that. Yeah, I think it would be full circle. To come back to the real world.

I think you just came up with the title.

Jumanji: Full Circle? Yeah, it better be that. Jumanji: Full Circle, I like that. The idea of all the kids, The Rock, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover and everybody else in the real world makes me so unbelievably excited.

Recently, your name was on a very exciting list of actors in connection with a new movie from one of my favorite filmmakers, M. Night Shyamalan. Can you say anything about this?

(Wolff imitates static noise.) We’re going through a tunnel actually. Sorry, I’m going through a tunnel right now. There’s a tunnel in my house. Can you hear that? (Laughs.)

You’ve heard this quite a bit, but Hereditary’s car accident scene is one of the most disturbing scenes I’ve ever seen. Oftentimes, when the cast and crew know they have to shoot something dark like that, they find ways to keep the set as light as possible. Was that the case that day?

No, actually. That was not the case. For me, sometimes if they’re trying to make it too light, it’s kind of distracting. So, I sometimes have to just stay in the zone. I kind of just was wearing my headphones and trying to stay in the spirit of it. I think it’s sometimes too hard to completely jump in and out.

Did that scene mess with your head for a little while after shooting it? No pun intended.

(Laughs.) I think it did mess with my head in the moment. I think the whole movie was kind of difficult. It kind of stuck with me. I think that scene in particular definitely stuck with me at least for a few days. But I think that movie was like a constant attention-taker. I think it haunted me for a while.

This is a shameless question, but have you texted your friend Nic Cage about his brand-new role as Joe Exotic [of Tiger King fame]?

Of course, I have. Of course, I have. I said, “Are you playing Joe Exotic?” and he texted me back (Wolff imitates Cage.) “You bet your ass I am.”

It’s perfect casting.

When I first saw it, I said the only person who could possibly play him in a fictional world is Nic. I just feel like that guy is so larger than life, and anybody else would not be able to go there. Nic is the only person who can go there, I think.

Are you itching to direct again?

Yeah, man. I have a movie that I’m going to direct that I wrote and I’m really, really excited about it. And without spoiling too much, Nic is actually producing it with me. Yeah, I’m really excited about it.

Can you reveal the genre yet?

I would say it’s a character drama, and I’m going to be starring in it. I’m really excited about it. But yeah, I’d say it’s a character drama with elements of thriller. It’s definitely a psychological drama.

***

Castle in the Ground is now available on Digital HD and VOD.

[sophieellisbextorarchives]

Sequins, songs, kids... dance! This is what saved SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR’s sanity during lockdown

‘I think I’m doing this for me.’ But for now, we need to head back to her house, where Sonny has appeared, and Mickey is delighted to see his mum. Plates are waiting to be spun, and as I let myself out, Jesse is putting on a show in the kitchen, with Sophie as the audience, sitting under the disco ball. ....and her wonderfully joyous discos filmed in the family kitchen helped lift the nation’s spirits too. She tells Hattie Crisell why Friday nights round at hers became so precious

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-8549299/Sequins-songs-kids-dance-saved-SOPHIE-ELLIS-BEXTORs-sanity-lockdown.html

Sophie Ellis-Bextor opens the door to me with a toddler in her arms – smiley 18-month-old Mickey – and her four-year-old son Jesse behind her, his hair a deep shade of copper. ‘You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen,’ I tell him, genuinely quite dazzled, and he replies bashfully, ‘Well, I’ve just had it cut.’

Welcome to Sophie’s world: a large and glittering house in West London, packed to the rafters with kitsch, toys, cats and boys. I don’t know how many cats are around, but the boys number five: Mickey, Jesse, eight-year-old Ray, 11-year-old Kit and 16-year-old Sonny. Managing the lot are the singer, her husband Richard Jones (bass guitar player with The Feeling and the supergroup Loup GarouX), and a nanny, who joins them Monday to Friday during the working day. ‘I used to have a nanny who was with us all the time, and to be honest I felt like it was too much,’ says Sophie. ‘It’s fine if it’s my thing that I think about 24 hours a day, but I think it’s healthy for other people to have their own life away from it all. It’s five kids – it’s a lot.’

It certainly is, and it’s hard to imagine how demanding it must have been during lockdown, when the only one missing was the nanny. The public got a glimpse of this when Sophie performed a weekly series of ‘kitchen discos’, broadcasting them live via Instagram, her husband filming on his phone. They launched these shows during the bleakest part of the pandemic, and the good will that emanated from them was enormously cheering. She would appear in a sequined jumpsuit or rainbow-striped dress, a pair of platforms at the end of her mile-long legs, and would serenade the camera while children wandered casually in and out of view. Sometimes her teenage son would jump in to rescue the baby from a trailing wire, or one of the boys would need a cuddle, and their mother would pull them in close, keeping her other hand on the mic.

It was charming chaos. The music encompassed hits from Sophie’s back catalogue such as ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ and ‘Take Me Home’ – or ‘Stay at Home’, as she rechristened it – but also crowd-pleasing covers and theatrical numbers from shows such as Grease. For the audience, it offered uplifting relief from the frightening reality of the time: climbing death rates and isolation. It was comfort music, I say. ‘Exactly,’ she agrees. ‘And disco’s always had that for me anyway. It’s so euphoric and joyful, and it’s complex. In disco you can have the most painful, heartbreaking scenarios, but they’re in among something that makes you want to put your hands in the air and sing along. I think music can allow you the space to feel joy and anxiety at once.’

I am delighted to find that one end of their large kitchen still looks very much as it did, with the disco ball and a half-deflated helium balloon in place over the sofa. She confirms that it’s more or less always like this, perhaps minus the tinsel curtain. Colour and fun are everywhere in the house, from the framed retro artworks filling every wall, to the pinball machine in pride of place. At the other end of the kitchen, a diner-style menu-board for the kids bears the words, ‘Be polite or no service.’

Leaving the children with the nanny, Sophie and I head out to chat on a bench in the park. She’s wearing an embroidered navy dress and a red fluffy cardigan, with red lipstick that has mostly worn off; at 41, she’s truly beautiful, with very pale green eyes. Despite what we’ve seen from her on Instagram, it hasn’t been an easy time. For one thing, there was the fall from her bike in June that left her in hospital with a gory head wound. When I mention it, though, she brushes it off with, ‘I cannot dine out on that any more.’ Then she adds, ‘I mean, I don’t recommend cycling off a towpath – it did hurt.’

‘I knew that this was something that was happening in millions of households. I do worry about all my parents – I say “all” because I’ve got step-parents as well – but I think really it was focused on John, because he’s so vulnerable. It’s such a weird, torturous thing isn’t it for human beings, if you say that hanging out with someone you love is the one thing that might actually endanger them? How can you wrap your head around that?’

She hasn’t been thrilled with the government messaging around the virus. ‘“Stay at home” is clear and concise and all ages get it. “Stay alert”? I hardly ever feel alert. I don’t feel alert now.

And we’ve all shown we’re good at following guidelines that make sense, but you can’t keep bending it for people. Look at the effect when the rules were made flexible.’ She seems to be referring obliquely to the Dominic Cummings/Barnard Castle debacle. ‘We all thought, “Oh well, if we could have been going off and having day trips all this time, why was I staying at home and not seeing my mum, who lives ten minutes away?” I found that really tough.’

The kitchen discos were as much for her and the family as they were for the audience. ‘It was Richard’s idea. One day we were making plans and doing stuff, and the next day it was like, boomph, everything shut down. Suddenly we were just home all the time, all work cancelled, all the festivals… I was supposed to be going to Australia, New Zealand, I had gigs all round Europe. And Richard was, like, “Well, why don’t we do a gig here, and it gives us something to do and a bit of fun?” I think we missed everybody.’

Performing during that time, even via Instagram, gave her a huge sense of connection, she says. ‘I honestly don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had that, and I don’t know how it would have been for our family, because it became really precious.’ She’s now planning a Kitchen Disco Tour next May (there will also be an album, out this October), and hopes it will offer audiences a cathartic experience. ‘I want to provide a place where people can get lost in the moment. I want them to walk out of there and go, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t know how much I needed that.”’

It was no surprise to her boys to see her dressed up and performing; Mickey sleeps in the room where she keeps her fantastic stage wardrobe, and they’ve all been with her to festivals, gigs and recording studios. It was clear from their low-key presence in the kitchen discos (she left it up to them whether they wanted to be there or not) that they’re not fazed by it. ‘The older I’ve got, the more the me at home and the me on stage is the same person anyway,’ she says. Her first solo album came out almost 20 years ago; this one will be her eighth.

She’s also just celebrated her 15th wedding anniversary with Richard. Theirs was a whirlwind romance that stuck: ‘I found out I was having a baby after only about six weeks,’ she says with a smile. ‘We’d known each other for a while – he’d been in my band – but we’d literally just started dating and I hadn’t even really told anybody.’ Sonny was born two months prematurely, thus arriving only eight months after they’d got together.

And they’ve now got him almost to adulthood, I say. ‘Yeah, and he’s lovely; he’s his own person. You know, parenthood is so much more reactive than I ever thought,’ she says. ‘I thought it was all about what you put in. It’s not. I realised it the day I had him: I looked at this tiny baby and I thought, “Oh my goodness, you’re Sonny, and now I’ve got to help you show me who you are and what you need from me.”’

To raise five children while continually working is no mean feat, and she mentions that there were tense moments during lockdown. But she and Richard clearly make a good team. ‘I guess the thing that’s often not celebrated as much in long-term relationships – and I think this goes for family members, friends, all sorts of relationships where there’s love – is that we actually really like each other,’ she says. ‘I really like who Richard is, and I respect him and I like spending time with him.’

She took an extended break after Sonny came along, following a difficult birth. ‘But to be honest, the more babies I’ve had and the older I’ve got, the more confident I’ve become about what I can do around being pregnant and having kids,’ she says. ‘I’ve been better with the last couple at just keeping going with the work either side of it. I have a job where I can basically call the shots a bit. I’m very lucky with that and I totally exploit it. Also I like it if I do a big gig and I’m six months pregnant – I feel quite clever,’ she laughs.

The challenges of this complicated life have inspired Sophie’s new project – the podcast Spinning Plates, on which she chats to other working mums, including Caitlin Moran, Fearne Cotton, the mummy blogger Candice Brathwaite, and her own mother Janet. ‘I’ve got such a brilliant array of women, and honestly it feels like a privilege to sit there for an hour and ask them loads of nosy stuff,’ she says. ‘Obviously the springboard is the idea of the working mother, but actually what really unites us is we’re all women, and there are so many things about being a modern woman… It’s a rich pot of stuff to go through, really.’

She loved having the chance to interview her mum. ‘In my head she’s always been this real trailblazer and very confident. She never seemed to have any guilt with any of her work, and I’m glad, because it gave me a good role model of “It’s OK for me to be selfish enough to have my work and keep it separate if I want to, and do the things I want to do.” I don’t think I would have been confident enough if I hadn’t had a mum like that; I’ve struggled a bit to give myself permission sometimes even with that.’

Another chat, with Yvonne Telford, founder of the fashion brand Kemi Telford, made her realise that at times she’s too self-critical. ‘She said she hates it when she hears women say, “Oh, I’m such an idiot,” and I was, like, “God, I do that all the time.” Even with the podcast, when I first started writing to people I wanted as guests, I’d say, “Don’t worry, I know how it goes – you’re probably too busy to reply.” Then I was, like, what am I doing? I’m saying to them, “Ignore me!”’ She bursts out laughing. It sounds as though making the podcast might be rather empowering. ‘Yes,’ she agrees.

[akhuna]

On Terry and Me

This is a slightly revised blog entry I wrote on the 15th of March on 2015. My blog is currently not publicly available, but I wanted to post it here.

On the 12th of March 2015, a Thursday night, I cried.

I had just opened the homepage of our local newspaper to get one last look at what was new before I went to bed, when I saw a picture of Terry Pratchett on the first page. "Discworld-Author Terry Pratchett Dead".

I stared and thought: ›Oh no.‹ And when I read the twitter messages, the tears started to flow.

I didn't know about Terry Pratchett and his books until 2000 - The Fifth Elephant had just been published, I think. I was writing for our school magazine then and one of my "colleagues" managed to contact Terry Pratchett via E-mail. I read the interview with interest and decided that I'd give Pratchett a try. I went to the local library and checked out Witches Abroad.

Now, I'd love to say something along the lines of: "From this moment, I was hooked and bought every single one of his books and that was the beginning of a wonderful friendship" - but I want to be honest here. The problem with Pratchett's books (the only problem, that is) is this: You have to read them in English. Most of the jokes are funny because they are puns. Or homophones. Since these cannot be translated into German, the books made me smile - yes - but I was wondering what made them so outstanding. Remember: I was 14, and I had been learning English for three years only so far, and reading English books in the original was still way too hard.

I loved the characters, though. Nanny Ogg quickly became one of my favourites and as I read Reaper Man, Death became another one. Equal Rites, Small Gods, Mort and Guards! Guards!, followed, then came The Hogfather. Until now, my favourite books are about the witches, the Feegles, Death and the Night Watch.

I cannot remember my first English Discworld novel. But I remember my reaction very well: While the German translations had made me smile and sometimes grin, the originals now managed to have me in stitches. There have been so many articles now on what is so brilliant about Terry Pratchett's books (of course, the Discworld novels are only part of his whole work), and many have voiced it much better than I could do that - so I can only tell you what makes them outstanding for me.

They are wise. They are funny. They are benign, and yet there is an irony in them whose sharpness is equal to Dickens'. They are clever and witty, and most of all: They are true. What you learn about character, about motives, the ways of the world, about people while having a good laugh is amazing. They are also very well written and feature characters who are real - you love them and they annoy you and they become real friends and companions. When you read the dialogues, you hear the conversation and if you are a bit unlucky, you can also smell the Ankh.

I put a love letter between the pages of Reaper Man when I was 16 years old and lend the book to my boyfriend at that time. The Wintersmith kept me company in 2008 when I went to Cornwall for six weeks, and the book immediately started a conversation with the girls sitting next to me before I had read ten pages. I remember sitting on a lawn on campus during summer time, talking with a friend about literature and being told: "Man, you have to read Carpe Juggulum! That's one of the best Discworld novels ever!". I finished I Shall Wear Midnight late at night and was moved to tears by the Author's Afterword and I was howling with laughter over some passages in Night Watch. Two years ago, while I was on holiday with the man, I took Unseen Academicals with me and was crying with laughter about the poem "Oi! To his Deaf Mistress".

I own DVDs of the broadcasts of Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters and was over the moon with joy when I could get my hands on the movies Hogfather, Going Postal and The Colour of Magic. While watching The Colour of Magic, I knit my very first pair of socks.

Last summer, while I was taking part in the summer tournament of "Nerd Wars" on ravelry, my team "1 More Page" was discussing Pratchett and his books during one round, because it had been announced that he had to cancel his appareance at Dragon Con due to his health issues. I made Socks for Nanny Ogg afterwards.

On Friday, the day after I had heard the news, I took out Reaper Man and started to read it to the man. And while I was reading and he was laughing and I was remembering how it was when I read the book for the very first time, there was a melancholy in the words that hadn't been there before.

There are so many places on Discworld I haven't visited, so many characters I have yet to meet. It pains me that now I have all the time in the world to check them out, because there won't be any more books to come. It seems so unfair that such a wise, talented man had to be plagued by that damn illness and had to go on so early while so many villains remain. That's not how it is in the stories.

My only consolation is the thought that he probably did still know where he was going. Because, as he had put it in I Shall Wear Midnight:

"It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong."

Goodbye, Sir Terry. I miss you.

[mshelenahandbag]

2017 - Year of the Laura Dern

Laura Dern is having the best year of her career, or anyone else’s for that matter. 

I could just end this article here, but you know I have to tell you WHY. Laura Dern has, for me, been constantly impressive with her acting prowess from a young age. My first memory is seeing her as Dr. Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park, and even back then, little didn’t-know-I-was-gay-yet me loved the cool female paleontologist. (Looking back she also had THE best lines (“we can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back!”), most famous of them all being during Goldblum’s “Man creates dinosaurs” soliloquy – “Dinosaurs EAT man….woman inherits the Earth.”) She’s always played interesting characters, but, for me, has never really had her breakthrough with mainstream television and film.

Until this year where Laura Dern has excelled in four projects and netted her first Emmy victory!

Sure, she’s had her accolades with David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart and her notable appearance as the woman Ellen DeGeneres came out to on Ellen. But never anything truly concrete to make a large cross-section of people go “wow.” She’s always, at least to me, been good for niche groups.  Her last Golden Globe win was for the HBO series Enlightened where she played self-destructive executive Amy Jellicoe, and she got an Oscar nomination for 2015’s Wild as Reese Witherspoon’s mother.

Wild director Jean-Marc Vallee is one of the main reasons we’re buzzing about Laura Dern’s 2017 renaissance. He definitely saw something in Dern, and her chemistry with Witherspoon, because the two would reunite and butt heads in HBO’s Big Little Lies – exhibit A in her best year. While everyone was obsessed with the performances Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley gave as the main trio of Madeline, Celeste and Jane (as they rightly should because the series is just that flawless), my focus was on Laura Dern embodying Renata Klein, queen of the helicopter moms in Monterey.

Dern’s Renata had me shouting EMMY long before others jumped on the bandwagon. There’s a scene in the second episode where the birthday party for Amabella, Renata’s daughter, is derailed by Madeline - out for blood when Renata didn’t invite Ziggy, Jane’s son. So Madeline comes back and gets plenty of comped tickets for Disney on Ice so everyone cancels on the birthday party. Renata hits the ceiling, calmly, telling her friend Harper (who bears the unfortunate duty of informing Renata) “Ok. Thank you.”

Harper tries to mediate with “Let us all get along-”

But Renata comes back with the AMAZING over the top…well…this.

“I SAID THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!”

Whether ad-libbed on the spot or script, this moment of hilarity, for me, from Renata made her one of the best characters this year on any show. Showing perfectly poised Renata lose it time and time again, especially when threatening her husband (“I will take my hands and put them around your throat!”) or Madeline (“I’ll even get Snow White to sit on your husband’s face. Maybe Dumbo can take a squat on yours”) was a highlight week after week. The entire series was worth of every Emmy it garnered and survived a potential shutout from FX’s Feud: Bette and Joan but if anything, Laura Dern was the only one out of those nominated that truly deserved to win.

From here, Laura Dern turned from psycho mom to plain old psycho in Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt as Wendy Hebert – who’s set to marry Kimmy’s old pastor. It’s a brief guest starring role, but Dern adds so much in those 20 minutes and delivers a fully-formed character. Wendy starts off so innocent, but the more we spend time with her and Kimmy (Ellie Kemper), the more we realize how unstable she is. Plus she helps Kimmy to confront some real traumas the reverend has inflicted on her, and she also delivers one of my favorite lines in the three seasons of the show as she confides in Titus (Tituss Burgess): “If we only see each other one hour a week, he’ll never realize what a useless piece of crap I am and he’ll love me forever, and that’s what I deserve!” In short, Dern’s portrayal of a woman with absolutely zero self-worth is hysterical.

And from here, Laura Dern’s year hits its zenith with Twin Peaks as she plays long-heard-about-but-never-seen Diane: Agent Dale Cooper’s secretary to whom he has dictated all of his many tapes. Laura Dern’s work with David Lynch has always been fantastic: whether in Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Industrial Symphony No. 1, or Inland Empire – it’s clear that Lynch knows how to get the best results out of her craft. And that’s the reason why her work as Diane is probably a role we will be talking about for years to come.

We meet Diane Evans as a chain-smoking foul-mouthed goddess who was my favorite part of the mindfuck of this 18-part opus. I seriously loved every time Dern, in her platinum bob wig would take a drag off her cigarette and generally her conversations would consist of “Fuck you [insert name here].” She played so well off her director Lynch as FBI agent Gordon Cole and the late Miguel Ferrer as FBI agent Albert Rosenfeld. But one of my favorite moments came when newbie Tammy Preston (Chrysta Bell) tries to thank Diane for helping them, only to be met with this-

Diane: “What did you say your name was again?”

Tammy: “Tammy.”

Diane: “Fuck you, Tammy.”

I laughed way too hard at this, for way too long. Diane’s modus was basically this for a few episodes but about halfway through the series, her mood changed. We saw her visibly uncomfortable speaking with Mr. C, Cooper’s evil doppelganger BOB created. She revealed that Cooper (Mr. C) had come to see he years ago, but refused to elaborate. We later her she and Mr. C were in cahoots, via text. Was THAT why Diane was so crazy? Diane seemed to be cool when Gordon Cole offered her a slot on the infamous Blue Rose team – investigating supposed paranormal encounters.

“Let’s rock.” Diane said, her index and middle fingers down.

Here is where I said “Something’s up.” You could easily explain her wayward associations with Mr. C, but those two words were uttered by The Man From Another Place in the original series. It’s not just a nudge-wink happenstance, it’s a deliberate clue from Lynch that something is off with Diane. And that comes to fruition twice as the series comes to a close. In part 14, we learn that Dougie Jones’s fingerprints match Cooper’s, and Diane reveals that Janey-E, Dougie’s wife is Diane’s half-sister. No simple coincidence, again.

In part 16 when the actual Cooper emerges from a coma (long story….), Diane receives another text from Mr. C. She goes to meet with Cole, Albert and Tammy and finally reveals what happened the night Mr. C came to see her. He raped her – and it affected her. Dern’s face telling this story is so genuinely pained and she just nails this. Then Diane begins to act odd….really odd, even for this show. She convulses and says “I’m in the sheriff’s station. I’m in the sheriff’s station. I sent him those coordinates, because…I’m not me.” Diane eyes the gun in her purse, Albert’s on edge and Diane pulls hers out only to be shot by Albert and Tammy before being whisked away by some unseen force. Tammy remarks she’s seen a real tulpa (a manifestation) and we cut to the Red Room in the Black Lodge. Yep, Diane was “manufactured.” But what about her cryptic statement “I’m in the sheriff’s station”? Well as luck would have it, we wouldn’t have to wait long to find that out.

In the finale of the series, we learn that the eyeless Naido who helped Cooper out of the Lodge and who Andy rescued, was actually our Diane. A quick fight took care of Mr. C and once the genuine article Dale Cooper lays eyes on Naido, she becomes our Laura Dern again and they kiss.

Then it gets weird.

Cooper pulls a Back to the Future Part II seeing the events of Fire Walk With Me play out – only this time he stops Laura Palmer from being murdered. We cut to the Black Lodge and Cooper and Diane are both there. Then they’re driving on a highway for 430 miles, cross over an electrical grid and check into a motel to have sex.

This is Diane’s final scene of the series and I love how Dern hearkens back to what she told Cole and the FBI earlier about her rape. You still see the pain and confusion on Dern’s face, especially because we’re unsure if this is OUR Cooper, Mr. C or a hybrid of the two. It’s such a fitting end for her work on one of the best shows of 2017, and her exit opens a whole new mystery.

The next morning, Diane’s gone and a note from “Linda” to “Richard” is left for Cooper and leaves us wondering if in a world where Laura Palmer has been saved – has absolutely everything changed? Is Dale Cooper now Richard and is Diane Evans now Linda? (Way more to say on this for a Twin Peaks fan theory thesis later, especially with the role of Carrie Page.)

I didn’t even need to see Laura Dern in Star Wars Episode VIII-The Last Jedi in her role as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo to know it will be amazing. I knew that from the casting, from her stills with the late Carrie Fisher (something I’m eagerly looking forward to) and the gorgeous Annie Leibowitz photos in Vanity Fair revealing that gorgeous lilac hair. But upon seeing Rian Johnson’s masterpiece that has become the crown jewel for me and many other (but not all) STAR WARS fans, I got to see Dern cap her banner year off in the most fabulous and wonderful style.

When General Leia Organa is unconscious from a First Order attack on the Resistance, command falls to Holdo. Dern and Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron immediately clash, and it’s breathtaking to watch. Holdo wants to load unarmed transports to try and escape to nearby Crait – home of an abandoned Resistance base – and Poe so strongly disagrees with her that he mutinies and relieves her of command (only for himself to be relieved by General Organa stunning him). Holdo remains on ship while the remaining Resistance flee to Crait, and as the First Order begins firing on transport ships. Holdo decides to make a stand and engage the ship to lightspeed, directly at the First Order’s ships. Hyperspace jumps only work when a ship is totally free and clear to maneuver. So if a ship’s in the way, it’s not gonna be pretty.

And it isn’t. Rian Johnson shows the devastation in a soundless scene that cements Holdo’s beautiful and poignant sacrifice. Dern’s time in the Star Wars universe may have been brief but Holdo is a character anyone should be proud to look up to: willing to step up when it matters and sacrifice everything for the needs of the many (…Wait that’s Star Trek…)

Laura Dern’s 2017 is something that won’t be duplicated any time soon, and it’s a career testament to one of Hollywood’s best actresses finally getting the recognition she has beyond deserved.

[datingfund957]

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Asian Dating Over 50 is a 50+ dating service (senior dating) in New York and is designed to help 50+ singles (Asian and Non-Asian) meet each other. 2019 Asian Supermatch Inc. Asian Dating For Over 50s Meeting a new partner is exciting, but it can be hard to know where to turn to meet someone who’s interesting and compatible. With around 21 million people of Asian descent in the US, the Asian population has grown by 72% since 2000, the fastest growth rate of any major ethnic group.

Welcome to video 3 of 3 on Asian Single FemalesTo get more tips, be sure to visit http://www.twoasianmatchmakers.com.

Why online dating is good. It’s interesting how, with certain patterns, you can make a great online dating profile.I spoke with Whitney Perry, the founder of the Single Online Dating Guide, who shared a great analogy.If you are wearing a dress that has zippers up the side, you can show what the dress looks like in a different way to different people by zipping it up a bit.

Men from all over the world admire Charming and magnificent Asian ladies. Asian ladies are so petite, shy, and smart so they successfully attract more and more foreign males from all over the world. Thanks to Asian traditions, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Thai women remain very feminine. This article is a great guide on how to find an Asian bride. Here are helpful reviews of 5 Asian dating sites worth joining.

AsiaCharm

AsiaCharm.com is one of the leading China dating sites. It strives to provide a good service for Western men who are searching for romantic relations abroad. If you like the look of a Japanese, Chinese, Thai, or Indian woman, you are going to enjoy this dating. It provides an extensive database of young girls who are looking for love. Asian women are great and this is why the demand for dating platforms with profiles of Asian ladies is so big.

If you are dreaming of having a caring, devoted and family-oriented girl, join AsiaCharm.com. Star meeting charming girls from different parts of Asia. Here you will be able to use a wide choice of search tools. It will help you to filter women by age, country, city, marital status, children, drinking and smoking habits. AsiaCharm works for the purpose of connecting single men and women. Register and browse through profiles of hot Asian girls by age and location. Create an account to find your ideal soulmate quicker.

RomanceTale

The following dating platform for Asian singles that has a high rate among Western men is called RomanceTale.com. This modern dating website is dedicated to finding you a beautiful and devoted Asian wife in the shortest term possible. If you don’t have an opportunity to travel to Asia and stay there long-term searching for a wife, choosing Romance Take dating service would be a smart choice.

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The company has a couple of years of experience. RomanceTale.com has been providing single men from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and European countries with a fantastic opportunity – meeting stunning Asian women within a few clicks on a device. This is a good Asian dating service that holds profiles of single women from China, Japan, India and Thailand wanting to date foreign men. Sign up at the platform today by providing your gender, name, date of birth, email and password to get access to thousands of single girls’ profiles with hot photos and detailed information.

TrulyAsian

If you are that man who knows that he doesn’t want to waste his time on endless chats and online flirt but meet Asian women with serious intentions, try TrulyAsian out. The service was launched a couple of years ago and even though this site is not that old and experienced like the previous platforms, it has already made great strides. With lots of singles from across the globe registered at Truly Asian, you can meet stunning Asian girls every single day without leaving your house. Some members have already found their soul mates, got married and created families. Sign up for free and enjoy free or payment features such as creating your profile with a photo and detailed information, browsing, using certain forms of communication, adding girls to your Favorites list, and contacting customer support that is available 24/7.

Paid membership will provide you access to great features like sharing photos and using a video chat with the ladies who you want to talk to, get to know and see whether you can build a lasting relationship via the service. There are plenty of options and a blog page that will keep you motivated and entertained while using the site. You can get TrulyAsian app for your Android or iPhone to meet and chat with a sexy Asian girl on the go and work on your online relationship at any time of the day or night.

AsianDate

So the next service that guarantees to date Asian women is AsianDate. The company is proud to have lots of members exchanging lots of messages every single day. Join the platform if you want to find out about Asian culture, traditions, values and dating principles. You will find it really exciting to meet beautiful women of different ethnicity. That’s because they have different values and life goals than Western ladies. Register to search for charming Chinese and Japanese girls. Chat, send letters, make phone calls, and share photos free of charge. AsianDate is a convenient and effective dating platform. The company’s staff confirms some female members to prove that they are real people. AsianDate app can be downloaded for Android or iOS mobile devices. This makes meeting stunning Asian babes simpler and quicker.

Match

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There is not a love-seeker who doesn’t know about Match. This dating site is the most popular worldwide because it targets international dating. Match is home to lots of Asian women. Asian ladies here want to date, marry and create a family with Western men. This is the place where East meets West. So this is your amazing opportunity to meet, chat and develop a romantic relationship with women of different ethnicity.

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What is really great about Match is that it cares for your needs. Sign up and fill in the questionnaire with multiple questions about yourself and your future wife. Tell your criteria according to your ideal partner’s age, country, city, marital status, children, education, interests, habits, and look. You won’t have to browse through numerous profiles trying to figure out whether you can make a couple with one or another lady. Match will provide you with some every single day. The system analyzes your answers in order to suggest you perfect ladies for dating and marriage.

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[glass--winged]

Who do you want out of your life the most? (from the thingy)

Ooh, that’s not a difficult one. Gonna have to shove this one under the cut…

I love the people around me right now. You are all incredible. I feel warm and safe and loved around you guys, because you all support me so wonderfully. I have left my demons behind me. But there are three people (and a friendship group) I would like to remove from the past I have, because they were far more damaging than I ever realised.

First, the friendship group. Little age-13 me didn’t understand that not everyone has a fear of being mean. That not everybody was as kind as I tried to be. They taught me that going to talk to the support staff was a betrayal of their trust. That those people should not be trusted. I wasted away through the following years, afraid of talking to the support staff about anything. My problems weren’t as bad as theirs, that friendship group taught me, so I shouldn’t jeapordise them by talking about them.

That sort of ruined everything.

The first girl - part of that friendship group, I’m around 14/15 by this point - was my “best friend”. A girl who I talked to the most, despite what she did to me. She was almost consistently mean and put me down all the time, but I was - and still am - like a little devoted puppy, convinced that someday it would change. I was partnered with her in Drama - my favourite subject - by virtue of the fact nobody else wanted to work with us, and I made the best of it. She could be nice when she wanted to be, but other times she was a nightmare. She would come into a lesson and flatly refuse to work, leaving me at a loss - no point doing a duologue alone - so I’d have to just sit down and do nothing for the hour. If she did decide to work, and I wanted a break between run-throughs, I wasn’t allowed them - she would insult me and kick me in the legs until I stood up again and carried on. She told me I was “naive” and “didn’t understand the real world” because I tried to be optimistic. She once kicked me hard enough in the shin to leave me limping for a while, and I let her laugh at me for it. It got to the point where I had to beg my teacher to put me into another group because I saw no way out. I said that I didn’t want to come to lessons anymore. I was moved away for devised work for a little while, but once we moved back to script, I had no choice but to move back into a pair with her.

We were invited to do a performance of our piece at a local theatre in a drama showcase, because it was so good - perfect score, our teacher told us. This girl told me that she didn’t want to do it, and that she’d already told the teacher that we weren’t going to go. I didn’t have a say in it - I was desperate to perform it, but figured the deed was done. On the day after the show had been on, I went into my form room, and my teacher called me to his desk and demanded to know why we didn’t turn up, when we were on the running list and everything. They’d had to do an emergency switch-round because we weren’t there, and we’d disappointed people who’d paid to come and see the showcase. This girl hadn’t told my teacher at all. She’d just decided she didn’t want to do it.I left that whole friendship group after that.

I met another girl, who quickly became my new best friend - funny, silly, nerdy, an absolute delight to be around. We did everything together for almost three years. But then something changed when we got into Year 12, when we were 16. We blustered our way into a friendship group that started out wonderful, but steadily got more and more toxic as the year went on. There was a messy breakup between an old female “friend” and a new male one, and the friendship group’s “ringleader” of sorts forced everyone to pick a side. The female friend was notorious for blowing things way out of proportion, and manipulating people to sympathise with her. To side with the boy, or stay neutral, they said, was siding with an abuser. I tried to stay neutral and mediate. It was incredibly hard when the female friend and the “ringleader” were planning to steal this boy’s belongings and burn them, especially when I would never believe for a single second that the boy would hurt anyone. He was not that kind of person. Because I tried to stay neutral, I was ostracised from the friendship group - including by my own best friend - via the “silent treatment”, a well-used tactic from this female friend. To this day, I am still petrified of conflict, and I get incredibly panicky being in even the same room as an argument - all for fear of being forced to pick a side.

When the “ringleader” left at the end of Year 12, everything died down, and it was just me, my “best friend”, and that female “friend” once more. I thought it was all going to be okay. They didn’t mention the things from before. I thought everything had blown over, that we were going to be friends again. But something was different. My best friend and that female friend began dating - fine, okay, fair enough. It’s not my place to interfere. I was wary, of course I was, because the girl’s last breakup had been messy, but… I just let it carry on.This female friend changed her.

Just like her new girlfriend, my best friend became catty, bitchy, snapped at me more often than not, made jokes at my expense. I still said nothing. Not worth mentioning to the support staff, I thought, they have other things to worry about. But then it got worse. I put up with a whole month of this, but still called them my closest friends. But there came one day where I made a really stupid joke, one I could have sworn I’d said before, and my old best friend stormed outside. I thought she was just doing a “nope” reaction, and continued to laugh, not knowing she was serious in her anger. They both blew up at me. I tried to apologise, knowing I’d hurt them, but they wouldn’t take it because it “wasn’t good enough” - another common tactic of this other friend. I apologised as best I could, multiple times,  but they responded by “silent treatment”-ing me again, saying that I “hadn’t apologised enough” - so I needed to apologise more, even though they wouldn’t let me talk to them in the first place. Fair enough. I guess I can respect that. People don’t have to forgive.

But they used it as an excuse to abuse me.

I ended up enduring my worst long-term experience to date, from October 2016 to June 2017. Every day was another fear of more insults, more ignoring of my existence, more abuse. Standout highlights (with BF as “best friend” and “GF” as best friend’s girlfriend) include:

A shitty pun was made in the group, and BF exclaiming “I regret being friends with all of you”. When GF pushed her to apologise for it, she went around the group pointing at people, saying “don’t regret”. She got to me, said “yep, definitely regret being friends with you”, and then carried on with “don’t regret” for the rest of the group. GF then said “no, you can’t regret being friends with [Ducky], you’d never have met me otherwise!" 

The two of them glared at me for ages, setting me really on edge and making me anxious, because my memory is so unreliable I think I’ve done something wrong. They knew this from previous years. When I asked what I’d done they laughed and said "we just like to watch you freak out”. 

I was sitting brushing my hair and trying to ignore them while they quite obviously talked about me while sitting right next to me. I tried to look oblivious and GF said, out loud, “wow she’s completely oblivious to the fact we’re talking about her, isn’t she?”. BF immediately responded with “well yeah, it’s because her head’s always up her ass”. That caused complete silence in the group, and multiple people told her to apologise. She flatly refused. She said she didn’t need to apologise. 

On the same day, I heard her say - right next to me - “I’m allowed to be rude to [Ducky]”. 

There are many more I won’t get into right now, because this post has got ridiculously long, but I hope I’ve given enough reason to want these memories gone. These people almost broke me. I’m still recovering from them. I might be going into therapy for it.

But, as with all things, there is a silver lining.

If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that I never want to see anyone go through the pain that I did. I swore always to be kind, and honest, and loving. To try to brighten others’ days when they might seem bleak. To forgive, and listen, and move on. That’s the world I want to see.

Here’s to 2018, surrounded by new friends.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

A broken branch of the family tree

My Great-Grandfather (maternal side) taught me how to play Cribbage. We played many times over the few years we knew each other well (and I treasure those years to a depth that I cannot speak to). I won my first game against him, then my second, and after that, he absolutely ruined me every single time. 

Occasionally, he would move my pegs instead of his own. Raised up as a respectful Southern daughter (at least where grandparents were concerned), I never corrected him. 

More than occasionally, he would tell me this story: 

“Did I ever tell you how I learned to play Cribbage?”

(Many, many times.) “No, I don’t think so.” (Because I loved this story, so it always felt new.)

“Well,” and he would clear his throat like the man in his nineties he was, though I rarely considered what that meant, “every night, my father and I would play a game to see who would milk the cows in the morning.”

Great-Grandpa had grown up helping settle South Dakota. There, he would meet my Great-Grandmother (who, funnily enough, would be the maternal answer to a male name on a female person that I would later inherit from the paternal line). They would move to Nebraska, and Great-Grandpa would be the reason--to this day--that Gordon, Nebraska has such finely made roads. But, before then, he was a farm boy, and this was his story.

“And let me tell you, I learned how to milk a cow.”

I laughed every time because his delivery was that damn good. Even as a young teenager, I recognized that sense of timing in myself, and I cannot describe to you how important it is that I found it it my Great-Grandpa and could say my biological father (snake oil salesman of lowest regard) was not the reason I could cue a laugh. 

When Great-Grandpa died (I was 16; he was 97), my grandmother bequeathed me his Cribbage board. It was only years later, when I grew up enough to understand my grandmother’s sensible view of the world, that I would discover she also carried that ability to cue laughter. (We were at a parade, and people in it carried a Confederate flag, and Grandma deadpanned to me, ‘And it’s the Democrats ruining society,’ and I laughed so hard I nearly fell over.)

Grandma plays Bridge and Hearts and a few other card games you associate with older women with a blue dye rinse. Except Grandma would roll into her grave prematurely to roll over in it if she ever ended up with a blue dye rinse. She is currently 84, on her third marriage (having divorced the first man and buried the second), and very likely having more fun in life than half of you ever will (that’s not a judgement; she’s just that way). She tried to teach me Bridge, making me the dead hand so she could guide me through. She tried to teach me Hearts the same way, and both times, the conclusion was clear: They’re not games for me. Hell, I could never beat an old man at Cribbage. What chance did I have against three living ladies at Bridge or Hearts even when one was on my side?

Great-Grandpa died when I was sixteen. When I was in my twenties, my mother and I were reminiscing on my times with my Great-Grandfather, and I mentioned how badly I had lost to him time and again.

“But, I mean, he was in his nineties and had played his whole life. I never really had a chance.”

“Oh, honey,” my mother said, on cocktail number I lost count because I’d been drinking, too, because it was the only way we could be honest with one another (she didn’t care for my honesty until she’d had a few; I craved hers while stone sober). “Grandpa counted cards.”

“WHAT.”

“And he was colorblind. Green-blue.”

“WHAT.” The time he moved my pegs came into sharp relief. Always green-blue. Never when I played red.

Mom looked at me with the glassy perfection of the truly fucked up, and I am sure I stared back in the same state. “You didn’t know?”

I stared. Waiting for her to laugh. She did not. “No! Why would I know?”

“Oh, I thought you knew.”

This casual brush-off confused me for years. Why would I know? Who goes to their parents and asks, “Hey, is there any special skills that 90-something old man has that can lead me to be ruined at Cribbage for three goddamn years?”

Years later, comfortably into my marriage and starting to really understand the exact toxicity of my relationship with my Olympic-level drunk mother, my husband and I went down to visit for Christmas. After many, many hours at a relative’s house, we came back to my parents’, and my mother suggested we find a way to relax.

“How about poker?” my husband suggested. We’d both recently gotten into Texas Hold ‘Em. We were all playing from Mom’s penny jar, so it was agreed the four of us--Dad, Mom, the husband, and I--would get to name the game as dealer. 

Mom bemoaned Hold ‘Em when my husband announced it. She also dismissed any version of poker where you got to trade part of your hand. I was surprised at her opinions. I remembered a lot of penny-ante poker with the neighbors when I was a kid, but I didn’t recall Mom having any real stance in the type of play. 

The deck got to Mom. She called Five Card Stud, no trades. She demolished the rest of us at the table. As I watched her gather up the pennies that had been hers in the first place, it dawned on me. 

Great-Grandpa counted cards and taught Grandma. Grandma counted cards and taught Mom. My brain always tries to count cards, but it can’t. Because Grandpa had one drink a day (seven and seven), Grandma had one beer a day (Budweiser), and Mom seemed to be in competition with herself to find the bottom of the bottle (or box) of booze. 

I missed out on a family secret. One that could bring fun and a bit of excitement to my life. Great-Grandpa passed it to Grandma through Cribbage, who passed it to Mom via Hearts, but it never made it to me, even though I have the itch in my brain, because Great-Grandpa and my grandma understood that counting cards and liquor both required a type of discipline, and my mother couldn’t do both at the same time. 

I unearthd Great-Grandpa’s Cribbage board recently, and a favorite bar in town has a weekly night. I need to brush up on the rules and expect not to win. I don’t know all the tricks of the game, but at least I can tell the story of my great-grandpa teaching me. 

“And he got really good at milking that cow!”

As long as I can land the laugh, I’ll be happy with my legacy.

[howtoloseweightfastsafely]

How I Lost Weight By Not Following The Mainstream Media And Health Guru's Advice - Why The Health Industry Is Broken And How We Can Fix It

If you want to find out how I lost 30 lbs in 90 days, then read on. I did it not by following the advice from the media about what to eat and what not to eat, but by following a specific diet plan that works.

You need to listen to the following VERY carefully.

You are probably overweight. Maybe even "obese".

I'm sorry to be brutally honest, but it's likely true. The facts don't lie...

More than 2/3 of Americans today are overweight. A large portion of that 71% is obese.

Prescription medications are the norm (HALF of all Americans are taking at least one). Most seniors are taking at least three.

If you're lucky enough to not be "on" anything, you know someone who is.

Why is this the case?

Why have we "reset" ourselves to accept a drastically lower standard of living?

Should obesity, chronic illness, and death via major disease really be accepted as a fact of life" or "consequence of old age"?

Is it really our bad genes that force us to live with a constant need for pills and doctors, and dialysis and pacemakers?

No, of course not!

It wasn't always this bad.

There was a time, not so long ago, when most modern diseases were unheard of.

There was a time when people all around the world, from tens of thousands of societies, lived healthily and happily. Free from disease, illness, and unnecessary death.

Some of these societies didn't even have words for "cancer" or "diabetes" in their vocabulary.

How was this possible?

How is it that the society we live in today is so rampant with obesity and other deadly illnesses, while others can't describe "cancer" because they don't have to??

Well, my friend, it all comes down to realizing that probably 80% of the "news" you see on the internet, TV, radio, etc. about nutrition or exercise is false.

It all comes from a sick, sad system based on putting the almighty dollar first (and on the internet, the almighty "page views" and "clicks", which bring in millions in advertising revenue).

One article lies that a "7 Minute Workout" is all you need to lose weight and "get lean", whereas anyone who has actually lost a LOT of weight can tell you that smart nutrition is KING.

Another article repeats the now-disproven lie that "cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease"... a claim that major scientific institutions have now published research against.

(Controlled studies, in which participants ate 2-4 whole eggs daily, found that dietary cholesterol has little effect on blood cholesterol in 75% of the population.1 Additionally, a study following 58,000 men for 14 years on average, found zero association between saturated fat intake and heart disease, and an inverse relationship between saturated fat intake and stroke.2)

But of course, we don't find out the truth.

We only hear about the stories with shock value. Because after all, would you rather click on (and likely share) an article that says "Spinach is good for you" or an article that says "Eggs are slowly killing you"? Chances are, it's the latter.

The fact that eggs are NOT slowly killing you doesn't matter in the least. All that matters is some smarty pants editor at (insert any popular website or media outlet) has just pushed your buttons and scared you enough to share an article with no legitimate scientific backing. And he's done his "job" well enough that he's going to look pretty darn good when his article brings in $400,000 of ad revenue for the month. (at your expense of course)

And as a result, off we go, believing what Yahoo, TV doctors, and other media outlets (including "expert" blogs) tell us about health, instead of listening to the people who've walked the walk, and had real, significant weight loss transformations.

Off we go working out for 7 minutes a day (and probably burning no more than 80 calories).

Off we go removing eggs and other sources of healthy fats (and likely replacing them with fat-storing, blood sugar spiking foods).

And off we go, wondering why the scale won't budge, why the jeans don't fit, and why we keep getting weaker and sicker.

Well, you've been had.

We've all been had.

It's the ugly nature of media and the ugly nature of money politics.

Honest Americans click away on flashy "eggs cause heart disease" headlines, and hotshot media executives laugh all the way to the bank, carrying hundreds of millions in ad revenue.

The "giants" get bigger, while the Average Joe gets the short end of the draw. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and more confused than we started.

Thankfully, that's all about to change.

Millions of Americans around the country are seeking out the truth and finding answers that are literally transforming their lives.

And you'll find a good amount of those answers in the rest of this book.

You've picked up a guide that's going to give you the ins and outs on just about everything you need to know to build the body of your dreams while understanding more about health, fitness, and mind-body wellness than 95% of the population.

And that's a promise.

 Interested in losing weight? Then click below to see the exact steps I took to lose weight and keep it off for good...

Read the previous article about "How I Lost 30 Pounds In 90 Days - And How You Can Too"

Read the next article about "The #1 Ridiculous Diet Myth Pushed By 95% Of Doctors And "experts" That Is Keeping You From The Body Of Your Dreams"

Moving forward, there are several other articles/topics I'll share so you can lose weight even faster and feel great doing it.

Below is a list of these topics and you can use this Table of Contents to jump to the part that interests you the most.

Topic 1: How I Lost 30 Pounds In 90 Days - And How You Can Too

Topic 2: How I Lost Weight By Not Following The Mainstream Media And Health Guru's Advice - Why The Health Industry Is Broken And How We Can Fix It

Topic 3: The #1 Ridiculous Diet Myth Pushed By 95% Of Doctors And "experts" That Is Keeping You From The Body Of Your Dreams

Topic 4: The Dangers of Low-Carb and Other "No Calorie Counting" Diets

Topic 5: Why Red Meat May Be Good For You And Eggs Won't Kill You

Topic 6: Two Critical Hormones That Are Quietly Making Americans Sicker and Heavier Than Ever Before

Topic 7: Everything Popular Is Wrong: The Real Key To Long-Term Weight Loss

Topic 8: Why That New Miracle Diet Isn't So Much of a Miracle After All (And Why You're Guaranteed To Hate Yourself On It Sooner or Later)

Topic 9: A Nutrition Crash Course To Build A Healthy Body and Happy Mind

Topic 10: How Much You Really Need To Eat For Steady Fat Loss (The Truth About Calories and Macronutrients)

Topic 11: The Easy Way To Determining Your Calorie Intake

Topic 12: Calculating A Weight Loss Deficit

Topic 13: How To Determine Your Optimal "Macros" (And How The Skinny On The 3-Phase Extreme Fat Loss Formula)

Topic 14: Two Dangerous "Invisible Thorn" Foods Masquerading as "Heart Healthy Super Nutrients"

Topic 15: The Truth About Whole Grains And Beans: What Traditional Cultures Know About These So-called "Healthy Foods" That Most Americans Don't

Topic 16: The Inflammation-Reducing, Immune-Fortifying Secret of All Long-Living Cultures (This 3-Step Process Can Reduce Chronic Pain and Heal Your Gut in Less Than 24 Hours)

Topic 17: The Foolproof Immune-enhancing Plan That Cleanses And Purifies Your Body, While "patching Up" Holes, Gaps, And Inefficiencies In Your Digestive System (And How To Do It Without Wasting $10+ Per "meal" On Ridiculous Juice Cleanses)

Topic 18: The Great Soy Myth (and The Truth About Soy in Eastern Asia)

Topic 19: How Chemicals In Food Make Us Fat (Plus 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply)

Topic 20: 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply

Topic 21: How To Protect Yourself Against Chronic Inflammation (What Time Magazine Calls A "Secret Killer")

Topic 22: The Truth About Buying Organic: Secrets The Health Food Industry Doesn't Want You To Know

Topic 23: Choosing High Quality Foods

Topic 24: A Recipe For Rapid Aging: The "Hidden" Compounds Stealing Your Youth, Minute by Minute

Topic 25: 7 Steps To Reduce AGEs and Slow Aging

Topic 26: The 10-second Trick That Can Slash Your Risk Of Cardiovascular Mortality By 37% (Most Traditional Cultures Have Done This For Centuries, But The Pharmaceutical Industry Would Be Up In Arms If More Modern-day Americans Knew About It)

Topic 27: How To Clean Up Your Liver and Vital Organs

Topic 28: The Simple Detox 'Cheat Sheet': How To Easily and Properly Cleanse, Nourish, and Rid Your Body of Dangerous Toxins (and Build a Lean Well-Oiled "Machine" in the Process)

Topic 29: How To Deal With the "Stress Hormone" Before It Deals With You

Topic 30: 7 Common Sense Ways to Have Uncommon Peace of Mind (or How To Stop Your "Stress Hormone" In Its Tracks)

Topic 31: How To Sleep Like A Baby (And Wake Up Feeling Like A Boss)

Topic 32: The 8-step Formula That Finally "fixes" Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested (If You Ever Find Yourself Hitting The Snooze Every Morning Or Dozing Off At Work, These Steps Will Change Your Life Forever)

Topic 33: For Even Better Leg Up And/or See Faster Results In Fixing Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested, Do The Following:

Topic 34: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 35: Part 1 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 36: Part 2 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 37: Part 3 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 38: Part 4 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 39: How To Beat Your Mental Roadblocks And Why It Can Be The Difference Between A Happy, Satisfying Life And A Sad, Fearful Existence (These Strategies Will Reduce Stress, Increase Productivity And Show You How To Fulfill All Your Dreams)

Topic 40: Maximum Fat Loss in Minimum Time: The Body Type Solution To Quick, Lasting Results

Topic 41: If You Want Maximum Results In Minimum Time You're Going To Have To Work Out (And Workout Hard, At That)

Topic 42: Food Planning For Maximum Fat Loss In Minimum Time

Topic 43: How To Lose Weight Fast If You're in Chronic Pain

Topic 44: Nutrition Basics for Fast Pain Relief (and Weight Loss)

Topic 45: How To Track Results (And Not Fall Into the Trap That Ruins 95% of Well-Thought Out Diets)

Topic 46: Advanced Fat Loss - Calorie Cycling, Carb Cycling and Intermittent Fasting

Topic 47: Advanced Fat Loss - Part I: Calorie Cycling

Topic 48: Advanced Fat Loss - Part II: Carb Cycling

Topic 49: Advanced Fat Loss - Part III: Intermittent Fasting

Topic 50: Putting It All Together

Learn more by visiting our website here: invigoratenow.com

[lovelytable]

1-90 for make me admit stuff ask

1: would you have sex with the last person you text messaged?

well i mean considering it was a group chat full of my str8 friendos i would have to say hard no

2: you talked to an ex today, correct?

technically but it’s complicated

3: have you taken someones virginity?

VIRGINITY IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT but also no

4: is trust a big issue for you?

not really. i’m actually a little too trusting. 

5: did you hang out with the person you like recently?

yes

6: what are you excited for?

spring break is in 20 days and i’m going to spain with my spanish class so the hype is real

7: what happened tonight?

i’m actually answering this in the morning but last night i went for a walk with my dog and my friend and we adventured all the way from her house to target and back and we made some nice friends and screamed into the void to tell it to stop playing country music and all in all it was a good evening.

8: do you think it’s disgusting when girls get really wasted?

no. let them live. just please don’t vomit on me and also be safe.

9: is confidence cute?

ehhhhh i don’t really like this question. like i like confident people but that’s just because they’re healthy and happy with themselves and that’s admirable and beautiful but “cute” isn’t really the right word.

10: what is the last beverage you had?

water

11: how many people of the opposite sex do you fully trust?

GENDER IS A FLUID SPECTRUM AND THERE IS NO “OPPOSITE SEX” but also 5 off the top of my head. 6 if we’re counting guy fieri.

12: do you own a pair of skinny jeans?

i don’t own any jeans that aren’t skinny.

13: what are you gonna do saturday night?

next saturday is my birthday and i really don’t know what i’m doing. probably hang out with my friends. make some s’mores. maybe see a movie (because i’ll be 17 and so r rated movies are an option and yea).

14: what are you going to spend money on next?

candy and flowers for my friends. only one of them has a bf and she’s not doing valentine’s day with him so they’re all getting presents from me. i love.

15: are you going out with the last person you kissed?

no

16: do you think you’ll change in the next three months?

of course. next month i’m going to spain without my family and by may i’ll have taken my ap exams and i’ll also have been in a play and god i really hope between all that i grow up/glow up a lil.

17: who do you feel most comfortable talking to about anything?

my friend who i went for a walk with last night. she was one of the first three people i came out to (i did it via text bc i’m a fucking loser) and out of all my friends she’s the one who’s the most honest with me so i like to return the favor.

18: the last time you felt broken?

february 10

19: have you had sex today?

no

20: are you starting to realize anything?

yessSSSSSSSSS AND IT’S FREAKING ME OUT

21: are you in a good mood?

i’m too stressed to be in a good mood.

22: would you ever want to swim with sharks?

not really. like don’t get me wrong i live for adrenaline rushes but i don’t really like swimming in salt water. it burns. also swimming with sharks is problematic. but anyway.

23: are your eyes the same color as your dad’s?

nope. he’s got brown and mine are blue. i’m a spitting image of my mom though.

24: what do you want right this second?

a magical machine to do all my homework for me

25: what would you say if the person you love/like kissed another girl/boy?

good for them but also BUDDY BOI WYD

26: is your current hair color your natural hair color?

yea. i did some colorful streaks last week for a project but by now i’m pretty sure they’ve washed out.

27: would you be able to date someone who doesn’t make you laugh?

no. that’s the most important thing imho.

28: what was the last thing that made you laugh?

my own awkwardness

29: do you really, truly miss someone right now?

miss isn’t the right word. i need to talk to some people but i’m not filled with a bottomless pit of longing or some shit.

30: does everyone deserve a second chance?

most people do but definitely not everyone.

31: honestly, do you hate the last boy you were talking to?

oh god no. he’s in the aforementioned 5/6 people.

32: does the person you have feelings for right now, know you do?

hard maybe. i think so??? but i’m a mess.

33: are you one of those people who never drinks soda?

no. i mean i haven’t had soda in forever and i usually choose water over soda just because health and also bubbles in my stomach are not the best feeling but i still like it.

34: listening to?

just got done listening to in the heights for the billionth time

35: do you ever write in pencil anymore?

every day

36: do you know where the last person you kissed is?

n/a

37: do you believe in love at first sight?

no. i promise i’m not some cynical angsty teen but i just don’t think that’s possible.

38: who did you last call?

ummm i never make actual phone calls they kind of stress me out but it was probably my mom or dad

39: who was the last person you danced with?

my friends

40: why did you kiss the last person you kissed?

n/a LET ME LIVE

41: when was the last time you ate a cupcake?

thursday? i think? i ate a muffin this morning tho

42: did you hug/kiss one of your parents today?

not yet but they just came back from a run and that’s a lil gross

43: ever embarrass yourself in front of your crush?

sweaty my life is an embarrassment

44: do you tan in the nude?

i used to but i burn really easily and now i’m more about the soft, unwrinkled skin life anyway

45: (woOAAHHHHH WE’RE HALFWAY THERE) if you could, would you take back your last kiss?

N/A

46: did you talk to someone until you fell asleep last night?

no

47: who was the last person to call you?

i think it was my grandpa

48: do you sing in the shower?

i perform

49: do you dance in the car?

i. perform.

50: ever used a bow and arrow?

actually yea in 5th grade i went to this cool camp thing and we did archery

51: last time you got a portrait taken by a photographer?

a couple weeks ago we had school pictures with the clubs we’re in

52: do you think musicals are cheesy?

some definitely are but they’re so good

53: is christmas stressful?

certain aspects of it are but in the end it’s two weeks off of school so i can’t complain.

54: ever eat a pierogi?

ever eat a what now

55: favorite type of fruit pie?

does key lime count

56: occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid?

i remember when i was really little and didn’t understand how business worked i really wanted to work at sonic so i could wear roller skates and bring back the pancake on a stick. if that didn’t pan out my backup plan was being a dinosaur.

57: do you believe in ghosts?

sure

58: ever have a deja vu feeling?

i’m living a deja vu feeling right now sis

59: take a vitamin daily?

i used to. i need to get back on that.

60: wear slippers?

no. i have perpetually cold feet but i refuse. fuzzy socks are where it’s at.

61: wear a bath robe?

eh sometimes

62: what do you wear to bed?

usually an old t shirt but it depends on how hot/cold im feeling

63: first concert?

i’m lame i’m sorry

64: wal-mart, target, or kmart?

target obv

65: nike or adidas?

nike only because adidas sports bras ain’t shit

66: cheetos or fritos?

cheetos

67: peanuts or sunflower seeds?

peanuts (although sunflower seeds are very aesthetic as far as snacks go)

68: favorite taylor swift song?

my second favorite song i ever had was love story

69: (aw yisss) ever take dance lessons?

i used to when i was really little. that lasted 2 ish years and then i did gymnastics for like 8 years.

70: is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing?

i don’t picture a future spouse

71: can you curl your tongue?

NO AND EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY CAN DO THE FOUR LEAF CLOVER THING AND ALL SORTS OF WEIRD SHIT AND I CAN’T EVEN WINK AND MY FACE MUSCLES IN GENERAL ARE WOEFULLY INADEQUATE

72: ever won a spelling bee?

YES.

the day is february 18, 2011. my birthday. i stand before my elementary school along with the other nerds who participated in uil academics. they begin to announce the winners for the district-wide spelling competition. 7th place. 3rd place. “and corbell elementary is proud to present the first place medal to...” i look around. all my classmates have already taken a seat upon collecting their medals. i am alone on stage. i grin with the realization. “SUZI”. the crowd goes wild. my parents are cheering. obama is there.

73: have you ever cried because you were so happy?

all the tim

74: what is your favorite book?

WE ARE THE ANTS BY SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON OH MY GOD EVERYBODY NEEDS TO READ IT ASAP

75: do you study better with or without music?

with

76: regularly burn incense?

no but i have a few candles in my room

77: ever been in love?

no (?)

78: who would you like to see in concert?

hank green and the perfect strangers

79: what was the last concert you saw?

NNNNN/AAAAA LEAVE ME ALONE

80: hot tea or cold tea?

both

81: tea or coffee?

both.

82: favorite type of cookie?

chocolate chip

83: can you swim well?

i mean i haven’t drowned yet

84: can you hold your breath without holding your nose?

yes but not for very long

85: are you patient?

god no

86: dj or band at a wedding?

dj

87: ever won a contest?

actually yea i won a book giveaway last summer on here but i never claimed it

88: ever have plastic surgery?

i haven’t yet but i probably will. i don’t have self esteem issues or anything but i just want to.

89: which are better black or green olives?

ew neither

90: opinions on sex before marriage?

live your life just pls be careful

BONUS (because there’s only 2 more anyway)

91: best room for a fireplace?

living room

92: do you want to get married?

not really. the only reason i ever would would be out of spite but in that case it would probably just be eloping or something bc mi familia would not contribute.

[sydneymaes]

the year of just realizing stuff

hello 2017 and the latest blog i have inevitably neglected!!! i’ve been wanting to reflect on 2016 for the past week or so but haven’t found (more accurately would be made) the time to do so. alas, i have finally done it. kylie jenner said it best at the beginning of 2016 it was the year of “just realizing stuff” so here are 16 things i realized in 2016. 

1. moving across the country, as far from home as possible, is bittersweet. going somewhere new and starting another adventure is filled with excitement for the unknown. moving cross country and ripping yourself out of your safe, comfort zone is terrifying and can get lonely. i handled it with what seemed like ease in my first semester. i was only homesick a few times because i was still so excited and i felt like i had mentally prepared for the adjusting period. i loved my new independence, the new city and the experiences but that didn’t stop me from missing my family gatherings and my friends a whole lot. i constantly go back and forth with loving the distance from home and wishing i could squeeze my dog or spend an hour cuddling my nephew at any second.

2. europe is rad. seeing places from my textbooks in real life amazes me more than i would like to admit to any teacher or professor. what i have seen of europe has been beautiful in it’s well-crafted, old age. i left excited to return and see more. spending 6 weeks in london was a cheesy dream; i’m so grateful for everything and everyone that was a part of my time there. going through italy and spain with my grandma was an experience i’ll cherish forever. there’s something special about long travel days that lead to some of the best sunsets and meals i’ve ever had.  

3. sometimes you lose and it’s hard, but humbling. despite all of the great things that happened this year i still had some moments of defeat that left a lasting impact. i had a semester kick my ass even though i thought it was going to be easy. i lost myself somewhere in mix of it all and have been feeling the repercussions for a couple of months. we lost one of the most important elections i could have imagined. we lost icon after icon this year even when it didn’t seem like it could get worse. the seahawks lost a few times and made me an anxious mess during 87% of the games they played. i lost to alcohol quite a few times (it’s legal in london). during each one of those losses my ego took a hit but i came out on the other end accepting the defeat and more humble than i went in.

4. finding people that understand you is wonderful. sometimes it’s as simple as understanding the tv references or the music you like. sometimes it’s having someone understand how obnoxious a class is or how overwhelming going to college can be. sometimes it’s having someone understand your whole life story rather than passing judgement or staring at you like an alien. finding someone who understands you in any form feels great and makes college that much easier.

5. support systems are necessary. i try my best to do everything on my own but it’s humanely impossible, and quite frankly more sad, to do it in such a way. i would be a dropout and potentially an idiot without my people. we’re programmed to need other people and it’s hard to remember that sometimes. i’m thankful for the words of encouragement, tough love, laughs, regular love and i guess the occasional money doesn’t hurt. 

6. roommates come in all forms. sometimes you share every intimate part of your life with them during week one and they end up helping you stay afloat. sometimes they are your go to encourager or pop culture junkie. sometimes they show you pet peeves you didn't even know you had. sometimes they teach you about people different from yourself. sometimes you only coexist with them and don’t move past surface conversation the entire time you live with each other. they’re all just fine and make it so you don’t sleep in a scary, empty room every night.

7.there are so many good tv shows i have missed out on. my new friends and online streaming have reminded me this year that i have barely scratched the surface of television and films that i need to see. it’s slightly overwhelming but thank god for tv breaks.

8. blogs are hard. i wanted to post more here and even get out the vlogs i filmed over the summer but i’m a great procrastinator and easily overwhelmed. maybe one day i’ll master it.

9. i definitely don't want to be an adult. paying bills, taking out loans and being responsible 100% of the time is not fun. i would like to never grow up sorry. i’m going to fight it for as long as i can.

10. podcasts are heavily underrated. i got a job this past semester at a place that allows for me to listen to podcasts while i’m working. i have started to dabble into the podcast world and it’s amazing to see how many are out there. there’s a podcast for every topic, tv show, or problem you could ever imagine. listening to conversations between hosts about different paths of life or stories told about a specific subject has been a nice addition to my week. sometimes i learn something valuable and sometimes i just get a laugh but either way podcasts are one of my favorite trends of 2016.

11. dogs are too good for humans. they’re sweet, spastic and the best de-stressors. thank god for strangers and their dogs on campus and for snapchats of my dog back home. my weeks were greatly improved by them.

12. i love where i am from. nothing compares to the evergreens that cover washington. leaving this year made me appreciate how gorgeous washington is. i always knew it, but not being able to see constant greenery and mt rainier every time i leave my house has made it even more special to come home. i love having the option to take just a short drive to the rivers or the mountains or the ocean. i can’t wait to be back for good.

13. admitting you need help and having honest conversations is difficult. as i said, i try to deal with most things on my own especially any problems i may be having. i have a few people that i go to for advice, sometimes, but i struggle with admitting i need help or that i’m having a tough time. sometimes it’s because of pride and stubbornness. sometimes it’s because of fear. whether that’s a fear of worrying others, burdening them, or fear of failure. in 2016 i think i struggled with my mental health more than i ever have. i struggled to find balance, i struggled to have honest conversations with anyone besides my therapist 3,000 miles away and i struggled with the fear of everything that comes along with a heavier season. the goal for 2017 is to be better at those honest conversations.

14. being an aunt is the coolest. leo was most definitely the best part of my 2016. traveling the world was great and all but nothing is as great as snuggling a baby and loving him with all of your being while still managing to not have the responsibility of being a parent. even though i’ve been away i still love watching him grow via the internet. i look forward to hearing about some new milestone he’s hit and seeing his sweet face. it can turn a shitty day around really quickly. shout out to my brother and his girlfriend for making my life and the rest of my family’s a little brighter with such a happy little guy.

15. self-care is essential. i’ve gone through waves this year of taking care of myself mentally and physically but at the end of the year i can report that not taking care of yourself leads to misery.i now know how important my routine is. how important it is for me to take time to be alone. how important it is for me to be around others sometimes. how important it is to set boundaries. how important it is to not eat garbage food all of the time. how important it is to have a creative outlet. how important it is to have some type of physical activity in my life. it’s a learning process filled with trial and error but frankly, without properly caring for ourselves we become toxic people. 

16. music remains one of the strongest sources of happiness in my life. it has become a foundation for some of the most positive relationships in my life. it has been something to lean on during the scariest moments of the year. it has been essential to some of the happiest moments of the year. live music has been the best escape from reality i could ever ask for in 2016. taking the time to listen to new music this year has reminded me how special it is to find something new you connect with and feel in your bones. listening to old music this year has reminded me of the moments i love to relive in my head.

[biofunmy]

The Best Things We Bought in 2019

Put everything in its place

YouCopia Storemore Adjustable Bakeware Rack ($20 at the time of publication)

After months of carefully extracting sheet trays, cutting boards, a pizza stone, and a pie plate from a stacked, wobbling, Jenga-like tower, I bought the YouCopia Storemore Adjustable Bakeware Rack, from our small kitchen ideas guide. This bakeware rack immediately brings order to chaos with its foolproof assembly and adjustable tines, which let you fit many pieces of gear of different sizes vertically within the rack. Now there’s no excuse to pile stuff helter-skelter, and it’s so much easier to find and reach for what I need for the task at hand, whether that’s baking off a salted honey pie or roasting some sausage, greens, and peppers for a sheet-pan dinner.

— Anna Perling, staff writer

Pressure wash everything

Sun Joe SPX3000 Electric Pressure Washer ($135 at the time of publication)

I’d had our budget pressure washer pick sitting in my online shopping cart for a little over a year — I could never quite justify buying it because I thought we’d use it for the one thing we needed it for and then it would languish unused, dusty and forgotten. But I needed to wash my deck, so I finally caved and ordered it because the situation was getting dire and rentals seemed like a hassle. I am happy to report I have now also pressure washed everything in my backyard: the car, the exterior house walls, the bird bath, our outdoor furniture, the grill … the list just keeps growing. My neighbors have also borrowed it, because they’ve seen me outside washing everything and can’t resist how easy it looks to wash years of accumulated grime off things. (And a little neighborly camaraderie feels pretty good.) So if you too have been looking for a project to sink hours into, look no further.

— Daniela Gorny, associate managing editor

Safer, smarter knife storage

Benchcrafted Mag-Blok ($40 for the 12-inch size at the time of publication)

My New York apartment kitchen has no drawers. As such, my knives were piled atop one another inside what was meant to be a wine cubby (why, architects?). That was bad for a few reasons: First, the knives could nick or dull by banging together, and second, it’s dangerous to reach into a pile of sharp knives (duh). I bought the Benchcrafted Mag-Blok, which we recommend in our small kitchen ideas guide, so I could reach for knives quickly and easily, store them more safely, and incentivize myself to immediately dry my knives after cleaning them instead of leaving them on the dish rack. Plus, the Mag-Blok is as sleek as a piece of heirloom furniture, and it’s something I know I’ll keep for a long time.

— Anna Perling, staff writer

A bike that takes the place of a car

Urban Arrow Family ($6,700 at the time of publication)

This summer my family moved to Amsterdam, a city where owning a car is expensive but bike lanes are ubiquitous. This cargo bike (or bakfiets in Dutch) lets me take my 2- and 4-year-old to school or around town, rain or shine, without our having to buy a second car. In addition to a bench seat with two safety harnesses, the Urban Arrow Family has a Bosch electric assist motor, making it easier for me to pedal, and a rain cover for the bucket so the kids stay warm and dry and get to school in style, with room left over for their school bags or a load of groceries. As for their chauffeur, well, I’ve made good use of our guide to gear for foul-weather bike commuting.

— Nathan Edwards, senior editor

A book to make you rethink everything

“How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” ($16 at the time of publication)

I buy only those books that I want to revisit; I prefer to borrow from my local library. But I know I will be meditating on Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” for years to come (plus, there were too many library holds to wait). Despite the hot-pink, flowery cover and the clickbait title, this book is a cry to reconsider the politics and philosophies behind how people live in a digital world. Odell seamlessly weaves together anecdotes about visiting California’s natural gems with literary theory and insights into how big data uses human consciousness. She makes it all click — and will make you question your own clicking.

— Anna Perling, staff writer

A reliably great iPhone charger

RAVPower Wireless Charging Stand RP-PC069 ($50 at the time of publication)

I had a problem: The flimsy iPhone charger that comes standard with new Apple devices kept sliding behind my nightstand. The solution: the sharp and sturdy RAVPower Wireless Charging Stand RP-PC069. It looks great, charges fast, and is solid enough that it’s never in danger of sliding behind furniture — even when my frenzied daughter is doing her patented flips and “super swoops” on my bed. Also, can we all just admit that it’s a pain to plug that little charging cable into the tiny slot on your phone? My wife initially made fun of me on this latter point: “Oh, it’s sooo hard to plug your phone in, boo hoo.” But I had the last laugh. After several nights of her watching me easily plunk my phone down on this handsome wireless charger while she searched for her cord behind her nightstand and then futzed with plugging it in, she relented and ordered a RAVPower of her own. It’s the little things in life ….

— Ben Frumin, editor in chief

Fresh dried greens

OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner ($30 at the time of publication)

I’ve struggled with washing lettuce for years, stubbornly rinsing, shaking, paper-toweling, fumbling, and cursing my way through the task. The end result was always a bit too waterlogged, a smidgen too gritty, a lot all over the place. No more. In an effort to up my greens-cleaning game, I bought the OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner, from our guide to the best salad spinners, and I haven’t looked back. The spinning mechanism is surprisingly satisfying, a grippy bottom keeps the bowl (which doubles as a serving bowl) in place, and it handles everything from lacinato kale to beet greens with care. “This is a crazy thing,” said my kid, “but I love it!” Enough said.

— Ingrid Skjong, staff writer

Sahred From Source link Real Estate

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[antionetterparker]

Ranking the 31 best ways to get rich in 2019

So you’re trying to get that paper. You don’t want to be a businessman, you want to be a business, man. I don’t hate it.

You’re gonna need some mad skills though, or at least a lot of patience. Don’t think anything worthwhile comes easy.

Be sure to check out how to make money fast, how to save money, and ways to make money online.

Luckily, thanks to the world wide web, you can learn just about anything from your home.

But I won’t make you wait any longer… here are the best ways to stack that paper in 2019.

32. Network marketing

I live to knock it, lol, but even I was raking in 5-figure paychecks through MLM before I gave in to my own sense of self-respect.

If you’re crazy enough to think you could somehow make it into the top .0001% as I did, network marketing could work for you. The first step is to lose your shame. The second step is to lose your friends and family.

Still want to do network marketing? You’ll want to make sure you aren’t joining an actual pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes are illegal basically everywhere, but that doesn’t stop people from starting one and hiding behind an MLM label.

Here are a few ways you can distinguish between the two:

Primary earning method – Is the compensation plan set up in a way where you earn more from selling products or recruiting new members? Pyramid schemes tend to do the latter.

Emphasis – Aside from the compensation plan, does the company make a huge deal out of recruiting without caring much about their products? Could be a pyramid scheme.

Do they pay attention to their market? If there’s no interest in consumer demand, that’s a sign they care only about adding new members to the pyramid.

Upfront investment size – Pyramid schemes usually require a large upfront “investment”, which just gets you your items. MLM’s sometimes charge upfront, but the fee tends to be pretty small.

None of those bullet points will 100% tell you if a company’s legit or not, but they do point you in the right direction.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to research the network marketing company further.

31. Real estate

Barbara Corcoran did it, and you can too.

While the average real estate agent banks about $54,000/year, there’s no limit to the amount you can earn in this job.

The Wall Street Journal recently published the salaries of the top 1,000 real estate agents, and the #1 head honcho grossed a whopping 1.4 billion, with a B. Even #250 made $60 million in annual sales. (1)

Normally, I’d say start investing in real estate yourself.

But not everyone has the money to buy up rental properties, nor do they always know what they’re doing.

Starting as a real estate agent is a great way to earn a nice paycheck while you’re learning the ins and outs of real estate.

Then you can jump ship and start your own little real estate empire.

30. Index funds

When Warren Buffet hits you up with investment advice, you listen: index funds.

This is the slow way to riches, but it’s almost certain. You can average a solid 8.5% return on index funds, which means that you’d be a millionaire in 20 years if you start investing $1,587/month now. (2)

29. Virtual reality

So, a couple years ago I blogged about how the VR industry was expected to blow up. Over 12 million in headset sales predicted for 2016. (3)

A funny thing happened in 2016: almost 100 million were sold. (4) 

The best part? 96% of these were low-cost, partial VR headsets, and the market for those in China is expected to hit $8.5 billion.

You don’t have to invest in crazy tech and clunky, futuristic headsets. Plastic and cardboard units that cost $30 and attach to your smartphone will do just fine.

Start up an SEO heavy e-commerce store if you’ve got the digital marketing skills, or start a highly targetted niche business, like selling VR headsets to the wedding market (except don’t, because that niche is taken by LiveKnot). (5)

28. Networking

There’s this legend of an Italian billionaire who was asked, “If you had to start all over again, from zero, what would you do?”

He said he’d take any job he could get that paid $500, buy a nice suit, and go to a party filled with successful people. If you’re not a people person, learn to be one.

Why?

Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Dale Carnegie (yep, the dude from How to Win Friends and Influence People) once taught public speaking to Warren Buffett. His advice? Smile, listen, be genuinely interested in other people, remember their names, and offer lots of praise.

27. Consulting

You can start off at a big 5 consulting firm (think PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Accenture) and make over $70,000 as an entry-level consultant, easily hitting 6-figs when you go Senior. (6)

Then go freelance for more freedom and more money.

Alternatively, if you don’t have consulting experience but can get a very specialized skillset, go into freelance niche consulting (financial consulting, marketing consulting, etc). Without decades of consulting experience, you’ll have to charge based on your performance – in other words, your rate will be based on the results you deliver. If you’re good, this just means more money.

26. Investment banker

Think Wall Street. Think Goldman Sachs. Think J.P. Morgan.

Banking has produced some of the world’s richest people…. if you can avoid getting thrown in Martha Stewart prison, that is.

That being said, the median salary for investment bankers is $100,000. (7) 

However, you’ve gotta hustle if you want to get to that 7-figure salary. It’s not just 40 hours a week.

It’s more like 90-100 hours most weeks for your typical analyst/associate, according to a former investment banker and author named Andrew Gutmann. (8)

To put that into perspective, that’s equivalent to a little over 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, but usually that involves coming in on the weekend as well.

Not everyone will succeed in a job with those hours.

But those that make it to a VP position can easily pull 7 figures a year.

25. Public speaker

Build a brand for yourself and a recognizable name, and you could be snagging 6-figure speaking engagements presidential-style. PublicPaidSpeaking.com is a good place to start…some of their “non celebrity professional speakers” are banking “individual profits of over $800,000 a year.” (9)

Yeah, you read that right.

24. Life coaching

If you’re that friend that everyone goes to for advice, life coaching could potentially bank you a multi-million dollar practice on the internet. The industry has been booming ever since the economic crash in 2008. (10) People in hard times will spend every last cent they have for someone who can fix their problems.

Becoming a thought leader by starting your own blog, guest blogging, writing on LinkedIn, and self-publishing on Amazon. As soon as you score your first high-profile client you can start name-dropping, and the requests will fall into your lap from there.

23. Kid-Friendly YouTube videos

How many times have you gone to dinner and seen a kid glued to their iPad watching YouTube while Mommy and Daddy get some private time?

There’s an entire app called YouTube Kids, and it gets 8 million weekly users. (11) The best part? The quality of your vids can be absolute garbage, because kids don’t care either way as long as you keep them mesmerized. One of the richest YouTube millionaires is a 5-year old who makes videos of him opening toys. Literally, that’s it. (12)

22. Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin skyrocketed in 2017, reaching almost $20,000, but has since fallen to hovering around $8,000-$10,000.

While not as big of a moneymaker as it used to be, cryptocurrency is still a promising way to make money.

There are two routes you can take depending on how tech savvy you are. If you’re less tech savvy, invest. It’s a gamble but one with potentially huge returns. If you’re more tech savvy, launch a crypto ICO. Basically, you start your own cryptocurrency and hack it via a crowdfunding technique called “Initial Coin Offerings”.

Ethereum started as an ICO, and it was priced at only $12. Nowadays, it hovers around $180 depending on the day.

Keep in mind that your coin has to have a unique, useful idea behind it. Pumping and dumping coins might’ve worked years ago, but people aren’t going to invest in random coins anymore unless there’s a compelling reason.

21. Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology that cryptocurrency uses to record transactions. It’s basically a decentralized, encrypted way of recording transactions digitally so they can’t be hacked or altered (or at least without a genius hacker).

Companies are currently developing blockchain solutions for nearly every field, meaning plenty of lucrative investing opportunities await.

If you’ve got a blockchain solution idea and you can sell yourself to angel investors, you could start your own company instead.

20. Gaming

Everybody would’ve laughed in your face if you said you were going to become a multi-millionaire by playing Doom back in the 1990s.

Fast forward a couple decades, and you now have people like Ninja making half a million for live-streaming his Fortnite sessions. (13)

You wanna make money playing video games? Playing in tournaments and being an e-sports athlete is one way, but the big money’s in streaming on platforms like Twitch and making YouTube videos because the income is much more passive.

Granted, it takes a long time to build an audience, but I mean you’re playing video games while you’re doing it, not running a blog or anything.

It’s a brave new world.

19. Podcasting

Everyone’s favorite podcaster Joe Rogan was allegedly earning $75,000 per episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast back in 2016. (14) That number’s gotta be much higher now.

To start a podcast, you’ll first need a topic, preferably something interesting. You’ll also want to decide on a name as well as the length you want each episode to be.

Aside from that, the rest of it comes down to creating your brand and planning/recording your episodes.

18. Dating apps

Almost half the population of the U.S. uses online dating now, and a third of new marriages start online. (15)

This is a huge market to capitalize on. Sure, you’ve already got your Tinders and Grindrs and eHarmonies, but there’s plenty of space left for the niche dating market.

Just look at Spark Networks, owner of Christian Mingle and Jdate (a Jewish dating site). They consistently gross over $100 million a year for matching up religious singles with other singles of the same religion.

Find a niche that’s not taken, turn it into a mobile app, and pair it with the addictive gameified interface of Tinder. You’re welcome.

17. Niche Sites

You can get rich selling products without having to manufacture them or even set up a store with affiliate marketing.

Niche sites are one of the easiest ways to go about this. You basically build a site/blog around an extremely niche topic and target ultra-specific keywords to bring in visitors that are highly likely to buy. All you need are your standard website pages (home, affiliate disclosure, privacy policy, etc), a few simple blog posts targeting your keywords, and some affiliate products.

Once your niche site pulls a decent income, you can scale by hiring writers or VAs to manage your site and pump out posts, then you can start another site and repeat the process.

You won’t get rich overnight, but as your site reaches more people thanks to your SEO efforts, more people will buy through your affiliate links, growing your income.

If you ever get sick of running your niche sites, you can always sell them for a nice profit.

16. Marijuana

Large-scale legalization of weed in the US started with Colorado and Washington in 2012, but it’s slowly spreading all over the states.

And in Canada, it’s been legalized federally.

If you have no moral qualms with your money flowing into the marijuana industry, you can capitalize on the legal acceptance of pot in two ways.

The first would be investing in marijuana stocks. As you’d expect, these are quite volatile what with all the political battles over the little green plant. Don’t worry, though, as the industry is expected to reach over $23 billion by 2022. (16)

Or, if you live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal, you could start your own marijuana business in the form of either a dispensary or a grow operation.

Neither are cheap, and starting either one requires jumping through a ton of legal hoops for obvious reasons. Plus, you gotta operate your business on an all-cash basis since it’s still banned federally.

But nearly 90% of dispensaries, wholesale cultivators (grow operations), and even companies making weed-infused products were profitable in 2016. (17)

What better way to make some green than with some green?

15. Flip websites

Imagine making $58,000 in profit over the course of 2 months just by buying and selling domain names. Well, it’s been done. (18)

Domains are basically digital real estate. Domain flipping sites like Flippa make it easy to try your luck, but if you really want to make good money, do your research and base your domain purchases on knowledge and skill. (19)

14. Amazon self-publishing

Thanks to the internet, anyone can publish a book now for free. But you have to put in solid marketing effort to make sales.

You don’t have a publishing house doing all the work for you, but you’re also raking in most of the profits. Self-publish on Amazon and sell your book for $2.99 or less, and you get to keep 70% of the royalties. (20) If you can sell 477,783 copies (indie self-publishing star Amanda Hocking was doing 100,000/month in sales in her prime), you’ll make your first million. (21)

Then if you want, start your own website and sell your books on there at whatever price you want. You’ll get to keep all your profits.

Just make sure you can handle all the admin and marketing stuff, or better, hire someone else to do it.

13. Content farm

If you’re looking for the next big thing, content marketing is already it. The industry is on track to rake in $313 billion by 2019, so get on it now. (22)

If you can learn how to write epic content that drives sales (and get your name in Forbes and HuffPo), you can charge hundreds per article.

Even better, start a content farm, hire writers off of freelancing websites, and skim passive profit off the top.

Starting a content farm will require you have the cash to pay your writers. Without it, your best bet is to do the writing yourself until you’ve got some money.

12. Instagram influencer

Grab that iPhone, download some photo editing apps, slap a filter on your selfie and post. Simple.

Instagram “micro-influencers” (10k-50k following) don’t make huge bucks…more like $50-$100 per post. But if you can grow your following up to 6-figures, you could rake in thousands for posting one sponsored photo. (23) Making a paycheck has never been easier.

11. Software development

Unlike web development, this is learning coding and development that’s focused on building software. It has a lower ceiling but a higher average income.

Learn some of the more lucrative frameworks and systems (like Spark and Cassandra) and some of the highest paying programming languages (like Scala and F#), and you’ll hit an average salary of $125,000. (24)

With enough experience, capital, and entrepreneurial skills, you could launch your own software company and maybe even become the next Silicon Valley success story too.

10. Video post-production

Video is IT. By 2020, video is expected to make up a whopping 90% of all internet traffic. It’s already on a huge upswing, having grown 71% year-over-year in 2016. (25)

You could go through the trouble of writing scripts, hiring actors, directing, and getting expensive filming equipment, or you could just start your own company that offers post-production video services (editing, adding in music, credits, etc).

That’s the part that most people outsource anyway. Once you build your name, start your own video editing training school to really bring in the passive income.

9. Web design

Websites like Codeacademy and SkillCrush will teach you web design for fairly cheap, and some websites even teach it for free. (26) (27)

Web design is the less technical, more design-oriented side of creating websites. You get to design layouts, make sure color schemes work well, and all that fun stuff. While it doesn’t pay quite as well as web development, you don’t have to learn as much code and you can still earn $75-$100/hour. (28)

8. Social media consultant

Facebook has over 3 million companies using their ads, and over 60 million using their pages to promote their business. (29) Instagram has over 1 million advertisers, and it’s bound to keep growing. (30)

If you’re that friend who’s always scrolling social media, editing photos, hashtagging, and whipping up clever captions, you can make money doing that. Get analytics and ads on lock on your skills list, and you can make good money doing what you do best.

7. Data scraping

You can do this manually without any programming skills, it just takes a lot longer. But if you come up with a good, unique idea like

Scraping emotional reactions to certain types of content on Facebook

Gathering leads from online business directories for B2B service providers

Gathering contact info for homes that were recently purchased

Scraping for keywords in user reviews of a certain product

Businesses will pay for the data if it helps them sell their products.

Now imagine if you did know how to code and could create computer programs that scrape all this data for you in seconds. You’d be making sales faster than you could keep up with them.

6. e-Commerce

Pick a niche product. I mean really niche (think “Disney coffee mugs” or “small travel backpacks”).

You don’t have to manufacture the product – you can fill orders via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), dropshipping (basically online retail without inventory), or even plain old affiliate marketing.

Kick your SEO into full gear. Once you’re #1 on Google you’ll start seeing some handsome profits with little to no effort aside from maintenance.

You can boost your sales by spending on ads (or hiring an expert to do the ads for you) once you’ve got cash rolling in. No need to if you don’t want to, but do it right and your profits will increase.

Then you can scale it by outsourcing all the menial stuff to virtual assistants. Hey, you’re creating jobs now!

5. Web Development

Again, you can learn this online, even for free.

Unlike web design, learning more advanced coding languages and becoming a web developer PAYS. One developer wrote in Business Insider of a typical job offer – $150,000 salary, $10,000 signing bonus, all kinds of freebies, from gym memberships to free meals on the daily, and flexible work hours. (31)

Of course, if you take all that coding knowledge and use it to start your own hit website (think Facebook), the sky is the limit.

Again, websites like Code Academy, Khan Academy, and Code.com (among a ton of others) are filled to the brim with coding lessons and other good stuff.

But as you know, the best way to get better is to practice. Once you’ve learned some stuff from your free online resources, you’ve got to start building websites with your skills.

4. Blogging

Bloggers don’t actually make money, right?

Nope, not a myth. If you hit it big with your blog you can clear six figures a year EASY.

Just look at Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. I mean, he regularly clears six figures every MONTH.

Sure, he’s got like 100 income sources at this point, but according to his income reports, affiliate marketing alone earns him around $100,000 a month give or take.

For more proof, just search the web for “blog income reports” and you’ll get endless lists of, well, blog income reports.

If you get really big, think Mashable, Tech Crunch, and Endgadget status (yes, they all started as blogs), you can even score a lucrative takeover. Ariana Huffington eventually sold the Huffington Post for $315 million to AOL. (32)

3. Mobile app creator

Mobile apps routinely hit 250 billion downloads worldwide this year. (33)

Platforms often pay 70% profits on your app sales, so if you’re selling an app for $4.99, that can add up quickly. Sell half a million downloads, and you’re looking at a $1,746,500 profit.

That might sound hard, but there are actually thousands of apps that have hit over a million downloads, so hitting half that is definitely possible.

2. SEO consulting

Having a digital presence is a must for any business nowadays, and the only way to get there is through SEO. Because of that, companies will pay huge amounts to someone who can provide results…I’m talking page one Google results.

The hourly consulting rate for a legit SEO specialist is $100-$300. (34)

1. Lead generation for local businesses

If you’re looking for automated, digital, and scalable, this is it. If you’re looking for a market with low competition that is almost impossible to saturate, this is it. If you’re looking for guaranteed five-figure paychecks, this is also it.

The bottom line is that this method works better and more consistently than almost any other for generating passive income. You’re building out niche websites that focus on specific products and specific locations, so when your competition is cut down to people advertising limo services in Dayton, Ohio, hitting it big is a lot more do-able.

Use SEO to get to the top and let the leads come in overnight. Once you can offer local businesses a stack of contact info for people who have already said they’re interested in the product or service, they’ll start handing you money faster than you can count it.

via https://mlmcompanies.org/get-rich-in-2019/

[mlmcompanies]

So you’re trying to get that paper. You don’t want to be a businessman, you want to be a business, man. I don’t hate it.

You’re gonna need some mad skills though, or at least a lot of patience. Don’t think anything worthwhile comes easy.

Be sure to check out how to make money fast, how to save money, and ways to make money online.

Luckily, thanks to the world wide web, you can learn just about anything from your home.

But I won’t make you wait any longer… here are the best ways to stack that paper in 2019.

32. Network marketing

I live to knock it, lol, but even I was raking in 5-figure paychecks through MLM before I gave in to my own sense of self-respect.

If you’re crazy enough to think you could somehow make it into the top .0001% as I did, network marketing could work for you. The first step is to lose your shame. The second step is to lose your friends and family.

Still want to do network marketing? You’ll want to make sure you aren’t joining an actual pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes are illegal basically everywhere, but that doesn’t stop people from starting one and hiding behind an MLM label.

Here are a few ways you can distinguish between the two:

Primary earning method – Is the compensation plan set up in a way where you earn more from selling products or recruiting new members? Pyramid schemes tend to do the latter.

Emphasis – Aside from the compensation plan, does the company make a huge deal out of recruiting without caring much about their products? Could be a pyramid scheme.

Do they pay attention to their market? If there’s no interest in consumer demand, that’s a sign they care only about adding new members to the pyramid.

Upfront investment size – Pyramid schemes usually require a large upfront “investment”, which just gets you your items. MLM’s sometimes charge upfront, but the fee tends to be pretty small.

None of those bullet points will 100% tell you if a company’s legit or not, but they do point you in the right direction.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to research the network marketing company further.

31. Real estate

Barbara Corcoran did it, and you can too.

While the average real estate agent banks about $54,000/year, there’s no limit to the amount you can earn in this job.

The Wall Street Journal recently published the salaries of the top 1,000 real estate agents, and the #1 head honcho grossed a whopping 1.4 billion, with a B. Even #250 made $60 million in annual sales. (1)

Normally, I’d say start investing in real estate yourself.

But not everyone has the money to buy up rental properties, nor do they always know what they’re doing.

Starting as a real estate agent is a great way to earn a nice paycheck while you’re learning the ins and outs of real estate.

Then you can jump ship and start your own little real estate empire.

30. Index funds

When Warren Buffet hits you up with investment advice, you listen: index funds.

This is the slow way to riches, but it’s almost certain. You can average a solid 8.5% return on index funds, which means that you’d be a millionaire in 20 years if you start investing $1,587/month now. (2)

29. Virtual reality

So, a couple years ago I blogged about how the VR industry was expected to blow up. Over 12 million in headset sales predicted for 2016. (3)

A funny thing happened in 2016: almost 100 million were sold. (4) 

The best part? 96% of these were low-cost, partial VR headsets, and the market for those in China is expected to hit $8.5 billion.

You don’t have to invest in crazy tech and clunky, futuristic headsets. Plastic and cardboard units that cost $30 and attach to your smartphone will do just fine.

Start up an SEO heavy e-commerce store if you’ve got the digital marketing skills, or start a highly targetted niche business, like selling VR headsets to the wedding market (except don’t, because that niche is taken by LiveKnot). (5)

28. Networking

There’s this legend of an Italian billionaire who was asked, “If you had to start all over again, from zero, what would you do?”

He said he’d take any job he could get that paid $500, buy a nice suit, and go to a party filled with successful people. If you’re not a people person, learn to be one.

Why?

Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Dale Carnegie (yep, the dude from How to Win Friends and Influence People) once taught public speaking to Warren Buffett. His advice? Smile, listen, be genuinely interested in other people, remember their names, and offer lots of praise.

27. Consulting

You can start off at a big 5 consulting firm (think PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Accenture) and make over $70,000 as an entry-level consultant, easily hitting 6-figs when you go Senior. (6)

Then go freelance for more freedom and more money.

Alternatively, if you don’t have consulting experience but can get a very specialized skillset, go into freelance niche consulting (financial consulting, marketing consulting, etc). Without decades of consulting experience, you’ll have to charge based on your performance – in other words, your rate will be based on the results you deliver. If you’re good, this just means more money.

26. Investment banker

Think Wall Street. Think Goldman Sachs. Think J.P. Morgan.

Banking has produced some of the world’s richest people…. if you can avoid getting thrown in Martha Stewart prison, that is.

That being said, the median salary for investment bankers is $100,000. (7) 

However, you’ve gotta hustle if you want to get to that 7-figure salary. It’s not just 40 hours a week.

It’s more like 90-100 hours most weeks for your typical analyst/associate, according to a former investment banker and author named Andrew Gutmann. (8)

To put that into perspective, that’s equivalent to a little over 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, but usually that involves coming in on the weekend as well.

Not everyone will succeed in a job with those hours.

But those that make it to a VP position can easily pull 7 figures a year.

25. Public speaker

Build a brand for yourself and a recognizable name, and you could be snagging 6-figure speaking engagements presidential-style. PublicPaidSpeaking.com is a good place to start…some of their “non celebrity professional speakers” are banking “individual profits of over $800,000 a year.” (9)

Yeah, you read that right.

24. Life coaching

If you’re that friend that everyone goes to for advice, life coaching could potentially bank you a multi-million dollar practice on the internet. The industry has been booming ever since the economic crash in 2008. (10) People in hard times will spend every last cent they have for someone who can fix their problems.

Becoming a thought leader by starting your own blog, guest blogging, writing on LinkedIn, and self-publishing on Amazon. As soon as you score your first high-profile client you can start name-dropping, and the requests will fall into your lap from there.

23. Kid-Friendly YouTube videos

How many times have you gone to dinner and seen a kid glued to their iPad watching YouTube while Mommy and Daddy get some private time?

There’s an entire app called YouTube Kids, and it gets 8 million weekly users. (11) The best part? The quality of your vids can be absolute garbage, because kids don’t care either way as long as you keep them mesmerized. One of the richest YouTube millionaires is a 5-year old who makes videos of him opening toys. Literally, that’s it. (12)

22. Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin skyrocketed in 2017, reaching almost $20,000, but has since fallen to hovering around $8,000-$10,000.

While not as big of a moneymaker as it used to be, cryptocurrency is still a promising way to make money.

There are two routes you can take depending on how tech savvy you are. If you’re less tech savvy, invest. It’s a gamble but one with potentially huge returns. If you’re more tech savvy, launch a crypto ICO. Basically, you start your own cryptocurrency and hack it via a crowdfunding technique called “Initial Coin Offerings”.

Ethereum started as an ICO, and it was priced at only $12. Nowadays, it hovers around $180 depending on the day.

Keep in mind that your coin has to have a unique, useful idea behind it. Pumping and dumping coins might’ve worked years ago, but people aren’t going to invest in random coins anymore unless there’s a compelling reason.

21. Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology that cryptocurrency uses to record transactions. It’s basically a decentralized, encrypted way of recording transactions digitally so they can’t be hacked or altered (or at least without a genius hacker).

Companies are currently developing blockchain solutions for nearly every field, meaning plenty of lucrative investing opportunities await.

If you’ve got a blockchain solution idea and you can sell yourself to angel investors, you could start your own company instead.

20. Gaming

Everybody would’ve laughed in your face if you said you were going to become a multi-millionaire by playing Doom back in the 1990s.

Fast forward a couple decades, and you now have people like Ninja making half a million for live-streaming his Fortnite sessions. (13)

You wanna make money playing video games? Playing in tournaments and being an e-sports athlete is one way, but the big money’s in streaming on platforms like Twitch and making YouTube videos because the income is much more passive.

Granted, it takes a long time to build an audience, but I mean you’re playing video games while you’re doing it, not running a blog or anything.

It’s a brave new world.

19. Podcasting

Everyone’s favorite podcaster Joe Rogan was allegedly earning $75,000 per episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast back in 2016. (14) That number’s gotta be much higher now.

To start a podcast, you’ll first need a topic, preferably something interesting. You’ll also want to decide on a name as well as the length you want each episode to be.

Aside from that, the rest of it comes down to creating your brand and planning/recording your episodes.

18. Dating apps

Almost half the population of the U.S. uses online dating now, and a third of new marriages start online. (15)

This is a huge market to capitalize on. Sure, you’ve already got your Tinders and Grindrs and eHarmonies, but there’s plenty of space left for the niche dating market.

Just look at Spark Networks, owner of Christian Mingle and Jdate (a Jewish dating site). They consistently gross over $100 million a year for matching up religious singles with other singles of the same religion.

Find a niche that’s not taken, turn it into a mobile app, and pair it with the addictive gameified interface of Tinder. You’re welcome.

17. Niche Sites

You can get rich selling products without having to manufacture them or even set up a store with affiliate marketing.

Niche sites are one of the easiest ways to go about this. You basically build a site/blog around an extremely niche topic and target ultra-specific keywords to bring in visitors that are highly likely to buy. All you need are your standard website pages (home, affiliate disclosure, privacy policy, etc), a few simple blog posts targeting your keywords, and some affiliate products.

Once your niche site pulls a decent income, you can scale by hiring writers or VAs to manage your site and pump out posts, then you can start another site and repeat the process.

You won’t get rich overnight, but as your site reaches more people thanks to your SEO efforts, more people will buy through your affiliate links, growing your income.

If you ever get sick of running your niche sites, you can always sell them for a nice profit.

16. Marijuana

Large-scale legalization of weed in the US started with Colorado and Washington in 2012, but it’s slowly spreading all over the states.

And in Canada, it’s been legalized federally.

If you have no moral qualms with your money flowing into the marijuana industry, you can capitalize on the legal acceptance of pot in two ways.

The first would be investing in marijuana stocks. As you’d expect, these are quite volatile what with all the political battles over the little green plant. Don’t worry, though, as the industry is expected to reach over $23 billion by 2022. (16)

Or, if you live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal, you could start your own marijuana business in the form of either a dispensary or a grow operation.

Neither are cheap, and starting either one requires jumping through a ton of legal hoops for obvious reasons. Plus, you gotta operate your business on an all-cash basis since it’s still banned federally.

But nearly 90% of dispensaries, wholesale cultivators (grow operations), and even companies making weed-infused products were profitable in 2016. (17)

What better way to make some green than with some green?

15. Flip websites

Imagine making $58,000 in profit over the course of 2 months just by buying and selling domain names. Well, it’s been done. (18)

Domains are basically digital real estate. Domain flipping sites like Flippa make it easy to try your luck, but if you really want to make good money, do your research and base your domain purchases on knowledge and skill. (19)

14. Amazon self-publishing

Thanks to the internet, anyone can publish a book now for free. But you have to put in solid marketing effort to make sales.

You don’t have a publishing house doing all the work for you, but you’re also raking in most of the profits. Self-publish on Amazon and sell your book for $2.99 or less, and you get to keep 70% of the royalties. (20) If you can sell 477,783 copies (indie self-publishing star Amanda Hocking was doing 100,000/month in sales in her prime), you’ll make your first million. (21)

Then if you want, start your own website and sell your books on there at whatever price you want. You’ll get to keep all your profits.

Just make sure you can handle all the admin and marketing stuff, or better, hire someone else to do it.

13. Content farm

If you’re looking for the next big thing, content marketing is already it. The industry is on track to rake in $313 billion by 2019, so get on it now. (22)

If you can learn how to write epic content that drives sales (and get your name in Forbes and HuffPo), you can charge hundreds per article.

Even better, start a content farm, hire writers off of freelancing websites, and skim passive profit off the top.

Starting a content farm will require you have the cash to pay your writers. Without it, your best bet is to do the writing yourself until you’ve got some money.

12. Instagram influencer

Grab that iPhone, download some photo editing apps, slap a filter on your selfie and post. Simple.

Instagram “micro-influencers” (10k-50k following) don’t make huge bucks…more like $50-$100 per post. But if you can grow your following up to 6-figures, you could rake in thousands for posting one sponsored photo. (23) Making a paycheck has never been easier.

11. Software development

Unlike web development, this is learning coding and development that’s focused on building software. It has a lower ceiling but a higher average income.

Learn some of the more lucrative frameworks and systems (like Spark and Cassandra) and some of the highest paying programming languages (like Scala and F#), and you’ll hit an average salary of $125,000. (24)

With enough experience, capital, and entrepreneurial skills, you could launch your own software company and maybe even become the next Silicon Valley success story too.

10. Video post-production

Video is IT. By 2020, video is expected to make up a whopping 90% of all internet traffic. It’s already on a huge upswing, having grown 71% year-over-year in 2016. (25)

You could go through the trouble of writing scripts, hiring actors, directing, and getting expensive filming equipment, or you could just start your own company that offers post-production video services (editing, adding in music, credits, etc).

That’s the part that most people outsource anyway. Once you build your name, start your own video editing training school to really bring in the passive income.

9. Web design

Websites like Codeacademy and SkillCrush will teach you web design for fairly cheap, and some websites even teach it for free. (26) (27)

Web design is the less technical, more design-oriented side of creating websites. You get to design layouts, make sure color schemes work well, and all that fun stuff. While it doesn’t pay quite as well as web development, you don’t have to learn as much code and you can still earn $75-$100/hour. (28)

8. Social media consultant

Facebook has over 3 million companies using their ads, and over 60 million using their pages to promote their business. (29) Instagram has over 1 million advertisers, and it’s bound to keep growing. (30)

If you’re that friend who’s always scrolling social media, editing photos, hashtagging, and whipping up clever captions, you can make money doing that. Get analytics and ads on lock on your skills list, and you can make good money doing what you do best.

7. Data scraping

You can do this manually without any programming skills, it just takes a lot longer. But if you come up with a good, unique idea like

Scraping emotional reactions to certain types of content on Facebook

Gathering leads from online business directories for B2B service providers

Gathering contact info for homes that were recently purchased

Scraping for keywords in user reviews of a certain product

Businesses will pay for the data if it helps them sell their products.

Now imagine if you did know how to code and could create computer programs that scrape all this data for you in seconds. You’d be making sales faster than you could keep up with them.

6. e-Commerce

Pick a niche product. I mean really niche (think “Disney coffee mugs” or “small travel backpacks”).

You don’t have to manufacture the product – you can fill orders via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), dropshipping (basically online retail without inventory), or even plain old affiliate marketing.

Kick your SEO into full gear. Once you’re #1 on Google you’ll start seeing some handsome profits with little to no effort aside from maintenance.

You can boost your sales by spending on ads (or hiring an expert to do the ads for you) once you’ve got cash rolling in. No need to if you don’t want to, but do it right and your profits will increase.

Then you can scale it by outsourcing all the menial stuff to virtual assistants. Hey, you’re creating jobs now!

5. Web Development

Again, you can learn this online, even for free.

Unlike web design, learning more advanced coding languages and becoming a web developer PAYS. One developer wrote in Business Insider of a typical job offer – $150,000 salary, $10,000 signing bonus, all kinds of freebies, from gym memberships to free meals on the daily, and flexible work hours. (31)

Of course, if you take all that coding knowledge and use it to start your own hit website (think Facebook), the sky is the limit.

Again, websites like Code Academy, Khan Academy, and Code.com (among a ton of others) are filled to the brim with coding lessons and other good stuff.

But as you know, the best way to get better is to practice. Once you’ve learned some stuff from your free online resources, you’ve got to start building websites with your skills.

4. Blogging

Bloggers don’t actually make money, right?

Nope, not a myth. If you hit it big with your blog you can clear six figures a year EASY.

Just look at Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. I mean, he regularly clears six figures every MONTH.

Sure, he’s got like 100 income sources at this point, but according to his income reports, affiliate marketing alone earns him around $100,000 a month give or take.

For more proof, just search the web for “blog income reports” and you’ll get endless lists of, well, blog income reports.

If you get really big, think Mashable, Tech Crunch, and Endgadget status (yes, they all started as blogs), you can even score a lucrative takeover. Ariana Huffington eventually sold the Huffington Post for $315 million to AOL. (32)

3. Mobile app creator

Mobile apps routinely hit 250 billion downloads worldwide this year. (33)

Platforms often pay 70% profits on your app sales, so if you’re selling an app for $4.99, that can add up quickly. Sell half a million downloads, and you’re looking at a $1,746,500 profit.

That might sound hard, but there are actually thousands of apps that have hit over a million downloads, so hitting half that is definitely possible.

2. SEO consulting

Having a digital presence is a must for any business nowadays, and the only way to get there is through SEO. Because of that, companies will pay huge amounts to someone who can provide results…I’m talking page one Google results.

The hourly consulting rate for a legit SEO specialist is $100-$300. (34)

1. Lead generation for local businesses

If you’re looking for automated, digital, and scalable, this is it. If you’re looking for a market with low competition that is almost impossible to saturate, this is it. If you’re looking for guaranteed five-figure paychecks, this is also it.

The bottom line is that this method works better and more consistently than almost any other for generating passive income. You’re building out niche websites that focus on specific products and specific locations, so when your competition is cut down to people advertising limo services in Dayton, Ohio, hitting it big is a lot more do-able.

Use SEO to get to the top and let the leads come in overnight. Once you can offer local businesses a stack of contact info for people who have already said they’re interested in the product or service, they’ll start handing you money faster than you can count it.