tarqueen27

[tarqueen27]

Don’t get mad. Don’t get even. Do better. Much better. Rise above. Become so engulfed in your own success that you forget it ever happened.

Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[tarqueen27]

and then stay angry.

[tarqueen27]

Take the time to read this and remember this boss ass advice.

What career advice do you have for recent graduates, especially women?

This is a really tough question, anon. I actually brought this up over Memorial Day weekend with my friends when we were reapplying lipstick in between rounds of heavy drinking at the Nats-Phillies game. 

The question of post-collegiate advice is daunting, because surely you’ve already heard from every Tom, Dick and Harry who are well-meaning but pulling from a pool of professional information that is at least 35 years out of use, or overly optimistic and misguided people telling you to follow your heart (and yes, I truly believe that’s misguided). So I guess I will attempt to give you in broad strokes what I wish I had internalized earlier, when I was a bit younger, and hope that you come out of your twenties a little less bruised than I found myself. 

I think the first thing to know is that you are right, your suspicions are true: it is really hard out here. It is harder than your parents had it; it is harder than your grandparents had it. Boomers now who are looking down their noses at Millennials and throwing around words like “entitlement” and “impatience” are out of touch at best and cultivating active ignorance at worst. Their belief that everybody should eat shit and get hazed for the first years of their career is rooted in a work infrastructure that rewarded this sort of torture with security and guaranteed benefits and advancement. I, too, would put up with endemic bullshit if I knew it was just for a few years, and then I would be locked into an upward trajectory with more or less guaranteed raises and advancement. This hasn’t been the professional landscape since the 90s – maybe the 80s. Your unwillingness to be treated like garbage is not a character flaw.

That said, your other suspicion is true as well: you probably need to work harder. There are a lot of extenuating circumstances here (are you rich? do you have connections? are you in a field that’s gasping for employees and willing to hurl money at them? did you major in English? are you considering law school? don’t go to law school, seriously), but for most of us, because we aren’t rich and don’t have connections and may not be in fields that are gasping for employees and willing to hurl money at them – the difference for you and me? It’s who is willing to work their fucking ass off. 

My first three years out of college were fucking terrible. I got an incredible opportunity, and I don’t know if I fully rose to the challenge, but I tried my hardest. That meant stupid hours and 3 a.m. phone calls; years of being friends with people who got used to me bailing on weekend adventures and dates and dinners to go back to the office for fuck knows what reason. It was objectively terrible, and I in no way endorse it – I don’t think that anybody should threat their junior employees the way I was treated. I would never do that to a new hire or an intern or a rented mule for that matter. 

But the takeaway is that I rocked up to New York on the slimmest of odds, and based mostly on stubbornness, a good dash of luck, and the knowledge that I wasn’t the smartest, but I would kill myself trying to be, I did okay. There are less dramatic versions of this that people should aspire to live each day, because the ugly truth of the thing is this:

In the marketplace of employees, all the abstract things that you have discussed and enumerated and angrily reblogged – prejudice, capitalism, sexism, racism – they’re all there. But you still have to operate within the system because you have to pay your rent and buy food. The way to do this is the way I think immigrants have been telling their kids to do this for generations now: push all that other shit out of the way, fight the urge to feel sorry for yourself, and work as hard as you fucking can. Of course it’s unfair, of course it’s fucking maddening. But you are only going to be in a position to change it or make it better if you make it, period, and opting out or waffling isn’t going to put you in that role.

Whenever I feel like I can’t do it or it’s too hard, I think about my father. My father and I don’t get along; we love each other but we don’t like each other, and it took us putting continents and oceans between us before we learned how to be comfortable in our relationship. But my father was among the Sent-down youth of China, part of the country’s lost generation of oldest sons and daughters ripped out of school in the mid-teens and dispatched to do hard manual labor in the fucking farms of China. He spent years out there, completely fucking alone and without any hope or idea of how he would ever get past this, if he would survive, how the hell he was going to get out of that hellhole – if he could even go home to Shanghai. He suffered untreated kidney infections and frostbite all over his hands. When the universities started to reopen, he sat out in haystacks under the moon with smuggled books of physics and calculus and taught himself with a basis of middle school math because he knew it was his only possibility for escape. He got into Fudan University in Shanghai, where he studied Chemistry because he thought it might help him get to America, and it did. Now, my folks live in California and have a lemon tree in their backyard, and when I was 23 and crying on the subway home, he would tell me I was working too hard and it would fill me with a crippling, bone-deep shame. 

However fucking hard I had it, however fucking tired or destroyed or depressed I was? I never came close to my dad. I never will. And whenever I got low and thought I wanted to quit I would remember where I came from and get mad: at myself for being such a fucking coward, at the situation, at the fact that even for a second I let these assholes beat me down. 

This is getting weird and wander-y, but I guess it boils down to this: you will feel shitty and tired and wronged, and all of it will probably be valid. But you also have to get past that and work your ass off – especially because you are not a middle or upper class white male – to get what you want. 

Because at the very end of it, you will have a job where you can pay your rent and buy food and maybe even have some left over for fun. 

But even better? If you’re very fortunate and work very hard, you might get to have a conversation like I get to have sometimes, where someone says to me, “Is it weird to have three black women in a row in this presentation?” and I get to say to them, “No. It’s a good thing we have three black women in a row. Would you ever ask me that about white men?” Or when I get to mentor young women at work, talk them off the ledge in the ladies room when they’re freaking out; send someone’s boss a note saying, “Hey, this kid you took a chance on is doing great.” Or hell, even the ugly stuff, like where I have to tell a phalanx of old white guys that they can’t say this shit and they have to listen to me, because thank God they have to listen to me and they can’t say that shit. 

At the end of it, best of all, the very luckiest ones of us are even be able to pay it forward a little. 

So Anon, who probably didn’t want this response at all, I wish you some good luck because everybody needs it, and I wish you fortitude to push through the rest. There’s a whole big world out there – kick it in the ass. 

[tarqueen27]

Love has no labels

Video - Via Siz iOS app

[tarqueen27]

[tarqueen27]

[tarqueen27]

[tarqueen27]

You will spit out the tears that have been dripping from your eyes to your tongue and leaving behind the bitter taste of salt and him and you will tell yourself that there’s always next time next time you’ll be more careful with yourself next time you won’t crumble underneath him next time you won’t fall so in love next time you won’t get so attached you won’t rip your happiness out of your chest and put it in his shaky hands who will touch her hips when you aren’t looking and you won’t let him call you every night so you learn to fall asleep without his breath pouring through the phone and wrapping around you like a blanket, keeping you warmer than summer ever has. next time you won’t trust him with every part of your body next time you won’t be so naive next time you’ll be able to delete his number without tears blurring your decisions next time you won’t have to drink so fucking much to forget him next time you’ll know how to breathe without him you won’t melt when he calls you baby girl and then next time blows in like a whirlwind that crushes you and numbs you and leaves behind an empty shell of a girl who thought she wouldn’t get hurt this time.

next time (via extrasad)

wow

(via dopendiamondz)

How i feel sometimes

[tarqueen27]

Wow, I never thought of that.

PLEASE READ AND REBLOG!!!!!

Put your car keys beside your bed at night. Tell your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your parents, your Dr’s office, the check-out girl at the market, everyone you run across. Put your car keys beside your bed at night. If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies. This tip came from a neighborhood watch coordinator. Next time you come home for the night and you start to put your keys away, think of this: It’s a security alarm system that you probably already have and requires no installation. Test it. It will go off from most everywhere inside your house and will keep honking until your battery runs down or until you reset it with the button on the key fob chain. It works if you park in your driveway or garage. If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break into your house, odds are the burglar/rapist won’t stick around. After a few seconds, all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won’t want that. And remember to carry your keys while walking to your car in a parking lot. The alarm can work the same way there. This is something that should really be shared with everyone. Maybe it could save a life or a sexual abuse crime.

[tarqueen27]

This is beautiful💜💜💜

[tarqueen27]

rawhumor:

Follow this blog to receive the funniest posts on your dashboard!

😂😂😂😂

[tarqueen27]

Happy birthday daddy! You are the #1 man in my life and im glad to be your daughter! I love you❤ @brothacharle

[tarqueen27]

Yall know your Haitian if you have this today :) Happy Haitian Independence Day! 😊🎉🎉

[tarqueen27]

2013 it was fun but 2014 will be better haha :) Be safe while yall partying 🎉🎉 Happy New Years!

[tarqueen27]

Had the best birthday party ever!😝 We danced, "drank", and ate. 🎁🎂🎤😁

[tarqueen27]

Me and the sis :) @camy102

[tarqueen27]

EPIC SWEET 17! LOL THANKS EVERYBODY :)#textgram