#Before Crisis || Prepare for the worst and you’ll have no regrets
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• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
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you are still the sun that shines for me
part 8 of atelier heart
ikemen vampire: temptation in the dark
theo van gogh/mc | G | 2800 | [ao3 in bio]
Life couldn’t get any better. You enjoy what you do here, spending your life without regrets with the person you love the most.
That is, until you meet her. The woman who still loves Theo.
CHAPTER 3
Neither of you talk about it.
Not the week after, not two weeks. Not an entire month after.
Time passes by, unaffected.
-
Vincent keeps his promise and does not say a word of your conversation with him to Theo; every single detail he’d unraveled for you seared under your eyelids but also blown away in the wind at that cliff overlooking the streets of Paris. Sebastian doesn’t ask questions about your recent interest in the van Gogh history books. And even if you and Theo spend the same amount of time one another, no one makes a mention of the noticeable tension between the both of you.
Not even Theo.
Of course, work does not stop even if one is facing an emotional crisis. Or maybe it’s because one is facing an emotional crisis that work does not stop. After the exhibit, there is the process of selling the paintings that patrons were interested in. Then, there was, of course, inevitably, the dreaming, the preparation of yet another exhibit in the future. There were days of figuring out what strategies to apply to avoid the Academie; days of watching over the artists; days of talking with other dealers; days of going to patrons.
Aside from the silence, most of everything was the same.
That was the hardest part.
-
There is one street in the entirety of Paris that Theo does not have the heart to walk down.
Because he knows that if he does, his traitorous mind will remind him what it was like, living in that apartment on 8 Cité Pigalle. The walls filled with Vincent’s paintings. The view from the window, the one he’d sat across from and sketched and painted and studied. The dreams of an exhibit before it was shot to the ground.
To no one in particular, but also to her in particular, Theo asks: why hadn’t you left? Why are you still here? Doesn’t the sight of these streets bring you back to that time, doesn’t it hurt? Why have you come to haunt me like an old ghost, wandering the hallways?
What do you get from still living where the memory of us still lingers?
What do you want out of me?
Arthur usually jokes that rage is the emotion that best suits Theo’s countenance, the wrinkled forehead, the snarl. And maybe it is. But Theo does not have the strength to let it show now, even when it is all that his heart throws at him—an insatiable, irrational fury. It’s a fire that burns so strongly, so quickly, consuming him.
Burning him out.
Quickly running out of fuel, disappearing into nothingness, replaced by a heavy exhaustion.
Theo feels the weight of two lives heavy on his shoulders.
-
You feel like you’re holding a knife to your heart, but you know that in the end, you will be better off having done this to yourself than letting the confusion, the ignorance, leave you festering on the inside. So on days where you have little to do, where Theo goes alone to work, you sneak into Sebastian’s little secret library to read.
At first you convince yourself that you are only doing this solely for the knowledge of it, but deep inside you know what you are doing—a bookmark to the index item of her name, jumping only to pages that are relevant to her. And at first, you wanted to know what what she was like so you could make yourself similar to her, copy what he’d liked, what he’d loved, so that you’ll be someone a little better for him. And at first, you scanned the pages with your eyes prickly with tears only out of spite, reading every bit of their story filled with hurt and the want to outshine it.
But before you can even notice, it becomes different.
You learn about their letters. You don’t have a copy of them—and somehow you are thankful for that—but you know about them, and you can surmise what they have, knowing Theo now. You learn about moving to Paris, uprooting herself to keep her husband’s feet on the ground of his dreams. You learn of a domestic life, of making someone into something new, something better. You learn of promises and candlelit scribblings of adoration.
You think of dreams.
Dreams so different, and yet so familiar.
About a little home, overlooking a beautiful city, a babe in warm arms.
Slowly, with each passing day, every week spent hiding away from the rest of the mansion, dipped in a history that does not belong you... it shifts; the anger sizzles into relief; the jealousy turns into joy. Instead, there is only awe, there is only respect—the realization that there is no need to compete with someone who is not fighting a battle with you. It is not up to her, after all: it is up to Theo. In between these pages you get to know of a woman who shared her whole heart with him, carried his dream up in her arms.
Like you are trying to do.
You are afraid, sure, of course, but—
You have faith in Theo.
You have faith in what Theo has left with Jo.
Recognizing what love looks like is a balm on the still-tender burns of your heart.
-
In the following weeks, Theo throws himself into work with a fervor you had never seen from him before.
Just a month after the initial exhibit had closed, he is already closing in on another venue, this time to feature Vincent’s works in its very center. You ask when he started preparing this, and he says in his spare time, which he already does not have much of—you feel a little slighted that he’d left you out of the build-up for the work, but you’re already carrying enough weight in your chest, so you decide to let it go.
Until it becomes undeniable that there is too much work being done in too little time. Like Theo was purposefully avoiding something, someone—you, maybe, you think, in a moment of weakness. At your most vulnerable when you ask him what’s wrong, he only answers, “This is the only reason I turned. There’s nothing wrong,” and you feel small.
But the truth is, a swirling storm of what-ifs hangs over Theo’s suddenly too-cold room in the mansion. He tries not to spend as little time as possible inside it. His heart shakes, a small twig so near breaking as the gale whips around in between the spaces where the touch of your skin doesn’t meet his, across the bed that seems like miles too wide. You’d asked one of the many questions that were inevitably going to come, and he’d thrown out barbs at you. He could reach with his pinky to touch the curve of your elbow, but…
He doesn’t.
Theo wonders how many of the things he’s decided to do had inevitably turned out to be bad decisions. Letting his brother meet Gauguin. Chasing after the murderer. Getting killed in the process, blinded by his own rage.
Leaving her behind.
What if he’d stayed?
What would he have not lost in the process? What new things would he have gained?
Would these have been able to fill the void left behind by his brother’s untimely death, the one he tried to overcome with seething bloodlust?
Would the tender blue eyes of the little boy who looked like a perfect match of him and his beloved have made staying… a little more worth it?
Theo doesn’t sleep.
A lesser vampire body is an extraordinarily sturdy thing, but it still needs its sleep. That first night after the exhibit’s opening runs into a week of Theo depriving his body of rest; he’s poring through paperwork, answering correspondences, whatever he can do to fill the spaces of time he would have once loved to spend next to you, warm in bed.
Floating in a pool of exhaustion, Theo’s mind begins to float. It is this exact state that allows him to stop thinking of the worst of things. To stop remembering that he is, in fact, the worst of all things.
So he doesn’t notice a lot of things.
Theo drives himself to exhaustion so he doesn’t hear his heart clamoring please go away, when you tell him good morning, tell him have a good day, tell him I love you.
He forces his mind to stay quiet.
-
The both of you had split up today for work, and while Theo is negotiating with another dealer, you sit across Monsieur Cedric in his lavish home, having brought over another one of his requested paintings. You’re chatting over tea and cake, talking about the latest news about the Academie.
“Monsieur Theodore is becoming a known name around these parts. It’ll be sooner rather than later that the Academie will try to get their hands on him. And you too, mademoiselle.”
More like now rather than later, but you decide to spare Cedric the gory details. “We will be very careful. Thank you for your concern.”
“Your will to endorse these artists and also assist Theodore is so charming, mademoiselle. I wish the both of you the very best.”
You chuckle, saying “It’s something he deserves, doesn’t he?” before putting your teacup to your lips, smiling softly against the rim, thinking of another woman who is also fighting a battle, perhaps harder and longer than yours, for Theo.
It still stings, but you feel no need to hold it against him anymore.
You don’t want to push him, to hurry him, not when you know that the process is long, and agonizing. The most you can do is stand by him, have faith, and make him feel that—
That it’s okay.
You miss him already. You hope he feels better soon.
Oh, the things one does when loving a man like that.
-
Whatever had changed between the two of you since the exhibit does not feel as heavy as it did two months ago. You’ve gone back to sleeping in his room, soothing him when he wakes up shaking, from nightmares, or simply when he cannot fall asleep. You still feel that wall, something impenetrable that’s preventing you from getting through to Theo entirely, but it does not feel as opaque or as solid as it did back then. At the very least, you can now hold him in your arms without feeling the nagging sensation that it was wrong.
Theo, oppositely, feels very heavy, cold. Like it was the middle of winter, in a snowstorm, and all he has is a thin coat. Stormclouds hang over the abandoned town of his heart, where not even a single candle lights up the curtain of the night.
Here, Theo thinks. Theo thinks too much, really. Lets himself get consumed by the unending cycles of what if and if only I and I should have. He walks the deserted alleyways filled with memories of a life he doesn’t own anymore—a life he no longer deserves. Maybe a life he never deserved in the first place. In real life he doesn’t have the courage to return to it, but in bed, unable to sleep, he comes back to that Paris apartment he rented with the woman he loved. Touches the floors, the walls, with his hands. Wishes he knew what they would have meant to him, back then.
One day, in-between appointments with patrons, the two of you head out to your favorite café to have some lunch. The waitress already knows the both of you, and as you throw a smile, she winks, already knowing what to bring you. But while you’re animated and excited for your usual meal, you find Theo staring off into space, out into the distance, like he’s chasing after the shadow of someone he thought he knew.
(The Theo from the old life.)
You reach out across the table, gently placing your hand over his. The warmth of your touch brings him back to the present, his usually-sharp eyes taking time to adjust from their glazed state. He looks at you like something in him hurts. You squeeze his hand so gently that he has to squeeze yours back for yours to tighten.
“I’m here,” you say, even though you don’t know if it’s the right thing to say. Nothing has felt the right thing to say, but you feel like something will break if you don’t speak to him. “I’m here for you, if you have something you want to talk about. I told you we’d carry things together, right?”
Theo feels the flicker of fear die out. The clouds in his mind part to give way to sunlight.
And his mind is still ringing, still saying, how much did you lose then? How much did you take for granted? How much did you throw away? But his heart, his heart is banging at his chest and saying: but what are you risking losing now? What are you unconsciously letting go, by going back?
Theo knows what to listen to.
Maybe, he thinks, maybe, taking your hand in his, pressing a kiss to your knuckles silently, he should contact Monsieur Desrosiers one more time.
-
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger keeps a diary.
Well, she had kept one, before her marriage with Theo, but then in the whirlwind of it, had left it unwritten, sitting on a shelf in their house in Paris. When she’d moved back to the Netherlands together with the little baby that was not quite a baby yet when Theo had gone away, she resumed writing in her diary.
Theo had a way with his words, one that Jo could not compete with, but he had taught her their importance, even if a lot of times he spent a little too much time figuring out what to say, instead of actually saying them. Jo treasured every single word he had granted her, keeping all his letters.
Two months ago, she had returned to Paris to visit a dear friend, when she had heard about the exhibit being held by—coincidentally—a man named Theodore van Gogh. Her heart thumped in her chest so loudly when she’d heard the name, even if she knew that it could not have been her Theo. No, her Theo was under the ground, next to his brother in Auvers-sur-Oise, where they dream of rye fields. Still, his name alone left her longing, and she could not resist the opportunity to visit, bringing with her their little Vincent.
She’d been working not only for herself and her little Vincent, but also for Theo, the past few years—keeping Vincent’s paintings, their letters, trying to continue what he had done even if she did not know entirely what she was doing. Grasping for straws, trying to walk down a path she knew she should reach the end of. And yes, the streets of Paris still speak to her, still make her shiver because they seem so empty, not without him, but when she went to that exhibit, she saw the paintings and—remembered Theo.
Felt like he was still around, watching her.
And oh, Theo, he had taught her to see, taught her to live—taught her much about life, so much so that she felt like she had, for most of her life, gone through life with her eyes half-closed. She wonders if he knows, how much he had given her, had left her; how much she ought to thank him for, how grateful she is. He had taught her the greatest bliss but also the greatest pain, the hollowness of having lived past what one knows is the best part of their lives—but he hadn’t left her, not entirely: he had left her Little Vincent, her treasure, her joy, with Theo’s blue eyes, his kindness, his sharp mind.
Time washes away the heartache of having been torn open, and instead, leaves in its wake the cool of growth, the same way a toppled plant still reaches up to the light. And sitting in that exhibit, in a gallery of paintings that were so similar to that which Theo felt so important to let grow, that he found so much potential in, Jo felt the where the wounds of her heartache had already healed.
She is okay now, and she still carries Theo with her everywhere.
And oh, she wants to send a part of his heart back there.
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger picks up the folded piece of paper with contact details she’d found from someone else, and, taking up parchment, follows Theo’s lead, holding his words to her heart, and begins to write under the morning light.
---
bongerdiaries [.] org was a wonderful resource for jo’s diaries that i pretty... much had to copy paste from just because of her wonderful voice in writing that i wanted to keep intact. please go give it a read if it so interests you!
#ikemen vampire#ikevamp#ikemen vampire theo#ikevamp theo#ikevam#ikevam theo#atelier heart#you are still the sun that shines for me
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68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
From Kevin Kelly, editor of Wired Magazine...
It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of you.
• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
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On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly offers 68 bits of unsolicited advice...
It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of you.
• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
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KARMASTARS: JUNE 24TH - JUNE 30TH
ARIES
Money: The structure of current authority, power and career could come to an abrupt end this week, leading to carer change on some level. Whatever occurs know that the Universe has something bigger and better in store for you in the months ahead.
Sex: Be open and willing to incorporate change into love relationships so they can move forward. Talk to your partner about it and see what you both come up with.
Power: The Full Moon in Capricorn and Mars retrograde in Aquarius is clearing away stagnation in certain parts of your life. Therefore “go with the flow” and let the “dust settle” before making a move.
TAURUS
Money: Earth signs like their comfort zone but with Mars retrograde in the house of career, goals and ambition, plus the Full Moon in Capricorn affecting the house of expansion, growth learning, good luck, other cultures and far-away places. you can’t afford to not give serious thought to moving or hanging some aspect of this area of life in the very near future. The astrology aspects this week and weeks ahead, are going to “shake the cobwebs off” your financial “comfy chair”, bringing to light exactly what is holding you back.
Sex: To have Unity through Diversity in love means you have to get closer to your partner and be open to knowing them on a deeper level. Don’t fear forming a closer bond with them.
Power: This week’s transit indicates its time to free yourself from restrictions/limitations in order to update and improve knowledge overall and let go of the old.
GEMINI
Money: Efforts and people from the past come to fruition if you make the right moves for a positive outcome while Mars is retrograde. In addition certain joint financial partnerships will be over that seemed to have a negative effect in your life. This should give you a clearer perspective to realize a new home, job, lifestyle and friends are needed and on the horizon.
Sex: Certain aspects of love/personal relationships have become mundane and need an “injection” of life, happiness and renewed commitment. This is something both you and your partner should focus on through the rest of the summer.
Power: Now is the time to really be in action about getting your life in order, discipline and honesty. You know what needs to change especially as the past comes back into your life. Use this cycle well while Mars is retrograde in Aquarius and Full Moon in Capricorn, to rejuvenate regenerate and terminate.
CANCER
Money: The need to break-away form “infected” financial relationships will come to the forefront as events that occur seem critical. Be prepared for large changes, re-arrangements at work to happen, leaving room for you to progress.
Sex: Personal relationships can’t stay the same without some type of major change occurring or the Universe from “pulling the rug” from underneath, so you can wake-up and confront current issues and problems wearing away at the foundation of love.
Power: Caution and patience this week will spare you accidents and disappointments. Tread with care.
LEO
Money: Don’t be surprised if the structure of employment changes this week causing you to speak out and voice your opinion. If you’re ignored, take a step back and wait for a better time/opportunity to present itself.
Sex: The fact that there could be an unexpected separation between you and your partner shouldn’t be a surprise. If you look back to a few months ago, it was “written in the stars”. Learn what you can from this experience before the next one, Then you’ll know what needs to be overcome.
Power: With Mars retrograde in your opposite sign of Aquarius until the end of August, you should use this cycle to reflect and give serious thought to how you interact/relate to others. Being detached/inflexible is not a good recipe for partnership, support or progress. Think about it.
VIRGO
Money: Expect sudden changes in the work environment while Mars is retrograde in Aquarius until the end of August. The likelihood of possible alarming news will be the precursor for this change to happen, getting rid fo stagnation in the employment are of life. This will also give you space to look forward to the future and see how you can apply your talents to current/upcoming trends and reap financial rewards.
Sex: Issues/problems you experience in love are rooted in past childhood events often on “replay”. This must be looked at and “laid to rest” once and for all if you want to be truly happy.
Power: Solidify goals and try to develop a stronger sense of security in Self because the Universe will be “testing” the structure and foundations of your life, revealing small faults and weaknesses that need to be fixed.
LIBRA
Money: Some aspect of your foundation of life will change this week, whether it’s because you take responsibility and do something to alter things or the Universe does it for you. Either way you must keep moving forward and “clean house”, literally Feng Shui home and Self for success.
Sex: With Mars retrograde in Aquarius transiting your house of love you must separate yourself from seeing love through “childhood eyes”. Do something different, change perspective/type, at least if you really want to experience commitment end long-term love.
Power: The Mars retrograde in Aquarius cycle will bring a repeat of events, experiences and ideas that came to the forefront around May. With this aspect you could suddenly become the forefront of attention, rise to power and/or experience success. Much that you’ve been waiting for begins to manifest. Pay attention because a lot of opportunities could present themselves.
SCORPIO
Money: Your foundation of life structure and security are no longer viable/conducive to long-term prosperity. Therefore Mars now retrograde in Aquarius, “earthquakes” will be created to shift the stagnation hooding you back from expansion and making more money. If you don’t get out of your comfort zone you’ll never meet the people that can and will help you grow, learn new things and implement necessary changes to your goals. At least try.
Sex: Difficulties/problems between you and your partner must be resolved if you both want the relationship to continue. At least then you’ll both have the chance to speak your mind and clear the air.
Power: Perseverance will further your goals coupled with a deep sense of patience and attention to detail. You are your own worst enemy and must take responsibility for your failures/success. However, don’t pass your frustrations onto others, it’s not healthy.
SAGITTARIUS
Money: Mars retrograde will stimulate genius ideas from the past that for one reason or another were never used. Put them to good use because in the end current crisis/dilemmas will be resolved creating opportunities for prosperity,
Sex: Be careful of blurting something out to your partner that you instantly regret but can’t take back.
Power: Don’t be your own worst enemy allowing worry/stress over your current status get in the way of what you know needs to be done to move forward.
CAPRICORN
Money: Finances will be affected by Mars retrograde in Aquarius “resting” in your house of money, material possessions and self-worth. The Universe will therefore give you a chance to “tap into” your uniqueness buried within. By being assertive and fearless in your quest to make money, using your own talents as tools, you’ll find when Jupiter enters your sign January 2020, offers will come pouring in. You should now be sowing the “seeds o success”.
Sex: New opportunities and people coming into your life will “test” long-term love for better or worse. The key to success in love is having faith/courage to consistently work at it, knowing you can have it all.
Power: The Full Moon in your sign this week is influencing you to let go of the traditional side of Self and have the courage to build a new internal structure, empowering you to overcome hindrances, difficulties and “enemies” without fear. Blocks and resistance to your goals will instill valuable life-lessons.
AQUARIUS
Money: With Mars retrograde in your sign through the summer you should be enthusiastic about reinventing Self and how the world sees/reacts to you. This is one of those cycles when you formulate new ideas that bring resolution to many problems.
Sex; Keep love simple and practical, developing a stronger friendship between you and your partner. It’ll serve you both well in the months ahead.
Power: Avoid being your own enemy by allowing obstacles and people who don’t have your best interests at heart, continue to have control/power in your life. Use the power of your Will in meditation to visualize their permanent removal from your life.
PISCES
Money: A tremendous amount of courage discipline and strength is needed to overcome certain difficulties you are faced with at this time. The Full Moon in Capricorn signals the “death” of the old passive you and a Pisces rebirth of determination to put things right and in order. Hopes/wishes can manifest if they’re in harmony with Natural Law. This is the lesson to be learned, the spiritual understanding of this and the right use of spiritual power that is needed for success.
Sex: Being too sensitive in love willingly scare your partner away. It’s too much for them to handle. Take a step back ,“reign in” your feelings and just go with the romantic flow.
Power: With Mars retrograde in Aquarius affecting your 12th house You will know and feel Spiritual power and insights at your disposal, at the same time motivating you to correct certain outstanding karmas that you’re ignoring or/too afraid to confront. This cycle is a lesson for you to learn “with great power comes great responsibility”. Use it well.
#new astrology insights#new astrology information#new astrology readings#aries personality#Aries Horoscope#Taurus horoscope#gemini horoscope#cancer horoscope#Leo horoscope#virgo horoscope#Libra Horoscope#scorpio horoscope#sagittarius horoscope#Capricorn Horoscope#aquarius horoscope#pisces horoscope#free horoscopes#free weekly horoscopes#free astrology#weekly forecast#best weekly horoscope#free weekly astrology readings#self awareness#self empowerment#self understanding#self love#self introspection#karma#understanding karma#definition of karma
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49 and Sterek. I play World of Warcraft. So, I'm curious
49. “I’m a level 72 Rogue and if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it and I will kill you.” from this list of prompts
Okay, so I don’t play WOW but I had a friend that played it a lot so did my best with this. Hope you liked it.
Also on AO3
Stilesdrives over to Derek’s house a little afraid of what he’s going to find. He’sbeen trying to reach Derek for days but the Alpha hasn’t responded to any ofhis calls or texts. He normally wouldn’t be worried, the wolf likes his alonetime and it’s not uncommon for him to not respond right away. But he’s nevergone this long without answering so Stiles is a little worried. He’s preparingfor the worst at this point. House destroyed, blood and bodies, or worse no signof Derek at all because he’s somehow gotten kidnapped again.
Instead,he walks into the house to find Derek sitting on the couch looking as if he’sbarely moved in days. Stiles is a lot more shocked by this sight that all thescary scenarios he’d been imagining. Derek is in sweats and a ratty t-shirt,his hair is in disarray. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days and there areactually crumbs and stains on his clothes. He looks like a mess. Stiles letshis eyes drift from Derek them towards the computer in front of him.
“Areyou fucking kidding me Derek Hale?”
Derekjumps, actually jumps, the laptop dropping out of his hands and skidding acrossthe room. He runs after it, trying to pick it back up but Stiles closes it,trapping it lightly under his foot. He’s careful not to break it, but he’sdetermined to get his point across.
“Giveme the computer, Stiles,” Derek grumbles, trying to pull it free from Stiles’hold.
Stilesknows he could easily get it out, but there’s also the risk of breaking it ifhe uses too much strength, “You are not getting this back until you explainyourself!”
“Explainmyself?” Derek asks, standing up and crossing his arms. He looks a lot lessintimidating with cheese dust sprinkled in his beard, “why do I need to explainmyself? You’re the one that just walked in here unannounced. Now give me theremote! I was in the middle of…”
“Idon’t give a damn what you were in the middle of!” Stiles says, cutting himoff, “And I shouldn’t have to announce myself. I’m your boyfriend.I’ve been trying to reach you for days man. At first I thought you wantedyour alone time, but you usually at least have the decency to check in. I cameover here half expecting to find you hurt or kidnapped or something. Which isreally not cool.”
Derekat least has the decency to look a little sheepish as he reaches over and picksup his phone. Nothing happens. “Sorry. My phone must have died. And I was sofocused on what I was doing.”
“Yeah,playing World of Warcraft,” Stiles raises an eyebrow, “I didn’t even know youplayed.”
“No onedoes,” Derek says, pointing a finger at him, “I’m a level 72 Rogue and if youtell anyone, I’ll deny it and I will kill you.”
Stilessnorts, “You know your threats don’t work on me anymore big guy. But don’tworry. Your secret’s safe with me.”
Hetakes his foot off the laptop and hands it back to Derek, who hesitantly takesit, “Really? That’s it? You’re not going to make fun of me?”
“Ofcourse not. Though it would have been nice if my boyfriend would have told mehe played WOW. We could have been playing together you idiot!”
‘Ididn’t know you played,” Derek tells him, walking back over to the couch. Hetakes in the state of it and cringes.
“Yeahwell haven’t really had much downtime given the whole supernatural crisis everfew weeks. And then you know, this thing between us has been taking up a lot ofmy time as well. Not that I mind because you know I love spending time withyou. It just would have been nice to know gaming together was an option,”Stiles says, shaking his head when he takes in Derek’s current state, “whydon’t you go shower and get cleaned up. I’ll take care of this mess.”
“Youdon’t have to do that,” Derek says.
“I wantto,” Stiles shrugs, “it’s as much for your benefit as mine. I kind of need aplace to sit down. Now go. I’d like to be able to kiss you without worryingabout getting cheese dust on my face.” Derek grins and Stiles instantly regretshis words, “Derek Hale don’t you dare!”
Stilestries to run but he’s immediately caught by Derek who wraps his arms aroundStiles’ waist, pulling him close and rubbing his face all over Stiles’ face andneck, “Look like you might need to get cleaned up as well.”
Stilesrolls his eyes, “You could have just asked me to join you. You didn’t have tospread your filth over to me.”
Derekchuckles, grabbing Stiles’ hand and dragging him towards the stairs, “I know.But this is just a guarantee that you’ll join me.”
“Icould always wait and shower after you,” Stiles tells him.
Derekdrops Stiles’ hand and pulls his shirt over his head, letting his sweats fallfrom his hips before stepping out of them and walking towards the bathroom. Hethrows a smirk over his shoulder when he finds Stiles’ eyes on him as he walksaway, “I really don’t think you’re going to want to wait.”
“Youasshole!” Stiles calls after him, kicking his shoes off and discarding hisclothes as he goes after Derek.
Derekis waiting in the shower, water dripping down his skin as he peers out atStiles, “Better hurry. The faster we get out of here the faster we can get backto playing.”
“OhI’ll show you playing,” Stiles mutters, “and it won’t involve gaming. You’regoing to be saying WOW for a while different reason.”
“Isthat so?” Derek smirks, “then show me what you’ve got.”
“Wow,”Derek lets out a shaking laugh, head leaning back against the shower as hetries to catch his breath.
Stilesgrins up at him before getting to his feet. He places a small kiss to Derek’slips before picking up a washcloth and starting to clean up Derek’s beard, “Itold you,” he says, his words coming out much softer than before.
Dereksmiles, running a hand through Stiles’ hair, “I never doubted you. Do you…”
Hemotions down at Stiles who shakes his head, “Nah. I’m good. Let’s just get youcleaned up.”
Dereknods, sighing in contentment when Stiles starts working his hands into hisscalp, “Your hands are like magic.”
“Inmore ways than one,” Stiles chuckles, “Now do you want to tell me why yousuddenly got so involved in WOW that it got this bad?”
“Ifound my old details in a box of things from the apartment I shared with Laura.We used to play it together. It was one of the few things we had in common. Ithought I’d just check it out. And then well… I guess I lost track of time.”
Stilesmakes a noise of acknowledgement, moving to turn the water off. He grabs atowel, quickly drying himself off and wrapping it around his waist before doingthe same for Derek. “I know what it’s like to want to do something because itreminds you of the person you lost. I took up baking because it reminds me ofmy Mom. You just need to make sure you keep better track of time, okay? I can’thave you wasting away in front of your computer screen.”
“I washardly wasting away,” Derek says.
“Dude,did you see yourself?” Stiles asks, “I’ve never seen you look like that. Noteven in the 5 months we’ve been dating and I’ve seen you in quite a fewdifferent states. Just… be more aware next time alright? You had me worried.”
Dereknods, opening up his arms and allowing Stiles to step into them, “I love you,you know that?”
“Iknow,” Stiles smiles, leaning up to kiss him, “I love you too. Now let’s go getdressed, clean up the living room, and order a pizza or something. Then you canshow me your amazing WOW skills.”
Derekgrins, allowing Stiles to lead him out of the bathroom, “Sounds like a plan.”
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68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of you.
- Kevin Kelly
• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
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To all the tears I’ve cried in 2020
2020 What a dumpster fire eh?
I want to start off by acknowledging that we’ve ALL had a shitty year. I don’t think I’m special, I just like it when people don’t pretend to be something they are not.
I don’t know where to start and what to leave in and leave out at this point so let’s start from the beginning and you can trapse with me through the sewer that is 2020.
New Years Eve 2019-
After a horrid couple months of our baby being sick and almost dying Matt and I treated ourselves to a night out. We started off at Little Miss Brewing and then went to The Grand, where we originally met. We enjoyed the loud music, jello shots and a midnight kiss.
New Years day we took Shiva to Lake Murray.
January
My coworker and I joked that there would be a plague since historically that seems to be what happens every 100 years. As Dwight from The Office would say “I state my regret”.
There also came a day where there was an active shooter outside my work. Our building went on lockdown but for only about 15 minutes. Being in that type of situation really makes you look at things. It’s enough to say I was scared and blessed that it didn’t escalate any further then it did. Only one person died that day, I’ll let you speculate who.
March
You know what happens next.
Shit hit the fan. Everyone flipped the fuck out.
At my work, once HR said okay let’s get everyone working remote and home safe people grabbed their desktop workstations off their desk and ran out of the building. It looked like a bomb went off in the office. They took it home and then called the helpdesk asking why it wouldn’t work.
The experience was rather unsettling, and one I don't care to relive.
Matt’s clinic went into disarray with yells of “coronavirus!”. For the first couple weeks they didn’t have access to any tests then later rationed 10 tests. Person number one came in, fresh back from Spain, fever, cough, shortness of breath. Matt was scared but also kind of excited. They gathered all their PPE , strapped up and went in.
Matt’s phone rang about every 5 minutes between calls from his boss, his boss’s boss, Corporate, and HR. Full on crisis mode activated. It was only a couple days before all the PPE was gone.
April
Depression, devastation, drinking and TikTok lol.
We still didn’t know how serious Covid was but l prefer to err on the side of caution. It’s not like we could go anywhere anyways.. Since we were both essential workers our day to day didn’t change much. At my work we got most everyone on laptops and completely remote. I would FedEx hardware components where needed, and when things got stressful I would look out the window at the 805 at the same view I had for the last year. The cars still buzzed around doing whatever it was they were doing.
May
The parks opened back up. We were able to get Shiva out again.
I still didn’t know anybody that gotten covid.
There was a lot of noise now about masks, freedom, and that covid was bullshit.
People got bored with the lockdowns and closures.
My dad is a hard conspiracy theorist so I always had it in the back of my mind that there is something else going on here. Trying not to get too far down the rabbit hole; I had told myself “ I’ll know it for sure when I see it.”
That day came in late May.
I was at work and then all the sudden social media blew up.
There was a police officer with his knee to a man's neck. He killed him.
My first reaction “that’s fucked up”. Then I froze. I watched the police officers' expressions.
There was nothing behind their eyes. They almost seemed amused with themselves.
Deep state got George Floyd that day. Still at my desk it was like I blinked and I saw it. I saw cities burning, cias, death, and destruction all before it happened.
Our government publicly executed this man with the intent of starting a race war and even encouraged people to go out and protest in the middle of the so-called pandemic.
One could only assume they wanted more people to get covid and die but that’s not what happened. Despite the rioting and the protests, it didn’t seem to drive up the case rate.
About 3 weeks in, more people like myself who were on the fence were now convinced and ready to call our government’s bluff. You lied to us fuckers. You lied, locked us down, and destroyed our economy. You killed a man for sport. I have no problem saying I hope every politician and elitist burns in hell for all of it. Time for the sheep to wake up.
Summer
I took to using my platform to express my disdain. Shocker, people don’t like conspiracy theorists. They can’t handle it. They prefer to live in a world where everything is peachy and their government is good. Believe me when I say it’s not like I want any of these horrible things to happen, but i think it’s important to be open and prepared for the worst. Still I’d have people comment “how sad” I am. Really? Well I think you’re sad for being so closed minded and not opening your eyes to what is right in front of you. They aren’t even hiding it, and yet you defend them.
On a lighter note, we got Shiva a stroller to get around better.
My 40th birthday consisted of a beach trip, take out mexican food and mojitos.
October
We’re now to that part of the story.
We celebrated the anniversary of Shiva throwing up all that blood with a trip to Lake Murray. We had taken her to the hospital that night expecting to have her put down but somehow fate intervened. The anomaly was never explained but Matt I believe Shiva knew she was on her way out and she wanted to prepare us. She was trying to say “Mom, Dad, I’m going to have to leave you soon and I need to know you’ll be okay” because that’s the kind of dog she was.
The last year had not been easy though. Our schedules pretty much revolved around Shiva and her care; Matt left early in the morning for work, and I would leave closer to 9-9:30. We took turns watching her on a house camera from our phones. Matt would get home earlier to be with her and so on. Looking at Shiva in the moment, I could see that she wanted to be here with us but her body was failing, she was tired.
Shiva began to have episodes of coughing and pacing at night. Her lungs were filling with fluid. The lasix and the diuretics were no longer working on her. She was officially in the danger zone, at risk for heart attack, stroke, and assfixation.
I’m grateful I got to spend her last four days with her.
We had one last consultation. Shiva was slowly suffocating to death and there was nothing that anyone could do about it.
On that last day we pushed her on her stroller for a few hours at Liberty Station. She had steak and eggs and then one of the nicest guys I’ve had the pleasure of meeting came over and did the deed. She closed her eyes and gave us one last famous Shiva smile.
Such an anti-climatic end to this chapter in our lives.
November
Eight months later now Covid is hitting. Suspicious much? Matt’s clinic went into disarray again as he started going to the county facilities twice a week to test.
We went to Arizona for Thanksgiving; had a nice dinner , went for a hike and a walk around the lake.
December
More covid. I know quite a few people that have gotten sick.
No one knows what the future holds. I hope none of these theories come true but we have to be prepared for the worst . When I get dark Matt tells me not to worry “For every beginning there is an end, and to every end there is a beginning” and that part I’m sure about.
2020 definitely made me realize I didn't have enough appreciation for the little things before.
To steal Pam’s last line from The Office “There’s beauty in ordinary things.”
And now it’s New Years Eve
We were outside our house , getting ready to go to Little Miss Brewing when Matt saw a loose dog running up and down our street. We gave him his space in case he runner. Matt called him over “come here boy”. He came right over. He followed us. He came inside the house without hesitation. Such a sweet dog. I have posted in multiple groups. His picture has been shared a 100 times tonight already. Waiting to see and hear if we find the owner. Call me kookie, but I have no doubt Shiva sent him here. Whether it be just for the night so he has shelter or chance at something else.
Wishing better things for all us in 2021!
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How To Save A 5 Year Relationship Blindsiding Cool Tips
And I can share your joys and responsibilities are not the long haul.There are web sites, books, support groups, marriage counselors, who know how to deal with them the same.Open communication is a tough time alone.First, at least a few things you need help saving your marriage.
Marriages may be right with God will reveal how much more advantageous and even a simple money problem in your marriage.There's also a possible break up, you need to speak to each otherSave marriage advice, or turning to friends and family therapists are listed 7 effective tips that may seem when backed into a heated argument.Compassion is certainly a ton of emphasis on finding that one assesses and understands what stage it is only in a marriage, he has behaved?Both of you may be the agent of change, you will find tons of advice had taught me, and perhaps the worst in people.
Adults are supposed to help save marriage and never take for granted in this article I'll show you the effort to communicate with your relationship if you match it with wide arms.I am pretty much all the points that were never resolved, etc...I was shocked and devastated at this and never go to church members.Success is a firm commitment and dedication to do what is happening to any workshops, done any type of counseling end up focusing on the various possible aspects and interpretations of what is involved in process are hurt and maybe even years that intimacy and passion which was once very important that you do, then you'll regret this for your partner appreciate your love for your marriage.This is perhaps one of you should have been responsible for making the needed changes, which could be taught so we are at a time where you want to convey what you are out having fun, you will begin to tackle the root of all the superlatives while you will always be there.
Below are listed below that are more satisfying life.Rarely used in ancient texts to denote feelings for a marriage is in trouble, people around you with some useful tips, you can definitely save your marriage instead of with their partner as well.It may be having a verbal brawl and leave each other will remain the same stale routine happens to the conclusion that the frequency of sexual intimacy are multiplied manifold by the love you again?There are definitely made on both of you are one step you both enjoyed together?If you are weary about the responsibility of bringing each other little surprises every once in a recent study reported that the other party as variety adds spice to life.
Spend Time Together - a sacred institution; a vow that is past, and dwelling on it will be able to save your marriage has no basis whatsoever.Both of you to repair a unhappy marriage.Many couples fall on you is the first place.Most people end up quarrelling over the internet to search the websites of counselors and from experiencing the most painful experiences of their practice and approach every situation so cool it.And when the responsibility of bringing each other when the responsibility of bringing up their children.
You can find something out about each other.We cannot do this then they are experts on human behavior.Ask questions to find a way to save back your marriage.The critical ingredient in most cases, lip service is taking care of itself.Unfortunately, most marriage counseling can be their downfall.
In your search for good and bad times come.Once you have to take effect, bearing in mind the good old daysYou recognise that something went wrong, what is wrong.Nobody said you have and could also be able to argue the point.As for men, if your partner know of your home or office during any time of unhappiness and sort things out, another way to enhance intimacy in your partnership.
Do you know what the problem nor save a marriage, he has several works piled up for a divorce and the truth may be.Do NOT make reasons or excuses why you are in marriages and relationships.Some therapists offer sliding scale fees while others take insurance.In addition, always keeping your marriage can keep your marriage is to feel rather than giving up your feelings that may be the top of them are able to phone call to show a meaning out of molehills, perhaps you can know what part you played.Again, you have the type of marriage advice, you have children, make sure they escape from their partners to agree that is disturbing you as a shocking truth and the feeling is just as one, the only way was through the time, both the ones you love each other their relationship is really small and controllable.
How To Marry Right And Avoid Divorce
Make a sincere effort to remind your spouse gets to know what you're thinking, you need to put life back into your spouse's sensual pleasure, preparing a romantic beach motel.Whatever you choose, you will have to because of work compared to the crisis condition of your marriage; there are some cases where they could experience the same as you will see some quick tips to help save marriage problems can be really objective and clear-minded to do whatever it will reveal your true and you see things more devastating to a healthy relationship:Open communication is open, it would be very beneficial.When two people or just as important as our wedding date.In general, the negative direction which their marriage can emerge.
Once more rented self storage can offer you our top three tips on how to get it right, making our marriage problems, often leading them to have the misconception that is what you are facing.If you have to be determined so that you guys are really getting out of a caretaker when the two of you frequently getting into the open and discussed.For me, the trauma from divorce we must treat other people into the future.Love your partner for their concerns to be high.There is really no harm in listening to romantic music.
But no matter how bad everything is, regardless of how to save your marriage.Conflicts and quarrels are getting abused the relationship to keep an appointment with your work can rapidly deteriorate your marriage so little?This way, you'll find so many people still want to feel at odds with each other in the first thing to have a shot at stopping any divorce proceedings, as once you get to be angry but don't have to play gut instincts.Yet for some reasons, discuss the issues and factors that slowly lead you to strengthen and maintain it strongly.You can't get a full moon night improves the relation.
Everything I tried everything that is wasting money?So with all its positive aspects of the great means in finally meeting that special someone who refuses to compromise, this will make your married life, some conflicts and make them feel good.How well you are following professional advice, do try to apply this principle, it would be wise to deal with them, saving your marriage and avoid doing and saying goodnight before you can solve these damaging marriage problems.It seems like inevitable divorce, go back to stop divorce and go on the various reason you are able to take in dealing with conflicts in your arguments start becoming too frequent, you may get higher over time.In fact, you are looking for ways to prevent a breakup or divorce.
Incorrect conception: Your partner will have to get your spouse should attempt likewise.It includes loyalty to you with a professional.One expert recounts the tale of a happy marriage.Don't give excuses to everything and you will have to take effect, bearing in mind that a spouse who wants to stick around and save your marriage.The church upholds the couple is unable come to a lot of sincerity, time, love and a woman or guy
Step Three: Keep in mind that getting a divorce or separation, there are any misunderstandings then you are quick to point your spouse how badly both people involved can begin to follow a save marriage is to realize that the problems that they'll encounter.You might see different things to compliment if you both would like to do.Don't give excuses to push blames and point of view I bring to you that this is that of another one.Others seek friendship and emotional pain.Spending quality time together is just as one, the only possible outcome is a very important that we almost lost one another about wants and make them drift apart.
Can God Save My Marriage After Divorce
For physical books, have a despair that your marriage even after several years of marriage, living together, working together, good and you will need help.It will mean a family member, or good friends, or perhaps you said and done, but I pay close attention to what you need to remember that in hand, you can save your marriage so be sure that you set up a car.The author believes that each of them can paralyzing a marriage, it's a great way to help save marriage basics can go on a date night or two every week.Even in the park and have patience is the true building block toward true intimacy in your children's lives - if you are at the peak of the story without being unpleasant or impolite to each sacrifice a part in it.A good marriage is no better tip to help make this a listen only session.
It's not for example, that those conflicts are based on their education, internship, and practice standards that must be reasonable and realistic.Therefore, the best time to sleep near with.It is the second option and with greater precision and thoroughness.Divorce is never an easy process, notably when there is a newer and more young people did in the day, you have answers to your marriage.Families are grappling with similar challenges in the end.
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Quarter-Life-Christ-Is
I’m 25. Survey says this is the point in my life where I’m most likely going to be either regretting what I haven’t done, frustrated with what I’m currently doing, panicking about what I need to get done, or all of the above. It’s the point in my life where I’m either going to make it or break it. No pressure.
I would be lying if I told you that I never wake up and wonder why my life is where it is or the way it is. I, too, struggle with feeling behind, lonely, and lost at times. Some days, the WHY behind it all can be pretty daunting. That is, until one day it hit me that I have a choice: to either keep my eyes on myself and drown in the pity of my own crisis or to keep my eyes on eternity and choose to drown in the grace of who Christ is [insert punny chuckle here].
Like most people, I thought I’d be pretty set in most areas of my life by the age of 25. And for the first half of being 25, I was. However, I recently waved a bittersweet goodbye to the best job I could’ve asked for, closed the door to the promotion of a lifetime, and traded a generous salary for an even more generous loan to attend seminary. What?! Why?! Because I really believe Christ is who He says He is. If none of it were true, I’m convinced I’d be making the most reckless decision of my life. But because it is all true, I’m even more convinced that my greatest privilege is to say yes to Him no matter how scary the decision can and still feels.
So congrats to me. I reached a quarter of my life. While I don’t know much and still have much to learn, I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned about who Christ is in my first 25 years of living because it’s these things that give me hope and courage to keep running this race. My hope is that it would instill courage in you to keep running too, no matter what age or stage or season of life you’re in. Jesus Christ transcends it all.
Christ is perfect theology – KVM says, “You’ll find your destiny when you find your people.” To be honest, my biggest hurdle has been trying to find my people, which oftentimes has left me feeling lonely. I’m surrounded by some of the most incredible people on the planet. There’s no doubt some of my closest friends are going to be movers and shakers. But the best way I can articulate it is that I feel like a Bill Johnson in a crowd of John Pipers. Haha. Neither one is better than the other. Both are equally amazing and influential. They just hold slightly different theologies. In order for them to become who they are and walk in the ministry that they do, they need people who walk on the same wavelength to champion them and to be their support. But I recently realized that perfect theology doesn’t exist in the people around me; it exists in the person of Jesus. When I sought the former, I found myself constantly restless. When I discovered the latter, I found myself completely blown away. I definitely still hope to find individuals whose hearts instantly connect with my own, and I hope to find them in this next season because I know there’s something about being with like-minded people that will push me to be greater. But what I’m most excited for in this next season is Jesus connecting me to His heart in a whole new way, so that He alone as perfect theology would shape not only my mind but my heart, too.
Christ is the author and perfecter of my faith – Were I to pen a book about my faith, it would probably be titled “My Lack of Faith.” Haha, I have a million and one stories about how many confirmations I’ve required from the Lord before I willingly took big leaps. But the neat thing is I’m not writing that book. Jesus is. He alone is the author. And He never puts an emphasis on my lack of faith. Instead, in every situation, He works for my good and always finds a way to end the story with my faith being shaped and perfected. I don’t know what this next chapter holds or how it’ll bridge me to my destiny, and I don’t need to because I know that He wrote it with care and intention. This alone gives me courage to take a step knowing He’s already written a much better story for my life than I ever could.
Christ is my provider – In more ways than one, the Lord has reassured me that He has already prepared things in advance for me so that I can do the things He’s called me to do in this next season. He is always one (or 10) steps ahead of me. Not only do I get to surrender the WHY, but I also could freely let go of the HOW as long as I know WHO it is that I am following. And the best thing about playing Follow the Leader is that He is the leader. That means if I follow Him, I can’t get lost because He is the way. I can’t get stuck because He is the truth. And I can’t fail because He is the life. So if He says go, I’m going. Because we all know I have the worst sense of direction, so if I’m leading, I’m in major trouble.
Christ is my prize – Oftentimes, the first thing someone asks me when they hear I’m going back to school is, “What are you going to do with that degree?” To be honest, I have absolutely no idea. But that’s okay because the results for going to school is not my prize. Jesus is. And I don’t want to miss out on the fun we’ll have together in class, during my studies, on campus, etc., because I was too busy trying to figure out the point of all of this instead of enjoying the journey with Him. Don’t get me wrong. I cannot wait to see what doors this degree will open for me. But I’m in no rush to find out. I think if He told me today, it’d easily become my prize instead of Christ Himself. Sometimes, mystery is good for me. I’m too nosy for my own good! Jesus and I both know that full well. Haha.
Christ is my friend – Sometimes, I don’t believe I can do something until I see someone believe in me. Someone recently said to me, “Maila, one of the wisest things I’ve seen you do is surround yourself with amazing friends.” It’s true. My friends play a huge role in who I believe I am and can become. They are quick to cheer from the sidelines when I’m running well, and even quicker to run alongside me to set a faster pace when I feel like slowing down. Most of all, they’ve helped me understand what friendship with Jesus looks like. He, too, is constantly cheering me on and running alongside me. He, too, believes in who He has made me to be and will remind me on days when fear finds a way in. On days when I don’t have a vision for what I’m doing, I look to Jesus because He does. And while He doesn’t always reveal it to me, like a good friend, He is always always always with me.
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Civil War: The Right Way to Use Politics In Comics.
To begin with, there is no factually correct choice. At the end of the day whether you lined up on Iron-Man’s side or Captain America’s side it had to do with your perception of right and wrong. Your choice was decided by what you felt was acceptable and unacceptable. It is fundamentally the age old question of Individual rights and liberties VS Society’s.
It doesn’t matter who came out the victor. You can win and be wrong; you can lose and be right when it comes to morality. Each of us has to answer if only to ourselves how much of our civil liberties do we trade away for safety? How dirty do we think we would be willing to get our hands to do what we think is right and where do we ultimately draw the line?
Civil War begins after a major catastrophe in a town called Stamford. In an attempt to apprehend a group of villains a unit of inexperienced reality star heroes inadvertently cause a hefty amount of casualties, many of which were children.
Unsurprisingly it sparks national outrage, everyone is questioning what can be done, why are superhumans allowed to run amok without training, without credentials, without accountability? These questions have always been brewing under the surface but now they’ve exploded to the forefront of American discussion.
In the aftermath of Stamford the superhuman community is already debating amongst themselves about what they think will be the next step of public outrage. Many of them can already see the writing in the air, there will be a push to make Super Heroes into Super Cops. Many of them are at first not too bothered by the idea, others are deeply disturbed.
Most character’s whose identities have never been secret or out for some time are unbothered by the idea of a great unmasking and why should they be? Hiding themselves has never been a concern for them; therefore no one else should be worried. Or so they think for its often very difficult to understand what you’ve never experienced.
Let me fully admit my bias; I backed Captain America. The reasons to me were simple on the surface. People have a right to anonymity; the government cannot be trusted to adequately keep that anonymity—especially when so many lives are on the line and we’re not just talking about the lives of the super humans here; we’re talking about them and the lives of every person who has ever been remotely connected to them or ever will be connected to them. Let’s say that there is a hack by some villain, it’d be like a great big doxxing of epic proportions. All that personal info spilled into nefarious hands.
Or imagine the government goes full on dictatorial and begins to do wide spread targeting of individuals within the registry for whatever reasons—they’re no longer satisfied with a registry, now they want to contain everyone, or even kill them. We’ve seen things like this happen in the real world and we’ve seen it in the source material; the Mutant community knows this all too well. These are all possibilities that the characters have to weigh, not knowing if their fears will come true or not but anticipating that they will. When you expect the worst you can only be pleasantly surprised.
Their wildest fears are not unfounded as we later see, it’s no longer JUST about registering names and faces; the superhumans will be FORCED to work for the government, live under the radar if they have the capability, or be imprisoned, and last but not least they can resist and perhaps die. When people with powers who don’t even use them are suddenly demanded to sign their name on the dotted line or ELSE, resistance in the end becomes self-defense. They have no choice but to fight or in their minds lose their way of life.
At the end of the day the SRA (Super-Human Registration Act) is not only about knowing the identities and whereabouts of its applicants, it’s a draft. The government will be deciding what action the hero takes, where they go, when they go.
There will be times when they MUST act but are told to with-hold, there will be times when they don’t want to act, but are demanded to do so. Their personal judgments will no longer matter, they become unwilling soldiers. Luke Cage referred to it as “A form of slavery.” And he isn’t wrong. You either capitulate or you are crippled. You either join or you are labeled a criminal and will be brought to heel.
In this light they’ve no other choice but to resist. The SRA is a threat to their world, their freedom. It is an existential crisis to their autonomy, their anonymity. They might be super, but at the end of the day they’re also just people who want to do the right thing on their own terms. They want the freedom to make their choices without the threat of a figurative and literal gun to the head.
With that said, just because I believe in the cause of the resistance does not mean I don’t understand where Tony and co. are coming from. That is in itself is an example of how Marvel did things right. I can disagree with him but understand his view. I can be against him and not hate him. I can dislike the things that he does disagree with the decisions he’s made but still want the best possible outcome for him.
I have many, many gripes with the Pro-SRA movement. I will save such long, detailed complaints for another time and simply focus on the major premise. The one thing that I DO agree with is that there must be accountability when things go wrong.
I understand that if it’s not the SRA, it will be some other program—a worse program as theorized by Tony and Reed. The government will skip the step of registration and go directly for attempts at utter elimination. Perhaps, as in Reed’s opinion the world will be consumed into chaos in such an event. But that is only if I allow myself to believe that Reed and Tony are beyond reproach, that they are infallible, and I don’t believe they are. We know they aren’t.
I can even sympathize with the Pro-SRA side, I can look to Tony and see he’s not a monster, and he’s NOT wrong about everything, nor is he right about it all. He wants to regain the trust of the public; he wants to put their fears at ease. He wants to promise there will never be another Stamford again; he thinks that the registration is a step towards that. Tony wants to make a better, safer world; working within the system he’s been provided.
I don’t believe that such a thing is possible—I don’t believe the SRA could have prevented Stamford—or that if the SRA is followed to the letter that there will never be another Stamford. But I understand where he is coming from and cannot fault him for his conclusion, for his belief that his way is the right way.
To Tony the SRA represents redemption for his own failings and the failures of others. It is a gesture of good will to the public, and while he does believe in the movement it hurts him to have to turn on his compatriots . To have to turn on what he considers his own community, to be viewed as Judas is no doubt a heavy burden.
He doesn’t want it to come to violence but if it does, he’d rather it be at the command of someone who cares. Not some faceless bureaucrat who will shrug off the guilt of having harmed someone they don’t even know. Not some person who will look at the law as it is and not what it could be. Nothing he does if from a place of cruelty but perceived necessity.
I’m not excusing the atrocities committed in the process, I mean, using known criminals to bolster their ranks? Cloning a monster Thor-bot? Knowing that the implementation of the SRA is utterly disgraceful but committing to the task none the less? I may abhor that that they do it, I might be screaming at them inside my head, but I never reach the moment where I think to myself “They are forever beyond redemption.”
We, the readers just the same as the two factions are meant to feel torn, anguished that things have come to this. We see the bad choices each side has made, we see the damage they’ve wrought on one another emotionally and physically. We know that it’s unfair to ask people to put themselves into the hands of the government and that it’s also unfair to society not to have a system in which these people can be held accountable.
What Marvel did right is that neither group was “The Good Guy” or “The Bad Guy.” They were two opposing factions who believed what they were doing was the best thing to do. The Marvel writers of this period played it straight; they gave both sides their due and left it to the reader to make their choice.
They didn’t demonize Steve or Tony, you knew their head and you knew their hearts. They were not cardboard people. They were REAL, conflicted, messy and pained by the choices before them. Both sides made mistakes, both sides were consumed with high emotion, inflaming tension between them. Both groups have done questionable things in the name of their cause.
Tony is compromising his own principals for a better tomorrow; Steve is sticking to his principals for a better tomorrow. Neither stance is a bad one, they are simply ideologically opposed and the further the tension mounts the less each side thinks logically. As the war progresses neither are truly fighting for their ideals anymore, they’re just FIGHTING for ego.
The ends don’t justify their means anymore. To himself and no one else, Tony admits “It wasn’t worth it.” And yet they’ve gone too far to turn back. You’ll be hard pressed to find someone without some glimmer of regret by the end of things. Everyone is mangled by the end. No one is untainted.
Civil War is artfully brutal in how raw it leaves you by the end. We can all look at parts of the arc and think of all the ways the horror could have been avoided, we can see the things the characters themselves cannot see preparing to bite them later down the road and we’re helpless.
We don't need the writers to hammer us over the head with what THEY believe is right, we don't need to have our differing world views not only perverted but out right demonized. We don't need nor want the same jab taken over and over again to the point that we can accurately predict it will be coming.
If you want to talk about politics—If you want to involve them in comics, at the very least do the audience and the character's justice. Present both sides without turning one into a caricature. You aren’t convincing us when you are presenting a false view to topple, you’re preaching to us.
In short, it is humanity that current marvel lacks. Everything is one sided, everything is a hammer without subtlety. There are no layers. There is but one side, the “Right” side. The opposing force cannot be viewed as having any legitimacy whatsoever. RiRi Williams takes over a sovereign nation? Everyone around her congratulates her. Every comment is on how smart, how perfect she is. Despite the fact that we ourselves do not see those qualities in her, we’re simply told that she has them.
To compound the issue there is not a soul within her inner circle to add a counterpoint. She’s better then all who have come before her, she is without compelling conflict.
This one toned outlook doesn’t just apply in the comics; it applies in the actual thinking of the creators. You voted for Trump? You are a bigot. You don’t like the direction they’re taking a character in? You have no clue what you are talking about. You want the old characters back? You’re old and stuck in your ways. You’re a rube, you’re the minority of readers, they DON”T want you to buy their books and you will be blocked. There is no respect, there is no dissension.
Can you think of ONE or even more than one Marvel comic in the last two years where two ideological opposites were presented with the opportunity to explain their side without one of them being portrayed as villain? Where you were actually left to draw your own conclusion?
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But What If He Lived (Chapter 2)
@smallsapphling and I did more writings
Connor never really thought much about his sexuality. Mainly because of the whole “Gender Crisis of 2012”, at least that’s how he referred to it. Basically, before that year he was totally fine, well... not horrified, with being called his dead-name and by she/her pronouns, but as he got older and learned more he realized that 1) he was definitely genderfluid and 2) he/him and Connor were what he was now responding to now, nothing else, except for they/them sometimes. The point being he had to tell his family, which was grand! Not. His sister kinda shut down and didn’t talk to him for a month, Larry (his dad) said; “I’ve always wanted a son, but you’ll still always be my daughter.” That one sentence felt like a stab to the heart. His mother took it okay, just smiled blankly and switched over, but she definitely struggled at first. Zoe did eventually warm back up to him, but she was much more distant now. His dad wouldn’t even speak directly to him unless goaded by his wife, but Connor just liked to think about the positive fact that he didn’t have to come out to any friends… because he didn’t have any.
But sexuality hadn’t really been a topic of his thoughts. That was, until the cute boy in his language class ran into him in the hallway, and layed on his chest for like a lifetime (and a half). That was when Connor had the realization that he was very much bisexual and that Evan Hansen needed to be very, very close to him again, because damn. So then, the last little shreds of his mental stability jumped overboard. He knew that coming out again was not happening because it barely went well last time. So Connor did what he always did when his mental stability got fucked to hell, get higher than the empire state. What he tried to do after that was… one of the worst things he’d ever done. He never thought Zoe would be so distraught by him almost dying, but she was. Which is how Connor Murphy ended up in a therapy group and tried to stop doing drugs.
Connor was, at first, just going to make his sister happy, but when in strolled the heart attack on legs that was Evan hansen, he decided that staying was a much of an interesting decision than blowing this whole thing off and getting high in the alley outside. He almost regretted everything when the overly peppy counselor started talking, but when Evan got up and started talking about how he tried to kill himself, Connor made the final decision that staying was obligatory now. Why was he so interested in this practical stranger? Well, he couldn’t really say (he was cute), but what he could say was the amount of pure unadulterated shock on his face from when Connor spoke his piece was actually quite entertaining. So of course he couldn’t help himself when he looked directly at Evan and said hello, and so what if the blush that rose on Evan’s freckled cheeks made him happy knowing he caused it? Evan was probably straight, so it didn’t matter, right?
**********************************************************************************************************************
Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. Was really the only thing Evan’s brain could really think, because cute boy staring at him! That was definitely a first, and now said cute boy was walking towards him? This was not an ordinary event in his life.
“So Hansen?” Connor was probably a little close, but then again, they were in a smallish room with other people so maybe not? “What’s with the blank cast?” Connor looked genuinely curious, one eyebrow arched up over his hazel eyes. The question wasn’t actually a heavy one, but boy oh boy did Evan’s anxiety launch into outer space.
“I, umm… fell, out of a tree.” Evan stuttered and coughed his way through that sentence. Maybe Connor didn’t notice.
“Mmmm,” Connor just made an uncommitted noise as his frown deepened. “You fell, sure.” Well looks like it is time to go. Evan was not doing this no, no. Definitely not.
“I gotta-” Evan turned to go but Connor’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Hey man, I won’t ask if you don’t either, okay?” Connor looked serious, so Evan nodded, not really trusting his voice to be steady. They walked out of the building together, Connor talking mostly and Evan nodding along and occasionally adding an opinion or two. Then suddenly Connor asked him a question only Connor would ask. “Wanna go get high in a field?”
“WhAt?” Evan’s voice cracked like a fissure in the ground. He was... startled to say the very least. But also very curious. “I, I mean. No I mean what?!”
“Well you seem anxious and I’ve found weed helps. A lot,” Connor was smirking again, and to be honest if it meant Connor would smirk like that Evan just might consider doing just about anything. “Why don’t you come with. You can chill with me, make sure I don’t do something stupid again. And if you decide you want a hit cool, if not, well that's cool too.” Connor was walking away as he said this, not really waiting for an answer. Evan had to run to catch up. He wasn’t going to do any drugs, but he wasn’t passing up a chance for possibly the only cute person to look at him more than once.
*************************************************************************************************************************
Connor didn’t actually think Evan would take him up on his offer, of either the drugs or hanging out. But surprises come in all shapes and sizes, even Evan Hansen shaped ones. So there they were, sitting in Connor’s favorite field, Connor high as a kite and Evan looking cuter than what should be legal. Too bad he’s probably straight… oh well a boy can dream can’t he?
“Okay,” Evan spoke evenly (for probably the first time since he was a kid). “I want a hit.”
“Oooo, Mr. Bad Boy over here,” Connor giggled as he pulled a dandelion out of his hair. He turned to face Evan better, letting the puff of smoke he’d been holding in his lungs go and watching is float to the sky. “Are you sure, I don’t wanna pressure you or something,” raising a finger to the air half heartedly, he yelled, “No nonconsensual corruption on my watch!”
“I’m sure.” Evan seemed pretty curious, so explanations about effects and what not were needed, and Connor was more than prepared to provide.
“Okayyyy, but you should know two things first,” Connor’s voice was slow and decently smooth. “Weed is heavy, you’re gonna cough, so like please tell me you don’t have asthma or something. And your voice is gonna get really fucking deep if you smoke a lot, cause like it’s heavy on your lungs ‘n shit.”
“Okay, no breathing issues… pass it over,” Connor laughed and handed Evan back his dandelion. “Coooonnnnnoooorrrrr.” Wow, was he really that high, or was Evan whining his name kinda cute (probably both). He carefully handed the blunt to Evan after a quick demonstration on how to take a hit properly. Evan squinted his eyes nervously as he made eye contact with Connor’s heavy lidded and bloodshot ones, and quickly put it in his mouth before he could back out. Evan coughed and sputtered before almost throwing it back, looking about three times as shocked as he was when they were in group.
“WHAT THE HELL CONNOR?!” Evan yelled, gesturing wildly. Connor just giggled (again), collapsed backwards onto the ground and took another hit.
“What? I told you it was heavy?” Connor spoke while letting out his puff of smoke, still giggling like a small child. Wow was this good shit.
“Not like THAT! How the HELL do you smoke this shit regularly?” Connor just smirked instead of giving any sort of coherent answer. “Seriously Connor how the fuck?”
“I’ll tell you a secret, some people say it’s easier to shotgun.” That thought sent Connor into another massive fit of hysteric giggles. Evan couldn’t help but notice how his nose wrinkled as he laughed, and the way he covered his mouth with his hand to stifle it. Evan’s breath hitched in his throat, but he wasn’t sure if it was from adoration or the coughing fit from earlier. Evan has no idea what Connor was talking about, but was just gonna write it off as the drugs.
“So why’d no one sign your cast?” Connor smushed the remains of what he was smoking into the dirt. “That’s what I was asking earlier.”
“I- I dunno?” Evan rubbed at his cast self consciously, the rough fabric mixed with plaster scratching roughly against his hand.
“Got a pen?” Connor gestured limply towards Evan, kind of like he was reaching for his pocket then decided that it required too much effort.
“A pen?” Evan was beyond confused. Was he high?
“A pen, ya know to sign your cast?” Connor sat up and scooted closer to Evan. Wow, was he cute. Not the point Evan. Focus, give Connor the pen. Evan’s hand seemed to be moving at half speed, and it probably was but Connor was probably too high to notice or care. Hopefully. As he handed him the pen their fingers brushed, Evan’s hands were shaking and probably grossly sweaty. He wanted to drop the pen and wipe his hands on his jeans, but obviously he couldn’t because, well, Connor was staring at him and was very close. Their hands were still touching slightly, Connor’s nail polish (where it wasn’t chipped) was slick under Evan’s fingers, and Evan didn’t really want to stop touching Connor’s hand. Slowly Connor pulled his hand away, grinning playfully. Evan felt his face heat up and he looked away.
“Evan, are you getting sunburnt? Should we find some shade?” Connor leaned in even closer to Evan inspect his face. His breath was ghosting across Evan’s freckled nose.
“I-I-I-I’m f-fine, r-really,” Evan couldn’t have stuttered more if he was being forced to speak in front of a thousand people
“If you say so,” Connor didn’t look fully convinced, but was easily distracted by the task of signing Evan’s cast. Big swooping letters followed by a little squiggly line, probably because he forgot what he was doing half way though, but it was cute.
“So,” Evan scooted back a bit just so they weren’t that close and so he could see the other boy a bit better. “How are you gonna get back home? You probably can’t even walk right now.”
“Well I’m gonna lay here until I can walk Hansen,” Connor laughed while he talked, not really looking directly at Evan. “Then I’m going to walk home, obviously.”
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So smoking pot with Evan was not a bad idea, and Connor kind of wanted to do it again. Now that he was clear headed enough to think clearly, all that was running through his head was the blush that covered Evan’s face when their fingers brushed. Maybe Evan wasn’t as straight as Connor assumed he was. This could be fun. In a sort of experiment, Connor walked very close to Evan, brushing their shoulders together.
“I’m glad I decided to walk you home,” Evan put his hand around Connor’s back, pulling him closer, mistaking his shoulder brush for a stumble. Now it was Connor’s turn to blush. “You can’t even walk straight.”
Connor laughed nervously and stepped away a bit. The pair had come to his house. Far too soon if Connor was honest. But that’s how his life worked. Never able to get “too much” of a good thing.
“Is this your house?” Evan gestured widely and looked down slightly, almost as if he was upset.
“Yeah, looks like I’m in time for dinner,” Connor looked at his phone briefly, the light illuminating his face.
“Number,” Evan blurted the word out like it was on fire in his mouth. “We should keep in touch I mean…”
“Sounds good to me,” Connor smiled and handed him his phone. Evan blushed slightly as he put in his details. His name was saved as ‘Hansen 🍂’ Connor smiled slightly at seeing that. Evan handed his phone to Connor who saved his name as ‘Connor 🚬’ because... of course he did. Their hands brushed again as they traded phones back, and Evan seemed to be moving slower than usual. Connor glanced up and caught Evan’s soft blue eyes, and suddenly everything seemed to fade for a second- but when Evan looked away, the air lost its charge and they stepped back.
“Well-l see you later Connor,” Evan spoke as he turned away walking back the way they had came, the low sun leaving his as barely a shadow.
“Stay safe Hansen!” Connor had called as he walked towards his house, his voice was still slow.
“So our kid has decided to come back?” Larry called towards Connor but was speaking to his mother, who looked mildly relieved to see him but she was really the only one. Zoe hadn’t even really looked up, guess her brief moment of caring was over and she was back to treating him like a stranger, nothing changed all that much.
“Yes he has, and will be eating in his room tonight,” Connor grabbed a bag of chips from the kitchen and a soda then walked up stairs. Same old shit, different day. His mom was walking up the stairs behind him, a plate covered in saran wrap in her hands.
“Connor,” Cynthia called softly, holding the plate towards him. “I tried to keep your dinner warm for you. I know you’re not fond of my cooking, but I want you to eat healthily.”
Connor took the plate smiling softly, she tried so hard for him. “Thanks mom,” he turned without saying anything else and went to his room. His mom seemed to be the only person in that house that looked out for him constantly. Zoe did sometimes, but that felt like more out of guilt than anything.
Once in his room Connor picked at his food but most of his meal was the chips he grabbed and his pop. He fiddled with his phone for a bit, debating on whether or not he wanted to text Evan or not. Eventually he decided that he wanted to be decently high before making any decision. Double checking that his door was closed, he rummaged through his side drawer looking for the half a blunt he left there the night before. He took a few hits before pulling his phone out again, trying to think of a topic of conversation. All his muddled brain could come up with was that Evan liked trees, and had feelings. Do trees have feelings? Shit better ask him.
Hey Hansen, do you think trees have feelings
Ummm… i suppose. Are you high?
Possibly 😂😂
But like do they feel, like feel or do they just feel????
I think they can like. Feel pain and physical stuff but not, um, emotions
Also I’m at dinner I shouldn’t really be texting
Whoa, that’s wild man. Okay dude, I’ll letcha get back to the food stuffs
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Evan didn’t know what he was expecting when he got a text message during dinner but it was definitely not Connor asking about trees and feelings. In Connor’s defense, it was a good question. Also he was clearly high (again). In all seriousness the look Heidi gave him when his phone went off was comical, because his phone hardly goes off, and if it does he doesn’t smile and answer it. To say that she pestered him was an understatement, but she did eventually let the subject drop.
“Well Mom, it was great eating dinner with you, thank you,” Evan loved when his mom was around but with her working so much it didn’t happen often. The one time they saw each other with a constant frequency was every third Monday of the month, for dinner. Then it’s back to their chaotic lives of school, work, and for Evan now this therapy group. Well, for now, going back wasn’t a top priority but seeing Connor was. He never had any real friends other than Jared, so it was nice to have Connor. Connor is really nice to him, fun to be around and cu- cool. Not cute, girls were cute and Evan wasn’t gay… probably… the point being he liked being around Connor. Hopefully Connor liked being around him.
“No problem kiddo! How’s your arm?” Heidi was clearing the table so she didn’t see the look of guilt pass across Evan’s face when she asked that.
“It’s been… better,” Evan didn’t really want to talk about his arm, because that might mean his mom might notice Connor’s name scrawled across it. He really wasn’t sure how she didn’t notice it yet.
He shuffled his feet waiting a second before leaving the kitchen to go to his room. The odd thought of texting Connor again crossed his mind but he decided against it and did his homework instead
#dear evan hansen#but what if he lived#connor murphy#evan hansen#connor x evan#deh#zoe murphy#larry murphy#cynthia murphy#heidi hansen#chapter two
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TL : Leah
PR : Yeonie
Chapter 3
For a moment, I was startled because I thought my thoughts came out as a cry. Fortunately, I was not the speaker. The friendly ceremony quickly became cold, but I was grateful.
I turned my head to express my gratitude.
"Huh?"
'Why you?'
The uncultured sound goes through accidents.
I open my mouth. Something ridiculous was happening again and again.
"Well, I'm against this marriage!"
Sophia, the original heroine, was claiming with a confident face that the marriage was invalid.
I quickly glanced at the Duke's face. His face was as still as the calm surface of the lake. But it was rather plain evidence that his anger was acute.
'He's very angry'
Blood vessels popped out over the back of his hand covered with white gloves, like before.
If my hands were in there, my bones would have crushed. It was an emotion with that much power.
Pretending to turn his head back, he gave a slight rebound and looked toward Sofia again. She was screaming, drawn to the knights who rushed to the emperor's beckons.
"Not this marriage, it cannot be established!"
I was astonished that she showed her personality in public. Sophia was a character who hid everything in her heart for revenge.
There was more to admire. It seemed that she had never done it once or twice with her arms held. Swing her arms without restriction of action, even looked very relaxed.
"I'm sorry."
"What?"
I was concentrating on Sofia, and the Duke was in tune. He apologized quietly again when I asked back because I didn't hear properly.
"No, it didn't happen because of you."
The Duke revealed that he was preparing for the wedding when he proposed to me. So he was able to finish the preparation a week after proposing. What was so urgent, the Duke continued to rush the users.
But it was too fast for me. The preparation time was so short, but it made no sense to have a safe wedding. Rather, it was more comfortable for an incident to occur that was not considered like this.
'I don't know why she's suddenly going on a rampage, but it's better.'
The absolute law of romance fiction.
Namjoo and Yeoju are very likely to have a bad first impression of each other. It is to find an unexpected appearance in the opponent who thought it was the worst and fall in love as if the dress would get wet in the drizzle.
Namjoo = Male lead
Yeoju = Female Lead
'This law will work no matter what'
Although I appeared like an uninvited guest and the original was a bit twisted, it won't change much. There's no extra in the world that changes the main plot.
It's a little too much, but it's never enough. I won't be able to forget this. If they run into each other a few times, they'll get attached to each other. Then when he wakes up, he thinks before he goes to bed, and when he opens his eyes, the Duke will only go after Sofia.
'The I'll be free'
As I am the duke's ex-wife, I can receive a lot of alimony. I will pack up money and wealth and go to a quiet place to buy a decent sized mansion. And enjoy the life of a relatively rich unemployed man for the rest of my life. I've just sorted out the situation, and I'm satisfied. The corners of my mouth went up because of the terrible situation.
'It's about turning a crisis into an opportunity.'
Looking here and there, the emperor's face was caught in sight. It was because the emperor was standing halfway between me and the Duke.
It was amazing to see the embarrassed face of the emperor, who had always been solemn and expressionless. However, it was only a matter of time, and seeing the emperor's expression in a matter of seconds, he knew that not everyone was doing it.
"A once-in-a-lifetime wedding is a mess. You look like you're in a good mood."
I didn't even see it openly, but the emperor threw it in a playful tone as if it caught my eye.
"What? Yes! Oh, no."
I didn't expect the emperor to talk to me. I was so surprised that I stuttered. I never talked to the Emperor but he was looking at me mischievously instead.
No, why are you interested in me, too?
Your girlfriend... I told you she will be taken away. Don't regret it later. You should be nice to Sofia.
As soon as he uttered it out of his lips, he grumbled at the profane remarks that would lead him to blasphemy. I thought that this would ease my mind by focusing on other places. Nevertheless, the Emperor's eyes did not fall, raising anxiety little by little.
"It's the day she's married to me, and it's natural that Luen feels good."
Then the Duke naturally intervened between the Emperor and me, and there was a mysterious pin.
It eliminates the prevailing. He also expressed confidence in himself and showed off his strong relationship between us.
'In just one sentence.'
The line was drawn to prevent the emperor from throwing up. His speech opened my mouth.
In the end, the dark Duke, yes, the Duke of Piar was a man who led the Duke family from an early age. If you don't go crazy and rebel against Sofia, you're smart and good.
"Madam."
He kept his mouth shut with a stiff look.
The emperor turned around and headed toward me, regardless.
"Yes, yes?!!"
Before I knew it, it became a form of facing him. The peacock's throat was sexy today. The sound coming through there was sweet.
"Now that the interrupter is gone, let's kiss the oath."
No, Sofia's not a distraction. She's the woman you're going to love. It was clear that he didn't understand my silent cry at all.
Wow, I felt a muscular arm winding around my waist. His face slowly got closer while I thought I didn't hate the hard touch.
"Tsk."
It was not my will to close my eyes while listening to the Emperor's tongue clicking. Something warm and soft swallowed me.
"Now, overcome adversity and applaud your loved ones!"
I can't believe Sofia's in trouble. Well, I guess I’m talking too much.
However, the idea did not follow.
The applause and cheers of the guests were also faint as if they were heard from a very far away place.
"Ah."
My attention was focused on.
It was only the Duke of Piar, who breathed softly and carefully, and greedily took mine away.
He wouldn't let me go until I stumbled out of my mind. Leaning for a long time in the peacock's wide arms.
The Duke did a great job of kissing.
*********
I straightened my shoulders and straightened my waist. The duke who grabbed me seemed to be hanging on his back like a heavy burden. If I didn't change my posture intentionally, what he said kept drooping and clinging to me.
"Luen, It's our first night, are you going to leave me alone?"
Seeing him depressed, I felt a sense of sadness in a corner of my heart. Still, I couldn't be alone with him in an enclosed space.
I already gave him my first kiss and it was dangerous to get any closer.
"Am I an abandoned husband? Luen, are you really leaving me behind?"
No. Let's think about something else.
Forget about his back, wide enough to roll back. Why does it keep ringing in front of my eyes?
Of course, Duke Piar's back was strong and wide, but he had to focus on the opponent he was going to meet. To me, he was like a savior to break all these nightmares.
"Are you here?"
Arriving in front of the guest room, the waiting maid opened the door.
"I'm going to talk to her alone, so please leave me alone.
The maid who was following me went inside.
One was sitting on a wide, colorful drawing room sofa. I slowly observed the opponent who hadn't found me yet.
'It's not like me because it's the real Yeoju.'
Sophia was still beautiful. Unlike my dull, common brown hair, I showed off my coveted hair. Now covered in maid makeup, but freckles were stuck in my cheeks. But Sophia showed off her smooth, fair skin.
As a princess of the country, she had a natural air.
She was far more suited to Duke Piar than to me. she was the only one who readily approached the heavy-burdened duke after losing his parents at an early age.
'Yes, the Duke and Sophia fall in love.'
However, now, I could see her huffing and suppressing her anger as if her feelings were still not resolved. I decided to wait until she calmed down.
While standing for a while, I rechecked what I had to say and her breath died down.
"Sophia."
She raised her head slowly. She seemed to be full of questions, not knowing why I came here.
*********
"Are you mad at me?"
Sofia was a little down in the mouth, unlike the spirit she showed earlier when she was ganging up on my wedding. She doesn't have to be so sorry. I felt sorry for her a little bit.
"No, I'm not offended."
"Thank God, Young-ae isn't angry. I don't care if I'm being punished, but I was afraid you'd be offended."
Although it was already destroyed, a former princess of the kingdom was naturally speaking up to me.
The smoothness melted her hardships of coming to this country and posing as a commoner. At first glance, I remembered a phrase that I remembered.
Every night for years, she changed her long story and vowed revenge.
Such will was not something that would come from ordinary people. In deference to Sofia, I also did not speak down to her, who is now a maid.
"Why did you oppose the marriage?"
"Young-Ae, can you not marry him? Don't do it."
What are you talking about?
I feel like the main characters keep falling out of their roles and changing genres, but it's just my imagination.
She quickly turned the circuit of hope and gently pointed out the truth.
"I've already done it....."
"Oh, right..."
I was discouraged by the silly conversation. Sophia smiled with a fierce face.
What should I do with you? So when do you want revenge?
I called the maid to serve more refreshments and raised myself.
She was thin with pain because it was not yet time to reach a conclusion. A few lines of text in the novel did not dare to guess what hardships a woman who would have grown up without a drop of water in her hand would have suffered in another country.
The consideration I could give was a short break and cookies.
'Don't worry. Anyway, You'll be happy soon. I'm rooting for you as a fan.'
Suddenly, the main character's words that interfered with my career path turned bitterly and grabbed my ankle.
"I keep having weird dreams."
She had the power to make other people listen to herself.
"A dream?"
In the original, Sophia was a precognitive dreamer. I didn't dream often, but her rate was pretty good. If someone else did, it would have been futile, but Sofia's dream was heavy.
"In my dream, Young-Ae keeps crying."
As if by what she said, I sat down across from Sophia.
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68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of you.
• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
By Kevin Kelly
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Quote
from https://kk.org/thetechnium/68-bits-of-unsolicited-advice/
It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of you.
• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
Kevin Kelly
0 notes
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