#life advice
best way I have found to comfort people who are endlessly apologetic of things outside their control (often as a result of shitty relationships) is the jokingly hyperbolic accusation of [gasp] “so you’re behind it all!”
like someone giving me directions who starts apologizing profusely when I miss a light as if it’s their fault–[gasp] “it was you who petitioned city council to build this intersection in 1893!!” because it snaps them out of it and they laugh like. oh yeah. that’s a ridiculous thing to blame someone for. I’m not that guy. you’re not that guy. it works.
There are 4 things I learned when I was 25:
You do not have to be affectionate all the time to care for someone, in fact, caring can also mean a couple of texts or silence for a few days while you both live your lives happily and separately.
People do not care for you less when they’re busy with their own lives. It’s your reaction to them being their own person - and your ability to make yourself happy - that determines how they feel about you.
Not everyone reciprocates to your actions the same way. If you want someone to acknowledge, be interested in, or treat you a certain way for your efforts, all you have to do is let them know. They will try their personal best to accommodate that within their personal spectrum of feelings.
No one owes you 100% of them, not even after 30 years, because someone having a percentage of themselves is what keeps them sane at the end of the day and that’s okay.
I will say this for working as an actor at the Renaissance Faire:
It may be hell and a half working in the summer heat in period costumes with minimum shade and no green room (if you’re on the non-professional cast), but it 1) gets you used to using a hand fan and 2) turns the act of fanning yourself into such a hard-punching combo comfort/calm stim. Like, seriously, it’s been six months since I worked there, and I can still just flick open a fan, flutter it a little so the breeze hits my face, and boom, brain starts producing the happy chemicals, calmness follows, life Improves. I’ve started carrying a small one at work and it’s been so incredibly helpful!
TL;DR: If you work in a hot job in the summer, get a hand fan to fan your face and throat when you’re especially warm. Not only will this cool you down super fast, you’ll inadvertently Pavlovian condition yourself to associate the movement and sensation with automatically feeling better, and will then be able to apply it to other situations.
There are things that need to be forgotten if you want to keep on living.
:’)
I don’t think there’s anything sadder than when two people are meant to be together and something intervenes.
:’)
Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.
:’)
As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better.
:’)
Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
:’)
This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.
A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.
Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic? She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing. But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great. She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success. So - what gives?
His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear. Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles. He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses. You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on. Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered. He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit. That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.
I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way. I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did.
It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this. But no one ever told me. I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes. No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.
I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed. I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to. No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to. I guess I just didn’t know. I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.
I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.
I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.
So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while. But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not. Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.
This post is one of those things that I will reblog every time it appears on my dash. This is so important, and no one ever tells you about it.
I almost didn’t read this but then I did and I’m really glad that I did.
Super important
Tldr: The reason clothes never “looked right on you” is because models and celebrities always had their clothes tailored to fit them perfectly.
I love this post but it always frustrated me just a little because I can’t even afford to buy new clothes let alone get the clothes I have tailored. But then I remembered that a lot of things are easier to do than you think they will be, so here’s some resources on how to alter your own clothes!
Please read this, it’s an opportunity to learn about yourself, possibly a new skill and why it isn’t you, it’s the industry.
5 Reminders When Life Feels Overwhelming
5 Reminders When Life Feels Overwhelming
Life can feel difficult and overwhelming and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. Occasionally, we need a few reminders for those days, and just to get through those bad days.
These reminders and quotes can help find a way to battle through those tough days. So what are the reminders to pick yourself up and remind yourself it’s time to live your best life?
01. Got a problem? There are always…
5 Positive Changes I’m Making To My Routine
Life is all about change and I’m making some positive changes to my daily routine. They’re really simple changes that I’m making in my daily life that help me to stay productive but also keep myself in a more positive mindset.
(more…)
if you dont decouple your drive to create from your desire for attention you will go insane. simple as. you will never feel satisfied b/c you will always want more and you will feel perpetually bitter that you did not get what you are “owed”
It’s an unpopular opinion but it is absolutely and completely true. I’ve never seen someone who creates for engagement happy with the engagement they get. I posit they can’t ever be happy that way because it will NEVER be enough
I was thinking about a conversation I had with a fellow writer a while back and I think it might also apply to fandom.
He was upset because his partner did not read much of his fiction. His partner was supportive of his writing in every other way–supporting his need to have space to write, asking questions about it, being a listening ear during brainstorming, encouraging him to make friends with other writers, etc. He (the partner) had never said anything belittling, discouraging, or negative about my colleague’s writing.
But he didn’t read much of it. The writer I was talking to wrote sci-fi, and his partner didn’t read sci-fi. In fact, he (the partner) was not a big reader of fiction at all.
I told this colleague of mine something that I had decided about my own relationships: my friends, lovers, acquaintances, relatives, etc., have no obligation to be my fans. I met almost all of them outside of the context of writing. Our relationships are built on those things: common history, common non-writing interests, common social circles, common humanity. They didn’t decide they liked me or wanted to hang out with me because of what I wrote. And I didn’t decide to hang out with them because I thought they would read my stuff.
So, expecting people who I know from other contexts to be interested in my stories is kind of unfair. Yes, I should expect them to be supportive. No, I shouldn’t expect them to change their personalities and start liking long, drawn out romances about gay Mormons (or whatever it is I may happen to be writing at the time).
If the non-writing people in my life also happen to be interested in my writing, awesome! If not, that’s okay too!
And actually, this even applies to the writing people in my life. Most of the writers I know, I met not through reading their work, but through writers groups etc where we talk about the process of writing. I hit it off with people who face similar issues as I do, or because our personalities just happen to mesh. Sometimes, it turns out that I also like reading their stories. Sometimes, it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean I don’t like them or I think that they are bad writers or that we can’t learn anything from each other. It just means the story is for someone else.
This relates to fandom in multiple ways. Someone might like me as a person, but not be interested in most of the stuff i post on Tumblr. They might like talking with me about our shared fandom, but not follow me into my next fandom. They might like my blog, but not be interested in reading my fanfic, for whatever reason–they don’t like reading fanfic, what I write doesn’t jibe with them, what I write is triggering, they have many competing obligations and can’t read every single fic that ever gets posted in the fandom, etc. They might love one of my fanfics, but not the others. They might enjoy my fanfics, but blacklist my personal posts or my political posts. They might enjoy conversing with me in the DMs, but not follow me at all.
And that’s okay. That’s normal. We are all different, and no one person is going to connect with me on every single level. In and out of fandom, I try to keep the attitude that the relationships I have are significant for what they offer, not for what they lack. If I feel like a certain need of mine is not being met, I can look to make additional friends, to expand into additional communities.
That isn’t always easy. But it is much easier than trying to force the friends I already have to fulfill a need that they just can’t fulfill.
And, by looking at the ways my friends support me, instead of focusing on the ways I wish they would support me, I appreciate the friends I do have more.
And I’m happier.
I’m not, like, a constant joy factory. But I’m definitely happier than I would be without this outlook.
“Slow down. Be cool.”
~ excellent advice by Todd Brotzman dealing with Dirk’s life anxieties, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
