Fictional mission / Space That Never Was / Alternate timeline
Two cosmonauts conducting a spacewalk to replace damaged piece of equipment mounted on the outer hull of the Ambition 2 spacecraft.
Ambition 2 / Mars-Phobos
In the mid 80s, international cooperation between USSR, USA, Japan and a few European countries resulted in a follow-up to successful Ambition 1 mission from a few years earlier. This time the goal was to visit and explore one of Mars moons, Phobos, in hope to find a suitable place for a permanent base on its surface, which would be built by the crew of Ambition 3, mission that would launch in late 1980s.
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As always, prints of my artworks are available in my print shop at Artstationand at Displate.com
Still studying for orgo my test is on Tuesday. I’m feeling pretty good about it & and any negative feelings I do have IM THROWING THEM OUT THE DOOR. I don’t need that affecting me. Also, if you haven’t already follow my Instagram !!! @studygil I literally have no followers so I don’t post much. Hope everyone is doing well physically and mentally and if not take some time for yourself!
people in fanfiction are so good at identifying v specific smells. I literally struggle to identify vanilla when I’m sniffing a candle labelled “VANILLA” how are these kids getting woodsmoke, rain, mint, and a whiff of byronic despair from a fuckin tshirt
Once I read a fic where they were like “he tasted like” and I’m expecting the typical formula (1 cooking ingredient + 1 natural phenomenon + “something uniquely [character name]”) but instead they said “he tasted like mouth” and it was one of the greatest fic moments of my life
click and drag to find out what your shitty fanfiction kiss tastes like
*if ur on moble screenshot it
This. Is. The funniest thing. I’ve seen. In days. Always reblog. Always reblog. Oh my gooood.
Oh and I got Cherries, Thunder and Ambition from screenshotting this.
Coffee, a hurricane and warmth…
So somewhere in the tropics I guess
Sugar, soft rain, and recklessness. Okay drama queen lol
It’s been a long time since my last blogpost and I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t had particular inspiration to write for a very long time. Not just for this blogpost, but also for fanfiction or other stories. I haven’t touched a pen in ages, and that’s very atypical for me.
In the past that was usually a bad sign. Being unable to write sometimes equated to being unable to feel anything. It was usually a sign that I was in a very bad place, going through the motions, and often utterly depressed. However, I feel like this time it’s different.
I went through EMDR therapy and have no longer had any PTSD attacks and my self-worth has steadily grown since then. While there are still things for me to work on, I’m feeling more self-assured, assertive and even content in life. Today’s blogpost is to focus a bit on what brought me there, and what I still need to work on.
An Ambitious Title
Let’s just say that “On the road to Enlightenment” is… well… quite pretentious a title indeed. But I do think it’s accurate.
What I mean with the term enlightenment is very broad. It’s the ability to have bad things slide off of you like butter off a hot knife, to have a sense of inner peace, to be like a tree unyielding to the wind, just swaying along… It means accepting your own position in life, and understanding what you can change of circumstances around you, and which battles can not be won. It means trying to be a little better every day, no matter the odds against you, but also being okay with it if the process is slow or sometimes comes to a standstill. It’s being your own best friend and your biggest supporter.
So even if I singlehandedly can not solve poverty or global warming or a pandemic, I can take my responsibility and help in the ways that I can control. And I can let go of what is out of my hands.
And most importantly: I understand that I am still the person who controls myself, even despite past traumas or my own character, it would be foolish to say growth is impossible.
So in that way, I do think I’m on the road to enlightenment. But I’m not fully there yet. And maybe that mountain is further away from me than I believe right now, but I’m feeling hopeful I can reach it.
Improvements I noticed
Less inclined to jump into drama
The past year, there are a few things that I’ve somehow let go.
In the past, I could get really into stupid arguments online. Someone said a dumb thing, and I would be there to refute it. And it wouldn’t make me feel better. It would just be a stupid way to get a little dopamine boost, until the asshole would respond with his own little dopamine boost, until we’d shredded each other to a pulp online. And a day later the process would begin anew, with another idiot of the day in another random spot on Facebook.
I still read a lot of things that sometimes have me start a sentence to refute whatever idiotic statement they posted, but nowadays, after a few words, I press backspace until no words are left, and I move on.
I bet it seems like a logical thing to do to some of you - not everyone gets dragged into useless discussions like that, but for me it was a miserable way to pass the time sometimes, and it would utterly drain me and even keep the focus from my job.
Instead, I did join more fandom groups with memes, and now if I do need a little dopamine boost, I prefer to check some of those memes, and pass on the best ones to some of my friends, brightening their days too. That’s a small way to spread positivity instead of rewarding negative behaviour with attention. And doing that constantly is like a breath of fresh air. It’s much chiller than before.
PTSD? Gone!
After EMDR therapy I also noticed that I no longer get triggered by my old trauma or situations similar to it. In my EMDR post I explained more about how it worked, and shortly after writing that post, we also wrapped up the EMDR therapy, and I noticed during situations that would otherwise have triggered me, I felt a little anxious, but only for a few seconds, and then I became aware of the anxiousness, I was able to remain confident in myself, and it never escalated to the point of tears or anger or a fight or flight response.
Mindfulness = happiness?
While we haven’t dealt with mindfulness in therapy yet (we probably will soonish), I do feel like I’m getting better at counting my blessings, also thanks to my lovely cat Vincent. He’s an absolute joy and I love having him around, he makes me incredibly happy and is such a smart boy. I do really think he’s responsible for so much of my progress.
It’s a massive improvement, because I started therapy with the ‘feeling’ that I hadn’t felt anything in ages. Nothing but anger, at least. To experience positive feelings, even if they might still be flattened in degree compared to what neurotypicals feel, is great.
Because two years ago, when I went into therapy, I only felt angry or tired, nothing else. I’m still tired sometimes, but not angry, definitely not angry, I’m feeling calm and instead of anger I feel determination, which is sometimes anger channeled into something useful. I could really get used to that.
Self-confidence
If you would have asked me a few years ago if I were self-confident, I would have hesitated, then probably said yes. But the fact I would have hesitated, says enough about how it really was. I’m feeling more assertive now, and at work I dare to offer my thoughts and frustrations more than I ever did before. Many schizoids can probably relate that they avoid conflict at work. We do not like that attention for ourselves.
But let’s give a dumb example - suppose a radio is on at work, and it disturbs you from performing well… a schizoid might remain silent to keep the peace, and then suffer in silence.
Nowadays, I would no longer keep silent. I would talk about the issue. I would also accept if there would be no solution to my problem, but I would advocate better for myself and voice my frustration honestly. I’m no longer covering up frustration in honey, because that doesn’t work. I have learned to be more direct, even though I’m not sure how I learned it during therapy - I suppose it might be a result from the EMDR therapy (and from getting older, probably.)
Ongoing Struggles
Focus and flow
One of my biggest issues to this day remains executive dysfunction. I can get paralyzed at the thought of completing certain tasks. I’m still not certain where this comes from. I’ve asked my therapist if she thinks it might be ADD or something of the sort, but she has not given it a straight answer, to my frustration.
I still receive help in the household from my mother, and I wonder if this is going to be a permanent thing and if I need to get a household help for the rest of my life, or if this is still something I can grow out of, as I’m slowly nearing the age of 40.
I can’t find focus for household tasks and certain other things, and can’t always find flow for work or certain hobbies either.
With flow I mean the feeling of “being in the zone”. Even when doing some of my favourite things, like gaming, I can still feel out of the zone, and get bored of it, or restless.
That’s actually a relatively new thing for me. I never got bored. Like, ever. And now I’m finding myself bored more easily than before.
I do sometimes find flow too, in work or hobbies, but it’s not a permanent thing. Finding better focus and better flow is certainly going to be a task for the future.
No ambition
I still have no ambition whatsoever. And I’m not even sure if that’s such a bad thing or not. But the thought of changing jobs, changing apartments or changing most of anything is too exhausting to even consider. And so I remain at a standstill.
Sometimes I also think 'oh wouldn’t it be nice to do more Twitch streaming?’ but then I never find the energy for it, and I’m like 'you have work, that’s enough, you don’t need to spend your energy on streaming, you’re not social enough for it anyway.’
And then I wonder why I want to Twitch stream in the first place and I can’t even answer the question. Because others do it and make money that way? Because I like gaming in my free time? I truthfully have no idea.
I’ve also lost all ambition to write. While I didn’t write with the idea of getting money out of it, it was still something I did regularly, and I haven’t written anything decent in many many months. It was one of the only things I liked to do regularly and it has fallen away somehow, and that does worry me a little.
But maybe the question is whether ambition is a must in a person’s life? Is it a must in a schizoid’s life, or is a life without ambition still a good life, and a person without ambition still a good person?
Conclusion
So while I’ve come a way already in my therapy, some big hurdles are still ahead, mostly the executive dysfunction. Does it come from something schizoid-related or could it be due to some perfectionist trait or ADD?
I also regret this is one bit we can’t tackle with EMDR - because EMDR worked very well for me, I’m kind of sad not every bit of my personality can be improved upon with that type of therapy.
I’m at that point in therapy where I’m grateful for the help I’ve received so far, and I’m able to name several things that have greatly improved, but I’m also a little afraid that the next thing to tackle can not be tackled or improved upon at all anymore, like I’ve reached the limit of my therapist’s expertise or my own ability to change.
The executive dysfunction has been with me since I was a teen and I honestly don’t know how it can go away. I hope that in a year from now I can give an update where I’m like “oh, good news everyone, it’s gone, and here’s how I did it!”
Until then, feel free to come into my inbox with any questions you might have (about anything) and I’ll be certain to leave a response for you on my blog or in private!
I need feminism because I shouldn’t have to worry that my gender will stop me from being successful in the male dominated games industry.
Do we really have to keep doing this? I hate how we completely dehumanize the majority of people working within the games industry by labeling it as a “male dominated games industry”. The way we use words can be so incredibly manipulative sometimes. When you use words such as “male dominated” it completely removes any sort of human context and replaces it with negative stereotypes because we are throwing around the word “dominated” which will always invoke negative connotations.
When you say words like “male dominated” you are almost implying that all the men in that particular industry are women-hating bigoted sexists who want to dominate over all of the women. That is a shitty and hurtful generalization to make. I’m going to slightly re-word the above quote:
“I need feminism because I shouldn’t have to worry that my gender will stop my from being successful in the games industry where 80% of the workforce happen to be really passionate and genuine men who are doing what they love.”
Yes, I understand that there are still people out there who are still inherently sexist towards women, to the point where it could be considered bigotry. These people are the minorities. There really is only a handful of people who will look at mind blowingly awesome work and deny the applicant because all they saw was the female gender of the creator behind the design.
Do you know what will actually stop you from being successful in the games industry (or any creative industry for that matter) 99% of the time? Lack of motivation, passion, talent, ambition, and creativity. You need all of this to succeed. We are all on tumblr, and we’ve all seen those amazing images, videos, music clips, or art… Yet the people who created them are absolute nobodies. It goes to show that just because you are insanely talented doesn’t mean you are going to make it if you don’t have the motivation and the passion to dedicate most of your life into getting your work out there and recognized. You can’t expect to have everything handed to you on a silver platter.
Saying things like “I can’t be successful because there are lots of men” is a really copout way of giving up. Don’t make excuses. Stop blaming others.
Shoot i did during the summer of Cali 2014 is going to be a good year for me and those around me, I can just feel it. God is going to bless us in ways I couldn’t imagine ✈️ ambition is the key to success
![ONE PIECE ワンピース [ WANO ] King “THE WILDFIRE” vs Roronoa “PIRATE HUNTER” Zoro ☠️BLACK KNIGHTS FANFARE](https://64.media.tumblr.com/52c168b04c570d616396ac03e5087e72/1b2f4331c8f0070f-74/s1280x1920/c5ddc0e202d3ec24d621f909baaa045b33dc2d26.gif "ONE PIECE ワンピース [ WANO ] King “THE WILDFIRE” vs Roronoa “PIRATE HUNTER” Zoro ☠️BLACK KNIGHTS FANFARE")
