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Anastasia Trusova Born (1989). Russia

“Bedtime stories”. Acrylic canvas 40 x 50

#art

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literally one of my favorite tweets ever

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The downside to making friends is that now there are people who expect to talk to you regularly. This is also the upside to making friends.

I once again owe people responses but I have a thesis to write that has barely progressed since I got mired in applications. Probably selfish of me to be happy that people are getting in touch with me because I haven't been around for a while while also continuing to ignore them. But this thesis needs to get written at some point.

#inventing friends for people in their twenties #ah well I got a reasonable amount done today *and* communicated with some people enough that they hopefully won't feel #that I suddenly cold shouldered them

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thinking about creatures.

#that is most certainly a creature #(affectionate)

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It isn’t just nauseating/The things that I could get away with?

[WOE.BEGONE Episode 36: Respite, lyrics from "Can I Stay Here Awhile?"]

#that time travel podcast #fanart #.......yes I'm not supposed to be here shhh #laptop was trying to update I am on a forced break

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I once again owe people responses but I have a thesis to write that has barely progressed since I got mired in applications. Probably selfish of me to be happy that people are getting in touch with me because I haven't been around for a while while also continuing to ignore them. But this thesis needs to get written at some point.

#inventing friends for people in their twenties #and now I am Posting instead of either answering people or thesis writing #if you see me here again today please thwack me with a newspaper until I leave

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Multiple people both online and off have recently pointed out to me that I am perhaps overly self protective in social situations and I have to acknowledge that they are right.

I'm not sure why exactly I'm like this. Sure I've gotten pretty negative social receptions from peers, especially when I was younger, but others have had it much much worse in that regard without being like this. Maybe I just landed in exactly the zone of "capable of making people like or at least not dislike me, but only when being extremely vigilant" to find it worth trying to stay on the right side of the line?

There are legitimate reasons for me to care to some extent, since people disliking me is bad for me both in terms of "being mocked/derided/etc is bad for my emotional stability, which I need to maintain if I am to have any chance of keeping my shit together and getting anything accomplished" and in some circumstances for practical and pragmatic reasons of having to coexist with those people. I'm not sure the amount I care is proportionate to a rational valuation of those concerns though at this point so much as a genuine phobia-like psychological knee jerk reaction.

I could work to be less like this, but am held back by the fact that there are legitimate reasons for it as listed above, so I am not entirely certain that stopping wouldn't actually be harmful to me. Most people who pointed it out are people I did eventually get to trust and let my guard down with, but not everyone is them and so I'm not sure it really was a mistake to wait until I was sure I could trust them before relaxing.

#personal #inventing friends for people in their twenties #i mean also another valid reason for the caution is that sometimes if something will make someone dislike you #it is because that thing is hurtful to them and I don't want to hurt people #plus it's harder to go back on someone disliking you if you later find you *might* have been friendship-compatible with them #and I like to keep my friendship options open

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One problem with me is I genuinely enjoy respectful debates so much, but don't trust others to remain respectful and non derisive when disagreeing with me, or myself to not accidentally get intense in a way people read as aggressive, enough for most attempts at having them to not be kind of nerve-wrecking.

#no better feeling than someone you've been disagreeing with defusing the tension and making it clear it's all been friendly the whole time #i feel like i've probably made this post before #unfortunately this makes me a bit of a nonconfrontational doormat sometimes even when I'd have a lot of fun engaging with a topic #if I could be assured it wouldn't get hostile and personal

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Alright which time looper are you:

- *becomes a better person in the loop*

- stuck forever, no choice but to suffer

- stuck forever, hell yeah I’m immortal

- I’m in a time loop? Oh. …Oh. Oh no.

- *becomes a worse person in the loop*

#stuck forever hell yeah I'm immortal #which is kind of funny because I'd be much less sure if I wanted immortality under any other circumstances #it's the ability to endlessly explore a set of resettable known parameters that cinches it for me

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huh. something small but unexpected happened and it threw me off my rhythm. the whole day is ruined now. its gonna take me 3-5 business days to recover

#you can't prove I'm not kuzco

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#*my* indoor plants died long ago #the struggle now is not letting Very Extroverted Roommate's meet the same fate while he's away

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People talk about the surprise albums from people like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé that drop with zero warning but I have just been existing in this world where every album I've ever heard in my life has been a surprise album because I didn't know that musicians had schedules that we could see

#my (non-existent) taste in music

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#I'd say to the point it's basically you but that seems biased #because you've had this pfp since I started following you so it influenced the vibes I got/how I thought of you since the beginning #so it's not very surprising that I think it matches

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There are now people in mathblr liking/reblogging this post without context. I wonder if they know it's from an Arcane liveblog.

Maybe what we need to fix the "being forced to publish at a ridiculous pace" problem in irl academia is to get more quasi-immortal beings to whom time isn't an object among university higher-ups

#I find the idea of people thinking this was just a solution I randomly thought of while going about day to day life funny #you cannot do this to me viktor #you cannot do this to me mathblr

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Well, obviously if you thought a specific opinion was wrong, you wouldn't hold that opinion. But it is possible to realise that among all of your opinions, there are probably some that are wrong, you just don't know which ones, and that acknowledgement will tend to affect how you react to hearing differing opinions.

Something I always find bizarre is when people mention something along the lines of "You always act like your opinions are correct and everyone else is wrong" as like. A moral or personal flaw. Because like. I'm pretty sure that's just how opinions work.

#it is true though that some people will say the thing op is pointing at just to criticise others for having strong opinions at all #but it's also true that it's possible to have strong opinions while acknowledging they probably aren't all completely correct #and I do think the difference can be noticeable to people so sometimes I think this criticism is valid #there's a difference between thinking you're right about a specific topic and thinking you don't need to learn anything #because you must already be right about everything

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construction workers were a superstitious organization who thought orange objects could ward off vehicles, or even control people.