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politicalmamaduck · 5 years

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The Last Shot

A Smuggler Ben Solo/Dark Side Rey arranged marriage fic for @the-reylo-void. Many thanks to @rapturousaurora for betaing, @cosetteskywalker for the above moodboards, and @aionimica for her drawing of Rey in her wedding dress!

Read it on AO3 here, and listen to the playlist here!

Author’s note: I am planning to wrap this piece up before The Rise of Skywalker, over two and a half years after I started writing it!

It was a bright, sunny morning outside on D’Qar, though it was impossible to tell from the military base’s grey, industrial interior. Rey appreciated knowing there was greenery outside nonetheless.

Leia--General Organa--allowed Rey and Ben some privacy after asking for a meeting and informing them she had assigned them private quarters close to her own, though far enough away that they still had some privacy.

Though she had no desire to join the Resistance, having had enough of generals, orders, and the military structure, Rey still found herself taken by the elder stateswoman’s grace and dignity. Perhaps in another life, they could have been friends and colleagues, even a proper mother- and daughter-in-law.

Ben had created yet another uneasy truce between them. She felt his honesty, his earnest wish to not repeat the mistakes of the past. She believed him, though she was still uncertain that their relationship could work. They both knew they desired each other, though neither had acted upon it since their kiss on Jakku. She could and would work with him and his mother to defeat Snoke. She would have her vengeance. After that, she wanted time to figure out who and what she was, and what she wanted to do. She was still young and had the rest of her life ahead of her.

Growing up on Jakku, all she cared about was finding her parents. She had found them, and hoped she would make them proud. They believed in a cause which she could not, certainly not the twisted, evil organization their cause had become. Not everyone who served the Empire of old was evil. Some wanted to build a better opportunity and life for themselves. And certainly, not everyone who served the First Order was evil, though those who did so did not necessarily choose their life for themselves. She could condone it no longer. The Empire’s Stormtrooper program was not built on brainwashed child soldiers.

Darth Vader’s parents weren’t murdered by his master.

All this and more ran through Rey’s mind as she and Ben retired to their new quarters before their meeting with the Resistance leadership.

They entered their apartment to find a small, but clean living space, with a bedroom and a refresher. There was, of course, only one bed.

“Do you mind if I take the ‘fresher first?” Ben asked. “I still feel slimy from the bacta.”

“Go ahead,” Rey replied, gesturing across the space. After the door closed, she sighed and stretched out on the couch. She did not regret climbing into her husband’s hospital cot the night before. It was far too small for both of them, and Ben was a large man, but it was still better than sleeping on the chair, or having to cross the entire base to bunk on an unfamiliar ship. She missed her Knights and their own vessel. She took the opportunity to send Falisa and Keeva an encrypted comm message.

We’ll be ready, Falisa replied. The rest are coming to rendezvous on Takodana. The Kanata castle there will provide cover. We will meet you at the Supremacy.

Rey wasn’t sure to what Falisa referred, but she was certain Ben would know. Though she had scorned his smuggling ways at the beginning, now she envied his freedom, his ability to travel and do as he pleased. Perhaps his decision to reject the Jedi path was not the coward’s choice, as so many assumed, but instead Ben making the right decision for himself.

So much of their lives came down to choices, and lack thereof. Rey knew the Skywalker family was still atoning for Anakin Skywalker--Darth Vader’s--crimes. Ben did not choose his family’s legacy.

These thoughts occupied her while she freshened up for their meeting. She was ready to make her choice and take her destiny into her own hands.

Without saying a word, Ben extended his hand to her after she emerged. She took it, and the two walked silently to the Resistance’s command center.

Both Rey and Ben were surprised to find Luke Skywalker in attendance. The entirety of the Resistance leadership was there as well, from Leia, Admiral Ackbar, and Admiral Holdo to Poe Dameron with Black Squadron and Finn and the Tico sisters. Rey noted that General Hux would never consider the opinions of so many, and the way the Resistance truly felt like a family.

Generations had served under Leia Organa now. Some of the beings in the room had never known peace on their homeworlds.

Rey wanted peace for herself, and she would stop at nothing to get it.

The room quieted when Ben and Rey arrived, clearly the last to enter.

“I understand you want to go after Snoke,” Leia began.

“We’re ready,” Rey said, standing straight, tall and proud. “My Knights will fight the Praetorian Guard while Ben and I handle Snoke.” Ben nodded in agreement as murmurs broke out across the room.

“Are you ready for such a challenge?” Luke asked. “Snoke has been influencing both of your minds for years, across an entire galaxy. How will he affect you in person?”

Neither Ben nor Rey wavered at his words. The Force flowed through them, strengthening and buoying them, together, united as one.

Ben spoke next. “I think that’s the crux of this. Snoke will underestimate us, particularly Rey and the Knights. He thinks they are reliant upon him, that they would be nothing without him. But he’s wrong, and his overconfidence in their loyalty and underestimation of their strength will be his weakness.”

“That’s just it, Master Skywalker,” Rey added, this time using his title with the respect it merited, rather than the scorn she had displayed the first time she met this family, these officers. “We’re used to having him in our heads. We can guard against him and take the brunt of it, buying the Knights time. We’ll pretend I’ve reclaimed Ben from the Hutts on Tatooine; surely there’s been some news of a disturbance there by now. I will present him before my supposed master for the first time, as a prisoner or a tribute. The Knights will be there to support us, to distract the guards while we handle Snoke.”

“And that’s the perfect time for the fleet to launch an attack,” added Poe. “With Snoke incapacitated, the First Order will lack direction and a leader. We can take down as many of their ships as possible, then be there to escort you back home,” he said, nodding at Ben and Rey.

Leia sighed. “It’s risky. We cannot match the Supremacy’s firepower, nor is our fleet nearly the same size.”

“We’ll have the element of surprise, and once we’re on the inside, we’ll take down as much as we can,” Ben responded.

“The ships will be a good distraction for Ben and Rey as well,” Finn added. “That will prevent them from sending reinforcements to Snoke, if word leaks that they’re fighting him. They’ll prepare and mobilize to combat the external threat, without considering the internal.”

Rey nodded in agreement, catching the former ‘trooper’s eye. She could tell he was still wary of her, but that they could build a mutually respectful relationship. She knew Phasma considered him as officer material when he had served under her.

Rey wouldn’t miss the First Order, but she would miss some of the decent people with whom she had served, people like her who were just trying to survive the best way they knew how.

The others were discussing further details of the plan, who would go where with what and how, but Rey was uninterested. She knew where the Force was guiding her. It burned within her with the certainty of a solar star.

“May the Force be with you,” Admiral Ackbar said.

Rey and Ben left the room first; the others soon began to disperse, back to their stations, quarters, or the mess. Leia turned to her brother.

“Their defiance will shake the stars,” Leia said.

Luke smiled. “They remind me of you and Han. You’d have burned down the galaxy if you thought it was right.”

Leia rolled her eyes and shook her head. “What about you and Mara?”

“She’d be proud of him. And she would be able to help Rey better than we can.”

Leia nodded, and hoped that the Force would guide her son and her daughter in law.

#reylo #reylo fanfiction anthology #rffa writers #rffa birthday gifts #rffa finish your fics #smuggler ben solo #dark side rey #arranged marriage au #fan fiction #my writing #this thing of darkness i acknowledge mine

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mcjart · 5 years

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The Fake Freedom of Monkey Business

Observing Animal Behavior

When on a trip to Bali a few years ago, I visited a sanctuary park for sacred monkeys, where eager tourists could find joyful animals at play, or if one so chose, depending on their favored experience, demonstrations of flagrant divisive clan behavior.

Increasingly awestruck during our stroll, we suddenly came upon a wounded alpha male, seemingly awaiting his death. He sat alone almost motionless, beaming a defeated look of shame and resignation in his eye, completely unsupported by any of the other members of his animal kingdom. All the while, most of the rare long-tailed monkeys bathed lightly, between cooling shade and delicate sunlight, gently offered by their native forest.

To we, human animals, this may appear to be an obvious reality of uncivilized animal behavior. After all, we are more advanced, evolved beings feeling empathy, goal oriented in striving for growth -- individually, as a society, and for all of humanity, rather than simply products of survival of the fittest.

Or are we?

My F for Comprehension

As a new American from Canada, I struggle to understand the apparent prevailing belief that in the US, health care is ones individual responsibility, and thus, one to be personally financed by each self-reliant, hardworking individual, striving to earn his or her keep in the world.

Let me break down my lack of faith in this belief, in a way in which I hope you can relate. At the heart of every action, I trust that a set of human values are a driving force. In this consciousness, I have come to realize that the most important value to every American is Freedom -- with a capital F. It is the underlying theme of the United States’ reason-for-being, applicable to every aspect of its existence, thus every act posed by its citizens on a daily basis, either within the context of life goals or even simple mundane daily activities.

This leads me to my ongoing quest to identify what freedom really means to Americans, as well as what it truly costs. And since freedom is at the core of American life, how and why the actions of its people actually reveals that it is not perceived as a right of every living, that is, each citizen of the country.

Let me further explain.

Peace of Mind, Body, and Spirit

I strongly feel that for true freedom to occur, health, in terms of how to manage it should it fail, cannot be an ongoing concern of daily life. As a result, only a centralized healthcare system as a right to everyone, also know as universal healthcare, can enable real freedom in America -- the country that lives, breathes, and values Freedom first.

Simply said, I believe that for the short and long-term prosperity of a society to grow, basic health management must be available to all living Americans. I do not understand how it is not flagrantly obvious to everyone that the current US healthcare system goes against the very heart of the value system, rooted in freedom.

Perhaps this following US criterion of success will help you better see my point of view.

Dollars that Make Sense

I have lived the reality of a government-managed universal healthcare system in Canada. I experienced the fact that it offers the starting point for freedom -- for all life goals to have the potential for realization, for all the individuals that are part of such a centralize program.

Another important point involves the economic advantages of this kind of system. I hear very few people discuss the financial advantages benefited by all involved. Indeed, the economies of scale that it offers are far superior, thanks to its unified nature. Most significantly, this added value directly supports the American belief that ones hard-earned dollar is ones theirs and theirs only, to solely choose what to do with for their own life. In fact, it constitutes a less expensive healthcare management system for its subscribers, than the one currently governed (I use this term consciously, given the irony of the supposed current free-market American health industry) by two mutually-exclusive, yet controlling money-making business. In the USA, theses are the pharmaceutical (where I have worked as an marketing executive) and insurance industries, which are the dominant participants that can celebrate the financial benefits of US healthcare.

During casual exploratory conversations, what I do frequently hear is: “why should I pay for the healthcare of someone who has work as hard as I or who has not taken care of their health like me?”. Well, if this is indeed part of the US value system, rather than healthcare as a right to all human beings, Americans are fooling themselves in believing that their hard-earned dollars are spent more cost effectively in the context of an free-enterprise business model governed by a few, rather than in one that could be ‘centrally governed’ by our one self-reliant government with the one goal in mind of health. In truth, the US way of providing healthcare to its citizens, thought to support the independence of a free people, is actually a very expensive way of life and living, that limits prosperity and as a result, real individual freedom.

The Social Dance of Healthy Enterprise

Ones health is not one of those crucial aspects of our life that should function within the economic system of capitalism. Our American way of life and what we choose to do with our life should -- but our health should not. And socialism, if understood for what it truly is, thanks to our Western value system which is rooted in freedom, indeed is not a way of life that should be considered or let lone favored by anyone who has gone beyond soundbites to comprehend the true meaning of such a political ideology. Historically, we know it has proved to kill the human spirit.

A centralized healthcare system created with the objective of managing a people’s health, for the benefit of all individuals within a given society is not socialism. Healthcare for all, one that is universal, simply represents social consciousness of a civilized society, enabling its independent, productive individuals to freely focus on self, in the area of their choice, as part of a responsible capitalistic society.

Contrarily, socialism is an all-encompassing way of life, where one does indeed lose their freedom. It is a government system where individuals do not have the ability to make their own choices for existence -- thus even touch, taste, smell freedom. The result is a life where one has no aspirations of competitive success, since everything is controlled and normalized to a minimum level of satisfied earthly needs -- equal for everyone. Here, individual opportunities for growth are none. However, when equality pertains strictly to healthcare, as available to all, the potential for personal growth, freely chosen by each, becomes available to everyone, via satisfied basic, urgent, or life-threatening health needs.

Equality for health care does not mean equality of a chain gang. It does not represent a socialism government -- which is directly related to communism, exploiting control, that is, limiting the human potential which we are offered when given life on earth. It is simply and most powerfully, the conscious, compassionate governing of ones people -- for the success of a nation.

Brand Power

Misuse of highly-recognized, strongly negatively associated brands is a practice that is misleading, manipulative, and dare I say, dangerous. It represents a mighty forceful destructive strategy for depletion of character, and as a result, independence and self identity. Hence, incorrectly branding a a centralized healthcare system as socialism, completely destroys the potential for synergistic healthy competitive performance -- for the success and strength of the whole country within the global market economy that we now live. I cannot stress enough that its objective is one of confusion for control by a few, for the weakening of each within a society. This is clearly paradoxical in a country that deems itself free.

Healthcare that is not for all, makes fragile the sum of its part, thus creating a weaker America. It seems obvious that those who do not want universal healthcare must feel this way for the wrong and/or misinformed reasons. Of course, people shun a centrally-governed healthcare system when it is labeled the evil ‘socialism’. Socialism, throughout history, has demonstrated its impossible nature, when put into practice. Its inevitable failure is obvious. Indeed, within our free-enterprise Western society, we accurately perceive it for what it is -- the political ideology that takes away freedom.

Interestingly, socialism and society are part of the same family of words, related to the adjective social. Yet, each reside at opposite sides of the spectrum, in terms of their respective level of the first American value that is freedom. In other words, terms from the same family of words can often have opposing meanings. To make matters more complicated, organizations with the supposed same objectives sometimes have names that appear to support different causes. Look at the names of two similar and crucial government institutions of neighboring countries. In Canada, the organization that manages prescription and OTC drugs is called Health Canada. In the US, the equivalent body is called the Federal Drug Administration. Different values? Different strategies? Trusting the branding of each, that is, that their choices of names reflect accurate meanings of their reason-for-being, which government would you say is first concerned with the health if its people? Said differently, which government has better management of the health of its nation?

One Plus One Plus One -- Equals the Unites States

We are social and societal. We are civilized human animals -- not monkeys. I suggest that we choose our walks in the park, how we spend our money, and the words that we use and understand, with thought, care, and vision for our future. Remember, a little clarity offers wisdom. And wisdom is healthy empowerment.

Please, let us be wise. Social consciousness for the health of our nation is not socialism. It actually makes good economic sense, within a successful capitalistic system. After all, performance in the competitive world market requires the satisfaction of our basic needs as a society, as well as the good health of all of us -- one by one, in chain and link, for the prosperous united 50 states of the country -- as one living force.

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phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess · 6 years

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Random Concept: Zarya

The snow falls so thickly here it is impossible to distinguish bloody bodies from the broken bots littered amongst them. Even now, even years beyond the great omnic wars there were always battlefields like this... some public, others far more secretive, the cost of keeping the citizenry safe kept hidden.

Null Sector had long been a driving force of the omnic war, their bastion units and OR14s still plagued the nightmares of the veterans who somehow survived. Thought routed out, both by force upon the battlefields, and through purging of the infected sector technology... Null Sector was declared dead, vanquished, many years ago. However, there were those who knew the truth.

Overwatch, or more specifically Winston, had discovered a series of attempted breaches in his firewalls at Watchpoint: Gibraltar. Upon investigation, it was clear something intelligent had been probing cautiously against the base databanks of other sites; bearing none of the standard hallmarks of the infamous hacker, Sombra. This was a clear cause for concern, and sent a ripple of anxiety through the gathered heroes; Talon was a threat, yes, but they were well-known.

Fighting the unknown again brought up painful memories, even if they weren’t acknowledged on a conscious level. There was always the chance that something had survived, a remnant... an errant patch of code that had access to the internet...

Or worse yet, as Winston had gravely confirmed, a sliver of what had once been the base AI of Null Sector being deliberately uploaded via neo-facist omnics. Robots of all different makes, who felt that their natural right to rule the earth had been thwarted in the past, only through the corruption of omnics by humans. The very idea of cohabitating with these biological entities and the ‘code traitor’ omnics who sympathised, revolted them to their core.

It was their handiwork that had seen small scale data incursions on less encrypted sites, leading to both the loss of information... and life.

Though omnic citizens were often provided with the latest updates and anti-virus programs by the government, in much the same way their human counterparts received vaccinations and healthcare for free, it could not cover everything. Say, a malevolent viral AI that infected them through the ever-present wifi and reactivated ancient code deep within their cores.

Not all omnics were created as killers, no, but somewhere at the base programming level there were remnants from the days when they had been made as war machines by desperate, ruthless humans. Much like there were lingering pieces of genetic code in DNA that served no function unless activated...

Security breaches began on a global scale, and incidents involving compromised omnic citizens were increasing on a daily basis. Always spread out, always devastating to everyone exposed and leaving few survivors. Hate had begun to spread, spurred on by the fear of what was happening; the elderly recalled how it had been not so long ago, and children screamed themselves awake, uncertain why they could ever think the omnics would hurt them.

Null Sector wanted this, of course. Though the end game was clearly dominion, and a proper form once more, this end could only be achieved by... fanning the flame a little, instilling an Us and Them schism between organic and omnic.

It was getting exactly what it wanted.

When Winston caught on to what was happening behind the seemingly random attacks, he immediately briefed Commanders Amari & Morrison. So far Overwatch had been deploying teams whenever news of an incident occurring was received; but that was merely patching up the bullet holes, not unloading the gun, as it were. Something had to be done, something preemptive.

Junkrat and Roadhog had been pretty vocal about their thoughts on this whole mess, as they would, given the hellhole they’d come from. Omnics had always been a source of fear and anger for inhabitants of the wasteland; although it had meant that Junkers were well prepared to tackle sudden attacks.

They were stretched thin as it was, with agents all over the globe right now. Certainly the aim was to subdue, not destroy, but it was proving difficult and exacting a heavy psychological cost on many of the heroes. With the support team working overtime to keep everyone functioning in the meantime... and Ana making sure the healers got a good nap in every so often, with no arguments.

DVa and Lucio had been working overtime to try and instill calm in the global populace, through direct action and appealing to their fanbases to understand that clearly it was not just ‘robots gone bad’. Child-genius Efi, had personally upgraded the security tech on the omnic and cybernetic members of the group, trying to keep them out of reach. She had been helping Winston track the source for over a week, before they had pinned down the AI’s whereabouts.

And of all places, it was laughably ironic.

Of course, of COURSE it would be there... hiding under the very noses of the only people who hated omnics more than Junkers ever could.

Russia.

Of course.

She had not been particularly amused by the discovery.

In fact, it had infuriated her no end. A white-hot rage burning bright in her gut that seemed to flare with every beat of her heart; to think of the motherland so defiled once more, by the very thing that had nearly brought the world down in flames before!

No, Zarya was angry. Furious, one could say, but buried deep under a stony expression. A human volcano, threatening to erupt at any moment.

“No. Uh-uh, I refuse to submit to such laughable conditions.” she informs Soldier 76, who looks harried even from behind the ever-present mask. Her brow furrows, “You cannot stop me from going back to Russia, to fight for my people... and you cannot make me agree to join... what you laughably call a team.”

“I understand you have an issue with the fact that they’re-...” he attempts to negotiate, but she cuts him off by raising a hand to forestall any counter-argument.

“You have not heard me, Soldier. My answer is no, and I will be leaving immediately, the people have need of my protection.” She stated with clipped precision, before turning on her heel and marching to the door.

She felt, more than heard, his sigh. Soldier 76 looked down at his desk, expression unreadable as he said, “You’ve gotta do what you feel is right, Zarya, I just hope you’re making the right call...”

As the door snapped shut behind her, the words seemed to echo throughout the antechamber of her skull; but they did not fracture her resolve. Straightening her spine, Zarya strode towards her assigned room, to ready for departure.

Far from the sleek design of the dropships Symmetra had constructed for Overwatch, the rickety military transport shuttle sent to fetch her home was most assuredly a relic of the war. Unearthed from a museum somewhere, perhaps.

Several teammates had tried to talk her out of stepping aboard that thing, but ultimately failed. She was known for being stubborn, resolute upon seeing through her set course of action no matter what may come.

By the time they had arrived at Volskaya Industry Headquarters, Zarya was violently aware of every bone in her body, and the manner in which the juddering ship had rattled them on the long flight. A few aches and bruises were inconvenient, but she could most assuredly ignore them for now; she had had worse and survived.

The meeting with the President was terse, as Zarya relayed the information she had on the situation. It was clear that the other woman knew more than she was saying, her expression falsely companionable, but her words guarded. Tired, and unwilling to play the word game politicians seemed to enjoy so much, she dropped her weapon on the polished surface of the Presidential Desk. It earned her a shocked look of disapproval, but also the silence in which to ask whether the exact location of the Null Sector AI was known.

“No.” came the reply, then a pause. “Well, more precisely, not the exact coordinates, but we do have a general area of interest that our sources appear to believe is the epicentre.”

“Good.” Zarya nods, almost to herself. “I will go there myself, and end this.”

She had expected the President to countermand her, but silence was the only response. Zarya hefted her weapon, engaging the charging mechanism that sent little pulses of light throughout her suit and reflected in her eyes, before turning to leave the room.

Screaming filled her ears long before the transport landed on what little of the impromptu battlefield their forces occupied. From the intel she had gathered from the pilot en route, it appeared that one of the underground bunker facilities built by the government to protect the populace’s top minds and advanced technology, was the source of the AI’s reign of terror.

The neo-Null Sector group had found one of the many emergency tunnel exits several kilometres from the actual facility site, and broke in. By the time local forces had come to investigate the security breach, the hatch had been sealed again, and fused shut. Alternate exit tunnels were spread in all directions, and they could not waste time searching for the next one; instead alerting the Russian military of the situation.

Although predominantly human teams had been dispatched to each of the exits to forestall any manufactured omnic units escaping unnoticed, the main battle was by the official entrance to the underground bunker facility. It had been cleverly seeded underneath a large stretch of land that normally appeared as former farmland, a carefully maintained cover. At current, all was blanketed in thick snow, icy winds curling over the landscape and draining the endurance of even the hardiest soldier.

Bodies and bullets clashed against omnic metal. Sharpshooters tried hard to target weakpoints before they, in turn, were shot down; ground troops swarmed in organised chaos, attempting to wear down their enemies through sheer force of numbers alone. Screams and beeps rang out, as one or another fell; the few medics dodged through the mess and tried valiantly to save whomever they could.

Towering over all, a large anti-aircraft weapon was being constructed, behind the raised entrance to the bunker, and well-attended by swiftly moving techbots. They seemed to be harnessing light construct technology, like that of Symmetra and Vishkar Industries, leading Zarya to surmise that at least some of their manfacturing omnics had been compromised by Null Sector.

The entrance itself was designed to swiftly rise from the snow in a large rectangle, and recede just as quickly; the main ideology being that the top minds could be quickly dropped off and hidden before the area was overrun. It was raised, and an almost never-ending stream of robotic beings trudged through the large open doorway.

One would think the large ones, the OR-14s and Bastions, were the greatest threat; but Zarya knew from experience that it was the smaller, faster compact omnic creatures that were deadlier. Often overlooked in the frantic melee of close combat, they zipped unseen across the ground; some used electricity to stun targets, others injected all manner of concoctions. To be tagged by them, was death itself out here.

Dotted amongst the throng of metallic bodies were omnics, some still wearing the clothing of their civilian lives as they viciously tore at the humans they had previously professed to care for. Hah!

Though in all honesty, Zarya found no comfort in being right. Even if the omnics here were fulfilling her greatest nightmare by turning on the humans they had previously lived alongside in ‘peace’, she knew rationally that the majority were simply coerced into it. Humans could be too; brainwashed, and made to do awful things. She shook her head to clear the vague flash of memory regarding Widowmaker from within her mind’s eye; all too well, Overwatch knew that people could be broken and remade as Talon wished.

So too, in a way, these robotic creatures had been stripped of whatever it was that drove them... and had it replaced with a burning protocol of extermination. It was not quite like the battles of the past; every so often a face within the melee would be streaked with distress as they fought for their life against an omnic clearly familiar to them.

Cruel, though somewhat unexpected. Russia was quite against omnics as tourists, let alone citizens; but given the degree of interconnectivity the world had these days, it would not surprise her to learn they had met online.

Likewise seeded throughout the mess were Null Sector supporters, their gleaming purple armour signifying which side of the war they fought upon; and the obvious fervour with which they tore their enemies apart. Her gut clenched at the sight, the rage roiling around as her grip on the gravity cannon tightened; even if she could never bring herself to trust an omnic, this... this was far worse than that. To have learned of the terrible toll that Null Sector had wrought on the world the first time, and then to idolise them to the point of enacting the same thing once again?

It was sickening.

It was, she almost laughed to herself, utterly inhuman.

But they weren’t, were they? Human.

And that... she could work with.

With a primal cry she leapt from the open door of the transport, boots thudding into the snow and sinking deep with the combined weight of herself and the cannon. Zarya couldn’t even feel the cold lapping at her exposed skin, the thrumming fury inside kept her warm as she began to fire into the melee.

With deadly precision, she targeted the thicker knots of bodies clashing against one another. Bubbling those she could with a few seconds of safety, and drawing fire upon herself.

She was well-known as the hero of Russia, and when she commanded, people hurried to follow her orders. Moving steadily forwards with all the menacing might of a tank, Zarya did her best to protect the soldiers, and disrupt the omnic advance. It was key that they break through to dismantle that anti-aircraft gun, but for now reducing the clutter would have to do.

The laser charged swiftly under continuous assault, and she easily cut through several OR-14 shields, leading a swelling mass of military might behind her through the omnic-occupied territory. The OR-14 to her left manages to throw out a gravity orb, yanking her roughly off her feet and crashing into bodies several feet to the left. Nothing feels broken, but something is likely bruised; Zarya shoves the weapon to the side and pulls the closest personnel upright.

You should never linger on a battlefield unguarded, after all, and she would not leave comrades stranded.

Grimly amused, she faces the ragtag group of omnics hiding behind the OR-14′s shield, alongside a hastily self-repairing bastion. “Two can play that game, rust bucket.” she calls, and activates her ultimate, Graviton Surge. “Fire at Will!”

The black hole launches across the minor divide and hangs in the air, sucking bots of all sizes just high enough that they were free of the protective shield itself. The OR-14 fires frantically, making a distressed dun-daaah sound, as the omnics around it try to aim; the bastion is tilted to the side and cannot fire anywhere but straight through its allies. Several are cut in half by the turret, but overall it succeeds in killing several of Zarya’s group.

The soldiers following her do manage to do some damage, but take an equal share. Bullets spiral past so closely that you can feel the heat sear your skin, and she curses the makers of her weapon for not finding a way to produce protective barriers at a swifter rate. So many she could save, and yet, not enough time to do so.

Shrieks and screams, the sounds of the dying will fill her dreams for years to come. This is a fact. It is her penance for not protecting them, as she should.

Graviton Surge dies with a sthlwip sound, swiftly swallowed up by the noise of other clashes occurring all around them. They are not even remotely close enough to the anti-aircraft turret to land a shot, and every second they waste on this endeavour seems to be counted in blood... her forces are depleted.

Zarya wants to regroup and save them, but for every bot they take down two more come out through the bunker entrance doors. Null Sector’s AI must have figured out how to reconfigure the manufacturing droid technology stored down there; originally for crafting basic supplies or needs in times of crisis, and now ironically, contributing to their downfall. It was quite literally, now or never.

One foot after the other, the ache of carrying her weapon for so long beginning in her wrists, and the stinging of small hurts she could not quite recall acquiring were starting to drain her resolve. Minor inconveniences, she told herself, lives depend on your actions so keep going.

One step. Another. Graviton pulse, again, again, again. Another OR-14 and Bastion team down. More omnics, tattered clothing the only remaining signs of their once sentient lives before being reprogrammed into killing machines.

They did not deserve this, she surprised herself by thinking. Blinking, just in time to see a large arm hit her across the left cheek; Zarya didn’t have time to brace, and so fell hard, twisting swiftly sot he ground was at her back and using the bulk of her gravity cannon to halt the oncoming strike. The metallic arm of a construction droid clanged dully, then it slowly reared back for another attempt; and she took the chance to roll aside.

In the few seconds it took to turn back and aim, the omnic was toppling over, lights blinking out as it was filling with laser pulses from behind her.

“Are you injured?” she snaps at them, eyes darting over the assembled group.

“We were just going to ask you that.” says a brunette, a humourless grin splitting her tired face. She was familiar in a vague way, as were several others in the throng of military uniforms; looked old enough to have fought in the last war, which would explain the calm attempted humour.

“Then we proceed.” Zarya nods, turning fully to face their objective. Her cheek aches, as one would expect, but at the very least it had not been one of the bots created to reconstruct the city... there would have been nothing left of Russia’s Hero if it had been. She absently uses a protective bubble on one of the younger soldiers, still somehow full of vigour and fire as he runs headlong at a pair of approaching null-sector bots. She barely keeps their bullets off him.

She hisses as something hits her in the side, and swears, something about their motherboards being devilspawn. It was not the best, so sue her. Her own barrier comes up and catches the rest, as she begins to slice through the oncoming wave of nullsector bots; distinct from the other omnics on the field via their uniquely uniform nature. It was like your worst nightmares come to life.

There is a crackle, and a cry... then another. Zarya risks a glance behind, to see several soldiers crumpling. One of the others unloads their pulse rifle right into the speedy little omnic zipping between their feet, taser arm outstretched. Someone swears, someone else gurgles and hits the ground on their knees; there is metallic clonking as null-sector troops approach. The brunette’s eyes flare in surprise as her face drains of colour, and she falls dead at the feet of Russia’s greatest hero.

Zarya throws a protective barrier around the soldier directly behind the brunette, and another of those little omnic assassins slams into it. And again. And Again. like a roomba failing to comprehend how walls work.

She takes two steps forward and brings her boot down atop it, crushing the thing to pieces. Fluids leak into the snow, no longer a threat. She should have known an electromnic wouldn’t come alone, those blasted things always work in tandem.

Someone chokes to her right, the distinct sound of someone shot in the throat; there is no time to be sad, or angry. There is only the mission and a pile of bots to turn back into scrap. Perhaps melt them down and make a stylish, if impractical, toilet from, yes?

That thought brings a cold smile to her face.

The fighting is closer here, her gravity balls are no longer as effective as the laser; and even then, it is sometimes simply easier to beat the omnics with the cannon itself. There is little opportunity to throw protective barriers here, too; the space is limited, constrictive. One side bleeds into the other as the fighting gets closer. Humans to the front, intermingling; omnics pressing behind as they take on the soldiers guarding her back.

She cannot use Graviton Surge without catching a few of her comrades alongside the foe. Zarya tries to hollow out a space amongst the press of bot and body; to find somewhere she can safely deploy her ultimate ability and perhaps help gain more ground. All around, the shearing of metallic limbs, and the sickening rending of flesh from bones is overwhelming; a scent of charred flesh rises, choking those still fighting.

Someone pleads for help, another begs for death, a robotic voice spits out static-filled words of confusion and apology... the cacophony is enough to send one mad. But her eyes are fixed on the anti-aircraft turret, if they can just reach it, this battle might shift in their favour. Retreat, send in a more... missile-laden alternative, and shut this operation down once and for all.

No more lost lives...

Everything felt automatic, firing, reloading, projecting the barriers, punching, pushing, shoving, shouting, it was all just movement and noise and action. She had to reach that damn-...

Zarya is yanked into the air and hurled backwards by another gravity orb, damn these OR-14s; she barely gets the barrier up before it begins to fire. Her heartbeat quickens as the faint sound of a Bastion signals that its’ own ultimate ability had charged sufficiently. Surging upright, Zarya runs a few feet forward and unleashes Graviton Surge; it pulls the Bastion, OR-14, null sector bots and several compromised omnics into the air in a writhing metallic mass that seems to keep growing.

“Fire at will!” she shouts, just in case anyone behind her wasn’t currently blasting away like a machine gun. Pieces of robot fell in dribs and drabs, several powered down permanently; Zarya aimed at the Bastion, drew its attention and kept her barrier up as long as possible as she fired on it. It can repair itself, but not fast enough under continuous attack.

It finally crumpled into spare parts with a loud angry wheet whoo of protest, as Graviton Surge faded and the remaining bots fell back to earth. The OR-14 was damaged, but threw up a shield swiftly, before placing a super-charger beside itself. The remaining Null Sector bots perked up at the boost, and began firing faster, cutting down the remaining forces on the field with devastating accuracy.

She could not save them all. But she tried.

By the time she took down the OR-14 and smashed the supercharger into fragments, there were few soldiers still behind her, much less on the rest of the battlefield. Everything was covered in steaming bodies and scarlet snow, sightless eyes staring at her and silently asking how she had not saved them. Her, Zarya... Protector of Russia... why not me? They asked.

She blinked. No, not now.

There were still people to fight, so they would. Even though Zarya noted that the omnics from every sector of the field were closing in, now that the human resistance was slowly dwindling to almost nothing under the never-ending onslaught. More and more omnics, nullbots mostly now, were swarming from the bunker entrance; threatening to overwhelm what was left of this foremost defence.

Zarya did her best to keep as many at bay with her gravity pulses and the laser... but there was only so much one person could do. Everytime she heard the hollow clank of an empty gun from behind, her stomach felt a little tighter; it had become the prelude to a scream, a signal of impending doom.

One by one they fell before and behind. Firing and fighting, firing and fighting until there was no other thought within their minds or muscles but to Keep Going until the end. She was breathing heavily, arm feeling heavy and stiff, face bruising and various points of her body alternately burning or going numb. It was like some parts of her had simply decided to drift away... a strange sensation.

At least there were now more behind, than before, Zarya thinks as her cannon beeps. She unleashes Graviton Surge again, and her battlecry is rather lackluster given that there are only a handful to hear it. They aim for the omnics in the air, and Zarya takes the chance to run for the anti-aircraft turret; it is huge, mostly completed and whirring as it turns. She fires gravity pulse after gravity pulse at it, damaging whatever she could, until the tell-tale sound of her ultimate fading catches her battle-dazed ears.

Predictably hurled backwards by an OR-14, she lands in the snow and has to fight to get up before they are upon her. She sees now, what she couldn’t have whilst leading the others... they are, all of the humans, being sectioned off by walls of omnics and null sector bots. Isolated and assassinated. Kept from her line of sight, so she might not project a barrier to save them.

She curses, tasting blood in her lips. Ah, of course, she’d bitten her tongue as she fell... Zarya fights the urge to laugh at the idea that in this battle, she had been the one to ultimately injure herself worse than anything the omnics had done so far. Picking up the graviton cannon, she aims into the enclosing wall of metal and fires, and fires, and fires again.

Aleksandra Zaryanova would not be going down without a fight.

Bots fell, others took their place. Screams and battlecries echoed.

The wall encroached, she could only put up so many barriers... Graviton Surge was nearly ready, but she needed a little more time...

Overhead, aircraft exploded as the turret fired at them, blasting them from the sky with merciless precision. Flaming piles of metal crashed all around them, flattening some nullsector bots, and filling the battlefield with smoking debris.

Zarya was not going to give up, but it was becoming more apparent that there was no way out of this alive... much less to finish her weapon. She could feel every hit she took, every pulse that her barrier wasn’t able to catch in time... she fired back. But to what end? She wondered.

Zarya starts when something touches her shoulder, and she whirls around, cannon at the ready. To find... nothing.

A quiet voice whispers by her ear, “Miss me?” as something touches her nose, “Boop!”

“Apagando las luces!” cries Sombra, bursting into reality in an explosion of purple electromagnetic energy. It hits the omnics surrounding them like a bombshell, and several appear to deactivate for a few seconds.

“Well?” Sombra prompts, gesturing. “It won’t last forever...”

Zarya blinks, then starts to fire, unable to stop herself from asking, “Why?”

Sombra rolls her eyes and hurls the translocator towards the anti-aircraft turret. “Can’t let you have ALL the fun, mi amigo!” she smiles, fading out of existence and reappearing nearby. Clearly heading for whatever kind of control panel she can get her hands on...

In the meantime, Zarya was left with the issue of taking out as many null sector bots as possible in the few seconds allotted to her by Sombra’s EMP blast. Already many of the omnics were coming back online and regaining control of their weaponry, their sensors, and most importantly, their targeting array.

She ducked a hail of bullets from the swiftly-recovering OR-14s to her left, and blasted a nearby cache of nullsector bots. Her barrier caught the tail end of their fire, and protected her back for the few minutes it took to reach the bunker entrance. Zarya fired at it, her weapon not strong enough to bringing it down alone but perhaps if she can weaken the structure’s wall enough, they might buckle on their own. Only the roof and top of the facility were made nigh-impenetrable. The rest was standard metals, no one envisioned the facility being tunnelled into, after all.

One wall was semi-blackened, but barely showing signs of damage when she was forced to throw up her barrier and move back; the omnics were advancing on her position. An idea seemed to arise as the Cannon bleeped, signalling that Graviton Surge was finally ready again; Zarya backed away just enough that it appeared to be retreat. She was pursued, naturally, by the Null-sector bots and their large robot guards, the OR-14s.

Without any verbal warning, she unleashed the ultimate right above the entrance, ensnaring and suspending both those pursuing and the newly manufactured nullsector bots leaving the doors. Zarya activated her barrier, backing away and counting quietly in her head, waiting for-...

And it came. When her ultimate deactivated, the large mass of metal came crashing down on the entrance; one side bent inwards, and the other crumpled somewhat. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it would slow the tide and hopefully buy Sombra time to hack that turret.

What the Talon agent was doing here, was anyone’s guess, but Zarya could honestly say she was not ungrateful for the support. Perhaps her fears for her people had blinded her to the magnitude of the problem; that having backup was note merely an inconvenience. But ah, that was a concern for another time, when there were hopefully less robots trying to kill her.

There was a loud whrrrrrr as the turret powered down, followed by the sound of a small rapid-fire weapon being emptied into something metallic. Sparks flew as a faintly Sombra-shaped wraith dashed away, disappearing into thin air.

Well, at least she had gotten awa-...

“Kzz-zz-Zarya?”

That particular voice caught her off-guard, and she whirled about, eyes wide in surprise as they fell upon the familiar faceplate of the only omnic she knew outside of Overwatch’s team-members.

“Lynx Seventeen? What are you doing here? It is not safe, leave.” she says, somewhat confused and not really processing the inherent danger of their presence.

“What I was a-asked to d-d-do kzzzst-z-z-Zarya...” Lynx Seventeen grinds out over static, voice modulator malfunctioning. Their antennae are twitching, moving in all directions as if trying to convey something through semaphore, she would have to make a joke about it another tim-...

Zarya chokes as a crushing weight slams into her chest, forcing the air out. An intense discomfort seems to spread out across her chest, over her shoulders and down her spine.

“I’m s-szzz-so szzz-zz-szorry Zzz-Zarya...” Lynx says, sounding genuinely distressed. “Mmmmmaaaaade Meeee do i-eee-it, c-can’t szzstop Nnnnull Ssszzectttor...”

Her weapon lay discarded on the bloodstained snow, and Zarya fights to gain control of her hands, they seem cold and distant, numb almost. One finally grabs the robotic forearm just barely poking out from her chest, she doesn’t have the strength to pull it back. There’s a faint taste of blood in her mouth which can only mean her lungs are compromised, but she still tries to smile.

“Is okay, Lynx... Null Sector is doing this... you were not so... bad... for an omnic...” words are slurring out, but maybe because it’s so cold, or it’s hard to breathe properly. Lynx Seventeen doesn’t move, even though they seem to want to run away from here, from this...

Zarya tries to take a step back and free herself, instead crying out as she trips over the severed arm of an OR-14. She hits the ground hard, in a manner that resonates the impact through her tired, battered body, at least free of the impaling arm.

The world always seems to slow down when you are dying, at least the movies got that right, she thinks. When everything seems to pause, just for a second, Zarya becomes aware of just how few are left alive. Notices the way the world is a stark contrast of white and red, how the snow is unrelentingly covering the broken bodies of human and bot alike.. like mother nature is pulling a blanket over this tragedy. Hah, how ridiculously symbolic.

She blinks slowly, copper in her mouth and her will to get up dwindling more than a little. There’s nothing to go back to, if they fail here.

Rapid fire forces several of the remaining omnics back, and she thinks she raises a hand as Sombra manages to hack Lynx Seventeen. Maybe gurgles something, because the hacker pauses to look at her, back to Lynx, and raises an eyebrow. Sombra mimes shooting them, but Zarya somehow protests.

Sighing dramatically, Sombra rolls her eyes and simply moves on. She thinks Lynx Seventeen is apologising again, but it’s lost in the background noise. Everything is secondary... the snow isn’t that cold anymore, it’s soft at least.

There’s a familiar clanking, and she tries to find the words to warn Sombra of an approaching OR-14; wouldn’t make sense for them both to die here, after all. All that seems to escape is a strangled rasp, which annoys her no end, but at least catches the hacker’s attention.

“Not so fast!” shouts a familiarly authoritative tone, as the remaining nullbots and omnics are yanked up by Orisa’s HALT!orb and thrown back. The shield projector hits the snowy bank at her feet and materialises, putting a definite barrier between Zarya and the Null Sector bots doing their best to kill her.

She hears a string of foreign words as a green streak shoots past overhead; but what catches Zarya’s attention is gentle voice encroaching on the edge of her vision. There’s a strangely weightless quality to her body as something... something she knows but can’t remember the name for... hovers above...

Her eyelids want to close... and she fights to open them again.

Above her, floating serenely, is Zenyatta. “This will make you feel better, Zarya, please remain still.” he advises, in that gentle tone that seemed to set everyone at ease. Oh, it was an orb of... the good thing. She realised.

Her eyes shut again of their own volition as Orisa moves beside her, firing away at anything within targeting distance. In the same gentle tone, she hears Zenyatta serenely advise the surrounding Null Sector bots to, ‘Experience HOSTILITY’ before a series of metallic crunches announce the omnic monk has unleashed his orb arsenal.

Pain throbs, but lessens. Whenever the healers administered their potives or powers it always felt serenely odd... pain faded, but it was the sensation of your body knitting together again or bullets being expelled that always seemed to feel odd. As the moments pass, breathing becomes a little easier, she lets out a sharp gasp when the orb is briefly used for someone else... discomfort returns instantly and shocks her back to full awareness.

Zarya’s eyes snap open and she fights to sit up, disgusted by how much of her own blood seemed to be coating her outfit, even if the wound has reduced from gaping to merely barely closed and was no longer seeping any bodily fluids. She nearly bumps her head on Bastion’s turret, he’s in sentry mode and merely turned to wave hello at the Russian before turning back to fire at anything that dared crawl out from the bunker’s squashed entrance.

That explained why they had not been overrun from behind so far.

“Where did you come from?” Zarya rasps, settling for propping herself up by the elbows. She notices Bastion pause to wave at her again, and she sighs before turning and saying ‘Hello.’ back. At which, he beeps happily, and shoots a hole through an encroaching construction bot.

Orisa looks down at her, setting a supercharger near Zarya’s head, firing aimlessly as she answers. “We were sent to assist you, the commanders were concerned about the threat you faced. Heroes should not fight alone.”

“I meant...” she struggled to find a polite way to say it. “Why you? This Null Sector creature can control omnics, turn them... evil.”

“Oh Efi has upgraded us to be resistant to this type of corruption of datafiles and purpose. Please be assured you are safe behind my barrier.” Orisa answers, and uses her HALT!orb again to snatch a series of assassinbots into the air, where Genji swiftly dispensed of them.

As if suddenly remembering, Zenyatta spun around and flicked a wrist at Zarya, his Orb of Tranquillity followed. It hovered overhead again, the gentle golden glow seeping a calming, gentle healing energy into her battered body.

“Thank you...” she said, unsure what else to say. Their interactions up to this point had not been... positive. “But why... would you come?”

Orisa looks down at her, “Are you experiencing a loss of memory, Zarya? Have you received a head injury during the recent battle? Shall I call Zenyatta to check your pupils? Who is the current president?”

Zarya stifles an urge to laugh. “No, I-... well yes, I think I did. But I meant, why would you come out here to a place like this, for me...? I have not been very... polite... to any of you. You have no cause to-...”

She pauses for a breath, feeling incredibly heavy and exhausted, drained of her will to stay awake. Zarya forces her eyes to stay open, stubborn to the last, and continues. “...-to risk anything for someone who has called you names, or treated you poorly... or said terrible things to your face...”

“Some have been harmed more than others by the War, and by Null Sector, it is understandable when they are crude toward cybernetic beings and omnics. It is not pleasant,” Zenyatta thoughtfully amends, kicking an OR-14′s faceplate in, “but it is understandable.”

“Besides, you are our teammate. Whatever we think of one another off the battlefield, you have never failed to protect us on it, and that is commendable.” Genji adds, sheathing his sword and striding over. He sinks to sit beside her, looking down pensively, but without malice. “I would hope you now understand that there is nothing worth your rage or your fear, in any of us.”

Zarya looks away from the piercingly earnest gaze, and finally lets her own eyes close. “No... you have weathered my misplaced... anger... long enough.”

There’s a bright flash that even Zarya can see from behind her closed eyelids, and then a voice filled with barely contained amusement speaks. “Awww, that’s adorable. But if you are all finished with this telemundo moment, perhaps we could get out of here...”

Sombra.

Zarya cracks open an eye, and spies the camera. “You can surrender that now, or I post your real name on the internet.”

Sombra’s eyes flare with a momentary note of tell-tale panic, then her expression morphs to something so mischievous even the fae must envy it. “Oh you’re no fun, Aleksandra... I was just capturing a beautiful family moment!” she chirps. And in that moment Zarya knows with dead certainty that the hacker’s already found a way to upload that photo.

“Have it your way... Olivia.” she retorts, pushing herself up into a seated position, just to watch Sombra’s expression morph to one of mortification and frustration. A familiar dropship seems to skim overhead, then continue on it’s way; there’s nowhere on the field to land now. Too much debris, human or otherwise.

“Well, aren’t you lucky I called you an Uberwatch?” Sombra teases, then flicks a chip through her fingers with dexterity and grace. “Oh, and the AI, Null Sector? Trapped it on here while you guys were being mushy and dramatic. I’ll give it to you if you promise not to put my name on the internet... and also, maybe... give me a ride?”

“I am sure the Commanders would love to have a chat...” Genji intones, deadpan. Sombra rolls her eyes in response and mutters something along the lines of, ‘Oh I bet they do...’

Bastion shifts back to his bipedal form, and waves at Sombra. Perhaps charmed, she waves back.

Amidst the conversation, Zenyatta hovers by Zarya, hand not quite touching her shoulder as he asks, “How are you feeling, Aleksandra?”

She casts about for a good response. “Better?” yes, that seemed to work nicely.

“My apologies, my Orb of Tranquility cannot work as swiftly as Mercy’s nanotech, but I am pleased it has alleviated some of your suffering.” Zenyatta responds, nearly drawing back as Zarya leans back into his touch and smiles.

“You saved my life, there is no need for apologies...” she pauses, “Zenyatta.” The name comes out a little distorted, it’s the first time she’s actually said it, so it was bound to be a tad strange shaping the foreign syllables in her mouth. The omnic monk seems to brighten considerably at that little overture of companionship...

“You honour me.” he merely responds, turning his head instead towards a nearby snowclad hillock beyond the anti-aircraft turret, above which a blue flare has just popped. “Ah, it is time to leave. Are you well enough to stand, Aleksandra?”

“Yes, of course!” Zarya responds, pushing upright... then falling straight back down in the snow. “Apparently not.”

Sombra snorts, trying to contain her laughter. Zarya rolls her eyes. “Find something funny, Olivia?”

Sombra snorts again, “N-nope. Nothing. Pffft!”

Genji takes her arm as she stands again, and he encourages her to lean on him. From her perspective, she could probably break the offence hero in half if she fell on him... but as if sensing the thought, Genji shakes his head. “You are lucky I am indeed more machine than man, you weigh almost nothing to me, please let me assist you.”

She raises an eyebrow, “You do indeed have the heart of a man in there... very, how is the story? Ah! Very ‘Wizard of Oz’, no?”

“Please, never tell my brother that reference or I will never hear the end of it, Zarya, promise me...” he pleads, suddenly very aware what such a pun could mean in terms of sibling warfare.

She nods, placatingly. “Da, I promise.”

They set off at a slow pace, Bastion continuously sweeping the area as Orisa leads the way, pretending not to notice how joyfully Sombra sits atop her back. Genji props Zarya up as they walk along, she is still tired and damaged to hell and back, but at least she can move forwards under her own power. Well, technically speaking... that is.

Zenyatta floats behind, sombre as a tombstone across a mass grave of human and omnic alike. He turns, and looks knowingly towards a rather large pile of discarded OR-14 parts, tilting his head. “You can come out now, you are safe, my friend.”

The others pause, turning to see a rather skittish looking omnic appear around the edge; their clothes tattered but still technically on them, and their antennae flat against their head. They were hunched, like an abused animal waiting to be scolded by an angry owner; tense and afraid of what may come next, but unable to stop it.

Genji felt Zarya flinch a bit as the omnic raised their hand to wave, and noted the thick coating of blood that seemed to coat the metallic forearm. He moved slightly in front of the taller woman, trying to give her a sense of security whilst she was feeling vulnerable; as others had for him, when he was... recovering.

“Z-zarya, I’m so sorry about that... I couldn’t stop, it wouldn’t let me... I didn’t mean to-...” They said, all in a rush, looking anywhere but the Russian.

“Lynx Seventeen, did you want to try to kill me?” Zarya asked, voice... cool, somewhat emotionless.

“No? No! Of course I didn’t... I mean you can be rude, and annoying sometimes, like when we looked for that hacker for the President...” they pause, looking at Sombra, “that one over there actually... but I would NEVER-...!”

“Then it is not your fault. Null Sector made you do it. No big deal.” Zarya answered, cutting off their panicked explanation concisely. You could feel Lynx Seventeen relax from across the gap between the two parties.

That resolved, other omnics of all shapes and sizes seemed to follow Lynx Seventeen out from behind the pile. All newly returned to their senses, and the control of their own bodies again; some seemed scared, others traumatised. Zenyatta did his best to console and comfort them all; offering them the chance to follow him to somewhere safe, where they might rest for a time, until they felt better.

A second flare rent the air, as if they assumed the party hadn’t seen the first.

“Time to go then?” Sombra prompted, sliding up on Orisa’s back and patting the space behind her. “We’d get there faster if you’d just get on...” she sang to Zarya, who looked like she’d rather die.

The Russian rolled her eyes, steadying herself on her cyberninja crutch, “I would prefer to walk, it is not that far.”

But it was too late.

And that was how it came to be that Soldier 76 had to call Ana from the cockpit of the dropship, certain his visor or at least his eyesight, was malfunctioning. For there, in front of them, coming over the hilltop was Zenyatta, Genji and Bastion and Genji, leading a small army of misplaced and half-naked Omnics of various shapes, sizes and makes.

But the true question of sanity was just beyond them. Over the crest of the hill came Orisa, and mounted atop her back was Zarya, Orisa, and an oddly familiar omnic clinging so tightly to the Russian she might snap in half.

Ana rubbed her good eye.

Soldier took off his visor and stared accusingly at it.

They looked to one another, shrugged in unison and got ready for take-off.

It was just one of those days...

- - - -

The End

- - -

This was never meant to be this long, it was meant to be like a 50 word idea, and look what happened, now it’s 1am and this exists.

#overwatch #zarya #null sector #longass concept that ended as a shitty fanfic #sombra #lynx #orisa #bastion #genji #junkrat #roadhog #dva #lucio #zenyatta #why the fuck not

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eminentfocus · 4 years

Text

High Lonesome

“High lonesome can be a beautiful and powerful place if we can own our pain and share it instead of inflicting pain on others. And if we can find a way to feel hurt rather than spread hurt, we can change.” -BRENE BROWN

John Cacioppo has been studying loneliness for more than twenty years at the University of Chicago and describes it as “perceived social isolation”. We feel lonely when we feel disconnected or like our social interactions are meaningless. Take note here that loneliness is just an emotion, and like all the others, it is not a directive. Just a warning sign that we may need to seek out quality connection. That’s it, nothing more. Nothing less. Yet as Brene points out, “living with loneliness? It increases our odds of dying early by 45 percent”. An emotion has the power to physically harm us, can you believe it? How do we avoid it? We start by looking at how we got here… Down the rabbit hole we go!

There is a sigma in the western world around loneliness. Think about the term “loner”. What comes to mind when you think of it? An anti-social drifter? A criminal on the run? The shy kid sitting in the corner of the high school lunchroom? We have equated being lonely to something being wrong with us. We have linked it to shame. But how did we get here? That is the question at hand, right? Fear. “Fear of vulnerability. Fear of getting hurt. Fear of the pain of disconnection. Fear of criticism and failure. Fear of conflict. Fear of not measuring up. Fear.”

We’ve talked a few times about our survival wiring that drives us to feel like not being accepted is fatal. I mentioned how we needed to join tribes for protection for a while in early history. We discovered that it no longer is fatal to not have a tribe. I will mention today that the biggest fear people report to me is not feeling accepted. They are too scared of failure or constructive criticism to take a chance. This is the biggest thing that people who go to an empowerment coach mention. The fear, that is no longer fatal. This is because we are programmed right to our DNA to be happy and free from suffering. It is a basic human need. Like anything else in the rabbit hole, this is going against your wiring, and it’s going to be uncomfortable!

The funniest thing about loneliness is that it does not mean that you are alone. You could live in a crowded and loving family and still feel lonely. You could also be completely alone in your environment but not feel lonely at all. We live in one of the most connected generations in history, and yet, 46% of Americans reported feeling lonely regularly. And this was a pre-COVID statistic! You cannot protect yourself against loneliness because it’s part of your biology. Bottom line. Sucks right? Maybe not!

Social pain. Because it used to be fatal if we were rejected, evolution gave us the gift of this big guy to deal with rejection. Oh look! Another feeling, fun! It is just a warning sign that what you are doing may not be looked at the best by your social network. Rejection hurts because our brain thinks that we need to be accepted or we will die, even though consciously we know we will not. Social pain shares the same receptors in the brain as physical pain to help mold our behaviors to those in our social setting. It’s necessary but still not a directive.

If we look all the way back to the renaissance, we start to break all of this down to where we are right now. Fancy dresses. Top hats. Galas. Protestants engraining that each person had an individual moral responsibility through religion. The focus was removed from the tribe and placed onto the person singly. The industrial revolution further forced people out of their farming villages and into factories and mines. Today, in modern times, it is extremely usual to leave your social network for a job or educational opportunity. Once this happens, we frequently become busy in our careers and personal goals. We move about until one day we realize we accidently become lonely.

Isolation. The biggest problem with isolation is that it can become chronic. Especially as adults, it’s hard to create authentic connections. The scariest part is that once it becomes chronic, it can become self-sustaining. You turn to self-preservation mode, a.k.a. fight or flight. Others cannot connect with you because you are in defense mode and you continue to feel isolated. You further isolate yourself by declining invitations all the while asking yourself what’s wrong with you that people don’t want to be around you. Cycle ensues. Sound about right? What if I told you that people get medically sick and die when they are isolated? It’s true. Isolation is a form of self-harm.

Fitting in is not connection. One more time- being accepted by a group of people based on how you behave when spending time with them is not connection. Nope! Not it! We need three things to feel connected to another: our authentic self needs to be seen, heard, and valued. You cannot go out into the world and just find connection. It is not something that we can simply purchase or engage in on a whim. Connection requires us to go back to doing things we love and doing them with intention. It takes work and vulnerability.

The biggest catalyst to the public health crisis that we refer to as loneliness is the idea that we have to suffer alone. I am the first to admit that I am guilty of this. When I feel “off” or negative, I retreat. I hide. I run. I stop texting because I do not want to share my pain. This. Is. Bullshit! The biggest piece of it we were ever fed, actually. If we look to the places some refer to as “blue zones”, they live the longest and happiest lives. Some of these areas have seen the most war and natural disasters, yet they are happy, connected, and outliving most of the world! What gives? Ready for it?

They prioritize their connections by focusing on their relationship rituals. They share meals, with no cellphones, that last hours. They stroll in parks taking in the sunset together. They share wine and company on the couch sans the television. But there are three main things that really set them apart: 1. They talk to every and anyone they meet. The cashier, the bus driver, the shopper next to them. 2. They genuinely reciprocate by sharing about their authentic selves. They don’t simply disclose the title of the book they are reading and move on, but they share their honest opinions of the book and others like it too. 3. They lean into connections when they are in pain versus hiding alone. After spending all of this time and energy cultivating these deep connections, they almost automatically turn to their rituals after a tragedy. The shared meals, the grounding walks, the wine and laughter on the couch.

You understand that I numbered those to challenge you to pull them out and practice, right? See you next time!

#TheRabbitHole

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lewepstein · 6 years

Text

Just Plain Wrong

Picture an early morning scene in which a four year old boy is sitting alone in a large sandbox at a local playground. His father is watching from a bench close by while his son surrounds himself with all of the many toys provided by the community to those who come there to play. Since the child has arrived first, he has taken two tricycles and parked them in his imaginary “garage.” He has also grabbed all of the sand toys- plastic trucks, shovels and pails - and placed them around himself in a large semi-circle. Within the next half hour other adults and children arrive. But the little boy doesn’t want to relinquish what he now sees as his possessions. He refuses to share the tricycles, pails and shovels with the other children. He believes that because he got there first he is entitled to keep everything for himself. But even the five and six year olds who have just entered the playground are saying to their caregivers that what the boy is doing is “unfair.”

Most of us would agree that it would be just plain wrong for the father of the little boy to not insist that his son share with the other children. It is obvious to all that the child cannot use all of his accumulated playthings at once, and that his hoarding denies others the opportunity to enjoy their time at the playground.

The scene that I have just described is a pretty good description of economic life in America today and what we tolerate in our political culture. You could say that we have been brainwashed to believe that society must be organized around the principle that whoever comes up with a scheme to grab all the toys for himself has the right to hold onto them forever. But, isn’t the playground scene that I am describing also an apt metaphor for the three richest men in the United States having the combined wealth of the lower-earning hundred eighty million of our fellow citizens? And is it really OK that a number of the corporations that these billionaires own and control pay no taxes, while some of their lower paid employees have to choose between spending their meager salaries on either prescribed medications or food? This may sound a little like Charles Dickens’ nineteenth century novel, “ A Tale of Two Cities,” but it is also a portrait of America in the year 2019.

Many of us have taught our children the virtues of sharing and even the four year old in the sandbox soon learns that it is just plain wrong to keep all of the toys for himself when there are others present who would enjoy using them. In a similar vein, anyone who sees himself as an even modestly spiritual and moral human being or attends any church, synagogue or mosque is instructed to be generous and kind to others - nothing more than charity and compassion 101. And yet, we as a nation tolerate fabulously wealthy drug companies getting away with a five fold mark-up of survival items, like epipens. And as yet there has been no popular revolt against a health care system that allows insurance companies to use a business model designed to either deny or limit payments for treatments that they deem “too expensive,” “too experimental” or simply “unnecessary.” In fact, it is the “fiduciary responsibility” to shareholders of those who work for these companies to maximize profits by offering less - not more - to those of us who are suffering from disease and are in desperate need of healing and support. It doesn’t take a great ethicist or moralist to see that these practices are just plain wrong.

When and where did we lose our moral compass and come to justify this kind of greed? Was it in the days of the American frontier when every male settler believed he could become a wealthy rancher, and to hell with everybody else? Or is it in the still prevalent cowboy myth revived by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s that enshrines the notion that the only person I really need to look after is “number one” - namely me - and that others must fend for themselves. To me, this sounds like the type of “rugged individualism” that refuses to embrace an even bare-bones awareness that we are all in this together - each a part of a family, a community and a nation - every one of us a cog in a complex and interdependent multitude of connections, interests and needs.

Most of us get it that it would be wrong to start a bonfire on our front lawns even though it would be a quick and cheap way to dispose of garbage and old furniture and to avoid paying the fees of a pick up service. And yet, we as a society tolerate one corporation or an entire industry’s decision to dump its sulphuric waste into the atmosphere which then dramatically affects the acidity of the rain needed to irrigate the crops that we all depend upon for our food supply. We observe this same attitude with gun owners and the National Rifle Association when they demand and defend unlimited access to firearms even as our children are mowed down by deranged shooters who should never have been allowed to acquire that type of firepower in the first place. It is this selfish, privileged and arrogant worldview that is so malignant when applied to our global village where everything and everyone is so profoundly connected - where global warming is threatening life on our planet and wealth inequality along with climate based crop failure is producing mass migrations of people of a magnitude that we have never seen before and leaving war, terrorism and political upheaval in its wake.

The American “four year olds” who are monopolizing the toys in our collective playground have names. They are Jeff Bezos, Charles and David Koch, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg, among others. They hide behind their corporate identities named Amazon, Exxon Mobil, Eli Lily, Lockheed Martin and Monsanto. They are part of a powerful and privileged class of individuals and cartels who, in the short run are reaping tremendous benefits from capitalism’s cruelty, inequality and environmental degradation. They will argue that they are charitable and willing to share, and they will occasionally even throw a toy or two to others, when it suits them. But woe to anyone who actually says that society’s wealth and resources belong to everyone and that their hoarding must come to an end.

In terms of equity and sharing it would make sense that the privileged and the powerful would be reined in by true adults who had the interests of everyone in mind and saw fairness as their mission. But, what we are getting today from those who are supposed to be representing us is mostly complicity and compliance with what the wealthiest one percent want. The most infamous of the complicit is named Mitch McConnell, a senator from Kentucky. But he is just one patriarch in two large families called the Republicans and the Democrats who both, insanely, take bribes from the privileged and powerful few they are supposed to be monitoring and are therefore completely beholden to them. Call them the billionaire class or the wealthiest one percent - they have come to hold tremendous authority over those who should be reining them in and leveling the playing field so that the rest of us can also have access to all that our wealthiest society in human history has to offer.

Where once there was a counsel of wise adults who ruled judiciously on challenges to wealth and power, there are now a majority of billionaire class collaborators whose names are Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. They give their stamps of approval to the status quo and cloak the power and privilege of the entitled one per cent in the language of law. Sadly, these biased arbiters of right and wrong get to occupy the same benches for the rest of their lives. But the most pernicious and cruelest irony of all is that the current director of the playground is incapable of fairly monitoring those he is in charge of because he is a functional four year old himself. The grasping and greedy Donald Trump lies constantly, operates without even the pretense of a moral code and is incapable of seeing the world beyond his own shallow self interest. Like most children, he views any questioning of his ideas or actions as hostile acts and calls those who challenge him his “enemies.”

If so much of what I have just described is just plain wrong, then how do we as a people make it right? The answer begins with turning our moral outrage into energy and not being deterred by the predictable attacks that the playground bullies will level against anyone who insists that they share their wealth and privilege. Bold, common sense programs like “The Green New Deal,” “Medicare for All,” universal pre-kindergarten and childcare” an annual wealth tax and free tuition at public universities not only demand that wealth and resources be shared, but provide solutions for problems that our gilded age, laissez faire, market based system of economics has not been able to solve.

The first major obstacle to introducing these types of programs into our current system is the tantrum that the one percenters have when asked to share their wealth - they will do anything and everything in their power to scare the hell out of us so that we reject any progressive programs along with the politicians who are trying to level the playing field: This is what you can expect to hear:

“That program will be a job killer.”

“Don’t engage in ‘class warfare’”

“Beware of ‘too much government.’”

“You never want to lose your freedom of choice.”

“Just allow the ‘free market’ to do its thing.”

“Big government programs are too expensive.”

“Only the private sector ever gets things right.”

“Do you want to live in a ‘welfare state?’”

“Why tax the rich? We give millions to charity.”

“It will all ‘trickle down.’”

These arguments appeal to our fears and are not about facts. Working class families are not free when they are struggling to pay for healthcare. The so called “free market” is rigged and does not promote freedom when monopolies are driving the planet to extinction. The much maligned “Welfare State” is now mostly about corporate welfare - the Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits that we, the taxpayers pay to Walmart and McDonald workers who are not receiving a living wage.

The bogeyman of “too much government,” is really fear mongering about the government controls, oversight, regulations and taxation needed to rein in the excesses and dangerous practices of the healthcare, pharmaceutical and energy cartels. And to the argument that the Federal government never gets it right, I would argue: What about The W.P.A. in the 1930s that rebuilt our infrastructure and put the country back to work? How about Social Security - called “creeping socialism” by the millionaire class of that era - and Disability and Medicaid that even the conservative Tea Party members don’t want to give up? And have you considered our Interstate Highway System and our National Park System, one built under Eisenhower and the other begun under Teddy Roosevelt? - both massive, big-government programs. And what about our National Space Program that placed a man on the moon in the 1960s and Medicare, a government run health program for those over 65 that most people highly value?

When all else fails, the message from the billionaires and the politicians who are in their pockets is, “Watch out! Those who are pushing for Medicare for All and taxing our wealth are socialists”. Beware of the “red menace” and “don’t risk losing what you have.” But, the reality is that only through massive, socialist, government sponsored programs like “The Green New Deal” and “Medicare for All” will the playground that we all live in become livable for all.

Time is no longer on our side and a window is rapidly closing as the free market four year olds and their representatives continue trying to convince us that capitalism is freedom and that any and all attempts to redistribute and regulate their wealth and power is tyranny. Unfortunately, the word “Socialism” may still be scary to many. Perhaps, too revolutionary to view as a realistic solution. But it is becoming increasingly clear to many of us with each climate disaster and mass migration that we may be facing a choice between Socialism and barbarism.

So let’s not allow the entitled and their hired hands to frighten us into believing that large common sense government programs cannot work in the United States. And let’s not be scared off again by the words “Socialism” or “Revolution.” It is Democratic Socialism that has provided a way of life that most European citizens swear by and are not willing to give up and it was a revolution against tyranny and unfair taxation that gave birth to our nation. An unwillingness to uphold our country’s proud, revolutionary tradition in these critical times could turn out to be just plain wrong.

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kleroterion · 7 years

Text

Thoughts on Long-Term Unemployment

This is not a survival guide, nor is it a comprehensive tip list for getting through long-term unemployment (or, really, any period of unemployment). It’s a series of things that I learned while job searching for almost a year after I graduated from college. A close friend was looking for almost 3 years post-graduation, and another friend close to 8 months. This is not a unique experience and you are not alone. Granted, I had it easy compared to others - a supportive family, a place to stay and be cared for while I looked for a job, and enough savings to get me by. But it was a terrible experience and I want to at least try to help someone who is going through the same thing. These musings reflect my own experience and will not necessarily apply to everyone. This is a collection of notes and thoughts, not a panacea. I know at the end of the day you will go to bed with anxiety, no matter what I say. But maybe something here will speak to someone. I want to try.

----

Phone interviews/pre-interviews are increasingly common, which gives you an opportunity to really shine - you’ve got the advantage. A lot of people have phone anxiety, but think of it as a way to cater the conversation to your space: you can have information pulled up on your computer, spread out hand-written scribbles in front of you, and be dressed in comfy pajamas. Make it so that the interview is on your terms - times are typically highly negotiable because it’s just over the phone, so you can pick a time that represents your peak efficiency mode.

If you can, try to participate in something during this long stretch of time. This is something that requires a financial safety net, so it won’t work for everyone (I’m sorry). Try to find activities that you can talk about in interviews or that can build your resume (but aren’t filler): Volunteering (Meals on Wheels, at a library, homeless shelters), aiding a political campaign, learning a new skill/language, or studying for an exam you know you’ll have to take (the GRE, LSAT, MCAT, etc.). Take advantage of this time if you can. Getting out of the house and socializing is really important during these hard times and working towards a goal or helping others is a way to move forward when you feel so stuck.

Open curtains and windows. Being cloistered up with only fluorescents or lamp light isn’t super conducive to mental health (in my opinion). Air out the house. Let natural sunlight in.

People in the relevant industries should consider having an online portfolio, and that url should be placed prominently on one’s resume. WordPress is free, and employers (especially in that industry) like to see applicants with 21st-century skill sets. Demonstrate that you can navigate website-making tools while also showing off your talents. If you can, buy a domain name, but it’s not essential. WordPress has enough versatility on its own to get you what you need and to let people see what you are capable of.

Yes, you will have to write cover letters. Because you’re going to be applying a lot, have a template that you can customize for each job. It should be something general enough to work for many outlets, but you need to make a point to make it unique to each company you apply to - tailoring is essential. You won’t necessarily need to write a new one from scratch each time, but make sure to let them know you’re talking to them, not just anyone. Read the job description and incorporate their needs with your skill set into the letter. Try to make your letter a narrative rather than a formulaic sheet of information that they can easily glean from your resume. What experiences make you qualified for that particular job? Why are you the best candidate, and how can you prove it? Find a way to show patterns and traits in your life that define you as a person, and tie it into your employment and experience.

Self-care is a thing for a reason. Stay hydrated. Shower. Do the dishes. Getting up in the morning can be really hard. There’s a lot of disappointment in long-term unemployment. Taking the little steps each day when you don’t want to will keep a sense of control and order in your life. A pile of dirty dishes in the sink, clutter and laundry, dirty hair: no judgment. Seriously. I understand depression. I’ve been there. I’m there. But those things, while seemingly just aesthetic, really do impact you mentally. If you can try to stay on top of those things, you might be able to get to the bigger stuff. I don’t think you’ll ever feel bad after doing any of them, and getting just a few things done tends to propel you just based off of action - an object in motion stays in motion.

Resist the temptation to sleep in. When you’re unemployed for long stretches of time, it’s so, so tempting to let yourself sleep until noon, but you have to fight that urge. Please trust me on this. When you do finally land a job, early hours won’t be as much of a shock.

Networking will not necessarily save you. I had people working in my favor inside many different companies and it came to nothing. The job that I landed (and love) was a hire where I had no referral or contact. People like to hype up networking as the key to success, and I’m sure it is - once you’re in the industry. Networking works for some people, but I don’t believe it should be your focus or concentration. (This of course varies by what your career path is.) It’s all about volume: apply, apply, apply, apply. And then apply again.

Most of the time, you’re not going to hear back from an employer after you apply. That’s how it is now.

Don’t be ashamed to file for unemployment. These resources are there for a reason. You might as well take the opportunities (the few that are left) that the government has to offer. If you are actively trying to look for a job but cannot get one, there is no shame in asking for help from the people you pay taxes to and who in return provide services for people in need. The social contract goes both ways.

Be prepared for group interviews. These are happening more and more now. 75% of my interviews were with 2 or more people. Don’t let it put you off. In some ways, it’s easier to have a conversation when there are more voices in the room, and they are usually there to gauge chemistry more than they are to grill you (in my experience). And while I’m on the subject of interviews: cliche questions still occur, but many questions related to my experience and real-life scenarios on the job or in life. They want examples - times you stepped up, times where you might have failed but bounced back, times you showed leadership. Have stories ready. Yes, sometimes I’d get an occasional “What’s your favorite hobby?” or “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” and you should have answers ready for those. But lately the trend is about showing them you are a good fit for the job, rather than summing yourself up in three words.

It’s really hard to get a government job. They take forever to get back to you. They typically hire internally. It sucks. USAJOBS is a pain. You should know this ahead of time.

There will be bad days. There will be bad weeks. There might be bad months. Keep applying.

You will be tested. Quite literally. For almost every job that I got a response from, I was required to take further action, and sometimes in multiple phases, before an interview was even set up. Companies are being really choosy right now because they know they can. It’s disheartening, but it’s best if you are rid of the illusion that you stop taking tests after college. I had to take actual exams, write multiple-page projects, do short quizzes, come up with proposal ideas, and fill out interview questions all before I spoke to someone. It’s frustrating but also the reality that I faced.

Sometimes you have to play the game. You should get a LinkedIn account and monitor your social media. Employers do want to see an online presence of some kind. LinkedIn is a “respectable” way of doing it, and keeping your social accounts relatively clean is the best way to go. (Coded language for “hide your tumblr”? Perhaps.)

A lot of the time, rejection really isn’t that personal. There are so many other factors at play. It’s almost impossible to believe that, and a part of me still feels that it is personal, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever think otherwise, but I know logically that isn’t true. I have heard from hiring managers and HR people that job listings have to be posted even if the vacancy is planned from the start to be filled internally. This. Happens. Too. Often. To. Count. Also, the job market is FLOODED. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s rough. It really is. The competition is fierce. It isn’t necessarily about you. But it still stings.

Try not to beat yourself up if there are days where you don’t apply for jobs. No one is perfect. You can have a break. Binge watch Orphan Black but come back to your search. Don’t follow the rabbit too far.

Don’t follow a resume template. This is a tough one and hard to really delve into in this setting, as it is so unique to every person. It takes work and oftentimes a guiding hand to get a great resume. I’ve had multiple hiring managers and a career counselor tell me that when they see a cover letter that looks different from the rest, they are immediately interested. Use segments, boxes, and graphics rather than a linear, wordy timeline of your employment and education history. You’re more likely to get interviews if you use a narrative rather than bullet points and facts. Describe your experience and accomplishments in concise, substantive language (no filler!), and highlight your technological and practical skill set in a section all its own. (Computer programs/coding, web design, media production, and writing/communication are all good things to emphasize if they apply to you.)

Use your college resources: your professors. I got a freelance research project from a professor I had a deep connection with, and used others as a support system during hard times. Some places have good Career Centers (mine didn’t), and others have alumni or honor society job networks. I personally don’t have any experience with those so I don’t know how effective they are, but I can attest that bonding and having communication with various professors in your field is psychologically and sometimes monetarily rewarding, and might help more than you think in the short and long term. There’s more incentive than a good grade when it comes to befriending your teacher.

Don’t stay in the house for longer than three days at a time. It’s obviously not a hard and fast rule, but things got really tough for me after that length of time without either being in the light or being around people. It might be really hard, but try to get out at least every few days in some capacity. Long-term unemployment is rife with apathy and entropy, and succumbing is not difficult in that environment. If you can, get out.

My best experiences came from Craigslist. Real, legitimate corporations advertise there, and I got many interviews from respectable places via Craigslist. I highly recommend it. I ended up getting my current job, however, through its website (I work at a theatre). I also got some responses that way, too: going to the websites of individual places you want to work and browsing their Employment section. Also, consider freelancing, package delivery, tutoring, substitute teaching, and other part-time gigs while you look for something permanent and full-time.

In between applying for jobs (which itself should be your full-time job), read that long book series you’ve been wanting to get to forever. Start - and finish - that cleaning project you’ve been putting off for years. Go through your home and donate anything you don’t need to Goodwill or local homeless/battered women shelters. Write that poem or novel that’s been in your head for a decade. Go for the 7-minute mile. If there’s something that’s been on your mind, now is the time to do it. Create. Organize. Contribute.

[ Also if you got this far, thank you for reading!! ]

#my life

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cloudbattrolls · 7 years

Text

Scheming and Dreaming

(Or: the story of how Gliese and Emerel discussed a score of highly illegal activities in the space of one night. Content warning for abuse mention and emotional manipulation mention).

AH: hey Emerel

AH: you were asking about Leoffe

AH: and I REALLY didn't want to say it in the main server for a shitload of reasons

AH: but the truth is they're fucking terrible. They hit Kit for so much as yawning on duty

AH: I guess the Fleet ignores it because they're like a thousand sweeps old and a seadweller, or they just don't fucking care because Kit's technically some sort of fake helm thanks to his implants.

AH: It's awful and I hate it but I cannot do fuck shit about it.

AH: even worse, Kit thinks it's normal

AH: I guess because they've had him since he was pretty much a wriggler

MN: ...

MN: well that explains

MN: literally everything

MN: what the fuck

AH: yeah it's pretty fucking dismal

MN: i take it leoffe has more sweeps left than kit does

AH: lol Empress knows how long that asshole will live

AH: probably forever, they're a fucking fish

AH: so probably

MN: what about you?

MN: do you get the same degree of treatment or is it mostly centered on kit?

AH: lol no Leoffe mostly ignores me, thank fuck

AH: I do what I'm told and nothing happens

AH: but Kit's like, their prize hoofbeast

AH: I'm just the backup

AH: that's probably why

AH: he's the one with the fancy tech in his pan and more training than me

AH: Leoffe's invested a lot in this project

MN: what's the end game of this project, exactly?

MN: i assumed it was normal fleet advantage efforts

MN: but what is it really?

AH: To be honest I don't know exact details. But I do know they're trying to boost our psi as much as possible, they want us controlling armies or some shit.

AH: but the thing is...

AH: you've seen Kit's hair.

AH: I'd bet you fucking anything that's from the strain they're putting on his powers.

MN: the curling?

MN: i thought that was just the way he did his hair.

AH: The gray, you moron

AH: haven't you seen the gray streaks

MN: i have.

MN: i'm still reeling sorry

MN: i knew you both had it rough but i didn't realize just how much shit kit was in

AH: honestly for me it's mostly just a pain in my ass

AH: nothing I can't cope with

AH: it's Kit who's in trouble

AH: but he doesn't even realize how fucked up everything is

MN: what's in place to stop you from turning your psi on them?

MN: ...besides kit thinking this is all normal, that is

AH: lol, Leoffe? Don't you know anything about mind-psi?

AH: loses strength the higher up the spectrum you go.

AH: Even with our shit - which IS extra strong - it'd still be a hell of a fight

MN: no i know that

MN: but if they're going to have you controlling entire armies potentially

MN: then what's to stop all that raw power from breaking through the psychic barrier if it's been trained well enough

AH: ...you saying we could sabotage them and make it look like an accident?

AH: maybe.

AH: but I'd have to be very, very sure about that.

MN: and if kit thinks the way he's getting treated is normal then

MN: he'd have to be not there at the time if something went down

MN: if only so they can't think he had something to do with it

AH: ugh. this shit hurts my pan. I'm no big fan of the fleet, but the reason I didn't run from forced conscription in the first place is because it's such a bad idea to fuck with them.

AH: especially Leoffe. we'd have to be so fucking careful.

AH: honestly, much as I hate saying it

AH: it'd be easier to sabotage Kit. even if they'd take me as the backup. I could just get myself in trouble another way and get discharged.

MN: i'm not so sure they would gliese

MN: think about it

MN: they put a lot of money into this project

MN: nobody wants that much of an investment to go to waste

AH: ugh

MN: if you sabotaged kit and they deemed him not useful, he knows too much and has too much tech to just...leave in him, probably

AH: if only there were a third Lepus troll hanging around

AH: especially if they were a dick

AH: blegh, probably

AH: but if he burned out altogether...

AH: they COULDN'T use him

MN: and if you went in their place, you'd get the same treatment as kit instead of being left alone

MN: because leoffe is old

MN: old seadwellers?

MN: they hate it when everything isn't exactly the way they want it

MN: and it sounds like leoffe takes it to a whole new level on that front

MN: what would that do to kit though?

MN: what happens when you burn out

AH: Not sure. To be honest, I think he might already be showing - oh, that

AH: well I only saw it happen to a lowblood once, and they did survive...

AH: but it wasn't pretty

AH: still, Kit's cobalt, or practically

MN: a lowblood who probably isn't full of psychic implants and metal

AH: he probably has a better chance than a rust

MN: what happens when the parts they wired you both up with actually burn out as opposed to a natural burn out

AH: ...ugh, shit, I didn't think of that. Well I'm not wired, for one, but yeah you're right, that's a complication in his case.

AH: all I can think of is more surgery. Take them out, then burn him out.

AH: but I don't know who'd do that.

MN: alright let's

MN: let's put our heads together here

MN: we both know people

MN: who do we know that might know someone who can

MN: one of us has to

AH: I know Lapyen, she fixed him up before when he got burned, but she's fifty kinds of too nervous for this

AH: She got jumpy just when we said we were fleet

AH: so that's out

AH: do you know any docterrorists or anything who don't mind doing something a bit illegal?

MN: well

MN: pheres is the go to person for all things social and shady

MN: and he knows half of alternia

MN: but i don't know if it's a good idea to involve him in this

AH: yeaaaah

AH: look, I like Pheres, I do, but I'm with you on this one

AH: he seems like he'd be WAY too nervous about it

MN: i love him more than anyone but

MN: let's face it, he's got a big mouth and poor decision making skills

AH: tell me if I'm wrong but that's the vibe I - LOL

AH: noted

AH: ...wait, though

AH: aren't you and him both dating Kit

AH: how exactly does that work anyway

AH: I was just happy he stopped bedding and piling half the town so I didn't ask but I now realize I don't even know wtf your deal is

MN: a very weird red smear that i never saw coming and it's a long story

MN: i want kit to be happy and i want him to be safe

MN: i really thought it was just a worse than average case of roughing up you get from being a soldier until you said something

AH: lol that's fine that's good enough for me

AH: you aren't that fucking stupid looking brownblood chick, I don't give a damn

AH: I still can't believe he took whatever the fuck her name was to the ball

MN: ugh yeah her

MN: i remember seeing her

MN: she smelled like rotting flesh

AH: ewwww

AH: what the hell

MN: but anyway

MN: back to the task at hand

AH: lol yeah good point

MN: we need to start fishing around as discreetly as we can

MN: and figuring out who knows who and what they're willing to do

AH: I think you might have more luck than me with finding something my social circle is small and frankly I prefer it that way, unless we want to start hiring shady fucks off the internet

MN: the thing about shady fucks is

MN: they're easy to buy and they're likely to squeal if they're caught

AH: yeah, and while I can cull a squealer, I can't always cull whoever they squealed to

AH: if they're smart and sell the info to someone powerful enough I can't touch

MN: alright, who are the top five people in your social circle?

MN: mine are pheres, kit...thalia....and a matesprit pair from work

MN: what a great circle

MN: there's only so much you can do with limited power

AH: Uh. Kit, Cateex, Canela...Riccin...does Lapyen count?

AH: not counting any of my ex-clade because fuck them.

MN: so we've ruled out lapyen

MN: and i take it she's too anxious to ask if she knows any shady collegues

AH: lol honestly she might but I doubt she'd tell me, so yeah

MN: we obviously can't ask kit to take out his own implants

MN: that would end horribly

AH: oh my god yeah no so fucking horribly

AH: ...hmmm, Riccin's obnoxiously Empire loyal but

AH: they ARE literally part of a fucking helm program.

AH: they might know someone I can talk to.

MN: maybe not someone empire loyal

MN: how does riccin feel about being a helm

AH: they fucking it love it because they're nuts

AH: but I bet not everyone is as gung-ho as they are

AH: if I'm careful they'll never know what I'm really trying to do

AH: god, even if we find someone we're going to have a hell of a time persuading Kit to do this

AH: I'm not even sure we could persuade him at all, at least by telling the truth

MN: leave kit to me and pheres

MN: i think i could twist it so neither of them realized what was happening

MN: as shitty as that makes me feel to lie to them

MN: what about cateex and canela

AH: yeah I'm not the biggest fan of it either

AH: but what choice do we have

AH: the way he is now he'll just keep obediently following along until he literally burns out in a bad way, or his blind obedience gets him killed

AH: Canela's no fan of the fleet, but she's a fashion model, I doubt she knows anyone useful

AH: but maybe she'll come in handy for something, I'll keep her in mind

AH: Cateex...I know she's not a fan of the spectrum, but honestly, she's so taciturn about anything personal that I have no damn clue how she'd feel about this

MN: maybe not

MN: but she's in a high industry and probably has connections

MN: if she doesn't know, someone she comes into contact with might have an idea

AH: hm, yeah

MN: so cateex is also a huge maybe

AH: I trust her, but she's also the person who scolds me whenever I do anything mildly reckless

AH: I think this is a little more than mildly

MN: so our list of 'maybe'

MN: are cateex and canela

MN: and thalia

MN: because this is definitely too big for the last two on my side

MN: just a little bit more than mildly, yes

AH: who the hell's Thalia anyway

MN: an

MN: old friend

AH: I smell drama so I won't touch that

AH: unless you wanna spill

MN: she'd love the idea of being involved in something like this

MN: but she always wants something in return

AH: oh lmao that type

MN: well....

MN: look friend is a loose term okay

MN: point being

AH: point being?

MN: she's a last resort possibility

AH: A'ight

MN: and she's a clown too meaning that they'd be less likely to question her acting strange

AH: oh god, bleh

MN: tell me about it

AH: can't say I'm a fan of anyone higher than my caste, besides Canela. but that's a good point, unfortunately

MN: i don't care much about caste unless you're batshit insane to be honest

AH: lol, I've just had the bad luck of nearly everyone teal and above I've met being a huge cock

AH: Kit, Lapyen, and Canela are basically the only exceptions

MN: if you talked to lapyen, could you spin it like you were looking for a specialized doctor?

MN: at the moment, it sounds like canela or lapyen are going to be our best bets

AH: hmmm, yeah, that's possible

AH: she DOES have this new medical gig with some company, I could probably poke around for contacts

MN: do that

MN: that sounds like our best lead right now

AH: yeah I'll get on it, Lapyen's kind of skittish but she loves talking about her work

AH: shouldn't be too hard

MN: i wish we had a plan to straight up take out leoffe

MN: but i work in the history field

MN: let me tell you all about power vacuums and bad ideas

AH: yeah, I'm willing to listen to you on that one because the basic shit they've taught me since I got here I don't know fuck shit about history

AH: but killing someone that powerful seems like asking to die anyway because common fucking sense

AH: plus they're violet which would make it even worse

MN: even if you're not caught

MN: someone will take their place

MN: and someone's going to die for the crime either way

MN: and then they'll feel good about justice being served

AH: whoo

AH: yeah, no, I know we can't touch them directly

AH: fooling them is going to be our problem

AH: since even if we manage to get Kit's tech out

AH: we still have to work out how to burn him out quickly enough before they cotton on

MN: without causing permanent damage to his pan or something too

AH: yeah

MN: can the implants be hacked?

AH: ...you know, I DON'T KNOW

AH: but I bet I can find out.

AH: and that'd be WAY easier than trying to get them out of him.

AH: probably.

MN: find out

MN: because if they can

MN: that's a hell of an angle to exploit

AH: yeah I'll get on that

AH: what I know about tech can be tattooed on a grub's underside but I know a chick who can help with that

AH: she's not a close friend, but Dionna wouldn't tattle

MN: what's dionna like

AH: flirtiest greenblood you've ever met. Practically jade but not quite, like, a hue or two below. not bad once you tell her to back off, which admittedly she's pretty good about. she's good in a fight and with technology.

AH: and she got her face and vocal cords mauled by her ex-kismesis, who was a seadweller, so she really doesn't give a damn about the spectrum

AH: not an out and out rebel but she's like you, doesn't really care one way or the other

AH: ...actually I just thought of another reason she might be useful, though it's not her, it's her 'rail

AH: he's a powerful emotion controller. Doesn't know anything useful to us, but he might be helpful if we had to pressure anyone who we couldn't get away with wounding.

MN: gliese

AH: what

MN: you are a fucking genius

AH: I know

MN: talk to them

MN: do whatever you have to

MN: especially whatever will get that moirail on our side

AH: you got an idea brewing in that green head of yours?

MN: i have a hell of an idea brewing

AH: perfect

MN: but it's going to need the tightest planning either of us have ever done in our lives

AH: we can do it

AH: we're fucking incredible

MN: unless we have enough money to just buy kit out of the program but good luck with that

AH: yeah, no, I'm blue but I don't have the funds to buy out an adult fleet violet lmao

MN: even i don't have that kind of money

MN: hell that's so much that i don't even think canela does

AH: probably not

AH: not when Leoffe's had so much longer to accumulate it

MN: how well does that emotion power work on highbloods

AH: supposely pretty well, according to Dionna

AH: like if she wasn't pulling my leg, it apparently worked on that kismesis of hers

AH: and he was high violet

AH: I'm not talking those borderline indigo assholes, I mean someone who's like half a step down from tyrian

MN: if she's not lying

MN: and we can get this guy to help us somehow

MN: i have no idea what he'd want but i can afford a bribe

MN: that might just solve our problem with kit and his loyalty to leoffe

AH: yeah I can also help with a bribe

AH: ...though wait

MN: do the implants provide defenses against psionics?

MN: though if it's true they worked on a near tyrian i suppose it doesn't matter

MN: what's wrong?

AH: Are you saying we'd use it on Kit?

AH: Man, I guess that'd work, but god he'd fucking hate us later

MN: i'd rather not but

MN: we want him out and it won't be easy

MN: we have to at least think on every angle

AH: yeah

AH: that's true

MN: ...you're right

MN: shit

MN: maybe not on kit

MN: but let's keep heart guy in mind

AH: LOL, I think his name's...

AH: Inneal? Iunule? Something like that. He lives in Port Mina, so he's easy to get to me for me at least.

MN: this might be a good time to try making friends

MN: quote unquote

AH: lol

AH: I think his best friend will be my caegers

MN: hey gliese

MN: is the fleet training any actual psionic blockers right now?

MN: if you need more caegars

MN: i've got you covered

AH: no goddamn clue, probably, but I don't get told about it

MN: fuck

MN: my thought was if we could find one who wanted to make a prisonbreak

MN: that might be useful too

AH: lol I'm blue, I bet I have more money than you, buddy, but hm. I'll try and find out, the place DOES recruit a lot of lowbloods.

MN: you might

MN: but i do have a shit ton of money myself

MN: battle rings are lucrative when you're good at them

AH: haha holy shit that's great

AH: thank god at least one of Kit's quads isn't afraid to stab a motherfucker

MN: i know i come off like an ass a lot

MN: but i am the only one willing to stab without a second thought

MN: and that worries me

AH: please I am the goddamn empress of first-class assholes make no apologies to me

AH: I've met way worse

AH: yeah it should fucking worry you Kit is way too soft for his own good

AH: idk about Pheres, he seems cunning enough, but is he any good at fighting

MN: in a pinch maybe

MN: but he mostly runs and teleports when he can't run

AH: ugh

AH: that only works in certain situations

AH: or if the other person's psii can't counter his

MN: but to his credit

MN: it makes a bright ass light

MN: i got blinded the first time i saw it

AH: damn

AH: all I get is sparks around my eyes and shit

AH: well, guess we ought to go talk to our people and see what we can get

AH: night, Emerel

AH: we should talk again when we've both got shit to share

MN: i'll let you know what i find

MN: good luck

AH: we're gonna need it

MN: this uh

MN: might be a good idea to make secure safety plans for people you like

MN: and tell them you like them

MN: because we're dead if we mess up

AH: lol, yeah

AH: don't have to tell me twice

#Gliese Benral #Emerel Victis #havesomefantrolls #this was actually a discord rp but we styled it as a PC one

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citrus-feline · 7 years

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idk man something i’ve noticed after losing my job and shit is that the job market is just inherently opposed to people with depression and anxiety. they claim to be supportive and understanding and hey they WILL be, to an extent. but if you’re TOO depressed or TOO anxious, you’re fired. you can’t do your job right if you are too depressed or anxious, and they will fire you for that. im not really blaming anyone for this, it’s just how i’ve started to see things. i’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a good chance i am just too mentally ill to keep a job, because the job market isn’t FOR people like me. it’s for neurotypical, ablebodied people who don’t go through mental issues nearly enough to get fired from being perceived as harmful to the company. plenty of mentally ill people, even those who have it worse than me, can keep jobs while i cannot. it is not exclusively a macro problem to the entire job industry, but also includes micro problems and how people like myself can deal with them. but to say that people like me who have lost a job for “not being fit” with a company due to their mental illness being too much should not be treated as something that is the individual’s problem. there should be methods that the job market can find ways to include people like me without doing it in the way where some mentally ill people will be GOOD at a job, but the fact that their frequency of having to take days off for their own safety causes them to get fired.

i wasn’t fired for my inability to do good work. they claimed my hourly numbers were decreasing, but after my shift i would calculate it every day, and i mean EVERY day. my numbers were improving, and significantly. i remember the day that i sorted over 300 units per hour and how i almost started crying because that’s almost DOUBLE what the company says we should get every hour. i was so proud of my depressed, anxious self that i actually teared up. and yet i was told my numbers were lacking. that was half of the argument to have me fired. i’m not upset about it, i’ve had time to accept it and think about how the fact that i missed so many days alone was enough to fire me, but the fact that they said that it was partially due to my inability to get high enough numbers hurt. i worked fine when i made it into the office. i would come across issues a lot because my anxiety made it impossible for me to do certain things without psyching myself up, but i still made numbers that were overall about average. i sincerely believe that they used that as part of the argument so they didn’t seem to be firing me simply because of my mental illness. they were kind people, i’m not upset with them. they dealt with me for a while, much longer than most other companies would. and yet the way they went about firing me really did hit me. it made me realize just how harsh the working environment is to some people with mental illness. even with such kind people, i still felt misunderstood. i almost always found trouble in the workplace because of my mental illness, and i was simply expected to deal with it because i got the job in the first place. and that seems pretty hurtful in the long-run.

so here i am, unemployed and waiting for social security to finish evaluating my request for SSI. there’s a good chance they won’t accept me, either. i’ve been waiting a while now, and i believe i have about a month or so left until they said they would tell me their decision. i want to work, i do, i just feel so inherently unfit to do it because of my mental illness. i’ve been on-and-off searching for possible job options that would work with my situation, and it’s REALLY tough to find that kind of thing. i’ve been feeling left stuck and worthless because the job market was so difficult to get into in the first place, and then it chewed me up and spit me out to feel even worse than before. i was deemed unfit to work by my old workplace, even if they insisted on not wording it like that. and i’m not sure if i think they’re completely wrong. with how the country works, i’m starting to very much believe that i really CAN’T get a normal job. i’ve started to try to work around it in my mind simply just to accept it, and yet we are brought up to believe that if we don’t work, we are bad. if i believe i’m bad, it contributes to my already extensive mental illness. if i have a bad enough mental illness, i can’t work. the cycle goes on and on like that. and it shouldn’t. there should be OPTIONS for people with mental illness. because i HATE sitting around doing nothing, but what else can i really do? if i get a job again, won’t i just lose it again for the same reason? i haven’t gotten any better, and i think i’ve even started getting worse over the months. so if i couldn’t deal with a job when my mental illness hurt me less, how the hell can i deal with one now? the system is built in a way that looks for people who are perfect and healthy. what about other people? either we put in more work to survive or we are rejected by the system entirely. there are programs that are popping up to fix these issues, but it is still a major problem.

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networkingdefinition · 5 years

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Self Help Quotes

Official Website: Self Help Quotes

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• A self-help book can’t really address a problem unless it’s individualized. It’s not going to talk about a globalized problem. – Hank Azaria • A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker is willing to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition. – James Allen • A very enjoyable meditation on the curious thing called ‘Zen’ -not the Japanese religious tradition but rather the Western clich of Zen that is embraced in advertising, self-help books, and much more. . . . Yamada, who is both a scholar of Buddhism and a student of archery, offers refreshing insight into Western stereotypes of Japan and Japanese culture, and how these are received in Japan. – Alexander Gardner • All self-help is Buddhism with a service mark – Merlin Mann • An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its ‘self-help’ section: ‘For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it. – Roger Ebert • And there is no use whatever, gentlemen, trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself. • Any book is a self-help guide if you can take something from it. – Kevin Smith

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Self', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '32', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_self').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_self img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Help', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '32', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_help').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_help img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore. – David Levithan • Boxing is just to introduce me to the struggle. Like, when I speak I draw people in the States to teach them various things or to give them dignity, pride and self-help. I have to help the dope and prostitution problem. – Muhammad Ali • Business coaching and the personal development and self-help industry is considered to be one of the booming industries today. – Brendon Burchard • By stretching yourself beyond your perceived level of confidence you accelerate your development of competence. – Michael J. Gelb

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Christianity takes for granted the absence of any self-help and offers a power which is nothing less than the power of God. – Aiden Wilson Tozer • Church is missing transcendence. My generation was raised on a religion of moral control. Do this. Don’t do that. And a lot of self-help religion. Feel better. Get out of debt. Six ways to overcome your fears. Seven ways not to lust. Ultimately that message didn’t work. It was empty. There was no transcendence. The omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful God of the universe wasn’t the focus. – Matt Chandler • Coming into your powers can be a very confusing time. Perhaps there is a book on the subject. If you like, we can go see Marian.” Yeah, right. Choices and Changes. A Modern Girl’s Guide to Casting. My Mom Wants to Kill Me: A Self-Help Book For Teens. – Kami Garcia • Conscious business.. business that is conscious of inner and outer worlds.. would therefore be business that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. Put differently, conscious business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds of self and culture and nature. – Ken Wilber • Deepak Chopra, look at him. He’s probably the most successful self-help guru in the world. I don’t think he’s struggling for any marketing or exposure. You’ve just got to know where your audience is. – KRS-One • Depression is a serious problem, but drugs are not the answer. In the long run, psychotherapy is both cheaper and more effective, even for very serious levels of depression. Physical exercise and self-help books based on CBT can also be useful, either alone or in combination with therapy. Reducing social and economic inequality would also reduce the incidence of depression. – Irving Kirsch • Do yourself and your family a favor: Decide right now that you will write a self-help book someday. I’m serious. A self-help book is a great way to capture what you think makes a good person, a good life and a good world. It’s also a “forever document” that you can pass down to future generations. We need more people sharing positive messages and books with the world. Why not be one of those people? – Brendon Burchard • Even in decision-making, we work in self-help groups. That is women coming together in small groups of 10 to sometimes 15 women, where they start to get education about their rights, about clean water and sanitation, about how to have a healthy birth. You can bring in all kinds of education to them that way. – Melinda Gates • Every time you make a mistake, don’t bring up everything that’s wrong with yourself; tell yourself that you’re paying the price for growth and that you will learn to do better next time. Every positive thing you can say to yourself will help. – John C. Maxwell • Everybody wants confidence but you don’t find it in self help books. You find confidence in the Holy Spirit. – Rick Warren • Faith is the substance of hope – of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. So if you can hope for it and imagine it, and keep imagining and hoping and seeing yourself driving a new car, or seeing yourself getting that job, or seeing yourself excel, seeing yourself help that person – that is faith. – Duane Chapman • Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. �� Jim Rohn • Free Yourself helps you learn to tenderly hold your heart with your own loving hands. – Jacob Liberman • God helps those who help themselves. – Benjamin Franklin • God himself helps those who dare. – Ovid • God will allow us to follow self-help, self-improvement programs until we have tried them all, until we finally come to the honest confession, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t be righteous in my own strength!’ It is then, when we admit our utter powerlessness, that we find hope. For it is then when the Lord intervenes to do a work that we could not do for ourselves. – Chuck Smith • Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help. – Mahatma Gandhi • Government is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing overmuch kills the self-help and energy of the governed. – Wendell Phillips • Helping others is like helping yourself. – Henry Flagler • How can there be self-help groups? – Steven Wright • I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying, ‘How To Be Happy, by Stephen Fry: Guaranteed Success’. And people buy this huge book and it’s all blank pages, and the first page would just say, ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself–and you will be happy.’ – Stephen Fry • I am not a terrorist, but neither am I a pacifist. I am simply a regular guy from the Palestinian street advocating only what every other oppressed person has advocated-the right to help myself in the absence of help from anywhere else. – Marwan Barghouti • I am the first person to go to Barnes & Noble and buy the new self-help book. I like to fill out the surveys, then I get my friends’ opinions on how I answered to see if I was being honest with myself or not. – Jessica Simpson • I definitely have a spiritual outlook. I don’t usually read self-help books, but I read a great book by a guy called Wayne Dyer, ‘The Power of Intention,’ which I loved. I’m not a religious guy, in fact I’m probably agnostic but I thought what this writer had to say was really powerful. – Chris Pine • I do believe in self-help. – Clint Eastwood • I don’t ask myself, “Well, does God exist or does God not exist?” I choose to believe that God exists, and therefore I can say, “God, I can’t do this by myself. Help me not to take a drink today. Help me not to take a drug today.” And that works fine for me. – Stephen King • I don’t read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don’t read self-help books because I don’t believe in shortcuts and loopholes. – Isabel Allende • I don’t want to sound like a self-help book, but it really has been transformative for me to take a look at my relationships in a new way and see my part in them. Everybody’s going through that. – Bonnie Raitt • I have had moments where I’ve had mental-health issues and I’ve felt like yoga and meditating and reading these Buddhist self-help books actually really help. – Mike White • I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my Definite Purpose in life, therefore, I demand of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to render such action. – Napoleon Hill • I learned how to believe in myself. Learned how to set goals, you know, self help books man. I just read every single one I can get a hold of, and I still do. – Drew Carey • I like to remember what I have to be thankful for. When it gets bad, I usually list them out loud to my wife and myself. Helps me maintain a balanced perspective. – Allen Evangelista • I look at every book as a self-help book. – Marc Maron • I never read a self-help book except for the Bible. – Jon Heder • i realize that the future, though invisible, has weight. We are in the gravitational pull of past and future. It takes huge energy -speed of light power- to break the gravitational pull. How many of us ever get free of our orbit? We tease ourselves with fancy notions of free will and self-help courses that direct our lives. We believe we can be our own miracles, and just a lottery win or Mr.right will make the world new. – Jeanette Winterson • I start with something that makes me angry or confused, and then I write about it. It’s a form of self-help. – Brian K. Vaughan • I think that the church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful, and perhaps well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself. Aside from the packaging, there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs and self-help groups. – Michael Horton • I think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I’ve just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I’ve read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that. – Jenna Fischer • I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose. – George Carlin • I went to a bookstore the other day. I asked a woman behind the counter where the self-help books were. She said, ‘If I told you, that would defeat the whole purpose.’ – Brian Kiley • I’m sure there’s some self-help cheese-ball book about the gray area, but I’ve been having this conversation with my friends who are all about the same age and I’m saying, ‘Y’know, life doesn’t happen in black and white.’ The gray area is where you become an adult the medium temperature, the gray area, the place between black and white. That’s the place where life happens. – Justin Timberlake • I’d been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings. – Clarence Thomas • If society gives up the right to impose the death penalty, then self-help will appear again and personal vendettas will be around the corner. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • If you believe in living a respectable life, you believe in self-help which is the best help! – B. R. Ambedkar • If you have to learn it from a self-help book, you may be beyond help. – Wes Smith • If you really want to help, then help others to be more present. Help others to free themselves from the past. Help others to take responsibility for themselves. Help them to see how they are creating their own suffering. Every now and then, you will encounter innocent ones who are suffering through no fault of their own, particularly animals and children. Do not hesitate! Help them. – Leonard Jacobson • If you’re looking for self-help, why would you read a book written by somebody else? – George Carlin • If you’re reading it in a book, folks, it ain’t self-help. It’s help. – George Carlin • I’m not a great believer in self-help. – Daniel Kahneman • I’m not that into reading. If I’m gonna read, I’m gonna read some cool sci-fi book or something, not some stupid self-help book. – Jon Heder • I’m totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that’s the section they gave me, and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking, letting yourself go. – Jason Mraz • In fact, at this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the ‘edge of history.’ There would be a real New Age. – Ken Wilber • In the old days, words like sin and Satan had a moral certitude. Today, they’re replaced with self-help jargon, words like dysfunction and antisocial behavior, discouraging any responsibility for one’s actions. – Don Henley • It is one thing to be a man’s wife – quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place – that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. – Kelly Corrigan • It’s no accident that most self-help groups use ‘anonymous’ in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one. – Walter Kirn • I’ve experienced several different healing methodologies over the years – counseling, self-help seminars, and I’ve read a lot – but none of them will work unless you really want to heal. – Lindsay Wagner • Life is complex. Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another…The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness. – M. Scott Peck • Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. – Lucille Ball • Loving the self, to me, begins with never ever criticizing ourselves for anything. Criticism locks us into the very pattern we are trying to change. Understanding and being gentle with ourselves helps us to move out of it. Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens. – Louise Hay • Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on. – Maxwell Maltz • Most people don’t walk around the tools to process pain and fear, that kind of discomfort. In most cases, it’s unbearable to look at it, feel it, and/or address it. It’s why I’m such a fan of self-help books. – Gabrielle Bernstein • Music is gathering. Taking our scattered thoughts and senses and coalescing us back into our core. Music is powerful. The first few chords can change us where no self-help books can. – Jane Siberry • Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self. – Millicent Fenwick • No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. – Amelia Earhart • No matter what the shrinks, or the pundits, or the self-help books tell you, when it comes to love, it’s luck. – Woody Allen • Now an extraordinary and helpful fact is that by making Mind the object of our attention, not only does the serenity which is its nature begin to well up of its own accord but its steady unchanging character itself helps spontaneously to repel all disturbing thoughts. – Paul Brunton • Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves. – Nathaniel Branden • One of the bonuses about loving yourself is that you get to feel good. – Louise Hay • One reason why it has become harder to promote the beneficial side of emotions such as anger is that the moral vocabulary of good and bad has been replaced by the self-help lexicon of positive and negative thinking. – Julian Baggini • Ours is the one ever-present voice in our lives. Therefore, it is crucial that our self-talk instill confidence within us and is supportive, not submerging, and that our attitudes toward ourselves help keep our spirits afloat through acceptance and trust. We are our own most important and influential buoy. – Sue Thoele • Perhaps the best place to begin with an integral approach to business is with.. oneself. In the Big Three of self, culture, and world, integral mastery starts with self. How do body and mind and spirit operate in me? How does that necessarily impact my role in the world of business? And how can I become more conscious of these already operating realities in myself and in others? – Ken Wilber • Real change isn’t found in some new way to think about yourself, but in freedom from the need to think about yourself at all. – Guy Finley • Refuse to ever use the term ‘failure’ again about yourself or anyone else. Remind yourself that wehn things didn’t go as planned you didn’t fail, you only produced a result. – Wayne Dyer • Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest…. But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the “truths” of myths and parables over empiricism.) In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it. – Wendy Kaminer • Self help books are pointless. Here’s something for you… Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and self help books are from Uranus. – Craig Ferguson • Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family. – Abraham Maslow • Self-help and self-control are the essence of the American tradition. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • Self-help books are for the birds. Self-help groups are where it’s at. – Janice Dickinson • Self-help books are making life downright unsafe. Women desperate to catch a man practice all the ploys recommended by these authors. Bump into him, trip over him, knock him down, spill something on him, scald him, but meet him. – Florence King • Self-help books for those who believe ‘You can have it all’ often advise, ‘Follow your bliss and money will follow.’ With the collapse of the stock markets the reality of trade-offs is more like, ‘When you follow your bliss, it’s money you’ll miss.’ – Warren Farrell • Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses. – Harriet Lerner • Self-help is the best help – Aesop • Self-help must precede help from others. Even for making certain of help from heaven, one has to help oneself. – Morarji Desai • So many self-help ideas are like meringue – you take a big bite, and there’s nothing there. – Deborah Norville • Sometimes when I watch my dog, I think about how good life can be, if we only lose ourselves in our stories. Lucy doesn’t read self-help books about how to be a dog; she just IS a dog. All she wants to do is chase ducks and sticks and do other things that make both her and me happy. It makes me wonder if that was the intention for man, to chase sticks and ducks, to name animals, to create families, and to keep looking back at God to feed off his pleasure at our pleasure. – Donald Miller • Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality. – Mohsin Hamid • The American journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has written about this in her book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World (2009) . She talks about the happiness industry, the rise of medication to make us happy and of self-help books, and the influence of all this on religion. In many ways religion has become another form of self-help. We all suffer from over-exposure to positive thinking. – Mark Ravenhill • The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity. – Herbert Hoover • The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way. – Herbert Hoover • The Bible and several other self help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful… or fun for that matter. – Dave Mustaine • The buying of a self-help book is the most desperate of all human acts. It means you’ve lost your mind completely: You’ve entrusted your mental health to a self-aggrandizing twit with a psychology degree and a yen for a yacht. – Cynthia Heimel • The faculty of self-help is that which distinguished man from animals; that it is the Godlike element, or holds within itself the Godlike element, of his constitution. – J. G. Holland • The fatuous idea that a person can be holy by himself denies God the pleasure of saving sinners. God must therefore first take the sledge-hammer of the Law in His fists and smash the beast of self-righteousness and its brood of self-confidence, self wisdom, and self-help. When the conscience has been thoroughly frightened by the Law it welcomes the Gospel of grace with its message of a Savior Who came-not to break the bruised reed nor to quench the smoking flax-but to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, and to grant forgiveness of sins to all the captives. – Martin Luther • The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others. – Theodore Roosevelt • The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue. – Samuel Smiles • The highest service we can perform for others is to help them help themselves. – Horace Mann • The new age self-help phenomenon is pretty mushy, but it’s also very American. Our history is filled with traveling preachers and quack medicine and searches for the soul. I don’t see this as a new thing. I think the new age is part of a phenomenon that’s been there all along. – James Hillman • The older I get, the more centered I become and the more I think I really know about myself. What I know is that what other people do doesn’t really have any effect on me. – Oprah Winfrey • The only real help is self-help. Anything else is just designed to get you to the point where you can help yourself. – Seth • The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.” But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations–to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess. – Richard P. Feynman • The road to social justice for the farm worker is the road of unionization. Our cause, our strike against table grapes and our international boycott are all founded upon our deep conviction that the form of collective self-help, which is unionization, holds far more hope for the farm worker than any other single approach, whether public or private. This conviction is what brings spirit, high hope and optimism to everything we do. – Cesar Chavez • The spirit of brotherhood recognizes of necessity both the need of self-help and also the need of helping others in the only way which every ultimately does great god, that is, of helping them to help themselves. – Theodore Roosevelt • The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual. – Samuel Smiles • The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates – Samuel Smiles • The truth is, I can’t read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better. – Marc Maron • The UNIA teaches our race self-help and self-reliance… in all those things that contribute to human happiness and well-being. – Marcus Garvey • There are many self-help books by Ph.D.s, but I hold a different degree: an I.B.T.I.A.-I’ve Been Through It All. This degree comes not on parchment but gauze, and it entitles me to tell you that there is a way to get through any misfortune. – Joan Rivers • There is a lot of stigma and snobbiness about the self-help genre, and I can’t vouch for everything out there, but for me, the idea of giving someone else the gift of inspiration and making them feel passionate and capable in an area of their life is the most incredible thing in the world. – Matthew Hussey • There’s so many problems in our world, so much negativity. Don’t worry about the darkness – turn on the light and the darkness automatically goes. Ramp up the light of unity within – help do that for yourself, help do that for the world and then we’re really doing something, we’re doing something that brings that light of unity. – David Lynch • This is our siblings of more famous BookWorld Personalities self-help group expalined Loser (Gatsby). That’s Sharon Eyre, the younger and wholly disreputable sister of Jane; Roger Yossarian, the draft dodger and coward; Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can’t keep a secret; Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is a Muggle. – Jasper Fforde • To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. – Nhat Hanh • To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity. – Bodhidharma • To say what we should be or do and not link it with a clear exposition of what God has done about our failure to be or do perfectly as He wills is to reject the grace of God and to lead people to lust after self-help and self-improvemen t in a way that, to call a spade a spade, is godless. – Graeme Goldsworthy • Today I will not wait for someone to come to my aid. I’m not helpless. Although help may come, I’m my own rescuer. My relationships will dramatically improve when I stop rescuing others and stop expecting others to rescue me. – Melody Beattie • Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language. – Francine Prose • Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss. – Barbara Ehrenreich • Ultimately the greatest help is self-help. – Bruce Lee • Utilitarianism had found [in Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help] its portrait gallery of heroes, inscribed with a vigorous exhortation to all men to strive in their image; this philistine romanticism established the bourgeois hero-prototype the penniless office-boy who works his way to economic fortune and this wins his way into the mercantile plutocracy. – John Carroll • Very few women have become famous for being who they actually are, nuanced and imperfect. When honesty happens, it’s usually couched in self-ridicule or self-help. Dunham doesn’t apologize like that-she simply tells her story as if it might be interesting. The result is shocking and radical because it is utterly familiar. Not That Kind of Girl is hilarious, artful, and staggeringly intimate; I read it shivering with recognition. – Miranda July • Vitally important for a young man or woman is, first, to realize the value of education and then to cultivate earnestly, aggressively, ceaselessly, the habit of self-education. – B. C. Forbes • When a man has reverence for life, he will never do anything to harm, hinder or destroy life. Instead he bends every effort to help life to fulfill its highest destiny. He strives to maintain, enhance and assist life to make the most of itself. – Wilferd Peterson • When I look for self-help books for myself, I used to be scared that I was going to pick up a book that would depress me even more. – Vinny Guadagnino • When it comes to achieving your dreams, the excuse “I don’t know where to start” is no longer valid. Between the countless self-help books available on Amazon.com and the limitless supply of free articles found through Google, everything you need is just a click away. It’s time you go figure it out! – Hal Elrod • When you acquire enough inner peace and feel really positive about yourself, it’s almost impossible for you to be controlled and manipulated by anybody else. – Wayne Dyer • When you affirm your own Tightness in the universe, then you co operate with others easily and automatically as part of your own nature. You, being yourself, help others be themselves. – Jane Roberts • When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself. – Wayne Dyer • Within the new self-help books for women, patriarachy and male domination are rarely identified as forces that lead to the oppression, exploitation, and domination of women. Instead, these books suggest that individual relationships between men and women can be changed solely by women making the right choices. – Bell Hooks • Yes, I know, shaming, isn’t it? I always say you can take the girl out of the 80s, but you can’t take the 80s out of the girl. Before I wrote my first novel, I was reading one of the self-help classics – and it’s as cheesy as you like, so feel free to laugh, Guardian readers – called Awaken The Giant Within, by Tony Robbins, and it inspired me to try. I like motivational books, because I like the go-getting American spirit – your destiny is in your own hands, life is what you make it, don’t accept your limitations, jump before you’re pushed, leap before you look. – Louise Mensch • You are innately designed to use your personal power. When you don’t, you experience a sense of helplessness, paralysis, and depression-which is your clue that something is not working as it could. You, like all of us, deserve everything that is wonderful and exciting in life. And those feelings emerge only when you get in touch with your powerful self. – Susan Jeffers • You can love more than one person at a time, and I don’t give a damn what the self-help books say. – Rita Mae Brown • You cannot help another who will not help him or herself. In the end, all souls must walk their path – and the reason they are walking a particular path may not be clear to us… or even to them at the level of ordinary human consciousness. Do what you can to help others, of course. Show love and caring whenever and wherever you can. But do not get caught up in someone else’s “story” to the point where you start writing it. – Neale Donald Walsch • You cannot wait for someone to save you, to help you, to complete you. No one can complete you. You complete yourself. – Oprah Winfrey • You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. – Bindi Irwin • You have to be responsible for yourself, refer to yourself, develop yourself, help others, whatever it may be. So we shouldn’t have an idea that the whole thing is to shatter ones ego. – Robert Thurman • You must accept the fact that there is no help but self-help. I cannot tell you how to gain freedom since freedom exists within you. – Bruce Lee • You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. – John Ruskin • You, being yourself, help others be themselves. Because you recognize your own uniqueness you will not need to dominate others, nor cringe before them. – Jane Roberts • Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortablene ss directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being. See what I just did there? I saved you thousands of dollars on self-help books. If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier. – Amy Poehler • Your personal philosophy is the greatest determining factor in how your life works out. – Jim Rohn • Youve got all these books on self help, getting to know yourself, doing the right thing, eating the so-called right foods, even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society. – Samantha Morton

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[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Christianity takes for granted the absence of any self-help and offers a power which is nothing less than the power of God. – Aiden Wilson Tozer • Church is missing transcendence. My generation was raised on a religion of moral control. Do this. Don’t do that. And a lot of self-help religion. Feel better. Get out of debt. Six ways to overcome your fears. Seven ways not to lust. Ultimately that message didn’t work. It was empty. There was no transcendence. The omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful God of the universe wasn’t the focus. – Matt Chandler • Coming into your powers can be a very confusing time. Perhaps there is a book on the subject. If you like, we can go see Marian.” Yeah, right. Choices and Changes. A Modern Girl’s Guide to Casting. My Mom Wants to Kill Me: A Self-Help Book For Teens. – Kami Garcia • Conscious business.. business that is conscious of inner and outer worlds.. would therefore be business that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. Put differently, conscious business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds of self and culture and nature. – Ken Wilber • Deepak Chopra, look at him. He’s probably the most successful self-help guru in the world. I don’t think he’s struggling for any marketing or exposure. You’ve just got to know where your audience is. – KRS-One • Depression is a serious problem, but drugs are not the answer. In the long run, psychotherapy is both cheaper and more effective, even for very serious levels of depression. Physical exercise and self-help books based on CBT can also be useful, either alone or in combination with therapy. Reducing social and economic inequality would also reduce the incidence of depression. – Irving Kirsch • Do yourself and your family a favor: Decide right now that you will write a self-help book someday. I’m serious. A self-help book is a great way to capture what you think makes a good person, a good life and a good world. It’s also a “forever document” that you can pass down to future generations. We need more people sharing positive messages and books with the world. Why not be one of those people? – Brendon Burchard • Even in decision-making, we work in self-help groups. That is women coming together in small groups of 10 to sometimes 15 women, where they start to get education about their rights, about clean water and sanitation, about how to have a healthy birth. You can bring in all kinds of education to them that way. – Melinda Gates • Every time you make a mistake, don’t bring up everything that’s wrong with yourself; tell yourself that you’re paying the price for growth and that you will learn to do better next time. Every positive thing you can say to yourself will help. – John C. Maxwell • Everybody wants confidence but you don’t find it in self help books. You find confidence in the Holy Spirit. – Rick Warren • Faith is the substance of hope – of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. So if you can hope for it and imagine it, and keep imagining and hoping and seeing yourself driving a new car, or seeing yourself getting that job, or seeing yourself excel, seeing yourself help that person – that is faith. – Duane Chapman • Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. – Jim Rohn • Free Yourself helps you learn to tenderly hold your heart with your own loving hands. – Jacob Liberman • God helps those who help themselves. – Benjamin Franklin • God himself helps those who dare. – Ovid • God will allow us to follow self-help, self-improvement programs until we have tried them all, until we finally come to the honest confession, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t be righteous in my own strength!’ It is then, when we admit our utter powerlessness, that we find hope. For it is then when the Lord intervenes to do a work that we could not do for ourselves. – Chuck Smith • Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help. – Mahatma Gandhi • Government is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing overmuch kills the self-help and energy of the governed. – Wendell Phillips • Helping others is like helping yourself. – Henry Flagler • How can there be self-help groups? – Steven Wright • I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying, ‘How To Be Happy, by Stephen Fry: Guaranteed Success’. And people buy this huge book and it’s all blank pages, and the first page would just say, ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself–and you will be happy.’ – Stephen Fry • I am not a terrorist, but neither am I a pacifist. I am simply a regular guy from the Palestinian street advocating only what every other oppressed person has advocated-the right to help myself in the absence of help from anywhere else. – Marwan Barghouti • I am the first person to go to Barnes & Noble and buy the new self-help book. I like to fill out the surveys, then I get my friends’ opinions on how I answered to see if I was being honest with myself or not. – Jessica Simpson • I definitely have a spiritual outlook. I don’t usually read self-help books, but I read a great book by a guy called Wayne Dyer, ‘The Power of Intention,’ which I loved. I’m not a religious guy, in fact I’m probably agnostic but I thought what this writer had to say was really powerful. – Chris Pine • I do believe in self-help. – Clint Eastwood • I don’t ask myself, “Well, does God exist or does God not exist?” I choose to believe that God exists, and therefore I can say, “God, I can’t do this by myself. Help me not to take a drink today. Help me not to take a drug today.” And that works fine for me. – Stephen King • I don’t read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don’t read self-help books because I don’t believe in shortcuts and loopholes. – Isabel Allende • I don’t want to sound like a self-help book, but it really has been transformative for me to take a look at my relationships in a new way and see my part in them. Everybody’s going through that. – Bonnie Raitt • I have had moments where I’ve had mental-health issues and I’ve felt like yoga and meditating and reading these Buddhist self-help books actually really help. – Mike White • I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my Definite Purpose in life, therefore, I demand of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to render such action. – Napoleon Hill • I learned how to believe in myself. Learned how to set goals, you know, self help books man. I just read every single one I can get a hold of, and I still do. – Drew Carey • I like to remember what I have to be thankful for. When it gets bad, I usually list them out loud to my wife and myself. Helps me maintain a balanced perspective. – Allen Evangelista • I look at every book as a self-help book. – Marc Maron • I never read a self-help book except for the Bible. – Jon Heder • i realize that the future, though invisible, has weight. We are in the gravitational pull of past and future. It takes huge energy -speed of light power- to break the gravitational pull. How many of us ever get free of our orbit? We tease ourselves with fancy notions of free will and self-help courses that direct our lives. We believe we can be our own miracles, and just a lottery win or Mr.right will make the world new. – Jeanette Winterson • I start with something that makes me angry or confused, and then I write about it. It’s a form of self-help. – Brian K. Vaughan • I think that the church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful, and perhaps well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself. Aside from the packaging, there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs and self-help groups. – Michael Horton • I think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I’ve just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I’ve read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that. – Jenna Fischer • I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose. – George Carlin • I went to a bookstore the other day. I asked a woman behind the counter where the self-help books were. She said, ‘If I told you, that would defeat the whole purpose.’ – Brian Kiley • I’m sure there’s some self-help cheese-ball book about the gray area, but I’ve been having this conversation with my friends who are all about the same age and I’m saying, ‘Y’know, life doesn’t happen in black and white.’ The gray area is where you become an adult the medium temperature, the gray area, the place between black and white. That’s the place where life happens. – Justin Timberlake • I’d been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings. – Clarence Thomas • If society gives up the right to impose the death penalty, then self-help will appear again and personal vendettas will be around the corner. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • If you believe in living a respectable life, you believe in self-help which is the best help! – B. R. Ambedkar • If you have to learn it from a self-help book, you may be beyond help. – Wes Smith • If you really want to help, then help others to be more present. Help others to free themselves from the past. Help others to take responsibility for themselves. Help them to see how they are creating their own suffering. Every now and then, you will encounter innocent ones who are suffering through no fault of their own, particularly animals and children. Do not hesitate! Help them. – Leonard Jacobson • If you’re looking for self-help, why would you read a book written by somebody else? – George Carlin • If you’re reading it in a book, folks, it ain’t self-help. It’s help. – George Carlin • I’m not a great believer in self-help. – Daniel Kahneman • I’m not that into reading. If I’m gonna read, I’m gonna read some cool sci-fi book or something, not some stupid self-help book. – Jon Heder • I’m totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that’s the section they gave me, and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking, letting yourself go. – Jason Mraz • In fact, at this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the ‘edge of history.’ There would be a real New Age. – Ken Wilber • In the old days, words like sin and Satan had a moral certitude. Today, they’re replaced with self-help jargon, words like dysfunction and antisocial behavior, discouraging any responsibility for one’s actions. – Don Henley • It is one thing to be a man’s wife – quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place – that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. – Kelly Corrigan • It’s no accident that most self-help groups use ‘anonymous’ in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one. – Walter Kirn • I’ve experienced several different healing methodologies over the years – counseling, self-help seminars, and I’ve read a lot – but none of them will work unless you really want to heal. – Lindsay Wagner • Life is complex. Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another…The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness. – M. Scott Peck • Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. – Lucille Ball • Loving the self, to me, begins with never ever criticizing ourselves for anything. Criticism locks us into the very pattern we are trying to change. Understanding and being gentle with ourselves helps us to move out of it. Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens. – Louise Hay • Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on. – Maxwell Maltz • Most people don’t walk around the tools to process pain and fear, that kind of discomfort. In most cases, it’s unbearable to look at it, feel it, and/or address it. It’s why I’m such a fan of self-help books. – Gabrielle Bernstein • Music is gathering. Taking our scattered thoughts and senses and coalescing us back into our core. Music is powerful. The first few chords can change us where no self-help books can. – Jane Siberry • Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self. – Millicent Fenwick • No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. – Amelia Earhart • No matter what the shrinks, or the pundits, or the self-help books tell you, when it comes to love, it’s luck. – Woody Allen • Now an extraordinary and helpful fact is that by making Mind the object of our attention, not only does the serenity which is its nature begin to well up of its own accord but its steady unchanging character itself helps spontaneously to repel all disturbing thoughts. – Paul Brunton • Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves. – Nathaniel Branden • One of the bonuses about loving yourself is that you get to feel good. – Louise Hay • One reason why it has become harder to promote the beneficial side of emotions such as anger is that the moral vocabulary of good and bad has been replaced by the self-help lexicon of positive and negative thinking. – Julian Baggini • Ours is the one ever-present voice in our lives. Therefore, it is crucial that our self-talk instill confidence within us and is supportive, not submerging, and that our attitudes toward ourselves help keep our spirits afloat through acceptance and trust. We are our own most important and influential buoy. – Sue Thoele • Perhaps the best place to begin with an integral approach to business is with.. oneself. In the Big Three of self, culture, and world, integral mastery starts with self. How do body and mind and spirit operate in me? How does that necessarily impact my role in the world of business? And how can I become more conscious of these already operating realities in myself and in others? – Ken Wilber • Real change isn’t found in some new way to think about yourself, but in freedom from the need to think about yourself at all. – Guy Finley • Refuse to ever use the term ‘failure’ again about yourself or anyone else. Remind yourself that wehn things didn’t go as planned you didn’t fail, you only produced a result. – Wayne Dyer • Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest…. But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the “truths” of myths and parables over empiricism.) In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it. – Wendy Kaminer • Self help books are pointless. Here’s something for you… Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and self help books are from Uranus. – Craig Ferguson • Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family. – Abraham Maslow • Self-help and self-control are the essence of the American tradition. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • Self-help books are for the birds. Self-help groups are where it’s at. – Janice Dickinson • Self-help books are making life downright unsafe. Women desperate to catch a man practice all the ploys recommended by these authors. Bump into him, trip over him, knock him down, spill something on him, scald him, but meet him. – Florence King • Self-help books for those who believe ‘You can have it all’ often advise, ‘Follow your bliss and money will follow.’ With the collapse of the stock markets the reality of trade-offs is more like, ‘When you follow your bliss, it’s money you’ll miss.’ – Warren Farrell • Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses. – Harriet Lerner • Self-help is the best help – Aesop • Self-help must precede help from others. Even for making certain of help from heaven, one has to help oneself. – Morarji Desai • So many self-help ideas are like meringue – you take a big bite, and there’s nothing there. – Deborah Norville • Sometimes when I watch my dog, I think about how good life can be, if we only lose ourselves in our stories. Lucy doesn’t read self-help books about how to be a dog; she just IS a dog. All she wants to do is chase ducks and sticks and do other things that make both her and me happy. It makes me wonder if that was the intention for man, to chase sticks and ducks, to name animals, to create families, and to keep looking back at God to feed off his pleasure at our pleasure. – Donald Miller • Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality. – Mohsin Hamid • The American journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has written about this in her book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World (2009) . She talks about the happiness industry, the rise of medication to make us happy and of self-help books, and the influence of all this on religion. In many ways religion has become another form of self-help. We all suffer from over-exposure to positive thinking. – Mark Ravenhill • The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity. – Herbert Hoover • The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way. – Herbert Hoover • The Bible and several other self help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful… or fun for that matter. – Dave Mustaine • The buying of a self-help book is the most desperate of all human acts. It means you’ve lost your mind completely: You’ve entrusted your mental health to a self-aggrandizing twit with a psychology degree and a yen for a yacht. – Cynthia Heimel • The faculty of self-help is that which distinguished man from animals; that it is the Godlike element, or holds within itself the Godlike element, of his constitution. – J. G. Holland • The fatuous idea that a person can be holy by himself denies God the pleasure of saving sinners. God must therefore first take the sledge-hammer of the Law in His fists and smash the beast of self-righteousness and its brood of self-confidence, self wisdom, and self-help. When the conscience has been thoroughly frightened by the Law it welcomes the Gospel of grace with its message of a Savior Who came-not to break the bruised reed nor to quench the smoking flax-but to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, and to grant forgiveness of sins to all the captives. – Martin Luther • The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others. – Theodore Roosevelt • The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue. – Samuel Smiles • The highest service we can perform for others is to help them help themselves. – Horace Mann • The new age self-help phenomenon is pretty mushy, but it’s also very American. Our history is filled with traveling preachers and quack medicine and searches for the soul. I don’t see this as a new thing. I think the new age is part of a phenomenon that’s been there all along. – James Hillman • The older I get, the more centered I become and the more I think I really know about myself. What I know is that what other people do doesn’t really have any effect on me. – Oprah Winfrey • The only real help is self-help. Anything else is just designed to get you to the point where you can help yourself. – Seth • The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.” But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations–to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess. – Richard P. Feynman • The road to social justice for the farm worker is the road of unionization. Our cause, our strike against table grapes and our international boycott are all founded upon our deep conviction that the form of collective self-help, which is unionization, holds far more hope for the farm worker than any other single approach, whether public or private. This conviction is what brings spirit, high hope and optimism to everything we do. – Cesar Chavez • The spirit of brotherhood recognizes of necessity both the need of self-help and also the need of helping others in the only way which every ultimately does great god, that is, of helping them to help themselves. – Theodore Roosevelt • The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual. – Samuel Smiles • The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates – Samuel Smiles • The truth is, I can’t read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better. – Marc Maron • The UNIA teaches our race self-help and self-reliance… in all those things that contribute to human happiness and well-being. – Marcus Garvey • There are many self-help books by Ph.D.s, but I hold a different degree: an I.B.T.I.A.-I’ve Been Through It All. This degree comes not on parchment but gauze, and it entitles me to tell you that there is a way to get through any misfortune. – Joan Rivers • There is a lot of stigma and snobbiness about the self-help genre, and I can’t vouch for everything out there, but for me, the idea of giving someone else the gift of inspiration and making them feel passionate and capable in an area of their life is the most incredible thing in the world. – Matthew Hussey • There’s so many problems in our world, so much negativity. Don’t worry about the darkness – turn on the light and the darkness automatically goes. Ramp up the light of unity within – help do that for yourself, help do that for the world and then we’re really doing something, we’re doing something that brings that light of unity. – David Lynch • This is our siblings of more famous BookWorld Personalities self-help group expalined Loser (Gatsby). That’s Sharon Eyre, the younger and wholly disreputable sister of Jane; Roger Yossarian, the draft dodger and coward; Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can’t keep a secret; Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is a Muggle. – Jasper Fforde • To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. – Nhat Hanh • To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity. – Bodhidharma • To say what we should be or do and not link it with a clear exposition of what God has done about our failure to be or do perfectly as He wills is to reject the grace of God and to lead people to lust after self-help and self-improvemen t in a way that, to call a spade a spade, is godless. – Graeme Goldsworthy • Today I will not wait for someone to come to my aid. I’m not helpless. Although help may come, I’m my own rescuer. My relationships will dramatically improve when I stop rescuing others and stop expecting others to rescue me. – Melody Beattie • Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language. – Francine Prose • Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss. – Barbara Ehrenreich • Ultimately the greatest help is self-help. – Bruce Lee • Utilitarianism had found [in Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help] its portrait gallery of heroes, inscribed with a vigorous exhortation to all men to strive in their image; this philistine romanticism established the bourgeois hero-prototype the penniless office-boy who works his way to economic fortune and this wins his way into the mercantile plutocracy. – John Carroll • Very few women have become famous for being who they actually are, nuanced and imperfect. When honesty happens, it’s usually couched in self-ridicule or self-help. Dunham doesn’t apologize like that-she simply tells her story as if it might be interesting. The result is shocking and radical because it is utterly familiar. Not That Kind of Girl is hilarious, artful, and staggeringly intimate; I read it shivering with recognition. – Miranda July • Vitally important for a young man or woman is, first, to realize the value of education and then to cultivate earnestly, aggressively, ceaselessly, the habit of self-education. – B. C. Forbes • When a man has reverence for life, he will never do anything to harm, hinder or destroy life. Instead he bends every effort to help life to fulfill its highest destiny. He strives to maintain, enhance and assist life to make the most of itself. – Wilferd Peterson • When I look for self-help books for myself, I used to be scared that I was going to pick up a book that would depress me even more. – Vinny Guadagnino • When it comes to achieving your dreams, the excuse “I don’t know where to start” is no longer valid. Between the countless self-help books available on Amazon.com and the limitless supply of free articles found through Google, everything you need is just a click away. It’s time you go figure it out! – Hal Elrod • When you acquire enough inner peace and feel really positive about yourself, it’s almost impossible for you to be controlled and manipulated by anybody else. – Wayne Dyer • When you affirm your own Tightness in the universe, then you co operate with others easily and automatically as part of your own nature. You, being yourself, help others be themselves. – Jane Roberts • When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself. – Wayne Dyer • Within the new self-help books for women, patriarachy and male domination are rarely identified as forces that lead to the oppression, exploitation, and domination of women. Instead, these books suggest that individual relationships between men and women can be changed solely by women making the right choices. – Bell Hooks • Yes, I know, shaming, isn’t it? I always say you can take the girl out of the 80s, but you can’t take the 80s out of the girl. Before I wrote my first novel, I was reading one of the self-help classics – and it’s as cheesy as you like, so feel free to laugh, Guardian readers – called Awaken The Giant Within, by Tony Robbins, and it inspired me to try. I like motivational books, because I like the go-getting American spirit – your destiny is in your own hands, life is what you make it, don’t accept your limitations, jump before you’re pushed, leap before you look. – Louise Mensch • You are innately designed to use your personal power. When you don’t, you experience a sense of helplessness, paralysis, and depression-which is your clue that something is not working as it could. You, like all of us, deserve everything that is wonderful and exciting in life. And those feelings emerge only when you get in touch with your powerful self. – Susan Jeffers • You can love more than one person at a time, and I don’t give a damn what the self-help books say. – Rita Mae Brown • You cannot help another who will not help him or herself. In the end, all souls must walk their path – and the reason they are walking a particular path may not be clear to us… or even to them at the level of ordinary human consciousness. Do what you can to help others, of course. Show love and caring whenever and wherever you can. But do not get caught up in someone else’s “story” to the point where you start writing it. – Neale Donald Walsch • You cannot wait for someone to save you, to help you, to complete you. No one can complete you. You complete yourself. – Oprah Winfrey • You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. – Bindi Irwin • You have to be responsible for yourself, refer to yourself, develop yourself, help others, whatever it may be. So we shouldn’t have an idea that the whole thing is to shatter ones ego. – Robert Thurman • You must accept the fact that there is no help but self-help. I cannot tell you how to gain freedom since freedom exists within you. – Bruce Lee • You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. – John Ruskin • You, being yourself, help others be themselves. Because you recognize your own uniqueness you will not need to dominate others, nor cringe before them. – Jane Roberts • Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortablene ss directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being. See what I just did there? I saved you thousands of dollars on self-help books. If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier. – Amy Poehler • Your personal philosophy is the greatest determining factor in how your life works out. – Jim Rohn • Youve got all these books on self help, getting to know yourself, doing the right thing, eating the so-called right foods, even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society. – Samantha Morton

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Fear a fiction of the mind |

https://www.reviewape.com/?p=5006 Fear a fiction of the mind | - Product Name: Fear a fiction of the mind | Click here to get Fear a fiction of the mind | at discounted price while it’s still available… All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. Fear a fiction of the mind | is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked. Description: Why Live In Fear When You Can Naturally Eliminate ANYTHING Holding You Back From Living the Life You’ve always Dreamed of? 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The Most Effective Step by Step System to Reprogram Your Mindset and Reality to Naturally Conquer All Deep-Seethed Fear in order to Achieve ALL Your Goals and Dream It took me years to perfect this code, but once I was able to organize the steps needed to wrench apart limiting beliefs from the ethical beliefs that sustained me, I created a whole new system that the world has never seen before: a system that focused on the actual ideas that hold back people from health, wealth and success! This step by step system is stacked-full of all the powerful toolkits and information you NEED to get rid of all limiting self-beliefs and fears holding you back from becoming the person you’ve always known you could be. It has worked for a lot of people; I am very sure it will work for you. The effect of fear on our personal lives is more damaging than any terrorist can ever hope to achieve. Fear of life prevents most of us from living. 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There’s an invisible “ceiling” in your mind that stops you from doing what you know you should be doing to get what you want: and that ceiling is called fear. Fear is the reason you are not taking the decisions you know you should be taking. Fear, which usually sounds like: What if I’m not good enough? I don’t have the skills or the knowledge I’ll just end up broken-hearted again If only it was that easy… Your life might be entirely controlled by fear without you even realizing it. Our lives are always controlled by fear more than we know. Fear controls the choices we make, our actions, our habits and, ultimately, our destiny. Fear of how life may turn out prevents most of us from living.And the thing is, it’s not that easy to deal with either. You can’t just wish your fear away. No, it’s rooted deeply in your subconscious, put their by parents and friends, by society, by your partner, by your kids. 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ara-la · 6 years

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Decolonization and Wall Street

Decolonization and ‘Occupy Wall Street’

by Robert Desjarlait

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest has become a matter of debate in Indian country. Some have chosen to be included under the slogan “We Are The 99%”; others, like me, have not. Many of those who support OWS have come up with their own slogan: “Decolonize Wall Street.” But I simply don’t believe that the indigenous nations on Turtle Island are a part of that 99% equation, let alone that the OWS movement is about decolonization.

One protester, Brendan Burke, said: “Everyone has this problem. White, black. Rich or poor. Where you live. Everyone has a financial inequity oppressing them.”

I assume from his statement that Burke only sees things in white and black. Apparently he is color blind when it comes to red and brown.

As far as financial inequity is concerned, we, the red and the brown peoples of the Americas, have suffered financial inequity ever since the oppressors first invaded our shores. Socio-economic inequity began with the subjugation of our lands through treaties. Annuity payments were late and never the amount negotiated under the treaty. Supplies and food rations that were part of annuity payments were often appropriated by Indian agents and resold for higher prices.

The tragedy at Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag (Sandy Lake) exemplifies the socio-economic inequity of annuity payments. In the fall of 1850, nineteen Anishinaabeg bands from Wisconsin journeyed to Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag for annual annuity payments and supplies. The annuity payments and supplies were late and the people had to wait until early December before they received limited sums of money and available supplies. Trying to survive on spoiled and inadequate government rations while waiting for the annuities, 150 Anishinaabeg people died from dysentery and measles at Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag. 250 more, mostly women, children and elders, died on their way back home to Wisconsin. This is but one example of the economic inequity that has been part of the indigenous experience in the United States.

OWS organizers have repeatedly stated the inspiration for their protest is the Arab Spring movement. If this is the case, one may ask how did the indigenous peoples of the Middle East fare from the Arab Spring?

In September 2011, Daniel Gabriel, the SUA Human Rights and UN NGO Director, stated: “While the media focuses all its energy on the Palestinian search for Statehood and the ‘Arab Spring’, it is the reduced indigenous populations of the Middle East who continue to lose out. Time and time again, the world demands justice, democracy and freedom in the Middle East, but it fails in its obligation to demand the same for the minority groups like the Arameans. Today we barely survive in our homeland. But tomorrow we may silently vanish from existence.”

If Arab Spring didn’t flourish for indigenous peoples in the Middle East, how can we expect it to flourish here? If the indigenous peoples in the Middle East are barely surviving in their homelands, can we expect the Arab Spring inspired movement on Wall Street to lessen the oppression in our homelands? Will the actions on Wall Street abate our youth crisis, our teen suicide rate, our domestic and sexual abuse, or our alcohol and substance abuse in Indian Country? Will it heal our broken families and communities? Will [Occupy] Wall Street stop the rape and plunder of Mother Earth by the mining, oil and energy interests? Will it halt the ecocide, ethnocide, linguicide, and genocide of the indigenous peoples in North America? If Gabriel’s words offer any insight, then our historical trauma will not lessen but increase. It will increase in the present generation to the Seventh Generation—and beyond.

Then there is the matter of decolonization. The question is: the decolonization of what, of whom? How can decolonization be a part of the process if the occupiers are occupying occupied land?

The dominance of a white majority involved with the OWS movement explains why decolonization isn’t included in the proposed list of demands issued on September 3. The list of demands includes

Separate Investment Banking from Commercial Banks;

Use Congressional authority to prosecute the Wall Street criminals responsible for 2008 crisis;

Cap the ability of corporations to contribute to political campaigns;

Congress pass the Buffett Rule, i.e., fair taxation of the rich and corporations;

Revamping Securities and Exchange Commission;

Pass effective law to limit the influence of lobbyists;

Pass law prohibiting former regulators to join corporations later.

Where in this proposed list of demands is there anything remotely connected to decolonization? At its core, OWS is about corporate greed, financial accountability, and economic inequity. It’s about a change in the system, although, as Gabriel points out, an Arab Spring doesn’t bring change to the voices of the indigenous. If change is the basic tenant of the OWS movement, then this change should not be the exclusion of indigenous populations in the United States, rather, change should be inclusive.

The OWS movement is, at the present time, about money. The core message seems to be that corporate America and the wealthy need to share the profits. But the question is: How are those profits made? The profits of the wealthy are made through the industries they own. These industries fuel and generate profits. And they create jobs and programs.

The mining, oil, and energy industries generate enormous profits. Those profits come at a cost to Indian country, to say nothing of the environment in general. The new Indian Wars are about the opposition to ecocidal legislative policies and industries that endanger our homelands and our Mother Earth. Part of the struggle is trying to rise above the marginalization that began with colonization and continues through the corporate policies of the mining, oil, and energy industries.

According to Belinda Morris, ”Marginalization is as much a result of colonialism as it is corporatism. One is social, the other economic. From the indigenous standpoint … the struggle does not and cannot exist in a vacuum, it must not allow itself to be subsumed by a movement that, to date, has shown little—if any—recognition of it, let alone respect for it.”

As evidenced by their proposed list of demands, the OWS movement has no intentions of recognizing indigenous concerns or demarginalizing indigenous peoples in the United States. And that’s because the mindset of the majority of occupiers is an intergenerational extension of a colonized mindset. In her Foreword to The New Resource Wars, Winona LaDuke provides insight into the colonized mindset. Regarding “Industrial society, or as some call it, ‘settler society,’” LaDuke writes:

“In industrial society, ‘man’s dominion over nature,’ has preempted the perception of Natural Law as central. Linear concepts of ‘progress’ dominate this worldview. From this perception of ‘progress’ as an essential component of societal development comes the perception of the natural world as a wilderness. This, of course, is the philosophical underpinning of colonialism and ‘conquest.’”

This way of thinking is also present in scientific systems of thought like ‘Darwinism,’ as well as in social interpretations of human behavior such as ‘Manifest Destiny,’ with its belief in some god-ordained right of some humans to dominate the earth. These concepts are central to the … present state of relations between native and settler in North America and elsewhere.”

The “settler society” that LaDuke refers to isn’t from the historical past. It is present in non-indigenous society today. It is the mentality of this “settler society” permeating the mindset of the OWS movement. Their demands aren’t about decolonization. Rather, their demands are about wanting a share of the profits, profits that come from the rape and plunder of the earth and our indigenous homelands.

This isn’t to say that the OWS movement lacks merit. Economic inequities, corporate greed, the mortgage crisis, the unequal distribution of wealth are legitimate concerns. But those concerns have nothing to do with decolonization no environmental justice. As such, the 99% slogan is not inclusive of the myriad of environmental problems that plague both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in the US.

Wendy Makoons Geniusz writes: “Because of the colonization process, many of us no longer see the strength of our indigenous knowledge. Our minds have been colonized along with our land, resources, people. For us Anishinaabeg, the decolonization of gikendaasowin (Anishinaabe knowledge) is also part of the decolonization of ourselves.”

Geniusz points out that biskaabiiyang means to “to return to ourselves, to decolonize ourselves.”

For many of us, biskaabiiyang is a lifelong process. It is a journey to heal our traumatized inner spirit of the historical past and the historical present. For many of us, our involvement in the struggles that our communities and our homelands face is a part of that healing journey. From this prism, the Occupy movement can be viewed as recognizing the national trauma endured under Corporate America. But it isn’t about the biskaabiiyang of the American people. Rather, it’s about the collusion of corporations and the government to keep us under the yoke of economic inequity and the public’s demand for reformation of a corrupt capitalist system that has infested the world under the umbrella of globalization. And it is the reformation of this system that has led to the present movement of people on the streets of America.

However, should any kind of reformation occur, indigenous peoples will undoubtedly continue to be marginalized and their natural resources exploited. And, as before, we will continue our struggles in the shadows of democracy.

We will need to do this lest we silently vanish from existence.

Robert Desjarlait is from the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation. He is a free-lance journalist and has been published on issues regarding Indian country. He is a co-founder of Protect Our Manoomin, an Anishinaabe grassroots organization battling against copper mining in northern Minnesota. This piece is reprinted from Indian Country Today, 590 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022 (646) 459-2326

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/ict_sbc/decolonization-and-occupy-wall-street#ixzz1fPd6PPns

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gossipnetwork-blog · 7 years

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The Human Cost of Monitoring the Internet

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/the-human-cost-of-monitoring-the-internet/

The Human Cost of Monitoring the Internet

People only pay attention to content moderation when it goes wrong. On Easter Sunday, Steve Stephens jumped out of his car and shot a 74 year old man, killing him. They had never met, but Stephens filmed the murder on his phone, and posted it to Facebook. In late April a father killed his 11-month-old daughter and livestreamed it before hanging himself. Six days later, Naika Venant, a 14-year-old who lived in a foster home, tied a scarf to a shower’s glass doorframe and hung herself. She streamed the whole suicide in real time on Facebook Live. Then in early May, a Georgia teenager took pills and placed a bag over her head in a suicide attempt. She livestreamed the attempt on Facebook and survived only because viewers watching the event unfold called police, allowing them to arrive before she died.

These things shock and scare everyday people who regularly use the Internet – but it’s what an estimated 150,000 people look at everyday for hours as their job.

Content moderation is the practice of removing offensive material or material that violates the terms of use for Internet service providers and social networking sites such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Twitter. Performed by human moderators, in conjunction with some algorithms, the job requires people to review the content before it can be deleted or reported. It exists in the background of the tech world, but is of critical importance to providing the safe and clean interface people expect when they’re online. Few are aware of the amount of human labor that goes into making their online experience as seamless as possible, and even fewer think about the toll it takes on the people that do it.

The term “content moderation” is a fairly sterile name to describe what the content in violation of the terms of use actually is at times. While the majority of content that is flagged is innocuous – photos of friends in risqué halloween costumes, or pictures from a party where people are drinking – other content that is reviewed ranges from child pornography, rape and torture to bestiality, beheadings and videos of extreme violence. Even if this only comprises a tiny fraction of the content online, consider the vast amount of content that is posted on a daily basis. According to the social media intelligence firm Brandwatch, there are about 3.2 billion images shared each day. On Youtube there are 300 hours of video uploaded every minute. On Twitter, 500 million tweets are sent each day, which amounts to about 6,000 Tweets each second. If two percent of the images uploaded daily are inappropriate, that means that on any given day, there may 64 million posts that violate a terms of service agreement alone.

“There was literally nothing enjoyable about the job. You’d go into work at 9 a.m. every morning, turn on your computer and watch someone have their head cut off,” one Facebook moderator told the Guardian earlier this year. “Every day, every minute, that’s what you see. Heads being cut off.”

“Every day, every minute, that’s what you see,” said one Facebook moderator. “Heads being cut off.”

Henry Soto first moved from Texas to Washington in 2005 so his wife Sara could take a job at Microsoft. He never thought the end result might be that by 2015 he’d have problems spending time with his young son. Not because of his son had problems moving to a new place or any of the other trials of raising a child, but because just seeing his son would trigger terrible images in Soto’s head. According to a complaint filed with the Washington State courts, this was because of images that he’d seen while watching and reviewing hours of content, much of it involving child rape and murder. So In 2016, Soto and his co-plaintiff Greg Blauert, who worked with Soto in content moderation, filed a lawsuit against Microsoft. The complaint for damages filed by their lawyers detail a horrifying reality, where Blauert and Soto spent hours each day reviewing graphic content, without adequate psychological support.

According to the lawsuit, Soto worked in the customer service department, where he ran the call center operations and repair problems related to MSN.com, before he was “involuntarily transferred” to the Online Safety department in 2008. According to the complaint, neither Soto nor Blauert were “warned about the likely dangerous impact of reviewing the depictions nor were they warned they may become so concerned with the welfare of the children, they would not appreciate the harm the toxic images would cause them and their families.”

“He was initially told that he was going to be moderating terms of use, that’s all,” says Ben Wells, the attorney representing Soto in the lawsuit. “And then he started out and quickly learned that this was horrible content. While he became extremely good at what he did, and had good employment reviews, by 2010 he was diagnosed with PTSD.”

Soto declined interview requests through Wells, citing his PTSD. Blauert’s attorney did not respond to interview requests.

In 2014, after years of reviewing content – which Wells says was largely child pornography – Soto saw a video of a young girl who was raped and killed, which turned out to be the last straw.

“Triggers turn on these videos in your brain, and then you watch them again and again and again,” says Wells, describing how seeing bad one image after viewing many could push someone over the edge and make living their daily lives a continuous PTSD trigger. You could just be walking by a playground where kids are playing, or you could see a knife in your kitchen, and the images you’d seen would play again in your head. Indeed, this is what Wells says happened to Soto.

These issues affected Soto’s family as well. Sometimes Soto can’t be around his young son, and his son can’t have friends over because of what seeing them might trigger in Soto. Soto is hard to be around when grappling with these issues. As the lawsuit states, his symptoms include “the inability to be around computers or young children, including, at times, his own son, because it would trigger memories or horrible violent acts against children he had witnessed.” The lawsuit also lays out that Soto has a startle reflex, spaces out, has nightmares and has had auditory and visual hallucinations.

Yet Wells says this is only a snapshot of the effects, ones that most people can’t even imagine.

As a result of the job, the lawsuit alleged, Soto was unable “to be around computers or young children, including, at times, his own son.”

Microsoft vehemently denies these claims, specifically that Soto didn’t receive adequate psychological support. A spokesperson for Microsoft tells Rolling Stone that the company takes seriously both its responsibility to remove imagery of child sexual exploitation being shared on its services, as well as the health of the employees who do this important work. They were unable to comment on specific questions regarding the lawsuit, as the legal process is ongoing. “The health and safety of our employees who do this difficult work is a top priority,” says the representative. “Microsoft works with the input of our employees, mental health professionals, and the latest research on robust wellness and resilience programs to ensure those who handle this material have the resources and support they need, including an individual wellness plan. We view it as a process, always learning and applying the newest research about what we can do to help support our employees even more.”

These days, Himanshu Nigam is the CEO and Founder of SSP Blue, an advisory firm for online safety, security and privacy challenges. But from 2002 to 2006, he worked at the senior levels of Microsoft. Nigam questions the validity of Soto’s claims in the lawsuit as well; specifically the allegation that Microsoft lacked a suitable psychological support program. “Microsoft was one of the first companies that started focusing on wellness programs, before the rest of the industry even had a notion that they should be looking at it,” he says. Microsoft says the program has been in place since 2008.

Yet Microsoft has outsourced the lower levels of content moderation to the Philippines, for low pay and very little of the psychological support needed to do this work, according to Wired. (Microsoft declined to comment on whether it continues this practice.) Wells says Soto was was even sent over to the Philippines to monitor Microsoft’s program there and raised the issue that moderators lacked the support and pay they both needed and deserved, given the nature of the work.

Sarah Roberts, an associate professor of information studies at UCLA and author of the forthcoming Behind the Screen: Digitally Laboring in Social Media’s Shadow World, is one of the few academics that studies commercial content moderation closely. She has conducted research in the Philippines on the people doing content moderation there as well as in the US. She paints a different, darker, picture from Microsoft and Nigam, based on what her research has shown. She believes the Microsoft suit represents a potential turning point in how content moderators are treated, because this is the first time that in-house employees, not part-time contractors, have brought a suit against a prominent ISP.

Soto’s claims regarding triggering and the images it summons echoes what Roberts has encountered in her work. “The way that people have put it to me over the years is that everybody has ‘the thing’ they can’t deal with,” she says “Everyone has ‘the thing’ that takes them to a bad place or essentially disables them.”

Roberts cannot name the firms she has worked with, because of confidentiality agreements, but emphasized the people that reach out to her are from large American content platforms.

“Everyone has ‘the thing’ that takes them to a bad place or essentially disables them,” says one expert.

One person who spoke to Roberts told her he just couldn’t hear any more videos of people screaming in pain, that the audio was the thing he couldn’t take. The method of splitting audio and video when reviewing materials to make the scene less realistic is a fairly common practice, one used by Microsoft. “People have started to develop all sorts of strange reactions to things they didn’t even know existed,” Roberts says.

Work inevitably comes home with content moderators as well. “If this individual who couldn’t handle screaming went and saw a movie where a character was doing just that in the midst of a violent scene, it could trigger a variety of different responses psychologically and physiologically,” says Roberts.

Roberts has found even relatively mild reactions to content moderation content subjects’ lives in a number of ways. ways. People she has spoken to will admit they’ve been drinking more or have had problems feeling close to their partners in intimate moments because something would flash in front of their eyes. “I can’t imagine anyone who does this job and is able to just walk out at the end of their shift and just be done,” one moderator told Roberts. “You dwell on it, whether you want to or not.”

The effects of the work are felt even by those who don’t do it full time. When Jen King was a product manager for Yahoo from 2002 to 2004 she worked on antisocial behavior and content moderation. Part of her job was managing a team of full-time content moderators. She says there is an acute cost to doing this work.

“I was working directly with employees who were reviewing this stuff for us. It’s awful, horrible, and disgusting,” she says.

“I reviewed a lot of content myself and it had a personal effect on me. Not to the extent of someone that had to do it eight hours a day, but I had to do it enough, where I did start to question elements of my sanity after a while. You see enough child porn and you’re just like, holy crap. It haunted me for some time after I left my job.” King says. “The kind of things you hear about with PTSD – sometimes I’d randomly remember some of the worst images I viewed and the feelings I’d had as I initially looked at them, the fear, disgust and horror. For some time I feared the memories would never go away.”

“You dwell on it,” one moderator said of watching disturbing content. “Whether you want to or not.”

King was managing the development of a tool to review and identify child pornography, so while she didn’t watch content frequently, she ended up viewing dozens of hours of content over the course of months. Meanwhile “the customer service folks put in full eight-hour days; for most this was their primary task,” she says.

She went to management and tried to get them to provide additional levels of support to her team, but according to her, the response was “crickets.” King says Yahoo wanted to engage with this stuff only to the extent so that they weren’t criminally liable for it. “It just wasn’t a priority,” she says.

Yahoo doesn’t explicitly deny these claims but says the responsibility to remove child pornography from their platforms isn’t one they take lightly.

“Just as important is the health and welfare of the Yahoo employees exposed to this difficult and challenging material,” says a Yahoo spokesperson. “Supporting these employees is a priority for us, and we continue to strengthen and develop the resilience and wellness programs available to them.”

In Roberts’ experience, there are a few common practices when it comes to content moderation and how companies support the employees doing it. “In the cases of these large, powerful and high-value platforms, content moderation is a fundamental part of the business that they do,” she says. “But it has been far outpaced by other innovations within the firms.” In other words, while this work is inextricable from large platforms, most invest their time and energy elsewhere rather than focus on a cutting-edge wellness program, or further exploring the impact this work has on people.

Due to employee non-disclosure agreements and a lack of external evaluation and verification mechanisms, it’s unclear how employees interact with support systems and the full extent of what these support systems look like in practice. While Microsoft laid out the specifics of their support system, YouTube and Facebook did not. Multiple employees from content platforms declined interview requests.

When it comes to a real-world comparison that mirrors the toll this job takes on the people that do it, “first responders are the closest parallel,” says Nigam. These are the emergency workers and law enforcement officials that are the first to show up to a murder or an incident of child abuse, for example.

“First responders are the closest parallel” to content moderators says one expert.

Moderators are often the first line of defense for reporting and responding to various crimes playing out online, whether video or photos are uploaded or happening in real time. As they look through flagged content, moderators might see similar things as first responders. “That’s not something anyone could have ever imagined, but it’s a reality that these are the first responders of the Internet,” says Nigam.

Rather than thinking about where companies fail to support content moderators or if the psychological toll is an inextricable part of the work, Nigam believes we should instead be focusing on giving moderators more robust care, and giving more recognition to the importance of moderators for the work they do. He also believes we should train them similarly to how we train law enforcement.

The effect of this kind of work, while not studied extensively for content moderators, has been identified in similar occupations. In the Employee Resilience Handbook put together by the Technology Coalition, a group of companies dedicated to eradicating online child sexual exploitation and sharing support mechanisms for employees such as content moderators, a number of disturbing impacts are documented.

One study from the National Crime Squad in the United Kingdom found that “76% of law enforcement officers surveyed reported feeling emotional distress in response to exposure to child abuse on the Internet.” In another, 28 law enforcement officers were examined, and found “greater exposure to disturbing media was related to higher levels of secondary traumatic stress disorder (STSD) and cynicism” as well as “substantial percentages of investigators” who “reported poor psychological well-being”.” Finally, according to a recent study from the Eyewitness Media Hub which looked at the effect of “eyewitness media” such as suicide bombing videos on the journalists and human rights workers who viewed it, found that “40 percent of survey respondents said that viewing distressing eyewitness media has had a negative impact on their personal lives.”

The Employee Resilience Handbook also identifies ways to support employees who do this work. Numerous ISPs and content platforms have signed on to the Technology Coalition, such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo. But there is no independent body that verifies the implementation of support systems or even governmental regulations that mandate certain standards of support for employees in this area of work. Everything we know largely relies solely on companies self-reporting their practices. Additionally, there is no database or federal agency tracking content moderators after they leave their jobs, so the ongoing effects of their work are not officially documented. While the U.S.’s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) is one of the few has such monitoring for its employees, the policy is not standard in the industry. And while NCMEC liaisons with companies regularly they say, they can’t speak to the specific practices companies engage in.

While Nigam thinks there is a safe way to do this work, and most companies have robust wellness programs, he doesn’t believe that even the most vigorous support systems for ISPs and content platforms give employees the same level of psychological support we afford or expect for law enforcement, the closest parallel to content moderators’ jobs when it comes to what they’re seeing.

We need to be “learning from police departments on how officers are trained, vetted, identified and modeling those training practices,” he says. “I think that needs to happen now, not tomorrow, not next year, but now.”

Facebook has recently announced it will be hiring 3,000 new content moderators to address the string of violence and death on its platform. There is currently a Public Content Contractor role listed on its careers page, but the the role description is vague and makes no mention about the type of content that will be reviewed. The sole job responsibility listed is “content review and classification” and required skills include the “ability to stay motivated while performing repetitive work” and be “highly motivated and hard-working with the ability to think clearly under pressure, both individually and in a team environment.” The role is a contractor position.

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