#also like it’s probably now or never if I want to do the traineeship

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

ugh just remembered when I was in that useless fucking social services job hunting workshop.... and the presenter, when she called me for my resume consult basically told me I was liar when I had the usual complaint that "oh just about EVERY entry level job where I am is DEMANDING that I have anywhere between 2 to 5 years experience already before applying"... and instead of confirming that is the problem with the job market today, she instead condescended to me saying "oh no honey that's bc they're HIGH LEVEL admin jobs demanding that and NOT ENTRY LEVEL. learn to read."

actually, no, sandra (not her real name). they're NOT high-level jobs. they're run of the mill front desk reception or call centre jobs, which are also basic data entry jobs.... that only 20 years ago (probably) would've been a walk-in off the street and be employed tomorrow thing, or NO experience needed, we'll train you!" type shit if you applied online.

now these positions are DEMANDING 2 to 5 years experience AND sometimes a combined traineeship for 1-2 years in business admin, pr that you ALREADY have the tafe cert III in business admin, bc they don't want you wasting time studying or waste their time training you. that's why I keep applying for traineeships bc half of these positions already come with one, or "the chance to take on a traineeship" which means, "we'll make you do it anyway and not reduce your workload to accommodate study time". if the job is advertised as a full-time position without the traineeship attached in the title (like a junior admin officer job or something that i've applied for at a local lawyer before).

just. I hated how dismissive this woman was all around. I know I should probs complain tk social services about her, but idk if anything would actually happen. and plus she'd be all like "oh everyone else in that class loved me, why don't you? just keep vibrating at 70htz in loathing and resentment and GET NO OPPORTUNITIES EVER bc of that. why did my teaching not get the IMPORTANCE of vibrating at 500htz ie. LOVE AND PEACE AND ACCEPTANCE is the ONLY thing that'll give you abundance and opportunities, through to you????"

uh maybe bc I see job hunting as a practical thing and not all the batshit reiki shit that I like in asmr for entertainment.... and the vision board mumbo jumbo of self-help internet is great coming from youtubers like Anna akana.... but NOT in a jobhunting working shop.... where you're guilting people about this mumbo jumbo is exactly why they'll never employed ever again. and esp since my old workplace tried to fire me for "ruining the positive family vibe of this workplave bc you rolled your eyes at me twice and are sarcastic from time to time 😥" during my performance meeting in November 2022. so obvs, I'll refuse to take that side of it seriously.

anyway my point was originally that im pissed of that this woman insisted that entry level jobs that are advertising 2 to 5 years experience aren't "entry level jobs, they're high level." when she was posed as an "employment expert" for this course.

no. they're NOT high-level jobs the bulk of the time. they're fucking run of the mill data entry which really only requires minimum skills in microsoft office and admin etc and a professional phone manner etc.... but instead they're asking for 2-5 years experience and intermediate to advanced microsoft office skills (or google suite etc) bc they want the applicant to do 25 jobs in place of 7 different people. which is shit I should be able to do with an arts degree. you're the one who really knows nothing.

but instead they want to drag me through another whole ass certificate 3 course and ANOTHER traineeship bc apparently an arts degree and a years worth of actual solid office experience isn't enough to man phones, do data entry, do front office reception and whatever dumbass shit "done with minimal supervision superhero" tasks they write in the job description on seek et al

#life #about me #shut up ilona #ilona's jobhunting thoughts and woes lol #ilona's work thoughts #ilona's work dilemmas #also posting this here bc i was supposed to comment kn something similar on linkedin #but then i accidentally refreshed my feed and lost the comment.... and i also thought better of it tbh

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Gerard James Butler born 13 November 1969 in Paisley.

When he was 6 months old, his family relocated to Montreal, Canada, where his father tried a few business ventures but ultimately failed. A year and a half later, his parents divorced, and his mother moved Gerard and his two older siblings back to her hometown of Paisley.

After the move, Butler was raised by his mother, with no further contact with his father until he was 16 years old. (Gerard and his later father reconciled, and remained close until his father died of cancer when Butler was in his early 20s.) During his childhood, Butler was enthralled with movies and acting, and his mother took him to several auditions. He joined the Scottish Youth Theatre and in one of his first roles played a street urchin in its production of Oliver!, a role I have played myself, in a school production I was in Fagin’s gang, but alas fame was not to come my way as it did for Gerard

Despite his love for theater and film, Butler was anxious to please his family and believed that acting was not a realistic career choice for him. “I was a 16-year-old kid on the other side of the world from where they made movies,” he later said. “Scottish actors never really got play. There was Sean Connery, and that was it.” Though he claims he is “not the most academic of guys,” Butler graduated near the top of his high school class and enrolled in the University of Glasgow, where he studied to become a lawyer and solicitor.

During his time in university, Butler was also the president of the law society and graduated with honours. Like many other new graduates, Butler decided to take a year off to travel abroad, and his ventures soon landed him in Venice, California, where he indulged in the high life: “This is when things started to go a little crazy,” he later said. “Something very compulsive and dark and lusty and pleasurable but damaging took over. It was suddenly knowing I could go out and have a life of traveling, craziness, adventure, partying, women, and all the other things that go with that—including a sense of abandonment.”

After California, Butler returned to Scotland to begin a two-year traineeship at one of Edinburgh’s top law firms,(while there he shared a flat with my pal Peter)but soon found that he despised the job more and more, and he started slacking off and letting his depression show. A week before he was due to finish his traineeship, he went to the Edinburgh Film Festival and saw a stage production of Trainspotting, an experience that crystallized his disappointment with the law and his yearning to be an actor: “The guy playing the lead role was phenomenal. It was such an incredible atmosphere. And I’m dying inside. This is the life I wanted to live. I can do this. I know I can do this. But it’s past now. It’s gone. I’m 25. I missed that opportunity. A week later, they fired me.”

Humiliated but determined to finally pursue his dream of acting, Butler moved to London, England, the next day and worked odd jobs while trying to get his career off the ground. While working as a casting assistant for the play Coriolanus, he ran into the play’s director, Steven Berkoff, in a coffee shop and begged for a chance to read for the lead role. He says of the experience: “I gave it everything. Afterward, the casting director came up to me almost in tears. She said, ‘You’re the best he saw in two days!’ Walking home was probably the happiest moment of my life, when there’s an energy in you that can’t be put down. I’d gone from handing out pages to getting the lead role.” After a successful run in Coriolanus, Butler landed the lead in the exact same stage rendition of Trainspotting that had inspired him to try acting again, and he was really on his way as an actor.

Making the transition from the stage to the screen, in 1997 Butler starred with Judi Dench and Billy Connolly in Mrs. Brown and also scored a small part in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. During the film’s shooting, he was picnicking with his mother near a river and heard screaming from a boy who was in trouble. He immediately dove into the river and saved the youth from drowning, winning a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society as an example of his courage and caring.

After acting in a series of largely forgettable films, in 2003, Butler finally got his break with the role of the Phantom in Joel Schumacher’s on-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Phantom of the Opera. It was a demanding role that required the actor to sing most of his lines. Even though Butler had been the lead singer of a rock band during his time in law school, he was incredibly nervous about auditioning for the part: “I’d had maybe four singing lessons when I went to sing 'Music of the Night’ for Andrew Lloyd Webber, which was perhaps the most nerve-wracking experience I ever went through. But I got the role.

Some people thought I did a great job, but others thought it was sacrilegious.” Though Phantom did not hit blockbuster gold, it got Butler recognized in Hollywood, and four years later he landed the lead role, as King Leonidas, in 300, the testosterone-infused historical epic about a small legion of Spartan soldiers defeating the enormous Persian army. To look believable as a warrior king, Butler trained every day for four months in the most intense workout regimen of his life, giving him an incredible physique in time for the shoot: “You know that every bead of sweat falling off your head, every weight you’ve pumped—the history of that is all in your eyes,” he said. “That was a great thing, to put on that cape and put on that helmet, and not have to think …'I should have trained more.’ Instead, I was standing there feeling like a lion.”

Butler’s role in 300 was a huge boost to his career profile. Since appearing in 300, the actor has starred in several romantic comedies such as P.S. I Love You with Hilary Swank and The Ugly Truth with Katherine Heigl, along with appearing on many “world’s hottest men” lists. And his career isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

Despite all of his success, Gerard Butler still retains the breezy attitude of a guy who rolls with the punches and has a down-to-earth sense of humour. Looking back, he is still slightly stunned at the twists his life has taken and reflects on what could have been: “I wasn’t going to be an actor. I was going to be a lawyer … There was something else at work, something I didn’t have control of. If I hadn’t [messed] up that job, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I might be a very mediocre lawyer in some small town in the middle of Scotland.”

Gerard has been quiet on twitter lately, one f his last posts on October 25th was plugging his latest film,Plane, which he said he “had a blast working on” He also has a number of projects in post and pre production, so loads more to come from this popular Scot. 

#Scotland #scottish #actor #television #hollywood star #happy birhtday

[llendrinall]

Omg what if Draco was also a spy for Dumbledore? Like imagine him biting his tongue when everyone is hateful and cruel to him cuz he's gonna have the last laugh when it comes out he was a spy. And in this version Percy still fucks off. Draco stays behind cuz he wants to see everyones reactions (especially his asshole boss that made his life fucking hell) He could be a seer in this and secretly became friends with Harry during Hogwarts. Idk, add whatever you want ❤

Ha! I don’t know why that “Idk” at the end made me laugh.

I have different mental versions of Draco. I can see him more or less happy, more or less certain of what he wants to do or of his relationship to the wizarding world. Other things are fixed, they are the things that make him Draco and appear in all versions of him, like:

1.- He can draw. He might have more or less practice, but he can draw pretty well.

2.- He is smart in the sense of doing very well academically, being able to understand something instantly. He doesn’t need to put many study hours, so he doesn’t.

3.- He doesn’t like Dumbledore. Regardless of his relationship to his father and Voldemort, he just doesn’t like Dumbledore as a person. It has nothing to do with how Dumbledore treats people (although that certainly doesn’t help) it’s more visceral. Just like some people will look at an actor or celebrity and go “no, I do not find Jimmy Fallon funny and can’t tell you why”. This is the same.

So Draco would never become a spy for Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s spy, hell no.

However, at some point Draco looks at Voldemort’s white flabby face and thinks “oh, no, I’m not doing this.” He decides he is going to work against Voldemort, but with whom?

(Draco is very proud of knowing when to use “whom” and also lives in fear of getting it wrong).

Draco has to find someone who can be an actual challenge against Voldemort. The Ministry is out because they are stupid, incompetent and infiltrated to the brim. And who else is there? Potter? Draco goes to class with Potter. He has seen how he spells, meaning both his charm use (Potter knows one a half spells and that’s it) and his orthography. He simply can’t consider Potter a serious contender against Voldemort. Nothing against him, Draco actually, (secretly) kind of likes the guy, but Voldemort can read minds, knows all kind of ancient magic and performs incredibly complex curses and conjurations.

Draco has seen Potter lick ice-cream out of his t-shirt.

If Draco wants to get rid of Voldemort, there is only Dumbledore. Draco doesn’t spy for him. He does nothing regarding Dumbledore that involves the preposition ”for”.

But he shares information. There is a “to” in there. Give information to Dumbledore. He can do that. Draco is quite smart, so he is able to deduce Voldemort’s strategy from little clues. He knows about Voldemort’s quest for information (both for the prophecy and the elder wand) months in advance.

This does not happen in the same universe as Percy Ministry Spy, but Percy is acting as a spy nevertheless. This means that Dumbledore has a pretty easy run setting his plans in motion and ensuring Voldemort’s defeat. It also means that he suffers though some absolutely miserable months which probably have something to do with his enthusiasm for the let-Draco-kill-me plan.

Each and every interaction with Draco is a reeling experience. Draco is not handing the information for nothing. He wants Voldemort dead by next month and when Dumbledore doesn’t deliver, he complains. He complains (note the italics). Draco doesn’t ask for the manager because there isn’t one, but he actually asks if Dumbledore has any older siblings Draco could talk to. You could say Draco acts entitled, demanding and full of expectations, but those words mean nothing. Draco breathes past entitlement to land somewhere between “Angel of Vengeance” and “Greek fury”, only instead of a flaming sword or claws, he has attitude and an excellent command of grammar. What a horrible little child.  

Meanwhile, Snape has developed the habit of twisting every conversation so he can say “pity you don’t have any other orphan available to sacrifice” and “oh, if only we had a child to endanger” and “yes, but how can we solve this by killing a child?”. It is very rich coming from him. Dumbledore is not amused. Apparently there is a line for Severus Snape and that line is drawn when sacrificing oneself for the greatest good.

(“Ah, but it is not yourself who will do the sacrifice, is it?” Snape says, and a week later Dumbledore tells Draco that of course he will let him kill him. Draco scoffs and rolls his eyes as if somehow that wasn’t enough).

And then, there is Percy Weasley. Neither Snape nor Draco are supposed to know about him, but they both know and it is unclear how. Probably Percy himself let them know (no, he didn’t). He would do something like that (no, he wouldn’t). Percy is a horrid nightmare (he… he may be). Dumbledore despises him (and how!). Snape will talk about Dumbledore not doing the greater sacrifice but Dumbledore honestly can’t think of anything worse than working with Percival Weasley.

(70% of Dumbledore’s dislike comes from the suspicion that Percy might be two or three points more intelligent than him. After almost a century used to being the most intelligent person in the room by far, Dumbledore does not like this new scenario. He misses Grindelwald.)

Dumbledore dies. Then so does Potter (briefly), followed quickly by Voldemort (permanently). Surprisingly, Snape also jumps into this dying fashion until he thinks better about it and survives, although severely wounded. Percy doesn’t die but as soon as the battle had ended and all Death Eaters are either dead or apprehended, he dissaparates right there from the Hogwarts grounds.

He sends a postcard to Draco a month later, which is kind of nice. There is also one for Snape and Draco props it next to the vase of flowers by his sickbed.

Thus begins the After-War.

By day two, Draco understands why Weasley left so quickly. It is a fucking disaster. Potter has to plant himself by Snape’s bed to stop the Ministry from arresting him. The man is barely coherent and barely alive and yet they wanted to interrogate him and transport him to a holding cell. The Ministry. The ones who allowed themselves to be infiltrated.

It is perhaps unsurprising that when the Ministry sends a hastily formed examining tribunal to Hogwarts, so students can sit their OWLs and NEWTs in August, the examining tribunal refuses Draco.

Draco doesn’t particularly care. He is rich enough that he doesn’t need to work and, in any case, once they finally start proper investigations and find Dumbledore’s trove of notes and testimonies in his sealed will, Draco will be exonerated and recognized as the hero he is. This insult or punishment, whatever you call the Tribunal’s unfair treatment of him, doesn’t hurt. Draco is immune to their attacks.

Soon after, he receives a letter from bloody Hermione Granger saying of course he can sit his exams, they expect him on Tuesday at ten. McGonagall will be there to put the fear of herself on the Tribunal and ensure they are fair.

And… he appreciates her intervention, he really does. Awfully nice of her. True moral backbone. It’s just that… Draco actually enjoyed the insult? He realizes now that he only attempted to sit the exams because he expected them to say no.

He sits the exams and aces them. They are particularly hard in the last one, the astronomy test. McGonagall coughs three times, rolls her eyes and finally says “bloody enough, don’t you think? He has shown he knows the material.” He sends her a handwritten thank-you letter just to be annoying.

Draco realizes that his behavior is very odd, but given that Weasley has fucked off to somewhere and that Snape refuses to heal so he won’t have to talk to people, Draco believes he is entitled to some oddities of his own. Thus, he begins collecting insults. From the low-brow and simple “Death-Eater scum” to the vitriolic “murderer”. The best, and the worst, are the ones that don’t come wrapped in words. Shunning and discrimination. Oh! He can’t explain it, but they taste tart and sweet.

He likes it. Not the dismissing, no, but the idea that they don’t know him and that their judgment of him is wrong. If that means they will also wrong him and treat him badly, so be it. It doesn’t change that he and Snape and Percy Weasley, are the heroes of the war.

He applies to a mediwizard program and is naturally denied. Then he tries a traineeship at the Wizengamot, also denied. Just for the fun of it, he applies to the Auror Office and receives a wonderful letter of rejection that has an actual dead spider inside the envelope.

It has been three months since the end of the war, now, and Weasley refuses to let himself be found. Snape barely manages to stay awake for three hours, and only with Draco. Evidently the stress of the war did a number on them, so it’s perfectly understandable if Draco keeps prodding and asking and applying to things knowing full well that he will get a resounding “no”.

You would think this was some sort of atonement for his past misbehavior and his admittedly awfully narrow views and even more abysmal manners regarding muggleborns. But Draco is quite sure he atoned for all of that when he lied to Voldemort’s face and, more terrifyingly, he lied to Aunt Bella’s face, stole their secrets and passed them to Dumbledore. He doesn’t need to punish himself any more.

No, it’s just… it’s just hard. He has spent three years with a carefully crafted lie as his only protection. It is not so easy to discard it. He liked that lie. It kept him alive.

And then, come October, the Ministry takes Malfoy Manor and all associated assets. Just like that. Puff. Seized. They haven’t even begun an official investigation on Draco, but they have taken his house as a precaution.

Now it’s personal.

It turns out that Draco is a vindictive asshole, who would have guessed? Probably everyone but him. Doesn’t matter. He will make them pay. The Ministry, the papers who ran the headline about Draco becoming homeless and the people who cut the page and framed it. They will regret it.

He moves into Snape’s ugly cottage because he has no other place to go and if Snape has any objections, he can say so when he pleases. Oh? He can’t talk? Too bad, then.

The Ministry has also seized his funds and Draco draws a line at using Snape’s meager savings (he assumes they are meager, he hasn’t actually checked) so he gets a job in the only place that would employ him: a seedy tea shop in the North side of Diagon Alley. The only reason the owner hired him was because the previous assistant tried to burn the place down and he was in a bit if a rush to find a replacement. After a week, Draco understands why someone would want to burn the place down, and that’s before his boss realizes that Draco is drawing a small crowd of people who like seeing him serving tables. From then on, he takes to screaming and insulting Draco for absolutely everything before turning to his customers with a smug smile.

Every time he or any of the customers complains, Draco smiles a cheap version of the smiles he used to give Voldemort and vows. Sometimes their words sting and sometimes they break against his armor. He lives in a weird state between immunity and pain.

Dumbledore’s actual true will, to be open by Hermione J. Granger (funny how he didn’t address it to Potter) is found in late December. Given the state of the Ministry, Draco expects that they will only get around summoning Granger by early February at best.

Weasley sends another postcard around Christmas. This one comes with an address, in case either he or Snape also want to drop everything and fuck off, he supposes. Draco writes back explaining he is bidding his time to exact just retribution over all those who wronged him and Snape is in no condition to travel. Weasley writes, well, he doesn’t write, he sends a third postcard with quite a nice drawing of a thumbs up.

Snape can now sit up and read the paper. He still can’t get a single sound out, but he can manage sighing in a very meaningful way. They receive another summon to have Snape declare before a Tribunal and he groans before passing out and staying unconscious the next two days.

All things considered, Draco is evidently the one coping better so he feels he can afford a little extravagant behavior like sitting in front of a mirror and practicing his own sighs of heroic suffering for when the vindication comes.

It comes in March.

The world goes absolutely insane. People knew that Snape had done… something, mostly because Potter had very obnoxiously advocated on his behalf.

(Potter is so obnoxious. He comes every Tuesday to Draco’s tea shop and asks for a cup of tea that he barely touches and stays there for an hour saying nothing).

But they had no idea of the extent Snape’s involvement. None. All the curses he surreptitiously knocked aside, all the misfired spells. It wasn’t just gaining Voldemort’s trust and acting on Dumbledore’s plans, he, Snape, personally saved two dozen lives with none the wiser. He was so good at acting covertly!

That should be enough to make any good newspaper editor foam in their mouth, but there is more. There is Weasley, going twenty steps ahead and being ridiculously clever and talented and just… knowing what to do. There is already a shrine to him in Coleraine because he did something very important there and the locals were merely waiting to find a name to put to it. Percy Weasley has been declared tax exempt in all of Ireland.  

Draco merely has a meager thirteen lives saved on his ledger, but he also has three years of cleverly betraying Voldemort. It doesn’t look like much, but once details emerge of how he stole information and passed it to Dumbledore, the whole thing becomes charming. Double-o-Drac-o, is what the muggleborns are calling him. Snape assures him it’s a good thing, but he doesn’t elaborate because he is a bastard who pretends that writing tires him horribly.

Snape wasn’t planning on surviving the war and for the first time in years he is unprepared. He deals with it by trying to shut the world off. If he wasn’t so weak from his wounds, Draco is quite certain that he would have buggered off to wherever Weasley is now, to sit on the sun and be silent together. He certainly does not appreciate the wizarding world’s earnest interest in him. You would think that the fact that he can’t (or, at this point, won’t) speak would deter them a bit, but it only adds to Snape’s tragic charm. Some women and many young men are particularly attracted by it. Fortunately, Draco has only had to chase two of them out of the house because even though Snape can’t say a word, he remains very skilled at non-verbal magic so he hexes every journalist and deranged fan that has the misfortune of coming close to him. Meanwhile, Weasley doesn’t want to be found (“nooooo” says his last postcard, Draco is a bit worried at the lack of capitalization) and has a ten-month head start. He won’t be found.

This means there is only Draco. Shameful bronze medal in the saving-lives business, but with a delicious aura of cleverness and bravery, a whole year of suffering in silence during the post-war, and a face that was made to be dramatically lighted, photographed and printed in the front page.

Wil you answer our questions, Mister Malfoy? Oh, but he will, he will answer every one of their questions and give all details. No one has given so much, sacrificed so much, suffered so much as him.

“I literally died, Malfoy.”

“And I couldn’t afford dying, Potter. I had to survive. Now, get out, these people have some more questions.”

Potter has moved from coming every Tuesday to the stupid tea shop to visiting them at Snape’s cottage. Draco only lets him in because he might annoy Snape into talking. Plus, he is nimble, he can avoid all of Snape’s hexes and the extra exercise will do Snape good.

His relationship with Potter is… strange, but fittingly so. Everything else has been weird lately, why not this? Potter had always elicited interest, but once people learn that Dumbledore had more or less raised him for the slaughter and that when Potter found out he nevertheless went ahead and died, the press and the public in general goes even more rabid. You would think that with so many shocking stories the scandals would dull each other. But, far from that, the public is on fire, incensed, and each piece of news is kindling for the flames.

Potter, unfortunately, does not have a photogenic face (he tends to look like a sad lost deer in all pictures) and all the attention stresses him out. Draco offers him a mutually beneficial deal: Draco will take care of the press for him and Potter will stop the Ministry from returning the manor and his fortune.

“How is that beneficial?”

“I want to tell the press that they took it from me with no evidence before they have the chance to hand it back.”

“Ah, fair enough.” Potter says. He does not seem to be a big fan of the Ministry, which is a pity because this time the Minister is not attempting to kill him, use him, or run a smear campaign against him, unlike the previous ones. It seems that the odd behavior isn’t restricted to Weasley, Snape and him. The other Weasley (Ronald), Granger and Potter are also displaying oddities. Mostly, there is a lot of yelling at the Ministry (Granger) and at every single adult who ever interacted with Potter (Weasley, Ron). Potter isn’t doing any yelling, but he has taken to following Draco around and chatting at Snape.

(No, not “to” or “with”, “at”. He chats at Snape and Snape suffers in silence having accepted that Potter will deflect every hex thrown his way).

Draco doesn’t judge. He is still working at the horrible tea shop with the even more horrible and petty owner (who has no idea how to treat Draco now and spends every waking second alternating between insults and clumsy flattery) simply because he wants to lord over the Ministry that they took his house and money. If Potter feels like he has to follow Draco and harass Snape into making a full recovery, so be it.

There is, of course, the question of Weasley (Ronald) wanting to know where the only tolerable Weasley (Percy) is. Draco doesn’t tell, despite having his address on postcard number 2. That would be a betrayal bigger than anything he did to Voldemort. He could never do that to a person who managed to annoy Dumbledore so much.

What he does is sit down with two cups of tea and explain to Weasley (Ronald) what his brother did and what he went through and why he might not want to interact with any one he knows when, instead, he could be lying face down on a nudist beach in Spain. It helps. Weasley (Ronald) doesn’t track his brother down, but he manages to get him to reply to his letters. He is overjoyed.

The news about having lost his ancestral home and fortune come out and people are adequately irate. He enjoys it, but not as much as he expected. Some people squirm and blush and walk into doors with the embarrassment of how badly they judged him. Some even apologize to his face which is frankly disrespectful because then Draco has to be civil to them. Overall it is unsatisfying. He wants more, but he doesn’t know what he wants.

He almost accepts one of the multiple offers he keeps receiving to enter this or that prestigious program. He would make a good a lawyer. Fortunately, Weasley (the cool one) talks him out of it via postcard. The postcard has nothing written on it other than a smiley face (evidently the brother talks are going well) but it shakes something inside him.

This gives him the idea of apologizing to Longbottom (extremely uncomfortable for both of them) and Granger, who gets him in a number or boards and committees as punishment. Draco competes to be the most disliked person in each committee, which is hard because Granger is in some of them. She asks for immediate liberation of house-elves and a transition program for them and Draco finds himself demanding (just like he did with Dumbledore, full of bile and entitlement) historic reparations. Each blood-line who ever held a house-elf will contribute proportionally to the transition program. He gets death threats over it, it’s great.

Two years after the end of the war, Draco finds himself back in his manor, with most of his money (he doubled his contribution to the elf fund because then the families who want to wash their names would have to do the same) and, mysteriously, Harry Potter in his bed. He has no idea how that happened. He is quite certain he was too busy being a little shit to seduce anyone. Was he seduced when he wasn’t looking? How dare he?

He also has half a dozen very important postcards on his mantelpiece. The only thing he doesn’t have is an ex-Death Eater, ex-potion professor, living in his mansion because the old bastard finally got well enough to say “bugger off, both of you” and then fled to Ireland where the nice Weasley has got a nice little cottage of his own.  

#asks #draco malfoy #verse: draco spy #Anonymous

[galactic-academia]

hello! hope you are doing alright, could i request #31 with sherlock please if you are taking requests at the moment. thankyou!

Hey! I’m fine, thanks. I’m sorry for keeping you waiting, I just finished my exams and, to be completely honest with you, I really didn’t know how I would fulfill this prompt… So, I did my best and I really hope you will enjoy it anyway

Rating: G

Category: F/M

Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)

Relationship: Sherlock Holmes/Female Reader

Tags: Light Angst, Protective Sherlock, Lestrade Does His Best, Donovan Is A *****, First Kiss.

Words: 1464

Notes: I’m not a native, please, forgive my mistakes. Picture is not mine. I hope you will enjoy it

Masterpost | Ask | Guidelines | Sherlock (BBC) Masterlist

When Y/N had become Detective Lestrade’s trainee, she was thrilled and neither the paperwork nor the impossible schedules would have made her change her mind.Lestrade was very kind, explaining her what she needed to know, to do, how to deal with everyone, everything, with a holy patience. And, God, patience he needed: Y/N was nice and clever, eager to learn but she was also the clumsiest person Lestrade had ever known. Last week, when she had toppled the pile of folders on Donovan’s desk, the Detective Sergeant had yelled at her so badly that the new trainee had flew to hide behind her mentor. Clumsy, shy, adorable… Nothing to become a good cop.

But Lestrade still had had to do his work, criminals weren’t so kind to behave while he was forming his new protegee. And this new case seemed to want to be a baffling problem. Of course, he knew what he needed to do: calling Sherlock. But he was also afraid of the encounter between Y/N and the only one Consulting Detective, only God knew what he would be able to tell his little trainee and Lestrade didn’t want her to be traumatized. Well… She was here to learn, wasn’t she?

“Ok, listen to me Y/N…”

“Yes, Detective.”

The young woman was already ready to take notes.

“Hum… What did I tell you to do when you find yourself in troubles you’re unable to solve?”

“Calling someone to help me: two heads are better than one.”

“Exactly. And this is what I’ve done. I’ve called a friend of mine to help me figuring on our latest case, ok?”

“Sure.”

“But he’s a little… Special? Don’t be afraid of him, he won’t hurt you. You may don’t believe it at first, but he’s a very good guy, ok? Just… If he says bad things to you… Well… Don’t listen to him?”

“O… Ok…”

“Fine, everything will be fine, so…”

“What is it Lestrade? A mysterious robbery? A puzzling threat? A murder? Several murders? Criminals of London had been so lazy lately! That’s a shame.”

Well… Detective Lestrade could have dreamed of better way to introduce Sherlock Holmes to Y/N; she was already looking at him with a puzzled face. But it could have been worse, far, far worse. Twenty minutes later, Lestrade, Donovan, Sherlock and Y/N were on the crime scene and the situation was beginning to be less and less manageable for the Detective Inspector. In one hand, he was trying to understand what the Consulting Detective was rambling about, in the other hand, he was keeping an eye on Y/N in order to a) write her report to the Police Academy b) keep her from doing something silly. And do you think Donovan would help him in these tasks? Nooo, absolutely not! She was far too busy bitching about “freaks and half-witted trainees”.

When, while taking notes and following Lestrade everywhere, Y/N almost stepped on the corpse for the fourth time, Sherlock, who was then crouching next to the said corpse, suddenly looked up to her. He got up and towered her from all his height. Crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap, CRAP! Poor little Y/N was going to be eaten alive by the dark and icy Detective! Seeming to understand her destiny, Y/N gasped under Sherlock’s gaze and ran to hide herself behind her mentor, who was, now, slightly lost.

“What’s that?”

It took several seconds for Lestrade to understand Sherlock was talking to him. What he was talking about, on the other hand…

“What?”

“What’s that?”

“What’s that what?”

“Behind you.”

There were only two things behind the Detective Inspector: the door and Y/N. Since it was reasonably presumable that Sherlock actually knew what a door was, Lestrade thought he was talking about Y/N.

“Ah. Not “what”, “who”. This is Y/N, my trainee.”

Sherlock threw a dubious glance to the young lady whose head was half curiously half scarily peaking behind Lestrade’s shoulder before mumbling a vague “…K.” and returning to the task at hand.

When Lestrade was sure the incident was over, he turned towards Y/N and tell her to go back to the car, he wanted to be able to read her notes when they would be back to the HQ. She has been very lucky to avoid the Consulting Detective’s fury. He wasn’t usually this lax when people were messing around his crime scene. A second miracle like that wouldn’t happen.

***

This incident could have been forgotten if the murder for which Lestrade had had to call Sherlock hadn’t been the first of several others. Serial killer; yes, it’s Christmas, we know. Since who says “serial killer” says “Sherlock on ninth cloud and very eager to solve the mystery”, Lestrade and his trainee were constantly running between Baker Street, Scotland Yard HQ and crime scenes. It wouldn’t have been a problem – that was their job, after all – if Y/N didn’t become the embodiment of the hearts eyed smiley each time the Detective appeared. It was unsubtle, awkward and really unprofessional. Lestrade should have bawl Y/N out, she was here to learn not to foolishly fall in love with the first of the class who, out of luck, would notice, make fun of her and break her heart! But Lestrade was also very soft and protective, so, when he realised that Sherlock was just passing over Y/N, he decided that either she would understand by herself that her love was unrequited or the end of her traineeship would mean the end of this one-side love story. He only tried to explain to his trainee that, well… How to say? Sherlock wasn’t a man for her? And it wasn’t because of her, no, no, he was a man for no one, that’s all. That hope was, in this case, a loss of time and energy. The only answer he got was Y/N’s suddenly sad face flushing deeply. He was right and she knew it, there was nothing more to say.

Lestrade had been very pleased to note his trainee had listened to him: the next time they ended at Baker Street, she kept her eyes down and sat down on a chair, taking notes, without trying to draw the Sherlock’s attention. So, the Detective Inspector had been very startled when he had heard the supposedly high functioning sociopath shout:

“Stop biting that fucking lip!”

A shocked silence felt on the flat. Lestrade, the eyes round like saucers, saw the penetrating glare Sherlock was giving to Y/N. He also saw Y/N shrivelling on her chair and was about to sound Sherlock off when this last started again, far softer:

“Stop biting that fucking lip, because it makes me crave to kiss your teeth away, what is stopping me from focusing and I really need to focus because lives are at stake.”

If possible, the silence which followed this statement was even more shocked than before, but it was nothing compared to the one which followed Sherlock’s tender kiss to Y/N’s lips.

“I tried to take no heed in you, but it didn’t work, maybe the exact opposite will?”

***

Six months later, when Y/N came in his office, Sherlock on her heels, proudly waving her degree under his nose, the only thing he was surprised about was the fact that Sherlock had let Y/N became a true constable. He was so overprotective with her, always so soft when he was talking to her, always so tender in every move towards her, like she was a fragile doll anything a little curt would broke, he has such harass Lestrade for him to be sure she was safe during the rest of her traineeship and then the instructor at the Police Academy – promising all his dirty secrets would be disclosed if anything happened to his sweet baby girl – it was a miracle that he let her join the police, criminal section of Scotland Yard, in addition!

Then, Lestrade found some logic in there: Y/N would never be alone, always under his or Sherlock’s protection; probably both. She just had the perfect profession for him always keeping an eye on her, she would always, always be safe. Looking to the couple in front of him, the Detective Inspector shuddered thinking about what would happen if Y/N was hurt; Sherlock had been deprived of the hope of love for too long, he wouldn’t let anything happen to his girlfriend, at no cost. And if something should happen to her anyway, Hell would be released on the culprit. That was what Lestrade understood by the sparkle in Sherlock’s eyes. If he was Donovan, he would be very, very careful.

***

Thanks for reading

#Sherlock #Sherlock Holmes #sherlock BBC #sherlock fanfiction #Sherlock Holmes fanfiction #sherlock imagine #sherlock x reader #sherlock x you #sherlock holmes imagine #Sherlock Holmes x Reader #sherlock holmes x you #request #benedict cumberbatch

[the-numbers-game]

life update - long ramble

readmore

in less than three weeks, i will have finished my postgrad. it’s been a hecking fast course, and very intense at times. like most things im a bit gutted at myself for not trying as hard as i can. but i’ve done mostly okay considering my efforts. a range of grades. i was gutted last term that i got a c in my criminal litigation class just due to my nerves. all my content was perfect, i was just shit scared of public speaking. i bombed conveyancing cos that class was shit. but i did good in my other two and i’ve got good grades this semester so far. but i’ve also missed more classes, and i think i bombed my oral last week, and i’m bound to bomb my oral this week too.

idk how i will adjust to being not-in-education for the first time since i was 5 (3, if you include preschool). tbh, if i dont get a traineeship i may go back in 2021 or 2022 and do a masters. something on the constitution and human rights. maybe i’ll write about labour again.

 i’m gonna chill for a month or so, working my 2.5 days at work whilst i still have my student loan rolling in (LOL, i get hardly anything cos i’m a pg and most of it is gone in the repayment of the personal loan i took out to do this course). then, i’ll increase my days to 4. i can live off 4 days, and it means i can still count this job as not being my life whilst i hunt for a traineeship, and failing one that starts pretty soon, another job. i’m fixed term, and i was lucky in i got a promotion, but the promotion was also for a fixed term position. 

i hope my contract is extended, i put my face out there a lot at work primarily for that reason. i go on training courses and sit on committees, partly because i get away from my desk but also because it makes me look like i care about my job. i’ll mainly look at the public sector, as i feel like i belong there, i like flexible working and having an interesting caseload. and then law firms, as maybe if i get an admin job at a firm they will take pity on me and recruit me. failing those two, i will look charities/trade unions/politics before resulting to texting someone at my old work and begging for a job back. or maybe i’ll do agency work. fuck idk. i shouldn’t worry about it. i’ll get a job, right? 

i do hear back this week regarding a traineeship. i’m not hopeful. i never am. but the interview did go really well. i didn’t stammer, i spoke freely, we spoke a lot about unions and the labour party and i felt like they liked me. they only interviewed 6% of applicants, so i’m lucky to get through and even if i don’t get it i know i’ll be less anxious about interviewing for traineeships again because i know it can go well(ish). if i do get it i’ll be over the moon, it’s not human rights and it’s not public law but they do a lot of union work and pro bono, and that’s good enough for me. 

over the years, the way i experience anxiety has changed, dramatically.  for a while, i had quite a good support network of ‘safe adults’. like my friends, past and present, and callum, have all been remarkable, but i think being able to relate to adults/people in authority when you’re not quite an adult yourself is good for validation. it didn’t last long and friendships and ‘drama’ started to consume my life. when i finally moved out of retail into an office environment, a lot of my anxiety, especially the physical stuff, shifted. i shit you not, i would physically throw up before many of my shifts in retail. so again, i thought i was coping as things weren’t as bad as they were back then. especially when it came to depression, as i actively removed myself from the main environmental factor causing me to have low moods. 

i was dumb, cos of course i still had sadness and anxiety. it was just different, and because i channeled a lot of stress into uni, being new at my job, and being skint, it felt like there was always an excuse it wasnt anything about me,it was xyz and hey fuck look at least im not barthing and crying every morning yeah?

but 2019, whilst being a year of several incredible highs and generally being a good year was full of anxiety and due to me doing such an intense course with lots of orals, i realised, yes, i may not be taking as many panic attacks as i took when i was 18 but i felt as bad, fuck, even worse socially and internally, than i did back then. so i went to the doctors just before the new year, and got put on drugs. 

that was a big step, as i always have a fear about the doctors but i have a really good gp surgery, my main doctor is a bit odd but really helpful. one of the other doctors did a whole law degree and the diploma before deciding it wasnt for her and she wanted to go to med school, so shes a really good person to turn to. the reception staff are kind (and you can book appointments online too, which i find really helpful). i think as well, i always viewed my anxiety as mild, and in a way, it is, but in a lot of ways, it is not. medication has certainly helped. i take antidepressants and beta blockers and whilst im not a super happy confident girl, i can cope a lot better. i’m no longer physically anxious (if you know me irl you know i am a shaky bastard) and my brain doesn’t run through the same STRESS as it did. so im grateful. i know meds dont work for everyone and that it takes people years to find something good for them, esp for people with a lot more complex mental health issues than me and my anxiety but i found ones that seem to be working, at least for now.

this year, i’ve tried to look after myself more. i’m saving for a house after opening a help to buy isa last year. i noticed my vision was being a bit blurry from time to time and that my eyes felt really strained when looking at the computer. so i booked an eye appointment and it turns out im short sighted. wearing glasses, as well as fulfilling 12 year old me’s fantasy, has massively helped my general fatigue. i’m gonna book in for physio at my gp, cos i have a dodgy shoulder, and due to general stress, both the dodgy one and the other are in a lot of pain constantly. i try and do a proper skincare routine in the mornings and at night. i’ve always loved skincare but usually just take what i’ve been gifted but i’ve had fun exploring brands and building a collection. i’ve asked for extensions at uni when i’ve needed them, and took time off when appropriate. i’ve been meeting friends more, and not patching messages. 

right okay- i’m falling asleep now but this has been a ramble which probably makes no sense but if we are mutuals or whatever i appreciate you and thanks for dealing with my bs.

tldr - finishing uni soon, probs gonna be looking for a job, doing better in life and with my mh. 

#personal #life update #mental health

[apromisetoyou]

Alone

Being consumed by a fear of the unknown once more because of my disappointment and anger amplifies the feeling of myself feeling alone. Having to bear the responsibility of an opportunity lost and the regret of having my hope bubble burst made me wonder why I am so unlucky, and why I didn't choose to leave earlier in spite of everything. I felt abandoned by someone whom I had tried looking up to, and this only served to impel me to validate all the negatives thoughts I have about her.

Demonising her, and the desire to make her pay, such thoughts started appearing and I almost feel justified for wanting to choose 'payback' as a way to end my relationship. I was prepared to trust her, to believe that she was also prepared to give me opportunities, but I see that up till the end, I would never be an employee she would think about taming. Ruthless impartiality - I can remain as just an intern, given that there will be others who can fill up the slots.

Yet, the underlying problem has always been this - I am aware that I could never fully bring myself to trust her and she could never fully trust me as well. I could trust her as my boss, but not as who she is in her totality. She could trust insofar in my role as an intern, but probably not as a full-time employee in the future. Perhaps it is the case that we did not fully trust ourselves enough to be able to deal with our ability and readiness to handle differences, just like my relationship with Gwen. We were not sufficiently motivated to take the risk that we can continue supporting each other.

Does this show that I am always a step too late to improve? I never let go of my concern for Gwen even after breaking up, until I decided to prioritise myself over her. I knew that I love her but I was not prepared to chase her back because I wanted her to stay true to herself and not confuse her feelings any further. I sensed her inability to embrace me as someone she could wholeheartedly support and I knew it would not be right for both of us to continue with a unbalanced tilted relationship, where my love for her would be stifling and overwhelming. Above all, I wanted her to be brave and not hurt anymore so that she didn't have to cry again. As I tried my best to move on, I was able to rationalise that she and I were not meant to be because we were both insecure and not ready to deal with the demands of our relationship. We ended up hurting each other unintentionally with our innocence, values and beliefs. I was resentful for not feeling validated by her and she was upset that I could not change enough for her and her parents. We saw our vulnerabilities as a mistake but the truth is, a relationship stays only because there are moments and pockets of vulnerabilities that we reveal to one another. Love and pain are 2 sides of a coin, and connecting them together is growth and support through healing. Sometimes, separation is necessary.

Still, I will not give up on our bonds, no matter how pathetic it may seem. Because she taught me love and I came to make sense of love in my own way thereafter, even if flawed and incomplete.

Back to a professional setting, my traineeship experience showed me and reminded me again that not everyone in a leadership position will turn out to be a good leader to all. Inevitably, there will be leaders who cannot meet the needs of some subordinates so a good leader will always be mindful to assign mentors who can step in to meet those needs. I could never find that mentor here, despite giving my best. Perhaps I didn't ask enough, perhaps I wasn't confident to do more, perhaps I was just lazy. But through it all, I was only told that everyone is just too busy and what I saw only confirmed what I was told. So I recalibrated my pace and I soon found my passion being slowly extinguished. While I don't think that I can arrive at the state where I can fully trust myself to handle differences, I think I have come to trust the process of journeying by myself and to trust in my ability to withstand stress from societal and my self-expectations with patience and kindness. I can trust in myself to handle criticism and be more independent at work. I appreciate the importance of caring and relying on my team of colleagues but I can still do more to show initiative in order to be more independent in my own learning - such as by asking a question everyday and consolidating my knowledge through applied practice.

Therefore, my 'payback' is in becoming a leader that anyone deserves, no matter who they are. I will never treat anyone as a means to an end nor will I see what I am doing as only a means to an end. Guided by the right intention and experience, my actions are an end in themselves (becoming; changing; connecting) because they embody my values, beliefs and principles to be who I want to become. Instead of ruthless impartiality, I'll choose ruthless optimism and hope to enact and practise practical idealism even as I see the larger picture. I will never want to 'disable' anyone through the lack of sincere open tough communication - feelings and thoughts. To do so, I will always put aside time for communications that would allow me to process and integrate my perceptions, knowledge and feelings of a person together, no matter our status.

So where do I go from now? Having processed my thoughts, I think I can finally mention her name V. It is valid that I felt anger and disappointment with her due to my belief that she has let me down but I do not want to always feel let down by her. What I perceive to be a personal injustice should not distract me from my intention to focus on cultivating my own inner disposition to embody the values I cherish. V is a mother with 2 children and it is enough knowing that she will love them and will do her best to make PRL an inclusive library with the support of both the current and new members. I can accept with peace my decision to take the gamble because it has helped me to confront my own evils with support from my friends, who once again reminded me that the feeling of being alone does not have to cause permanent suffering or hurt. It will help me to see myself clearly, warts and all and choose from a position of vulnerability to understand that someone out there can empathise with my perspective, and this is enough for me to construct a new narrative of hope and acceptance with what is. I have to continue strengthening, disciplining and regulating myself so that I can continue to pass on the shared hope of connecting with others. My experience is unique and not unique at the same time, just like how I am a part and apart at the same time.

I do not wish to cause harm and hurt to others by projecting my own experience of suffering and pain onto them and neither do I need to start a personal vendetta just to seek satisfaction. My loved ones are here to ground me and I am fine just being alive and 'living hard' with them. 别辜负自己也别辜负生命因为有一天你打自内心所发出的光和热会带给你周边的人继续活下去及改变的力量。请记住今天你选择了善良宽待自己，也从此更相信爱并且接受这个世界的好与坏。因为我有好也有坏，我必须继续理解，继续沟通，继续相信自己，相信希望-成长的变化会带出真善美的可能性。

Besides following up on my handover, I think I can take whatever remaining time to consolidate my learning before applying them to Bilberries Blue. Hereon, I want to seek out my personal atelier - empathetic communication and recover my joy in living, no matter how long or challenging it may be. Right now, it is better to draw clearly the line between NLB and me. I do not think it is an organisation that I can find myself investing in or belonging to but this does not mean I cannot learn from the people there and what they are doing/thinking of. Innovation is neutral and no one is any less deserving to change this world through innovation and creativity, not withstanding one's intention/motivations.

There are colleagues whose professional and personal identities I respect, but V's role as a manager in NLB is one which I cannot come to respect. The only professional takeaway I have is the recognition of office politics and trade-off - mind games to put it bluntly. Still, I respect her competency and her efficiency and I will acknowledge her choices and ruthless impartiality with grace. Slowly, I may come to lose my disappointment and anger with her as I continue to trust myself more. I see that I only have to forgive myself for demonising her and not her because unlike my relationship with Gwen, I did not treasure/trust her enough to expect anything from her as a manager. My expectations came about because of my friends' experiences and the social knowledge of what a traineeship would deliver. The tension with V only came in because I felt that she ought to do something about my learning, but I also recognise that she is not obliged to because she does not owe me anything from this traineeship. It is part of my unconscious bias (due to my lived experiences) to project any misforgivings I have to a person in power but thanks to sociology, I remember now that I can direct my energy and feelings to the larger structural systems in the civil service which have shaped our interaction in order to avoid turning this into a static situation that is personal. I choose to end our relationship as RO and employee, rather than mentor and student.

As V rightly puts it, a relationship should be helpful to each other. I am not looking at this as a win-win i.e. extrinsic motivation but as an intrinsic motivation to develop my character according to my values. I understand that her personal accountability towards me will inevitably be shaped by her professional responsibilities to the team, NLB and her career aspirations in the civil service. Care is a choice that no one can institute. Even for myself, I need to acquire and commit to the discipline to care for myself and others - hence my personal atelier: empathetic communication.

In all, V did not try to sabotage my learning and she has helped me to acquire knowledge in her own utilitarianistic/functional way. Most importantly, she listened and shared about her personal self, which is what I valued above all, as well as her honesty with the team. Not her recommendations, nor her testimony. I hope she continues to stay honest, albeit not strategically but authentically. So that she will become a better leader for PRL and the incoming new staff as well as the PwDs she will interact with in future.

And this is what I will do with any lingering expectation/feelings for Gwen too. We may not care for each other as friends now but I'll trust the process of self-discovery, seek out and commit to my atelier while practising compassionate mindfulness until one day, I know I can fully trust myself to acknowledge Gwen with purity of intentions and the joy of wishing her well, as long as I live. Until then, I will continue to struggle and face more pain/hurt but I will know how to respond better and stick to the values that I wish to embody.

My writings and reflections saved me. My friends saved me. My family and the unfairness in this world motivates/drives me. I may feel alone but I know where not to go to. No one is truly alone, both physically and mentally, when he/she/they understand that we are all a part of this world shaped by the circumstances not of their doing, much as we feel apart sometimes. Not all of us may become master of our own fates but we can certainly take hold of our agency and keep on trying to negotiate with the circumstances while being attuned to and regulating our emotions agilely. Just like love and pain, freedom and structural forces will always come together as flip sides of the same coin. That is the journey of life and it is also where meanings are co-constructed through diversity and inclusion.

This is my praxis and my way of healing.

I love you Hong Kai, aged 26 years old. To the future me, I hope when you read this, you see how much you have struggled with disappointment and how much you have grown by choosing love and hope because of the pain you went through. You will look back and remind yourself - you are enough because you have made it all the way here without falling into despair, regardless of the lost opportunities, failed relationships, and guilty self-indulgent choices. You are still tender and also naive in your idealism, though mindful of the practicalities. If all else seems lost/bleak, please always choose kindness and ruthless optimism for yourself and this world because I know you value the good in humans and you are strong enough to accept the suffering and pain that we cause to one another, be it intentionally or unintentionally. In short, never give up on the values you want to embody nor on living in the many worlds you inhabit. By choosing to live with kindness and gratitude, you already belong to a group - inclusive humanity. Your innocence will materialise in a different form each time you fail, confront and learn to become wiser and kinder.

I hope and trust you will continue to go on many adventures of your own making while striving for balance, groundedness and peace bravely, freely, simply, kindly, contentedly, sincerely and justly. Happiness will follow in many different ways (: <3 Wishing the same for every living being in this world because we are connected by our experiences.

#fear of the future #ruthless optimism #self-regulation #post mortem #SGtraineeship #self-love #acceptance #hope #disappointment #renewal #reconstructing narrative

[thistherapylife]

Do you have any advice for starting field placement? I start this August and am terrified I'll screw up or get too attached to my clients.

Hi anon! 

Yay! I looooove asks from therapists or from those trainings to do so. I wrote about this here so this is a more expanded answer but will be similar.  @othersideofthecouch answered this here. My answer isn’t going to be perfect and it’s coming from my experience so it’s just as flawed as everyone else. Also I know a lot of folks in therapy who aren’t therapists read this so a heads up - this may be okay for you but it may not. If it feels like too much, bounce out! Take care of you! {This is also like the world’s longest post so just fyi}

Take some breaths - all the shit you are going to be passing along regarding anxiety management, you are passing it on cause it works. So use it. Use the mindfulness and DBT techniques you know. Laugh with your peers, use your supervision and if you have it, use your field placement class if you are still in graduate school. Remember that you are the therapist and they are the client - when you the person is showing up with the room, it needs to be for a reason. I’ve seen therapists who have used sessions to spend the whole thing talking about themselves and it sucks. Remember that your clients don’t owe you trust - you have to earn that. OH and please for love of everything read this post by @cps-oteric if you are going to do any work with social worker “in the system.” You also may want to take a look at your social media accounts prior to starting.

The best advice I got in grad school was a professor (who continues to be one of my mentors and leads my consult group). They laid it out: “You guys are going to fuck up. Every. Single. One. Of. You. Will. Mess. Up. It’s going to happen. Because you are human and your clients are human and there is room for mistakes. Now, I’m not talking about the mistakes you have a choice over - the stuff you guys covered in Law and Ethics. That you should always be aware of and strive to prevent. But the accidental mistakes? The mistakes of inexperience? Those can be incredibly valuable for your client too. Part of our job is give people a different experience - to own up when we fuck up and do the repair work with the client.” 

Why was this the most helpful for me? Because it gave me the space to feel like it’s okay to make mistakes. It wasn’t okay to ignore those things or be intentionally fucked up but that I didn’t have to be perfect. I “fucked up” early in my first field placement - I had to call out unexpectedly. I did the right thing and called my supervisor, let them know and called the location I was supposed to be at that day. The site was supposed to let my client know and they didn’t. For the client, this is was major thing and we ended up doing a lot of repair work around but in owning up to the experiencing be shit for the client, even though that wasn’t my intention, was a huge deposit in the proverbial trust bank and was new experience for the client. I didn’t apologize for taking the time - I needed it full stop - but I did apologize that it wasn’t communicated effectively to this client and validated/normalized the feelings that came up. It’s also important not to let your anxiety/discomfort/fear etc. around messing up, compound the mistake - which is why I am pretty into therapist’s knowing their own shit. tldr; You are going to mess up but explore it with your supervisor, your mentors, your cohort. You won’t be a perfect therapy robot. 

As to the second fear - look at what you mean by attached. What’s the fear there for you? Often, it’s around not being able to keep your clinical hat on because you will be too close and/or that it will hurt when you leave. There will be probably clients it hurts to leave. Leaving my last job, I had a couple of clients - man. I still think about them and hope they are doing well. There are a couple of clients right now, who if I left my agency, it would hurt to leave. And I’m not talking about being devastated or anything would indicate an over attachment where you don’t keep that clinical hat on but when relationships end - it can be sad. Relationships have two sides, that connection develops no matter your modality - I can’t speak of all therapists here for sure. But all of the therapists I know personally and many of the therapists I’ve take courses from have experienced attachment in some way. Often, your clients will leave their fingerprints on you. Some in dust and some tattooed. Process your countertransference around this. Sometimes, in grad school, you get the idea that countertransference is all about the start of an ethical breach (or my Law and Ethics professor was just a royal asshole which is a distinct possibility). You will have feelings about your clients - positive, negative and in between - and sometimes - right at the beginning especially for me - I thought grownup therapists had all their shit together and they didn’t have feelings about this shit which like WHAT?! No. You get better at riding those waves that’s all. It’s more like “oh yup, this client’s mom is making me feel X” or “this client is bringing up frustration because of x and I know that and that’s just me. Gotta bring that to supervision/consult group/therapy”

It will depend on your placement and other factors. If you are working on a MRT or in a hospital, then you are will be affected by your clients, for sure, but your attachment may be different than it is for others with more long term placements. One of my really good friends from graduate school loves working on mobile response because she likes engaging with folks for a short period of time and has never had a desire to do the more long term work. I ended up being hired by my first placement so I had the opportunity to work with some clients for multiple years. And sometimes the length of time doesn’t matter. I saw a client for I think 2-3 times? Somewhere in there but no more than 4. But there was something about that client and those sessions that will stay with me forever. (I talked about this case in therapy when it was happening and I have a decent idea why). So your mileage will vary. 

Do your best to take care of yourself. Put your cases and clients, lovingly away at the end of the day. Set good boundaries with your agency and placement. Yes, you signed up to do a job but they don’t own you 24/7. Hang out with your friends, your family, your partner, your cat - whatever you love. Grab a coffee or a dinner with a friend or a cohort member. Have good boundaries with your friends. If you aren’t sober/working on sobriety, go to team happy hour and if you are, advocate to have a team activity that’s not a bar. Use your supervision. Reach out to mentors if you don’t think the placement is a good fit. Don’t forget to eat. Move your body. Watch TV or read a good book or garden or run or goof off on the internet but do something for you. SLEEP. If you are on meds, take them. If you can make it work (I couldn’t most of my traineeship and regret it), find a therapist. Tell ‘em you are starting your placement and some will dip low on the sliding scale cause we’ve been there. 

You made it to the end of the this post! Gold Star! This isn’t a master post for starting therapists but it’s a start. Check out the “keep yourself warm therapy posts,” “for therapists,” “new therapists,” “baby therapists” posts if you want more :) Best of luck anon. I’m rooting for you. Update me if you remember!

#ask a therapist #ask me anything #thistherapylife #this therapy life #new therapist #brand new therapists #new therapists #practicum #traineeship #field placement #asw #mft intern #self care #self compassion #self care for therapists #anxiety #countertransference #counter transference #counter transfer happens and it's okay as long as you manage it! #feelings management #keep yourself warm therapy posts #making mistakes #coworkers #building safety #building trust

[timelordinaustralia]

92 Statements

I was tagged by @king-belamy! Thank you! :)

RULES: You must answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people.

THE LAST:

1. Drink: water.

2. Phone call: work related.

3. Text message: work related.

4. Song you listened to: “Stand By Me” - Ki Theory (love this song, this version was on FTWD, but I have heard it by several artists, mostly the John Lennon version). 

5. Time you cried: IDK.

6. Dated someone twice: Nope.

7. Kissed someone and regretted it: Nope.

8. Been cheated on: I’d have to actually be in a relationship haha.

9. Lost someone special: I guess.

10. Been depressed: Probably.

11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: Nope. 

LIST 3 FAVOURITE COLOURS:

12.-14. black, blue, red.

IN THE LAST YEAR, HAVE YOU:

15. Made new friends: if the internet counts haha. made acquaintances irl I guess, but not friends. 

16. Fallen out of love: nope.

17. Laughed until you cried: probably. not for a bit anyways.

18. Found out someone was talking about you: that happens. people always talk about you behind your back whether negative or positive. best to ignore it, unless it is friends saying lies and bs. then they are not friends and you should cast them out. Luckily that last part isn’t relevant to me. 

19. Met someone who changed you: define changed me. you always can learn something from people, and change as a result. even if it is just a student teacher relationship or boss and worker relation shop etc. Depends on what you mean. Like hella changed you heart and soul, then no. But small changes, then yes I guess. But generally no people I have met have made me become a whole different person. 

20. Found out who your friends are: yep. only one left irl I reckon, and maybe a former friend from high school, we talk sometimes and hopefully can reconnect soon. Oh wait, maybe two others, but haven’t talked in ages, so idk. But apart from those four, I’ve just given up with the others as it is just one way, and they obviously don’t give that much of a shit about me to bother to talk to me.

21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: haha nope. 

GENERAL:

22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: all of them. well except one, as it’s someone i met on tumblr, but technically haven’t met in real life. Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! (maybe one day)

23. Do you have any pets: yes. my cat. she stunk up the house an hour ago. but i still love her. haha.

24. Do you want to change your name: nope.

25. What did you do for your last birthday: I don’t remember. I think I was doing this course thing, and then I tried taking the bus home, but stuff happened, was kind of cheesed off. I did get myself i doughnut I think. Was good. I can’t remember what I did when I got home, but my mood changed, and I was happy again. So whatever I did in the afternoon/evening must have been good. Maybe watched some tv IDK.

26. What time did you wake up: haha, not as early as yesterday or tomorrow as I got to sleep in a bit as I had to go to a meeting about a possible job/traineeship thing (which is good, so I can get out of volunteer stuff and finally have my first paid job thing). My Fitbit says 6:42am, but that wouldn’t be correct, that isn’t when I woke up, but when I checked my phone before I got up. Maybe 6:20amish. But around 6:40 yeah. 

27. What were you doing at midnight last night: According to my fitbit I fell asleep at 23:59pm so I might have been asleep if the fitbit is correct. So either sleeping or trying to sleep, and just being still so it records as sleeping haha.

28. Name something you can’t wait for: a job, or the xmas special for dr who, but I also don’t want the xmas special as I am not ready for Capaldi to go. But it sounds good. I love multi doctor stories. First Doctor and Twelfth Doctor. Can’t wait, but also DON;T GO!!! haha

29. When was the last time you saw your mom: IDK. 40 minutes ago maybe. She’s gone to bed.

31. What are you listening to right now: nothing rn. 

32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yes. Used to have a couple of “friends” named Tom.

33. Something that is getting on your nerves: idk. maybe my brother. he’s already used over half our internet again. All he does is stay home and play video games and try to use up our internet. he slowed it down last month. douche.

34. Most visited website: tumblr or google haha.

35.-37.

38. Hair colour: brown.

39. Long or short hair: short.

40. Do you have a crush on someone: no. I mean I get attracted to people, but like, not around them enough to develop crushes. 

41. What do you like about yourself: IDK. My amazing taste in music haha. That is so relevant to me though. Others probs hate some of the stuff I like.

42. Piercings: None.

43. Blood type: I have no idea tbh.

44. Nickname: Don’t really have one, people call me Andy. Or some my surname or a variation of it.

45. Relationship status: single af. really should probs try getting into the dating scene before I get too old. will do someday.

46. Zodiac: Gemini.

47. Pronouns: he/him.

48. Favourite TV show: Doctor Who. But I have loads. If it is whonviverse related, then it is defs a fav though. Torchwood would be my next choice obviously. I love it. I do like the first 2 series more than COE AND Miracle Day. But COE was still fantastic af. 

49. Tattoos: none.

50. Right or left handed: right handed, I use my left hand sometimes and people get confused. But I am right handed. My handwriting sucks, but sucks more in my left as I never learnt to use that hand for writing like I did my right.

51. Surgery: None.

52. Piercing: None.

53. Sport: Just PE stuff. And sports day stuff and all that. I used to be good at high jump. Apparently my teacher had never seen someone just run over the bar. Just scissor kick or back flip (whatever those techniques are called). One of my teachers jokingly asked if I had springs in my feet once. I remember the mat in primary school for the high jump was too small for me and I landed on my but on the other side on the grass haha. Memories. 

55. Vacation: Europe. I want to go on holiday so bad. Even if it is around Australia. But money...

MORE GENERAL:

57. Eating: Not eating aything atm. But chips. They are my weakness. 

58. Drinking: water. it’s healthy. 

59. I’m about to: watch some show before I go to bed early....

61. Waiting for: the world to change. Sorry music reference. 

62. Want: stay up late like I used to and watch my shows. But need to get up early....

63. Get married: If I find my soul mate haha. IDK. Depends. They might really be against marriage. So yeah. Then won’t. And if my partner is not female, but male, then technically atm can’t marry in Australia (yet).

64. Career: Wherever I end up IDK.

WHICH IS BETTER:

65. Hugs or kisses: hugs. someone hug me.

66. Lips or eyes: eyes.

67. Shorter or taller: either or. idk.

68. Older or younger: around my age. I need to spend time with more people around my age.

70. Nice arms or nice stomach: whatever.

72. Hook up or relationship: relationship.

73. Troublemaker or hesitant: idk.

HAVE YOU EVER:

74. Kissed a stranger: nope.

75. Drank hard liquor: probably.

76. Lost glasses/contact lenses: nope.

77. Turned someone down: sort of. 

78. Sex on the first date: I don’t think so, think I would like to get to know someone before. 

79. Broken someone’s heart: idk. 

80. Had your heart broken: nope. don’t think so.

81. Been arrested: not yet... haha. jokes. Haven’t been arrested. (too smart for that :P)

82. Cried when someone died: at a funeral I may have had a couple of tears.

83. Fallen for a friend: once. tried to ignore it. glad nothing ever happened they won’t worth it anyways.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

84. Yourself: I try.

85. Miracles: No.

86. Love at first sight: I wish.

87. Santa Claus: The basis of the myth, but the Santa Clause, no.

88. Kiss on the first date: Yeah.

89. Angels: Nope.

OTHER:

90. Current best friend’s name: N/A well I guess the best friend you have? So not my best friend, but the best friend I have atm? then Dylan. That’s irl though. 

91. Eye colour: Blue Grey

92. Favourite movie: Don’t ask. I have many. I want to say something classic. But let’s just go with 3 random movies I love. Shrek. The School of Rock. X-Men movies (sorry can’t pick, so the franchise).

Tagging: @hugwinchester, @beautifulopportunities, @tigresswraith, @saybiforme, and anyone else who wants to do it.

#timelordinaustralia #tag things #don;t have to do it #have come across this once before #probs tagged you already in past ones sorry

[gyrlversion]

JAN MOIR: My heart sinks just a little at this BBC Girl Power

For the first time, a flagship BBC politics programme will be fronted by three women. Emily Maitlis, Kirsty Wark and Emma Barnett are the all-female presenting team on BBC2’s Newsnight.

‘Boom. Let’s do this,’ Emma said when the news was announced.

This gave the impression the plucky threesome were girding their loinettes for some kind of battle, when the truth is the war has already been won.

In Beeb Central, the Time of Men — the old order of broadcasting patriarchy — is going, going, gone; replaced with furious alacrity by an illustrious regiment of women.

Leading men across all spheres, from showbiz to politics, are falling like kneecapped dominoes.

Emily Maitlis (pictured), Kirsty Wark and Emma Barnett are the all-female presenting team on BBC2’s Newsnight

There is a female Doctor Who and a toothsome female duo presenting Strictly Come Dancing, the Beeb’s most popular light entertainment show. Female DJs have replaced Chris Evans and Simon Mayo on Radio 2, while the golden but entitled Age of the Dimblebys is crumbling into dust.

BBC1’s Question Time David has been replaced by Fiona Bruce, while the successor to Radio 4’s Any Questions Jonathan has yet to be announced, but the smart money is on A (for Any) Woman — quite possibly Woman’s Hour’s Jane Garvey, or Fi Glover of the station’s The Listening Project.

From now until for ever, it seems every high-profile onscreen appointment will be given to a her, not a him, in this brave new broadcasting She-domain.

My heart should sing at this display of raw female power yet, instead, it sinks. Just a little — a dip, not a plunge. But the trajectory is definitely downwards.

It’s not that I object to the promotion of this trio of talented Newsnight women, each at the top of her game in myriad brilliant ways. 

No, it’s more that the BBC’s response to accusations of gender imbalance and its protracted gender pay-gap dispute has been so clumsy, so silly and, ironically, so devoid of fairness and equality.

For there is nothing positive about positive discrimination. All these well-meaning attempts to end discrimination simply end up with more discrimination.

Andrew Neil, by far the best political interviewer across the BBC network, will step down from his BBC1 This Week programme in July

At the BBC, a sometimes flawed meritocracy has been replaced by something far, far worse; blunderbuss gender politics in a workplace where white, middle-class males are treated like lepers.

Take Andrew Neil, by far the best political interviewer across the BBC network, who will step down from his BBC1 This Week programme in July — probably in exasperation at being continually shuffled off into a late-night ‘graveyard slot’.

BBC Director of News Fran Unsworth then cheerily said she would axe the show because ‘we couldn’t imagine it’ without Neil.

If she’s such a fan, why has the old bloodsucker been kept in his late-night coffin all these years?

Neil is still appearing in his lunchtime Politics Live show. Yesterday, he ticked off the voluble Remainer MP for Broxtowe, saying: ‘This is not the Anna Soubry Hour. I think you have had more than a fair say.’ Authoritative yet still polite, a first-class act in a second-class slot.

Elsewhere, a traineeship scheme for Radio 1’s Newsbeat is only to take black, Asian, mixed ethnicity or lower socio-economic applicants. 

This means applications from ambitious middle-class white girls — and particularly boys — would go in the bin. Fair enough, you might think. 

Perhaps it’s time for men to suffer and understand what it feels like to be marginalised, sidelined and overlooked just because of their sex.

Imagine how Emily Maitlis must have felt on discovering that fellow Newsnight presenter Evan Davis, a broadcaster not fit to clean her over-the-knee boots, was paid a third more for doing the same job.

Clearly there has been a gender pay imbalance at the BBC, just like the one in society. Maybe it is true that, for too long, power and equality were denied to women at the BBC. Yet certain kinds of privilege and bias still have their place.

Imagine how Emily Maitlis must have felt on discovering that fellow Newsnight presenter Evan Davis, a broadcaster not fit to clean her over-the-knee boots, was paid a third more for doing the same job

For Emily, Kirsty and Emma are a certain kind of BBC woman. Shiny of hair and blue of stocking, they are all good middle-class gels who went to posh schools (two of them fee-paying), then good universities.

Most importantly, I’ll wager they are all Left-leaning liberals with Guardianista sensibilities running through them. And if any of the trio isn’t a dyed-in-the-cashmere-wool Remainer, I’ll join the Brexit Betrayal March myself.

Which suggests BBC bosses are keen on diversification in all its forms, but only in areas where it suits them.

It would be impossible to imagine a Right-leaning, Brexit-supporting female broadcaster — Julia Hartley-Brewer, for example — even being considered for a Newsnight job.

And when I interviewed Sky TV’s Kay Burley recently, she said that as a working-class girl from Wigan who left school after her O-levels, she ‘didn’t have the right accent or education to work at the BBC’.

Have things changed? In every way, but also in no way whatsoever.

The broadcasting regulator Ofcom is reviewing the BBC’s news and current affairs output to ensure it remains relevant and trusted in the capricious, polarised and challenging world of multi-sourced news.

The new Newsnight team will give them much to ponder over. But in the meantime, let me stop you right there, as Emily would say, and ask: is one woman’s equality another man’s injustice?

Ade, you lazy lump, congratulations! EuroMillions winner deserves all the happiness his huge windfall will bring   

Middle-aged, overweight, sad owl face, lumbering dolt, usually Scottish. If it’s true that all lottery winners look like the same person and fit this particular profile, how come I haven’t won yet?

Despite ticking all the above boxes, yet again it’s not me, it’s him — Ade Goodchild, a singleton 58-year-old factory worker from Hereford.

No, Ade doesn’t hail from Scotland like most Lottery winners seem to. But in every other aspect, he seems to fit the stereotype perfectly.

He is corpulent, dazed, bears a slight resemblance to a giant thumb and, unusually, insists that his mega-win will change him. 

According to one report, EuroMillions winner Ade Goodchild never lifted a finger to do any chores in the house or work in the garden

Twice-married Ade scooped £71 million on the EuroMillions this week, a fantastic sum. His two ex-wives have already said they don’t want a share of his money. Good for them.

His first wife said it ‘couldn’t have happened to a nicer man’, while the second insisted that she is ‘happier without him’. Still, it is prospective wife No 3, whoever she may be, who will reap the lottery windfall.

Ade seems like the kind of lazy, useless husband any woman would be well rid of. According to one report, he never lifted a finger to do any chores in the house or work in the garden. Even after they were divorced, his second wife said she still had to go round and walk the dogs.

Yet Ade is self-aware enough to joke that he’s no more attractive now he’s a winner than he was before, but that his wallet is getting more than a few admiring glances.

He says he will look after members of his family and is going to spend the money on wine and women, then waste the rest.

Can you find it in your heart to wish him well? I do, I do, I do. 

Paul pogos to the bank: Court case reveals Clash punk rocker’s millions 

Back in the 1970s, the Clash were sexy revolutionaries whose punk music was thick with Left-wing ideology. 

The song White Riot urged alienated white youths to riot like their black counterparts; London Calling sent an apocalyptic message to strengthen the kids’ resolve before the onslaught of Thatcherism, boo.

Well, that was then. Now, Clash bassist Paul Simonon has won a £5 million legal fight with his second wife, who managed some of the band’s financial accounts. 

She wanted to change the terms of their original divorce settlement and sell her share of Clash royalties to an investment firm, but the judge ruled against her.

In the initial settlement, they each kept a London home, while sharing the cost of their sons’ education fees. The couple’s legal bills for the new hearing were more than £60,000.

‘You think it’s funny, turning rebellion into money,’ they once sang, the old hypocrites.

Next, you’ll be telling me The Who’s Roger Daltrey is a Tory-supporting Brexiteer.

A rare black-and-white print of The Scream, by Edvard Munch, will soon go on display at the British Museum.

How very prescient, for the painting seems to sum up the national mood over Brexit precisely. Head in hands, hair torn out, mouth open in a soundless yell of despair from the very marrow of one’s being.

Of course, debate still swirls around the famous image. Is Munch’s figure emitting a scream or listening to a scream? And is that scream real or psychological?

Who knows, but altogether now . . . aaargggh.

TV presenter Lorraine Kelly has won a big case against the taxman by arguing that she appears on TV not as herself, but as an entertainer

Awww, that’s fantastic! TV presenter Lorraine Kelly has won a big case against the taxman by arguing that she appears on TV not as herself, but as an entertainer portraying a super-cheery, empathetic wee character who doesn’t actually exist.

‘I am a McFake,’ is what she appears to be saying, but didn’t we know that anyway? Ms Kelly (above) told the tax tribunal she was an entertainer because she played ‘a version’ of herself on her ITV show. So the Lorraine Kelly who appears as Lorraine Kelly on Lorraine is not the real Lorraine Kelly but a theatrical construct.

She won her appeal against a £900,000 tax bill and £300,000 National Insurance demand. That’s the real drama. Take a bow, Lorraine, whoever you are.

‘When is the real Prince Harry coming?’ a schoolboy asked the Duke of Sussex during a visit to a London primary school.

Indeed! Over the past few months, as Harry has chuntered on about living the dream, shining the light, all the blades of grass and the raindrops and your ‘own true north’, it is a question I have often asked myself. Hullo clouds, hullo sky? Really, Harry?

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[scotianostra]

Happy 51st Birthday Gerard James Butler born 13 November 1969 in Paisley.

When he was 6 months old, his family relocated to Montreal, Canada, where his father tried a few business ventures but ultimately failed. A year and a half later, his parents divorced, and his mother moved Gerard and his two older siblings back to her hometown of Paisley.

After the move, Butler was raised by his mother, with no further contact with his father until he was 16 years old. (Gerard and his later father reconciled, and remained close until his father died of cancer when Butler was in his early 20s.) During his childhood, Butler was enthralled with movies and acting, and his mother took him to several auditions. He joined the Scottish Youth Theatre and in one of his first roles played a street urchin in its production of Oliver!, a role I have played myself, in a school production I was in Fagin's gang, but alas fame was not to come my way as it did for Gerard 

Despite his love for theater and film, Butler was anxious to please his family and believed that acting was not a realistic career choice for him. "I was a 16-year-old kid on the other side of the world from where they made movies," he later said. "Scottish actors never really got play. There was Sean Connery, and that was it." Though he claims he is "not the most academic of guys," Butler graduated near the top of his high school class and enrolled in the University of Glasgow, where he studied to become a lawyer and solicitor. 

During his time in university, Butler was also the president of the law society and graduated with honours. Like many other new graduates, Butler decided to take a year off to travel abroad, and his ventures soon landed him in Venice, California, where he indulged in the high life: "This is when things started to go a little crazy," he later said. "Something very compulsive and dark and lusty and pleasurable but damaging took over. It was suddenly knowing I could go out and have a life of traveling, craziness, adventure, partying, women, and all the other things that go with that—including a sense of abandonment."

After California, Butler returned to Scotland to begin a two-year traineeship at one of Edinburgh's top law firms,(while there he shared a flat with my pal Peter)but soon found that he despised the job more and more, and he started slacking off and letting his depression show. A week before he was due to finish his traineeship, he went to the Edinburgh Film Festival and saw a stage production of Trainspotting, an experience that crystallized his disappointment with the law and his yearning to be an actor: "The guy playing the lead role was phenomenal. It was such an incredible atmosphere. And I'm dying inside. This is the life I wanted to live. I can do this. I know I can do this. But it's past now. It's gone. I'm 25. I missed that opportunity. A week later, they fired me."

Humiliated but determined to finally pursue his dream of acting, Butler moved to London, England, the next day and worked odd jobs while trying to get his career off the ground. While working as a casting assistant for the play Coriolanus, he ran into the play's director, Steven Berkoff, in a coffee shop and begged for a chance to read for the lead role. He says of the experience: "I gave it everything. Afterward, the casting director came up to me almost in tears. She said, 'You're the best he saw in two days!' Walking home was probably the happiest moment of my life, when there's an energy in you that can't be put down. I'd gone from handing out pages to getting the lead role." After a successful run in Coriolanus, Butler landed the lead in the exact same stage rendition of Trainspotting that had inspired him to try acting again, and he was really on his way as an actor.

Making the transition from the stage to the screen, in 1997 Butler starred with Judi Dench and Billy Connolly in Mrs. Brown and also scored a small part in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. During the film's shooting, he was picnicking with his mother near a river and heard screaming from a boy who was in trouble. He immediately dove into the river and saved the youth from drowning, winning a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society as an example of his courage and caring.

After acting in a series of largely forgettable films, in 2003, Butler finally got his break with the role of the Phantom in Joel Schumacher's on-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Phantom of the Opera. It was a demanding role that required the actor to sing most of his lines. Even though Butler had been the lead singer of a rock band during his time in law school, he was incredibly nervous about auditioning for the part: "I'd had maybe four singing lessons when I went to sing 'Music of the Night' for Andrew Lloyd Webber, which was perhaps the most nerve-wracking experience I ever went through. But I got the role. 

Some people thought I did a great job, but others thought it was sacrilegious." Though Phantom did not hit blockbuster gold, it got Butler recognized in Hollywood, and four years later he landed the lead role, as King Leonidas, in 300, the testosterone-infused historical epic about a small legion of Spartan soldiers defeating the enormous Persian army. To look believable as a warrior king, Butler trained every day for four months in the most intense workout regimen of his life, giving him an incredible physique in time for the shoot: "You know that every bead of sweat falling off your head, every weight you've pumped—the history of that is all in your eyes," he said. "That was a great thing, to put on that cape and put on that helmet, and not have to think ...'I should have trained more.' Instead, I was standing there feeling like a lion."

Butler's role in 300 was a huge boost to his career profile. Since appearing in 300, the actor has starred in several romantic comedies such as P.S. I Love You with Hilary Swank and The Ugly Truth with Katherine Heigl, along with appearing on many "world's hottest men" lists. And his career isn't showing any signs of slowing down.

Despite all of his success, Gerard Butler still retains the breezy attitude of a guy who rolls with the punches and has a down-to-earth sense of humour. Looking back, he is still slightly stunned at the twists his life has taken and reflects on what could have been: "I wasn't going to be an actor. I was going to be a lawyer ... There was something else at work, something I didn't have control of. If I hadn't [messed] up that job, I wouldn't be sitting here right now. I might be a very mediocre lawyer in some small town in the middle of Scotland."

I half expected a tweet on last nights Football from Gerard, but he has been quiet since the beginning of the month when he tweeted.

Devastated to hear that we lost one of the true greats today. He was such an enormous inspiration to me, and a big part of the reason I’m even here. He gave a little Scottish boy inspiration and hope that there was a place for us in this business.

On the movie front, Butler fans who like his "...has Fallen" films, will be pleased to know that Mike Banning will be back with a fourth instalment Mike Banning called Night Has Fallen, no more details about that as yet, but if it attracts stars like Nick Nolte and Morgan Freeman, who co-starred in  Angel has Fallen, it is sure to be another hit.

#Scotland #scottish #actor #birthday

[parquetquarts]

okay so it’s hit the third month of my sound technician traineeship and i haven’t been blogging any of it but i feel like now is an adequate time to start blogging a lot of the feelings i currently about where i am in my life and what i want to do. 

i think that, firstly, i had no self esteem when i began this traineeship. i had just been fired from my job of three years without so much as a goodbye, i had broken up with someone who i really, really liked and i had moved into an abusive home (which i just moved out of into a nicer home - thank goodness) and i was struggling with mental illness more than i ever have had in my life.  i began this traineeship with the impression that this would be my dream. that all my unpaid internships, that every effort i went to to further myself despite the fact that i was constantly struggling with my mental health and what was going on around me, that suddenly assuming i would be happier because i was working in what supposedly was my “dream job” was obviously not the case. i subconsciously thought that everything could be handed to me on a platter, that because i had already done so much hard work that it would just be easy.  let me just tell you that i think the interview was the first hard hurdle - i think hundreds of people applied for this job, then in the interview there was six of us, and then finally, they chose me. I thought that it had been a mistake and maybe they regretted it but so far my experience has been mostly positive albeit stressful.  i don’t really know how to express how wrong i was in terms of absolutely everything that i expected, but all i can accurately say is that these have been the hardest three months of my life. i don’t think i’ve pushed myself, cried as much, thought about quitting as much as i have in this traineeship. i have had countless panic attacks, i’ve shut myself off from my friends, my family, the people that i love, scraped myself countless times, crushed my fingers, lifted things that are probably heavier than me, fought with the patriarchal society that dominates this industry on too many occasions and it’s only been three months!!! i feel like right now i’m sam worthington doing his avatar videologs but i could not even have prepared myself for hard this traineeship was. i could go on about that, but let me tell you some other things that are probably not as despairing as that. i now have on my resume that i have worked with all of my cities resident companies: something that i thought i would never be able to do. I also got to work for three days with one of my lifelong idols patti smith; and i can already die happy knowing that i had the opportunity to work on her show. 

i have gained so much more confidence in myself and my abilities already. i am not anxious about doing things anymore because i know how to do them and i don’t need to constantly ask for help and reinforcement because i know what to do. i can use a mixing desk without help, i can use power tools without help, i can read a tech rider, a sound plot, distinguish between microphones, know what ohm’s law is and how to do the equations without looking them up, know about phase and polarity, know how to do a bump in and bump out of a show, i can lift 17kg weights and put them on flybars by myself without crying. i can move two-storey high set pieces and so much other things but just let me tell you that living your dreams, while rewarding, is exceptionally difficult however somewhere, somehow i have been exceptionally blessed to be standing where i am today, with a grazed knee and tears streaming down my face because i thought that i couldn’t do it and i still think that it’s too hard and i should quit but let me just tell you that i am going to finish this if this is the last thing i can possibly do in my life. i’m not going to let the stupid demons consume me. just watch me succeed

[heritagelotterychanginglives]

Former tree surgeon Graeme branches out

Former tree surgeon Graeme McGrath switched from managing trees to volunteers, thanks to HLF-supported traineeship scheme with the National Trust.  

After leaving school Graeme, now 46, wasn’t sure what he wanted to do as a career and fell into various jobs from pub work and fire alarm installation to doing a stint as a security guard for Channel 4's Brookside and Hollyoaks. He quickly realised he needed a job he enjoyed rather than just something to pay the bills.

A keen gardener, he enrolled on an arboriculture course on Lord Derby’s estate, eventually completing a BSc in Arboriculture to become a self-employed tree surgeon. A few years later the economic downturn coupled with increased competition impacted his business: “When I first started I could work eight days a week; I was turning work away all the time. By the end of it we were lucky to get even three days’ work,” he remembers.

Wake-up call

But it was a more personal wake-up call just after his 40th birthday that set Graeme on to an altogether different career path: “The final straw for me was the diabetes,” he says. “I didn’t realise I had it at the time, but I found myself at the end of a branch one day literally shaking like a leaf. I couldn’t get down. I had a few days in hospital while they got me back under control and I realised then, from that point on, I shouldn’t really be playing with chainsaws.”

“The final straw for me was the diabetes. I didn’t realise I had it at the time, but I found myself at the end of a branch one day literally shaking like a leaf.”

Graeme had always thought the National Trust would be a good organisation to work for but when the Volunteer Management Traineeship – funded through HLF’s Skills for the Future programme - was advertised at nearby Speke Hall, it was his girlfriend who talked him into applying: “I thought she meant a ranger job or something like that, but then she said it was for a Volunteer Manager. I thought: ‘I’ve done plenty of volunteering, but I’ve never managed anyone. I’ve only ever managed trees.’”

Having already convinced himself he wouldn’t get the job, Graeme was delighted to be selected as one of only 17 trainees based at National Trust sites across the country. Some 18 months later and he graduated from the programme with an Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) Level 3 qualification in Volunteer Management.

Championing inclusion

Fuelled by his own experience growing up in a Liverpool council estate, Graeme has become a champion for inclusion in his new role: “In the late 1980s, aged 19, I moved to the south end of the city, Toxteth, which was so multicultural and vibrant, I knew it was the place to be,” he says.

“I thought: ‘I’ve done plenty of volunteering, but I’ve never managed anyone. I’ve only ever managed trees.’”

He loves the diversity of his home city and has worked hard to form sustainable partnerships with local housing associations, the NHS Social Inclusion Team and the Liverpool Guild of Students in a bid to make volunteering and Speke Hall more accessible to the communities on its doorstep. He says: “Working in partnership with existing service providers allows us to reach some excluded groups that we would not ordinarily be able to access alone.”

Based on the latest volunteer satisfaction surveys, Speke Hall is now among the National Trust’s top places to volunteer in the North. Regarding himself as “not much of a trumpet blower”, Graeme won’t admit that’s down to him, but believes having a dedicated person to manage and look after volunteers does make a difference: “My role is to deal with whatever issues the volunteers have. I think that’s probably why the survey results have gone up because the volunteers know there is a dedicated person there specifically for them and any queries they have. I’d like to think that because our volunteers are happy, and the staff are happy, then the visitors are happy too.”

Finding his feet

For Graeme the personal benefits have also been far reaching, and not just from a health point of view: “I’ve really enjoyed it. I feel like I’ve found my feet now and I’ve got the confidence to do well in the role. As a Volunteer Manager you can’t even imagine the things you will be doing until you are doing them. I never thought I would be dressed up in tights in a Tudor costume with a falcon on my arm.”

“I never thought I would be dressed up in tights in a Tudor costume with a falcon on my arm.”

From managing trees to people, one thing Graeme is adamant about is the fact he, and others like him, would be unable to make a move into the heritage sector if it wasn’t for paid traineeships like the one he attended: “I think it’s absolutely brilliant they are prepared to do this. By funding this and the accreditation, HLF and the National Lottery have definitely helped open up the heritage sector. There are so many people out there like me, who are passionate and should be given a chance, but without funding, without paid traineeships, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

And he adds: “I have been very fortunate to secure a full-time volunteer coordinator job at Speke Hall after completing the traineeship in November. I have a contract until the end of February 2018 which I hope will be renewed! I would like to stay with the National Trust as long as possible but feel, with the accredited training and experience, I would have a good chance of finding work with other volunteering organisations if need be.”

#HeritageLotteryFund #HLFsupported #ChangingLives #NationalLottery #gardening #NationalTrust #SpekeHall #volunteer #heritage