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the-and-sign-anon · 3 years

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On The Borderline

Pairing: Kaz Brekker x Squaller! reader (platonic), Inej Ghafa x Squaller! reader (platonic)

Word count: 2,421

Masterlist

Change was the only constant in life. You knew that as well as anyone. That didn’t mean you had to like it. You were fairly confident in saying you hated it, actually. You hated when your parents took you from Ravka to Novyi Zem. You hated when they got sick and died, leaving you alone at the age of eight. You hated learning to survive, working the fields for four long years until you could afford passage on a ship that sank in the middle of the True Sea.

The first change you ever welcomed was the band of pirates that pulled you from the driftwood you’d spent two days floating on and took you in as one of their own. The captain in particular had an unavoidable soft spot for kids with fire in their eyes, which you had an abundance of. On this unsavory ship, you discovered your Grisha nature and embraced the call to the winds. Another Squaller taught you all she knew, while others on board trained you in combat and general thievery.

It was completely by chance that you ended up in Ketterdam. Your crew’s ship, the Firebird, docked for three days in Fifth Harbor. You were new to the country and were instructed to stay with at least one of the crew at all times. The last thing anyone wanted was for their spitfire junior Squaller to go missing in a place like that. Which is, of course, exactly what happened.

It turned out your honorary big brother, nicknamed Flint, the most rambunctious Inferni you’d ever met, had made port in Ketterdam before and left on less than good terms. The two of you were cornered in the Barrel by half a dozen Dime Lions. Even with both of you staying on guard, you stood little chance of escaping the encounter. Flint did his best to protect you, but by the time the gang left, he was bleeding out and you were beginning to develop bruises over your entire body.

“Flint, please. Don’t go.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, little breeze. I don’t think I’ve got much say in it now.”

The loving nickname only made the tears in your eyes gather faster.

“I don’t know the way back. You have to lead us back home.”

“I’m sorry.”

The last two words he spoke would haunt you for years to come. You stayed huddled next to his body for hours as you tried to push away your tears. It was there that Kaz Brekker found you. He was thirteen and you looked no older than him, but far softer and innocent. He would have passed you by, everyone else in the Barrel had, but something about your quiet sniffles, the slightest breeze that swirled around you in your grief, caught his attention.

“Miss?”

You sniffled again and looked up with unspeakable pain in your eyes.

“Please don’t hurt me.”

Kaz made no move to approach you.

“What happened?”

Your grip on Flint’s cold hand tightened and it wasn’t hard for Kaz to put the pieces together. Despite his better judgement, despite everything he’d learned about fending for himself and stepping over others to get ahead, Kaz wanted to help you. Maybe it was because he saw some fragment of Kaz Rietveld in the pain so clearly written in your eyes. Maybe it was the way you seemed loath to touch anything but the stiffening fingers of your lost family.

“Follow me.”

“Why?”

“Because your other option is to sit here in this alley and freeze.”

You grudgingly got to your feet. Kaz took notice of the oversized shirt you wore, cinched around your waist with a thin piece of rope you’d found on the Firebird. Your pants were rolled up to your ankles and your hair was kept back with a stained red bandana. Kaz led the way to the Slat and you followed silently, looking back for the first few minutes at the body of your dearest friend.

“Where are we going?”

“The Slat.”

“What for?”

“To get you out of the cold. Do you always ask this many questions or have I done something to earn an especially irritating walk?”

You shut up after that and wondered about your crew. Surely they would be worried about you and Flint. Maybe Feodora would gather a few others and come looking for you. You could hardly imagine how they’d all react to the loss of Flint. And how would they find you, now that you’d followed this strange boy with gloves and a menacing glare?

When you reached the Slat, Kaz ushered you in and went to see Per Haskell. You were left standing near the door, arms wrapped tightly around you. A few of the Dregs gave you odd looks, but most ignored you entirely. You were grateful for that.

It took a bit of convincing, but Kaz secured you a place among the Dregs. With your Squaller training and willingness to finish fights, you endeared yourself to the rest of the gang rather quickly. If Kaz was Dirtyhands, the terrifying enforcer with legends to rival Pekka Rollins, then you were the headwind, strong willed and stubborn, but soft when you wanted to be. You and Kaz balanced each other and had a common goal; destroy the Dime Lions and their leader, brick by brick.

You passed years this way. Despite Kaz’s protests and thinly veiled worry for you, you tagged along on the Ice Court heist. Being on the open ocean again was equal parts terrifying and liberating. You could never forget your fear and pain when your ship sank, but the memory was tempered by the loving voices of your old crew. The freedom you’d had with that ragtag family of pirates felt mirrored by your new landbound family.

After the fall of Van Eck, the destruction of the Dime Lions, which you made sure of personally, you were left wondering what was next. You hoped to remain in Ketterdam with Kaz. He wouldn’t admit it, but he liked having you around and trusted your judgement. You’d grown so accustomed to working side by side that neither of you really considered that it might change.

And then Inej came to you with an offer. She wanted to hunt slavers and you supported that dream. She asked if you supported it enough to join her on her first voyage as she learned the ins and outs of sailing. With Kaz’s encouragement, you did so. The first few days went smoothly. You helped her memorize protocols and orders. You taught her as best you could the things that came in time on the sea. And then you came across another ship. Its familiar flag and the name emblazoned on the side brought your heart into your throat.

“Y/N, what is it?”

Inej studied the ship, but it was completely unfamiliar to her.

“Be careful.”

“Do you know that ship?”

You couldn’t respond. You knew the flag. You knew the paint, the figure perched in the crow’s nest, but the new name was what had you reeling. In bold white letters, the words Little Breeze stared back at you across the waves.

It took too long and no time at all for the two ships to approach each other. Neither drew weapons or readied cannons. When the Little Breeze came up beside you, a figure moved from the sails and caught the wind, drifting over to land on the deck in front of you and Inej.

“Feodora.”

For a few seconds, she looked surprised. If you weren’t so torn apart at the sight of her after all this time, you might have taken pride in it. You’d rarely managed to surprise her in your time together. Then recognition bloomed on her face.

“Y/N? Our little breeze…”

You nodded the slightest bit and she smiled like the sun after a storm. When she took a step closer, you tucked your hands in close and she stopped. Even when you were young, you’d curl in on yourself to keep your space.

“So… this is where you’ve been all this time?”

“Only recently.”

Inej was still a bit lost. She knew little about your life before arriving in Ketterdam. Kaz had never been willing to tell her or anyone else, having determined that it was your story to share as you saw fit. You snapped out of your thoughts and glanced over to your friend.

“Inej, this is Feodora. She’s the Squaller who taught me all that I know. My first and best teacher. Feodora, this is Inej Ghafa. She’s my best friend.”

You both knew that title truly belonged to Kaz, but she was more than happy to share it.

The two women nodded to each other and Feodora turned back to her ship. She made a few hand gestures and a cheer went up from the deck. With an encouraging look from Inej, you caught a breeze and set foot on the deck of the ship you’d believed you would never see again. Feodora stood beside you and the crew surrounded you both. You were bombarded with questions, which you spent hours trying to answer.

“Now, now. I think our little breeze has grown tired. Everyone, give her some space.”

Feodora leaned against the railing beside you. She could see how it all weighed on you.

“You renamed the ship.”

“We thought it only right. We all missed our sweet little breeze.”

“I… I’m sorry we lost him.”

“Flint spent a long time outrunning his worst choices. They were bound to catch up to him eventually. We all just wished we’d had someone else looking after you. We might not have lost you both then.”

You nodded softly. It had been in Flint’s nature to cause problems. To pick fights he couldn’t win. You’d all known it, but he’d been your partner anyway. He’d done his best to look after you.

“Did you ever find him?”

“The next morning. Sent off to the Reaper’s Barge. There was nothing else we could do. But we could never find you.”

“I met a boy. He helped me.”

“Brekker. We’ve heard of him.”

“He’s not so bad. People just don’t know him. Not really.”

“Well, if anyone can find a soft spot in someone like him, it’s you.”

You both smiled and chuckled.

“I guess that’s my real talent, huh?”

“Absolutely. Wars could be ended if only you could meet both sides and ask them kindly to stop.”

You looked up at the sweeping sails and swinging rigging. You’d missed this ship. These people.

“You’re welcome to join us again, you know.”

“Do you have the authority to say that?”

“I took over as captain when Inga retired, so yeah.”

You laughed and smiled at the thought of Inga relaxing in some little house on a beach somewhere without a care in the world.

“Congratulations. But I don’t know…”

“We won’t force you. I just want you to know it’s an option.”

She didn’t say it, but you could feel her hope. Feodora wanted her fiery little breeze back. She wanted to sail again with the fierce, startlingly innocent girl she’d pulled from a wreck all those years ago. But you weren’t that little girl anymore. The girl she’d known wasn’t jaded. She’d been hurt, but she was still bursting with hope. That girl had died in the alley in Ketterdam with Flint.

You knew you couldn’t go back. You wouldn’t. You’d come too far. So you pushed off the railing and pulled Feodora into a short hug. By the time she could respond, it was over and you were stepping back, starting to create the distance that would separate you forever from the world you’d been forced to leave.

“I’m working with the Dregs now; they’ve taken to calling me a headwind. If you make port in Ketterdam again, we aren’t hard to find.”

“Wherever the wind blows, little breeze.”

“Wherever it blows.”

You told Inej what you could about your afternoon aboard the Little Breeze. You could only share the whole story with Kaz, the only person who could understand it completely. So you tucked it away in the back of your mind while you kept teaching Inej. When your trip was over and you pulled back into Fifth Harbor, you were glad to be back on solid ground.

That same night, you curled up in a chair by the window in Kaz’s office. He sat on his bed, his gloves tucked away for the night. He listened intently as you recounted everything to him, interjecting only when he wanted to know more details. When you were finished, he pondered how to respond for a moment.

“I didn’t make the wrong choice, did I? I just… I don’t think I could go back to being their little breeze. No matter how much I love them, I can’t let go of all I’ve learned, of the people I’ve come to love here.”

“The only person who can determine if your choice was right is you. It’s your life, your path to follow. But because you’re asking me, I think you made the right call. The person you were when you made port here for the first time couldn’t have survived Ketterdam for long. That shadow is just that. A part of your past that you can’t take in your hands and carry with you.”

You gave him a lazy smile that made him glad for the night he’d found you and replied in a mock awed tone.

“You are awfully introspective, Mister Brekker. Maybe you should be a philosopher at the college.”

You both let out little snickers at the mere thought.

“Maybe I should save you the trouble of worrying and just push you out my window.”

“I can catch a breeze, come back up here, and slap you with your own gloves.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Neither would you.”

Of all the things in your life that changed, you cherished the relationship you had with Kaz. He’d become a part of you, of who you were and who you’d someday be. You couldn’t have imagined as a child what your life would hold. You never could have dreamed that you would sail the True Sea with pirates and Grisha, be part of an impossible heist, and find family wherever you went. Your father had always told you that home was where the heart was. You had determined that your home was where the wind carried you.

#my writing #kaz x reader #inej x reader #soc x reader #six of crows x reader #reader insert #female reader #platonic reader insert #grisha! reader #squaller! reader #soc x grisha! reader #haven writes

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excitedlysuffering · 4 years

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Neji Headcanons Collection

Requested from my wattpad account

For everyone who has requested, I’m slowly getting through them, but I’ve been busy and exhausted lately so it’s taking longer than I wanted it to, I’m sorry!

What He Looks For In An S/O~

• Neji is a pretty stoic, introverted guy, so he’d need someone who was more on the introverted side as well. However, he would love an S/O who could bring him out of his shell a little

• He definitely seems like someone who would prefer to date a fellow shinobi so he didn’t have to worry about them and since they most likely aren’t apart of the Hyuga clan, them being a ninja would help his clan be a little more approving

• He needs a PATIENT S/O

• Neji is new to relationships and someone who understands that and wouldn’t rush him would be ideal

• Although Naruto changed Neji for the best, he can still be a little insensitive sometimes, so a partner who has a thick skin is important

• Neji hates small talk with a passion, so he would look for someone who could hold intellectual conversations or who didn’t mind silence

• As an introvert, Neji is something of a homebody, but make no mistake; this boy is always training so you’d best be ready for rigorous training being a regular past time

• COMMUNICATION is key in a relationship with him

• As smart as Neji is, he does not have the aptitude or patience to deal with mixed signals, so just talk to him, please

Relationship With Neji Stuff~

• Neji isn’t clingy by any means, but you’re his girlfriend and he expects to see you often, and will easily become concerned or upset if his partner starts to seem distant

• Trust is the most important thing to him, if he’s dating you he clearly trusts you A LOT, and it will upset him if he notices you don’t trust him as much

• Your relationship will most likely be lowkey, in public at least, but that’s not because he’s ashamed, he’s just an incredibly private person

• Although Neji will enjoy sparring with you, he will also be up to other ideas for dates

• He loves taking walks with you, whether it’s after dark, before average people are awake, or in the middle of the day

• He’s the kind of person to have a certain amount of time set aside for you, whether you spend it out and about, or inside, he won’t interrupt that time unless it’s unavoidable

• He’s very good at picking up your moods and such things, but he doesn’t always know what to do about them, so he’ll help you in ways he knows how tea and training

• He has a great memory. Whether it’s certain dates, the timing of your week, or little things he’s noticed about you; you can trust he won’t easily forget it

• PDA embarrasses him, but he will allow hand-holding and the occasional cheek kiss

• He takes so much pride in his hair, he won’t allow you to touch it until way later in your relationship, but once he does… he’d rather die than admit, so sometimes he’ll wordless put his head in your lap and scowl until you take the hint

• Neji doesn’t just date around, he’s looking for something serious, so if he realizes that you’re not what he’s looking for in a wife he will immediately (and respectfully) end it

How To Lose/Annoy Him~

• Generally, Neji is a very forgiving person since he’s needed to be forgiven many times, but there are some things he won’t tolerate; cheating, slander, and genuine disrespect

• An S/O being rude to someone for no reason would turn him off

• He really can’t stand gossipers and busybodies so if you want to lose him, go off I guess

• Laziness is a major thing for him. He can understand being tired of at your limit, but he really can’t handle his S/O just lazing around for a long time

• Immaturity is a big no-no. Neji comes from a clan who only recognizes maturity and formalities so he would be uncomfortable with an overly childish S/O

• Selfishness or being chronically inconsiderate can and will make him angry

• He won’t even entertain someone with bad hygiene like he really doesn’t understand how someone could be okay with not being clean?

• Incessant complaining and whining will grate on his nerves like anything else

• Not respecting his boundaries, even if you don’t understand them, will have him running for the hills before you could even say ‘Byakugan’

Soft Neji Things~

• Neji isn’t one for constant affection, but once he realizes how much he enjoys the lotus position (you sit in his lap, facing him, legs around his waist) it’ll be a regular occurrence. Whether he’s reading or just savoring your presence you’d better get used to it

• He loves to read and sometimes if you ask beg he’ll read to you and he has the smoothest most ASMR voice ever??

• He actually enjoys shopping with you because he loves helping you choose (and he likes to spoil you)

• I strongly believe that Neji plays an instrument (piano, flute or violin) and sometimes he’ll play for you

• If he’s had a really bad nightmare or his family is stressing him out, don’t be surprised if he climbs in your bed at a random hour of the night

• Locked doors or windows have never stopped this boy, so you’d best expect him to just walk in like he owns the place

• Considerate to the max, he’s always thinking about you and doing small things for you

• You actually bring out a new side to him, he’s more playful and free around you

Random Neji Facts~

• Neji made it into a game without your knowledge to see how many times he can scare you by just waltzing into your house

• He’s incredibly competitive, so the second you mention being the best at something, even in jest, prepare to have to prove it in competition

• His love language is in between quality time and acts of service

• He doesn’t really expect gifts or anything, so if you really want to see him light up, get him a little ‘I’m thinking about you’ gift

• Neji likes to journal, he likes to write down little things about his day, or ideas or even quotes that he heard and liked

• He really enjoys domestic activities because he didn’t really think he’d be able to find anyone to do that with

• He loves receiving and writing letters, it’s intimate and it’s special and he’ll keep everyone you send him

• Neji has a love/hate relationship with his hair; he’s very proud of it, but he hates all the extra work that goes into taking care of it

• He always carries extra scrunchies/rubberbands on missions in case his hair gets loose

• He gets sunburns so easily, he’ll always have sunscreen during the hottest months

Little Things~

Favorite:

• Place to kiss- Your wrist pulse point; it’s intimate and it feels so natural for him, especially when he’s holding your hand

• Way to hug- He loves to place a hand on the back of your head and one on your back; he loves the feeling of being so close to you

• Things to do with you- He loves doing small things with you; reading, drinking tea, or cuddling

• Cuddle position- When he’s not busy, he loves to lay back on the couch with you on top

• Type of date- Lowkey ones, maybe a stroll through the park, or going to a nice little cafe/restaurant

This or That-

• He enjoys spring the most, he loves seeing all the new life after a long winter

• He’s a hardcore morning person, he lives to be productive and the day won’t wait for him to ‘get in the mood’

• He’s a good cook, but as I’ve mentioned, his love language is acts of service so you cooking for him means a lot to him every time

• Loves to read, either on his own or with you and his favorite genres are classics and nonfiction

Conflict Happenings~

• He has a very sharp tongue, but he really hates arguing with you and will try to avoid that for as long as possible

• However, if something needs to be addressed, he will not hesitate

• Would prefer to have a calm, rational, debate, so if either of you loses your cool, don’t be surprised if he just up and leaves

• However, if you say something that crosses the line… God/Pein/Jashin/Kami have mercy on you, this boy will go off

• After the fight is over, he’ll need space to calm down, but once he is, apologies and makeups are quick and sincere

• He refuses to fight over small insignificant things, he finds it beneath him

• He will listen, though, because if something is bothering you, that’s valid to him

• Don’t push him or test his limits, it’ll make him uneasy and feel like he can’t trust you, which can lead to your relationship self destructing

• After fights, whether big or small, he needs some good ol’ fashioned cuddles (you both do honestly)

• He’s a firm believer in not going to bed angry, so even if you’re still upset, he’ll do everything in his power to get rid of his own irritation

• It’s hard to hurt his feelings, but if you do he’s cut deeply, so watch what you say

Modern Neji~

• OMG this boy is one of those people that are always smartly dressed and no one can change my mind

• He’s not a teacher’s pet, per se, but he’s very polite and is always doing his best

• He’s one of those gym obsessed people, but very lowkey about it

• I could definitely see him into fencing and/or martial arts

• He’s the kind of person to only hang out with his closest friends because he feels most comfortable with them

• Most people would know he was from the esteemed Hyuga family, but no one would really process it because he’s not overly flashy and doesn’t really mention it

• He’s still pretty antisocial but after Naruto pretty much shoved his way into his life he started to open up

• Has so many fangirls and is always being asked on dates but is so confused, like why do these strangers always follow him? And who are these gifts from??

• I can really see a turf war between Neji’s fangirls and Sasuke’s fangirls over who’s better

• He most likely majors in business and finance to inherit the Hyuga company or at least have a fundamental role in it

• I think he’d like a roommate, especially if he lives off-campus

• I could see him living with someone like him so he’s not constantly overwhelmed by someone with Naruto’s personality

• Neji is always the model student and I could see him tutoring a few people (begrudgingly, of course)

• He’s always doing his best, but it might not seem like it? Neji is very good at retaining information, so the only time you’ll catch him really studying is if he knows he has trouble in that area

• His living space is meticulously clean and probably kinda bare

• He doesn’t really feel the need to decorate because it’s temporary, but if his roommate wants to he won’t care

• Neji is not a partier, but if his friends drag him to one he might stay for a while

• He’s such a lightweight and he might find himself drunk quicker than he thought possible

• Doesn’t have much of a hangover besides waking up disoriented and dizzy

• I love Neji honestly

Masterlist

#neji hyuga #neji #headcanon #naruto scenarios #naruto shippuden #collection #canon #modern #requested

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eretzyisrael · 5 years

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(via Israeli Sustainability Initiative To Pilot Village-In-A-Box With Its Own Water, Food, Energy Systems | Technology News)

No matter how hard we try, living a sustainable life is a constant uphill battle. We carry around metal straws and reusable bags to cut down on plastic consumption, turn off the water while brushing our teeth to conserve, try to buy organic produce to support sustainable agriculture. And yet, we all have a carbon footprint – some negative environmental impact that is just unavoidable.

Our planet’s resources – clean water, soil, clean air – are not infinite and Earth Overshoot Day, when humankind will have used up its allowance of resources for the year (according to calculations by the Global Footprint Network, a sustainability-focused think tank), was marked earlier this week. Five months early.

Israeli entrepreneurs Jonathan Haran and Victor Hajaj want to see drastic transformation in how we think about resources and consumption rates. And they’re aiming to effect this change on the societal and communal level.

“All the resources we need for living are part of the food-water-energy-nexus,” Haran tells NoCamels in a phone interview. “That’s all we need.”

Societies, he says, have just not understood this well enough yet, and so many municipalities, regions, and countries are managing the three realms independently of each other. “That’s inefficient because, on a macro level, food, water and energy really cannot be separated from each other. They are inseparably intertwined,” he explains.

The leapfrog in sustainability can therefore only come from an approach that sees this nexus as a whole, and enables innovation in all three sectors, he says.

Haran and Hajaj founded The Sustainable Group in 2017, an initiative that seeks to establish sustainable neighborhoods, with a focus on developing countries, while integrating technological systems “to provide for residents’ basic human needs without being dependent upon state infrastructures,” the group says. At a later stage, the systems may provide resources for the wider infrastructure network.

These technological systems include energy production systems (sun, steam, solar, hydrogen, turbines, wind, etc), food production systems (hydroponic greenhouses, aquaponics, permaculture and organics), water production and desalination systems, infrastructure and innovative sewage systems, computing systems that manage resources and report malfunctions, and construction and development systems, the group says.

Victor Hajaj and Jonathan Haran. Photo via Haran’s Facebook page.

Working with a team of top-notch scientists from different professional backgrounds, The Sustainable Group has developed two core products.

First is the “village in a box,” a complete, shippable construction set to build a fully integrated village with an infrastructure solution that supplies communities with housing, energy, food, and water.

“Especially in remote areas that have weak infrastructure, taking this decentralized approach can have a huge impact,” Haran tells NoCamels. By giving communities their own, independent water, energy and food supplies, residents can use renewable energy and tap into the synergy of systems to their full extent, growing food locally through vertical farming, putting the village’s waste to good use and recycling water, he says. It can be an incredibly efficient approach to resource management which directly translates into as much as a 35 percent decrease in costs of living, Haran adds.

“The questions we looked at were: What will the future of community and housing look like? What challenges will humanity face? Should our homes be flexible and smart and know how to work for us, to create economic and existential security for us? Yes! How do we do that?” Haran wrote in a Facebook post earlier this year.

The challenge, he wrote, is “how to deliver more infrastructure solutions that will keep up with the fast growth of population and know how to adapt to changes. Village-in-a-box is the future of communities. A community that is sustainable and resilient; productive and self-sufficient. It can be built anywhere on the globe,” he said.

And the model is not just for villages. After all, big population centers around the world are where most resources are squandered, and where fundamental change could have the greatest impact.

The Sustainable Group is offering its resource-distribution software as a separate service. The AI mechanism is designed to learn the behavior of both humans and the environment, to understand how everything works together, after which it will be able to tell the integrated food-water-energy-system how to use its current resources in the most sustainable way.

“With that, we can save 30 percent of wasted energy, which leads to an impressive cost reduction,” says Haran.

The software is still in development and “should be done by the end of the year,” Haran tells NoCamels. “This ‘software-only’ solution would be great for cities or for industry, basically for everyone who wants to apply real-time resource management.”

The Sustainable Group recently participated in the Chivas Venture Competition, a no-strings-attached $1 million contest first founded in 2014 for social entrepreneurs with big ideas for solving the world’s biggest social and environmental issues. The Israeli group made to the finals, but the top spot went to a project from Mexico that proposes to convert agricultural waste into a natural sugar substitute.

The Sustainable Group is now focused on a joint venture with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies to build a neighborhood based on its proposed model as a sort of proof-of-concept. Construction is set to begin next year in a kibbutz close to Mizpe Ramon. The village has been dubbed “Qayma” for now and registration for the first carbon-negative village in Israel is open.

Mitzpe Ramon. Israel. Deposit Photos

“That’s a great place to start,” explains Haran “since Mizpe Ramon is the most remote city in Israel. If it works here, in the middle of the desert, that’s great proof that it can work anywhere in the world.” And especially in developing countries where many people are at “the mercy of nature,” the group says. Humankind, they write, has already severely impacted natural systems through “air pollution, mining and as a result of the quick development of unsustainable energy based on fossil fuels, the destruction of the oceans of fish stocks, pollution of streams and deep aquifers, deforestation, harm to the food chain and natural ecology that plants and animals depend on.” This is especially felt in these countries .

Haran and Hajaj also want to show that living sustainably has nothing to do with being a “tree hugger,” as Haran emphasizes. “Sustainability is for everyone, and The Sustainable Group aims to give back control over resource consumption to the communities themselves. That is not just a selfless social endeavor, but also highly economical.”

The project is garnering interest in neighboring countries and communities in Israel, Haran says. Resource scarcity is especially pronounced in the Middle East. Haran tells NoCamels that The Sustainable Group is “already working with some Bedouin and Arab communities in Israel,” and would like to see more such cooperation in the future.

For now, the pilot project in Mizpe Ramon will be the next big step on the way to sustainable community living.

#Israel #Technology #ecology #sustainability #The Sustainability Group

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airquietworks · 5 years

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Journeys a World Away With You (IzuOcha)

Summary: As professional heroes, Deku and Uravity are tasked with lifting a world’s worth of burdens. With lives on the line, and the chaos the profession can bring, moments of respite are all too fleeting. But at the end of the day, the two can always find what they need in the other. Through sorrow, anger and fear, each of them is always there to lift the other up, whenever the world gets too heavy for one alone.

Lost in Tides

The aching weariness in Izuku’s limbs made his fumbling search for his keys difficult.

The challenge was minuscule - a minor irritant he would shrug off in another world, another lifetime. But with melancholy oozing from his heroic soul, his lungs gasping desperately against a torrent of unshed tears, the mild annoyance became a spike of fire, searing into his frantic fingertips.

After he uttered a string of mumbling frustrations, he finally was able to scrounge his keys out, before struggling to get the right key in the lock. The click was wondrous music to his ears, desperate as he was to throw himself into his home and find whatever respite he could after the worst mission of his career.

Izuku stepped through the threshold, hurriedly kicking off the big red boots, one of the most distinguished parts of his costume. His sock-clad feet ached as he let them out of the tight confines of his footwear. He hissed his feet made contact with the cold floor of the entranceway, the soreness punching upward through his legs, his soles adding onto the pile of his misery.

He directed his focus to try to get out of his costume, quickly clawing at the various clasps, wishing more than anything to get the tight suit off of him. He was so preoccupied with the suddenly momentous task that he did not notice the soft footfalls approach him, before a pair of warm arms wrapped around him and squeezed tight.

“Izuku…” Ochako whispered his name like a prayer, her voice instantly soothing him and halting his frustrated hands. “Thank goodness you’re okay.”

The tension trapped in his limbs slowly faded. He let himself go slack, before slowly wrapping his arms around her in-kind and pulling her closer into his chest.

Izuku took a deep, shuddering breath. He tried to think. What should he do? What could he possibly say right now? How could he get the right words out?

“I…I…” The words flashed through his mind. Am a failure. Am a sorry excuse for a hero. Love you. Am not All-Might. Want to climb into bed with you and forget about the world. Want to glue my eyes to the screen and be held by you as the horrors flash by. “Couldn’t save someone.”

Only at that moment, after holding it all in so long while wearing a courageous smile, did he finally let the rain fall.

“Shh, shh,” Ochako cooed, letting Izuku lean down and cry into her T-shirt clad shoulder. “You saved so many people today, Izuku. There was nothing you could have done for him.”

The rational, analytical side of his brain knew that to be true. The hostage situation at a central bank had been dicey, involving far too many villains and civilians. It had taken multiple heroes and a ton of his own acrobatics to get most people to safety. But despite his lightning speed, he could not prevent the crazed leader of the robbery, who had hidden away deep in the vault, from killing the elderly bank manager after getting spooked by the opening blows of the rescue operation.

Most every hero on the scene, with far more experience than he, called it an “unavoidable casualty.” They had no way of knowing about the extra hostage and were forced to act quickly when negotiations broke down.

Izuku had wracked his mind trying to think of a way it could have ended differently. He could not find a reasonable answer.

But none of that was a comfort to him. He should have found a better way to approach the situation. He should have had the ability to do something to change the outcome of what happened. His nagging, irrational desire to help people kept smashing about inside his mind.

“I should have…” Izuku began to say, before pausing to gulp trough his weeping. “I should have been able to do something.”

“We can’t think like that,” Ochako stated softly into his ears, running soothing fingers behind the back of his head. “All we can do is save who we can. And you did.”

Izuku was amazed at the bright, bubbly manner in which she spoke. As a rescue-specialist, she had become much more acquainted with death than he himself had in villain suppression. It was not long ago that he was in her shoes as the pillar of support. But here she was, bright and comforting, doing a much better job than he himself probably had.

She slowly took over the task of disrobing him of his costume, acting with far more precision than he could in his current state. After he was left with nothing but an undershirt and boxers, she grabbed his hand and gently tugged him towards the nearby couch in the living room of their shared apartment. He went along, loose and lost, unable to focus on his more immediate surroundings.

As she gently guided him to take a seat on the couch – the familiar softness feeling wonderous after the mission – she wrapped around him tightly again, putting her head on his shoulder and sinking them both deeper into the couch.

Ochako let him cry it out. He sobbed into the cushions,, pulling Ochako to him, desperate for the comfort of physical contact. She ran her hands down his arm in gentle strokes, her soft touch like a calming breeze down his skin.

As his sobs eventually devolved into sniffles, Ochako pulled out a nearby box of tissues and held it in front of him. He gratefully pulled out a few, blowing his nose and wiping his face. He could only imagine how much of a mess he looked right now, but Ochako maintained a gentle smile, her bright brown eyes gleaming beautifully in the low light of the living room.

“You can’t blame yourself,” Ochako said gently, breaking the spell of wordlessness that had entrapped them. “You’re incredible Izuku, but you can’t save everyone.”

“I know,” Izuku replied, sighing mournfully. “But I want to. I have to try.”

“And that’s what makes you you,” she noted, beaming up at him through her eyelashes. She paused then, reaching up to grab his cheek, stroking a thumb across his freckles. “But you can’t get lost in ‘what-ifs.’ And you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

“I know but….it’s not easy,” Izuku mumbled. As soon as his eye wandered, he felt a light tug on the side of his head, directing him to focus back on the wondrous woman in front of him.

“It never is,” she agreed. “But we can get through it together, right?”

She intertwined her other hand with his, her padded fingers pushing past his scarred ones. Her eyes sparkled and Izuku found himself overcome with a swell of affection for her. She truly was his oasis.

Izuku sighed and leaned his head forward, pressing her forehead into Uraraka’s. “You’re right. Thank you, Uraraka.”

“Don’t mention it,” she replied quickly, still smiling up at him, her pink cheeks just a tinge rosier.

“Um…I’d like to thank you properly, if that’s alright,” he muttered, feeling his own face get a little hot at the proximity.

Mercifully, she laughed. “Always so formal.”

“Hard habit to break,” he whispered back, before closing the distance between them and crashing his lips into hers.

The rest of the world seemed so much farther away.

Lost in Fire

Uravity: Deku’s newest sidekick?

The big, bold letters on the page mocked Ochako. She kept her face plastered to the table, averting her eyes from the horrendous headline, but it was no use. The image of Deku helping her out of some rubble, the two focused intently no one another, plastered in print for the world to see, would not leave her mind.

The picture also would not leave the tabloid newsstands. Or the hero talk-shows rampantly probing into their relationship. She had become the hero world’s number-one gossip topic.

She smacked her balled fist hard on the dining room table. She heard Deku jump from the nearby couch, where he idly read through a newspaper while letting her fume. She had been like this for a few days — periodically slamming her fist or letting out wordless exclamations of frustration — and she had been thankful for his unending patience.

It had all started innocently enough. When their respective agencies started conducting a few joint operations, the two had naturally gravitated toward each other, unleashing a few surprising combination moves on hapless villains. It was completely satisfying punching them out together and a lot of fun being able to hang out with him during mission downtimes.

But the reporters soon got a lot of footage of them together and let loose a constant barrage of questions.

“Why are you two working so closely together?”

“Are the rumours of you two being in a relationship true?”

“How much has Deku helped you with your hero training? You were classmates weren’t you?”

“Are you pregnant?”

She had barely resisted the urge to punch out the tabloid reporter on that particular question. She had done her best to cool the burning curiosities of the reporters, but it had been a fruitless effort. Ultimately, when a stealthy photographer caught them making out in an alleyway after a mission (the two could not help themselves), they had been forced to come clean about their romantic relationship.

It had been okay at first. The pronouncement had led to a surprisingly fast surge in both their popularities, as hero forums and shows went wild about the news. Confirmed professional hero couplings were not all that common given the safety hazards, let alone with two heroes in the top 30. The pair had even gotten a rather badass cover shot on Hero Weekly, another good boost to both their notoriety. It was eventually a good boost to their pocketbooks too, through new endorsements.

But the upsides of a public relationship felt short-lived. The paparazzi were relentless on the hottest couple in the hero world. Neither of them could conduct interviews without their relationship coming up, even when dealing with some rather serious missions.

While Deku was less impacted as his feats sent him on a meteoric rise through the hero rankings, she was less fortunate. Soon, the questions directed her way grew more barbed around her riding Deku’s coattails. Her own popularity sagged while Deku’s fame rose, as hero aficionados questioned whether their relationship was genuine or if she was just trying to latch a free ride onto a shooting star.

“Are you upset that Deku has now risen so far above you in the hero charts?”

“No, I’m happy for him,” she remembered replying with a bright face, barely containing the seething rage bubbling beneath her surface.

“Is there a reason why you have stopped working with him as much? Are you about to break up?!”

“…Our agencies have stopped their joint operations and we’re both very busy.” She had answered a variation on that question a dozen times. She barely stopped herself from informing the reporter of that fact.

“Are you at all intimidated that Fleur De Lis has joined Deku’s hero agency?”

“What kind of a question is that? Of course not.” She could not contain her anger at that one.

“Your quirk is great as rescue, but how do you use it in your love life?

She balled her fists and let the smile fall from her face. “I am not answering that.”

“What will happen to your career if you and Deku get married?”

“…...Next question.”

It had all infuriated to her to no end, and she had been short with reporters on more than a few occasions.

She supposed the headline in front of her was not all that surprising. With Deku now into 5th place on the hero charts, she could have figured her media treatment might get worse.

None of that stopped her from reaching her hands out and tearing the magazine in two.

“I am not a sidekick!”

“People know that. It’s just a bad tabloid Ochako,” Izuku stated logically, looking up towards her from his own newspaper.

“I am so sick of this kind of treatment!” she roared, palming her face in frustration.

“It’s absolutely unfair,” Izuku agreed, nodding in a well-rehearsed fashion. “We could send them a letter or post something to one of our fansites.”

“That hasn’t worked!” she shouted angrily, shaking her head. “Nothing does!”

Izuku sighed sadly, shuffling his paper away and getting up to join her at the dining table. He reached across the table and squeezed her hand gently, trying to soothe her fiery soul. She squeezed back, but it did little to placate her frustration.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…it’s just so annoying. I want people to see me for the hero I am, not the hero in your shadow.” She looked over and squeezed his hand again, trying to show it was not him she was mad at. Not really.

He had a contemplative look in his eyes and was scratching at his chin as if about to endeavour into a mumble storm.

“People do see you for the hero you are,” Izuku stated seriously, before regarding her with a small smile. “Remember the little girl you rescued from that collapsed building last week?”

“Yeah…” she murmured as the memory flashed through her mind. Lifting rubble away to clear a path through to the girl’s room had been a rather standard operation for her. But as the little girl hugged her desperately and gave her the most adorable teary-eyed smile (besides Eri’s, of course) the mission was warmly rewarding just the same.

“Well, I found her parents on Facebook,” Izuku said, pulling out his phone and swiping his through quickly across the screen. He held it up to her and she was pleasantly shocked to see the same little girl, beaming towards the camera, decked out in an Uravity T-shirt with an authentic Uravity helmet.

“Wow that…that’s pretty cute,” Ochako murmured, unable to stop the smile in her face at the image.

“And do you have any idea how much the internet exploded about the footage of you punching out those villains by the docks last month?”

Ochako could remember it well. A gang had set up in one of the warehouses there. She had been called in when the idiots had accidentally set off an explosion but had found herself having to punch a few of them out before she could get to clearing away debris.

She had been caught on film and the clip of her showing off her brawling prowess had gone viral. It was a bright spot in a sea of bad coverage.

“Yeah…I remember…” she murmured.

“You even got ‘UravityKicksButt” trending for a while,” Izuku noted, getting a wider smile out of her in response. That had been a fun little moment. “The public knows what an amazing hero you are. The tabloids know that too; they just want a way to stir up controversy to get views.”

“I guess…” Ochako replied, before pouting at the torn magazine in front of her. “Doesn’t make it any less frustrating though.”

“It doesn’t,” Izuku admitted. “And you’re well within reason to vent about it. But if you’d like, I could think of a few more enjoyable things to focus on.”

“Like what?” Ochako asked, eyebrows rising up in curiosity.

Izuku grinned at her, before disentangling his fingers from hers and stepping away to reach behind the couch. He returned with a large photo book with her branding, plopping it down in front of her.

“I know this has all been bothering you a lot so I...well…I’ve been putting a little something together,” Izuku said nervously, his cheeks reddening and his words getting away from him. “I know it might be a little much and I understand if it is but…I thought you might appreciate it.”

Curiosity seized her eager fingertips as she plopped open the hardcover of the book. Her eyes were greeted by a familiar clipping from her hometown newspaper. There was a picture of her looking a little awkward standing in a heroic pose for an unseen camera, smiling out with a grin towards the world.

Atop the image, a headline read “Local makes pro-hero debut.” She remembered the interview well, her first as a pro, done shortly after she had gotten out of school. Her parents had undoubtedly asked the newspaper to do a story, and it was a pretty small publication, but she was humbled by the coverage just the same.

Ochako turned the page and was met with more of her highlights. A picture of her next to Ryukyu, both of them above a pair of fallen thugs. A picture of her lifting tonnes of rubble out of a collapsed mine shaft with her quirk, with an accompanying newspaper story. A promotional photo of her posing with her first-ever action figure, taken shortly after she had hit the ceiling after seeing how many zeros were in the contract for her first merchandising deal.

Her entire career thus far was summarized within the pages of this album. Her eyes brightened as she saw pictures of her saving people, a few more images of fans emulating her on social media and even a few of the first hero forum posts raving about her feats.

“How…?” Ochako asked with a breathy whisper, fingers brushing across the laminated pages.

“I…well I had been saving it for a rainy day…” Izuku answered softly, but he smiled at the wonder etched in her face. “Being a nerd has its uses sometimes. Do you like it?”

It was like beams of light breaking through the storm clouds. The rain above her head dissipated under the weight of all the fond memories rushing to the surface. The people she had saved. The fans showering her with praise and appreciation. The help she was able to provide her parents when the dollars started to roll in.

She smiled as she turned a page and saw a copy of her first fan letter. The original was safely stowed away in a mementos box, back at her parents home. She had not questioned when Izuku had asked to examine it when she first received it, elated as she was, but now had her answer.

The world could attack her and her heroics over her relationship with Deku. But they could never take away all she had accomplished. Nor could they ever take her down low enough to match how high Deku could lift her.

She quickly leapt out of her chair to grab hold of him, causing him to yelp in surprise. Without missing a beat, she lifted him out of his chair with her quirk and spun him around, laughing and beaming up at him. Her own happiness was infectious unto him and she eagerly put him back down on the ground to kiss his smile.

“I love it!” Ochako shouted, grinning at the happy, blushing face of her lover. “I can’t believe you’ve been doing this.”

“I’m glad,” Deku replied, smiling and breathing a sigh of relief. “I was worried it might be a little much.”

“If you want to do cheesy things for me, you’ll know I’ll never stop you.” Somehow, Izuku always found ways to surprise her with his gestures of affection. “Thank you, Izuku. This was just what I needed.”

His smile was bright enough to wash away all of her fears. “You’re welcome.”

The rest of the world seemed so much farther away.

Lost in Blood

There was a desperation embedded into the way Deku and Uravity held one another.

The fear and adrenaline were only starting to fade as the two huddled together in a corner of an infirmary tent, out of the way from the prying eyes and frantic pace of the medical staff. The air was filled with the sound of rain pattering across the top of the tent. The softness in which they usually held one another was gone, replaced by a primal need for companionship and a possessiveness only a brush with death could bring.

There own physical injuries were not insignificant. Bandages dotted their flesh, covering various knicks and bruises. The cloth wrapped around Deku’s forehead, covering a nasty gash. Uravity’s left hand was wrapped up like an oven mitt, the rushed treatment of a stab through her palm, which still throbbed in pain. Neither was worse off than many of the other heroes and villains receiving medical attention, but they had not escaped unscathed.

Words flowed slowly between Uravity and Deku, their rush impeded by the ice of fear. They contented themselves with holding one another, pursuing warmth in one another, communicating in little touches that further affirmed their partner was safe. They idly watched the medical staff work, but their frenzied pace amounted to little more than background noise, as if they were watching a television show before dozing off for another night’s rest.

“That was reckless.”

It was Deku who broke the silence, slightly more open to taking the first step to talk about his feelings. The back of his analytical mind had already gone into overdrive to process everything that had transpired in the mission but had eventually run up against the blocks his emotions were putting up. He knew he would have to push through and talk about it, no matter how painful it would be.

“I had to do it, Deku.”

Uravity knew exactly what he was referring to. The moment where she had leapt in to block the attack of a stealthy blade-producing villain, who had attempted to flank the overzealous Deku and land a solid strike. As she pushed him out of the way and took a defensive stance, the villain had impaled her hand, sending her reeling. He had come at her again, aiming right for her heart, but she had managed to dodge and quickly sent him flying with a counter-punch.

The exchange had sent Deku into a reckless flurry, as he tried to quickly resolve the hideout raid before any other hero could get hurt. She watched as he flirted with far too many close calls as he blazed through the swarm of villains, weaving through them with an incredible speed she could not hope to match. Meanwhile, she had returned to her own duties – pulling heroes and villains alike out of the melee so that nobody got hurt more than strictly necessary (although that did not prevent her from getting her fair share of knockouts too).

Deku leaned his head into her hair, sighing deeply, breathing her in.

“That was a…a scary moment.” His statement hung in the air, looming over them like a shadow.

It was not a matter of faith, so much as love. No matter how assured Deku was of Uravity’s capabilities, he knew a part of him would always panic when she was thrust into the middle of danger.

Mercifully, they had not been put into this risky a mission – at least whilst working together - since they had gone professional. Seriously threatening missions were few and far between and they had worked separately for most of their relatively short careers. They had both been confident going into the mission, but it had proven to be a shock to both their systems.

Both Deku and Uravity knew they might not have been so shocked had they been operating without the other. But seeing their partners dance with death was something else entirely.

“I guess I should be a little used to it by now,” Uravity said softly, managing to crack a smile at the dark humour, idly brushing a hand over Deku’s costume. She was well acquainted with the scars hidden underneath the cloth, the mementos of dozens of life-threatening, earth-shattering fights Deku had already been a part of.

There was always fear at those moments, but also a degree of admiration at his unrelenting determination. In those encounters, she always knew it would be fruitless to try and stop him, even if stopping might have been the more rational thing to do. So she always settled on supporting him best she could, whether it be with a timely splint or a timely fist.

That certainly had not changed tonight. She knew she would not sit idly by if he was put into too much danger. But the icy claw of terror that had momentarily squeezed her heart was beyond what she had once experienced. The chains they had forged, binding them together, had become something restrictive, choking her in the direst of circumstances.

“So…”

“I-“

The two tried to speak at the same time, looking sidelong at one another. A matching smile emerged on both their faces, penetrating through the dark clouds swirling above their heads.

“You first,” Izuku offered, leaning a little farther back to regard her properly.

“I guess I was wondering….whether you were okay with what I did,” Ochako’s eyes darted away from him, one of her hands tensing in his palm holding it. “You looked so upset afterwards…I didn’t really know what to say…”

Izuku blinked at the memory. He tugged a little at his costume collar as he recalled those frantic, desperate moments where he had pulled her to him once the battle was won. She had been reciprocal, but the desperate energy was a little tilted in his direction.

“Sorry about that, Ochako. I just kind of…lost it a little,” Izuku answered honestly. “But you did not do anything wrong. Your actions made sense given the circumstances and I…I can’t fault you for wanting to help me, all things considered. I was being reckless and I thought I had it but that blade quirk was cutting things close and it was such a close thing and you saved me and…”

“Mumble storm,” Ochako noted with a pinch of mirth in his voice, stopping Izuku in his rambling tracks. He smiled a little sheepishly at her, before continuing.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I know that. But something…somehow, seeing you getting attacked like that I just…everything seemed so slow. It was like my heart stopped. I just…it’s hard to explain. Am I making sense?”

“Mmm. Yeah, I think I get it,” Ochako hummed and nodded in understanding. “I think I felt something similar seeing you back there. This is…it’s scary, Izuku.”

Their faces fell as they gazed at one another, the remnants of those fears ghosting a grip over their hearts once again. Ochako pushed herself back deep into Izuku’s embrace, closing her eyes and just trying to lose herself In his presence. In the fact that he was alive. He was fine. He didn’t have any new scars to show for the close call.

“It’s going to be different now,” Izuku murmured, his analytical mind hard at work trying to process all these conflicting emotions. “All Might warned me about this. I guess that’s what it means to be in love with a hero.”

Ochako did not respond to the statement, recognizing the powerful truth behind those words. The two were silent for a moment and she contented herself with listening to the steady heartbeat in his chest.

The heart she so desperately wanted to protect.

“I wish I could keep up with you,” she said, sighing, as she thought back to the incredible speed in which he felled villains.

Izuku did not let the statement hang in the air for long, pulling Ochako at arm's length and looking intensely into her eyes.

“You’ve always kept up with me.” He did not want to see her put herself down. She was one of the greatest heroes he knew and he would not accept her reduce herself in a comparison to him. “You saved me today, and it’s not the first time.”

“But those have always been after you’ve already been speeding to save the day,” Ochako noted, frowning at the thought of it. “It’s hard for me to fight by your side the whole way through, Deku.”

“You did a pretty good job of it today,” Izuku said, smiling at her. Despite the gloom enrapturing them, he found himself desperate to get Ochako to find the bright side of things. He would always fight to put a smile on her face. “You pulled me out of the fire again.”

Ochako squeezed Izuku’s hand with her uninjured one and breathed deeply, her heart warming at his kindness. She knew he was giving her too much credit, but appreciated his words nonetheless.

“Ochako…” Izuku spoke with a little more softness. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, plunging into a line he feared would upset her more. “I’m sorry If I worried you. But you know I can’t really stop what I’m doing.”

“I know. And I never would really try to stop you. It’s who you are,” Ochako smiled, her sombre voice not quite matching her expression. “And as long as you are that way, I know I’m going to have to find a way to rescue you.”

“You did more than that, Ochako. I saw some of the blows you were throwing,” Izuku teased, delighted when the line managed to make her smile a little bit wider. “But there’s nobody I would want watching my back more than you.”

She nodded, the grin not leaving her face, as she disentangled her fingers from his and held out her fist between them.

“We’ll figure this out,” Ochako declared, managing to kindle a spark of fire in her voice. If Izuku could summon the courage and put on a brave face, she could do the same in kind. “We’re heroes. No matter what comes our way, we can punch through it together, right?”

Izuku stared at her for a moment, seeing her burning brightly as a wildfire, his heart picking up pace. She was dishevelled, battered, and sweaty, but it was these moments he found her the most wonderful.

“Right!” Deku declared, pushing his fist into hers. The fears of the outside world might claw fervently at them, but together, they could push their way through it all.

For a brief moment, the rest of the world seemed so much farther away.

AN: Written for IzuOcha Week Day 7: Tranquility. Hope you enjoyed it! And well done to all the talented creators taking part in this occasion! Thanks to all the people organizing too! ^_^ This is actually a piece for an old project that didn’t pan out. I never got around to posting it, but figured IzuOcha week was a good opportunity. I rather like it. Sorry I couldn’t bust more stuff out for this week. I wasn’t quite as inspired and I wanted to focus what inspiration I had on a small amount of progress on my next big project you will maybe see someday hopefully. Please like and reblog if you enjoyed! =)

#IzuOcha #IzuOchaWeek #IzuOchaWeek2018 #my hero academia #shipping #Fanfiction #midoriya izuku #uraraka ochako #Romance #Character study #hero life would be tough but their love is tougher #I hope you enjoyed this cheese #day 7 #fluff #angst #one-shot

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thezodiaczone · 6 years

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July Forecast for Gemini

Which end is up? Normally, you’re happy to let that question go unanswered, Gemini. A little bit of pandemonium keeps life interesting for you! But as the Sun makes its annual visit to Cancer and your second house of work, money and daily routines until July 22, you’re ready for some post-birthday stability. Grab it while you can this month. Amidst your attempts to be practical and grounded, the stars serve up two topsy-turvy eclipses AND your ruling planet Mercury turns retrograde. The only constant seems to be change! Our advice: Roll with it. Now’s the time to root into your sign’s “mutable” nature, which helps you stay flexible and adaptable.

So, what’s going on upstairs exactly? For starters, July kicks off eclipse season, with two of this summer’s three scene-shifting lunar events sparking radical change. Eclipses sweep in four to six times a year and shakes up the status quo, removing anything that’s past its expiration date and flinging open the doors for a fresh start.

The first, a partial solar (new moon) eclipse, lands in Cancer on July 12, activating your second house of finances and security. Is it time for a new source of income, a different working style or some affirming habits? Solar eclipses mark bold beginnings and can set us on a whole new (and unexpected) path. Efforts you undertake now could really pay off in the coming six months.

This is the inaugural eclipse in a series that will fall on the Cancer/Capricorn axis between now and July 2020, initiating a wave of changes around the way you spend, save, invest and share both money and power. If you’re living check to check, prepare for an eye-opening (and unavoidable) education on how to make your money work harder for you. The second house also rules self-worth, and you could get a crash course in confidence, learning how to advocate for what you truly deserve.

This is the only eclipse from this series in 2018—a “sneak preview” of the changes that will take flight in 2019—but it will still be an intense start! On July 12, the Sun and new moon are exactly opposite power-tripping Pluto in Capricorn and your eighth house of joint ventures, shared finances and intimacy. The annual Sun-Pluto opposition is a time when domineering behaviors can manifest, along with abuses of authority. Pluto rules the unconscious, and this transit can draw out the “shadow” sides of people driven by fear and scarcity. Watch your own jealous or undercutting thoughts, which can be intensified by an eclipse. Fights around sex, money or the division of power could erupt, and with these two ego-driven planets at loggerheads, it will take extra effort not to sink into low-vibe behavior.

Some of this angst is spurred by magnifier Jupiter, which will end a four-month retrograde two days before the eclipse, on July 10. Jupiter will go direct (forward) in Scorpio and your sixth house of health, fitness and organization. That will be a boon for your wellbeing but could also bring up dormant control issues and anxiety, especially around money.

Keep calm and Gemini on: Jupiter will remain in Scorpio until November 8, giving you ample time to get back on the wellness wagon and straighten out your finances. Start with an epic decluttering and purge stuff that’s been taking up psychic and physical space. With stressful Mars now retrograde until August 27—and in Aquarius and your ninth house of excess until August 12—there IS such a thing as “too much,” even for you. Prioritize. Streamline. Focus. If you tend to the handful of projects that are most aligned with your values, you’ll get the right return on investment. The sixth house rules helpful people, so refresh Team Gemini with some savvy service providers and delegate duties to them.

On July 22, the Sun swings into Leo and your social third house, helping you get out of your head and talk things through. With el Sol in your communication and kindred-spirits zone, synergies can spark up quickly. But don’t rush to sign someone on as a partner too quickly! From July 26 until August 19, expressive Mercury will be retrograde in Leo, scrambling signals and causing chaos with technology, transportation and interpersonal affairs.

Explore small (and low-risk) joint undertakings where you can test your chemistry rather than incorporating an LLC together. Hold off on inking contracts if possible, and if you need to have a “difficult” conversation, make sure you’re prepared to listen as much as you talk—if not more. Since the third house and Mercury both rule anything with wheels (and electronics), think twice before getting a new car, bike, scooter, laptop, phone or gadget. Research now, then make an informed purchase after August 19.

Mercury will join Mars, Saturn, Neptune AND Pluto in powered-down retrograde as July ends, and it may feel like a lot of things are stuck in a holding pattern. Once again: roll with it. Retrogrades are ideal times to revisit the past, reunite, reflect and redo. Surely you have some unfinished business or back-burnered projects that could use your attention while you wait?

Retrogrades aside, there’s one day that things WILL happen, come hell or high water. That’s June 27, when the Aquarius full moon total lunar eclipse commands the cosmos, sweeping through to radically move the needle. This game changer of a full moon will blast into your outspoken and expansive ninth house, prompting you to completely ignore every Mercury retrograde “rule” and address an issue head-on.

The ninth house also rules travel, study, entrepreneurship and long-distance connections. Out of the blue, you could hop on a plane for a big opportunity, see your work published or get an exciting indie business opportunity. A person or situation that’s no longer aligned with your vibe could be “eclipsed” out of your life. This eclipse will conjunct fiery Mars, which is retrograde in Aquarius for the next couple weeks. If you’ve been biting your tongue, a LOT could come out in a heated way. Watch that temper—and that famous Gemini sarcasm!

This is the final Aquarius eclipse in a series that’s been touching down on the Leo/Aquarius axis since February 2017, shaking up your mindset, beliefs and communication style. Reflect on the past couple years: You could now live in a different neighborhood, acquire an entirely new set of friends or have a platform to share your ideas. Look back to the prior two Aquarius eclipses on August 7, 2017, and February 15, 2018, for clues of what might fully come together now. And if you DO have something to get off your chest, remember all that you’ve learned from these eclipses—make your point in a kind way that brings people together rather than dividing and alienating them.

Love & Romance

With relentless Mars off-course in Aquarius and your excessive ninth house all month (June 26 to August 27), you might be feeling overwhelmed or like things have moved too fast and now you need to pull back. Some Geminis may contract a case of “grass is greener” syndrome, having gotten a bit too hopeful about someone only to discover that their “adorable quirks” are possible deal breakers. Action planet Mars spinning retrograde can help you go back a few squares and reassess things before making any major decisions.

Whether with a new love interest or your longtime sweetie, you’ll be able to talk things through while diplomatic Venus is in Leo and your third house of communication until July 9. But she’s opposing Mars in your larger-than-life ninth house, so watch out for overthinking or forcing conversations before you’re both ready.

On July 9, Venus darts into Virgo and your nurturing fourth house until August 6. Take time to relax at home, feather your nest, focus on self-care and strengthen bonds of unconditional love with family and intimate friends. If you’re in a new relationship, this is a perfect time to meet each other’s parents or siblings or to exchange keys. Longtime couples will enjoy this homey vibe and hosting some lovely gatherings or revisiting a nostalgic spot. Bring on the misty-eyed moments!

Venus will form flowing trines to innovative Uranus in your twelfth house of fantasy (July 11), then structured Saturn (July 14) and transformational Pluto (on July 27), which are both in Capricorn and your erotic, soulful eighth house. These could be powerful moments for pulling out all the romantic stops and having some unforgettable encounters in the boudoir, however many shades of gray you fancy!

Key Dates

July 11: Venus-Uranus Trine You could drop your emotional guard spontaneously, perhaps even sharing a deep, dark secret. Seeking love? You might meet a fantasy-sparking soulmate type out of the blue.

Money & Career

Easy does it, Gemini. You’re percolating with big ideas, but it might be too soon to unleash them fully on the public. Mars, the planet of drive and ambition, is retrograde in Aquarius and your expansive ninth house until August 12 (the retrograde lasts until August 27). Rushing into anything is not advised, especially ventures that involve the media, education or a startup business. In your eagerness to “make this happen!”, you may have overlooked a few small but crucial details. Don’t worry about upsetting anyone, Gemini—if a deal’s not working in your favor, it’s okay to hit pause or renegotiate.

Besides, the month’s two eclipses may bring opportunities you couldn’t have imagined. On July 12, a partial solar eclipse in Cancer activates your second house of work and money. An intriguing job offer or a new client could appear out of the blue. You might have an epiphany about the kind of work that best suits your soul, and home in on that. Take methodical steps to build that over the next six months, and you’ll have some awesome progress to celebrate in early 2019 (or sooner).

A total lunar eclipse in Aquarius arrives on July 27, electrifying your visionary ninth house. You’ll be glad you didn’t rush into anything because this could take your passion projects in a whole new direction. This powerful surge of purpose and optimism can bring one of your world-changing ideas to a global audience or push you to leap far outside your comfort zone. (Since this eclipse will sync up with Mars retrograde, be sure to pack a parachute for backup.) An opportunity to travel, teach or publish your work could appear out of the blue. Look back to mid-February, when an Aquarius solar eclipse planted the seeds for what will come to a bold turning point now. Stay open to opportunities and input from afar—you never know where it will come from.

Key Dates

July 5: Mercury-Mars Opposition You can get sucked into some petty (or significant) squabbles over expenses or the division of time and resources. It might not be possible to precisely balance everything, but find a way to make it work for everyone on a grander scale and people will be happy.

Love Days: 18, 23 Money Days: 30, 12 Luck Days: 10, 27 Off Days: 8, 19, 25

#gemini #monthly forecast #horoscope #horoscopes #astrology #gemini monthly

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streetlight0 · 6 years

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human life is terrifying, miserable nonsense

It’s kind of absurd to expect it to get easier. You get better at dealing with it, but it doesn’t get easier. It gets harder. It’s a constant game of catch up. And it just keeps going faster and faster and faster, and it doesn’t stop until all of a sudden you’re done. That’s it. You’re dead. That was your life.

You can try to hold onto the good parts, but time is the one force that really is unstoppable. You can’t fight it. They’ll all be stripped from you sooner or later. The best you can do is appreciate them while they’re around.

Really all of this is just absurd. There’s no use trying to find objective meaning in it. There is none to be found. The best you can do is synthesize a meaning for yourself and act in accordance with it. But that’s really quite arbitrary, isn’t it? But if you come up with nothing and resign yourself to meaninglessness, then what have you done with your life? It’s a hard problem to answer, but you need to come up with something, and it’s okay if your answer changes. Just do something. Although inherently there’s not really any point, that doesn’t change the fact that we all exist and have almost boundless possibilities before us and a limited amount of time to choose among them.

Presented with a set of possible choices too big to explore beyond even the tiniest subset, a painfully finite amount of time to blindly forge a path through that set, and no instruction as to how to even begin to go about doing that, it’s tempting to simply reject the problem altogether and end your life of your own volition. Lord knows how much I’ve been tempted by that answer. But I don’t actually think that’s any sort of answer.

The fact of the matter is that our existence, while miserable, nonsensical, and terrifyingly ephemeral, is a sort of manifest defiance to our universe’s natural progression toward homogeneous equilibrium. I believe that to be among the most miraculous truths of human existence. Eventually the universe will win out, but that’s no reason to surrender yourself to it before your time. You are a conscious manifestation of matter with only this one opportunity to be anything at all, to observe the strangeness of there being a universe capable of producing you, and to contemplate the most mysterious facets of our reality. And you only have so much time to do it, so you might as well use that weird little brain of yours before it inevitably goes kaput.

The universe seems to be a self-contained structure, with nothing in particular coming before it and setting it into motion. Or, if there is some sort of external structure which gives rise to it, we have no reason to believe we’ll ever have access to that. Whether you call that God or a multiverse of some sort or whatever you may, the only thing we actually are a part of or will ever be a part of is this universe, born of nothing and marching without hesitation to an inevitable oblivion. Most of what is currently within our cosmic horizon will one day be far beyond it, torn from us by the accelerating expansion of space itself caused by dark energy. There is no reason to believe that this universe was made for us, or that we have any sort of special status in the cosmos. We are merely a side effect of it, an accident of nature struggling to find our place in a universe where we don’t actually have any place to begin with. We have existed for a ridiculously minuscule length of time relative to the age of the universe, and the universe will exist long after we’re gone. And still, despite the depressingly nihilistic perspective which seems to be unavoidable if you take an honest look at our current understanding of nature, we still do exist. We think. We learn. We see. We hear. We feel. We understand. We build on our own understanding, and we revise our misunderstandings. We progress. We toil endlessly against the harsh, uncaring universe which spawned us. And we have only gotten to the place where we can understand these facts about the universe because of the endless toil of our ancestors, not deliberately trying to head toward anything in particular, but simply deciding that it is right that we should exist. But of course, they came up with religions in order to find meaning, comfort, and order in their lives. Yet even now, in an increasingly nonreligious society, it is still crucial that we continue the endless struggle. We are short on time not only as individuals, but as a species. There is only so much humanity can accomplish before we inevitably die out. Therefore, if we want to do anything at all with the time we have, if we believe that it is not necessary that we yield to nature’s pull into nothingness, if we want there to be any sort of meaningful progress made by humanity, and if we ever want to even have the CHANCE to make contact with other beings like ourselves, then we gotta keep going. We have an infinitesimal period during which we can be, and to give up on what little of that you have is the biggest fucking waste there could ever be in this world.

TL;DR: Our lives don’t really serve any purpose in particular, nor do they make any sense when you look at them critically, but they’re miraculous and fascinating nonetheless. So please don’t kill yourself. You’re gonna die anyway, and sooner than you think, so you might as well do something with what little time you have.

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shadowsandbonerp · 3 years

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The Veil of The Mists

Accidentally or intentionally, there will come a point when you reveal your special abilities to others and thereby inadvertently stumble upon the greatest hoax in the City. You will discover, much to your simultaneous relief and dismay, that no-one remembers anything regarding your powers. To say no- one is slightly inaccurate, as you’ll eventually discover, but you will find that the vast majority of city dwellers simply ignore, excuse, or forget any legendary power that you manifest in their presence. Is it that they don’t want to remember or that they cannot remember? This is a philosophical question you may never answer.

This force, responsible for the ignorance of millions of people, is the Mist. Even its name is shrouded, you will never discover it. No-one can know its name; it cannot be spoken in reference to this force anywhere in the City. But you have likely come up with your own term for it: “the Hiding”, “the Brain-wiper”, or simply “this thing that makes people forget”.

In many ways it is a mild, undetectable force. In other ways, its all-encompassing nature is terrify- ing, as your experiments will surely divulge. When- ever the legendary manifests in any way, the Mist ensures that no-one knows about it or recognizes it for what it truly is. You begin to realize that you live in an entire City that is forever in the clutches of this force and that everyone you know and meet is entirely oblivious to what is going on around them. They are “Sleepers”, “groggies”, “fog- heads”; they are unable to see what you can see, no matter how concrete the facts you show them.

This realization alone can tear your psyche apart and indeed countless like you have lost their minds when the gravity of the situation struck them. You are living in a city of sleepwalkers, and that includes the people you love the most. A great chasm opens up between you and those closest to you, a chasm that you can only repress, never bridge. This may drive you to want to know more about the Mist. Even if you survive all this psycho- logical stress, you will face unavoidable questions. “What about me? What am I not seeing? Is there something I too am blind to?” You start, in your own way, to study the Mist. If you continue asking questions, here’s what you’ll find out:

The Mist hides and distracts. Just as one is about to witness the real-life manifestation of your Mythos, something will happen to make them look away or at the very least blur their impression. Fog will roll in, rain will lash at them, steam will blow out from the subway vents, the lights will flicker. Alternatively, their phone will ring just at the right moment, or someone will cry for help, or they will spot their favorite sports player walking down the street. Whatever form it takes, the Mist will make them miss the miraculous display altogether, or at the very least doubt what they saw: “I saw some- thing, but I’m not sure exactly…” If you push them later, most people will respond with disbelief that it ever happened, or even could happen.

As you’ll discover, the Mist is not limited to people’s minds. Its effects are more far-reaching than mind tricks. It can cause interference in electrical devices recording your legendary pow- ers (and Sleepers would claim it’s edited footage, anyway). More worryingly, it seems to be able to orchestrate events with disturbing synchronicity, for example, having your boyfriend arrive at the scene out of the blue just as you’re about to witness the magical powers of a Rift you worked weeks to track down.

You see, the effects of the Mist are not limited to Sleepers. You too, as well as the other Rifts you’ll meet, are subject to its distractions. The difference is that you remember; you know there is something hiding the truth from you. You know that what you didn’t see in a moment of distraction is what really matters, and that if you had seen it, you’d remember it.

The Mist provides excuses and twists perceptions. Sometimes, if you’re lucky or unlucky enough, the Mist will fail momentarily and someone will get to see your legendary power in all its glory. At first, as the unadulterated reality sets in, they may be shocked, eyes glazing over. However, the Mist quickly sweeps up after you. Moments later, the glazed look in their eyes will vanish; if asked about it, they’ll acknowledge everything that happened except its legendary nature. Sleepers will staunchly maintain that there is some mundane explanation to what happened: a freak electrical phenomenon, some kind of scam using movie special effects, whatever. You don’t seriously expect them to believe it was the Big Bad Wolf you just wrestled with, do you?

This normalizing effect also works on a much deeper level. You’ll find that Sleepers subconsciously edit everything they see as it happens. Where you may see a two-headed troll, they will see horribly deformed and obese Siamese twins; when obviously faced with the Queen of the Dead, they’ll remember her as an obnoxious drag queen. The Mist makes it so that Sleepers just cannot see, not even what’s right in front of them. Even you sometimes need an actual display of legendary powers before you can be sure someone else is a Rift. When thus revealed, the magnitude of the power of the Mist over the City’s residents is truly alarming.

The Mist makes you forget. This is possibly the scariest aspect of the Mist. When you experience this effect, you will suddenly grasp how fragile your mundane life is, how in one moment it can all be taken away from you. It seems there is only so much the Mist can cover up at once; sometimes, when it’s stuck for a solution, the Mist will become aggressive and simply wipe out all memory of your Mythos manifestations from people’s minds. For them, and sometimes ‘them’ are very large groups of people, it would be as if the event never happened. “I can’t recall exactly what I did last Thurs- day. I guess I went to Eddie’s, like every Thursday. I might have had one beer too many, though…”

This effect also has a milder but equally impactful aspect, one which affects minds over time. People in the City don’t dwell over mystical and supernatural shenanigans; they forget, they let go, they move on. Their own lives are much more compelling than something weird they can’t understand. Which brings us to the last point.

The Mist exploits the things dearest to you. Your own life is the Mist’s strongest weapon, es- pecially the things you love or hate. If you value your family, the Mist will use them to throw you off. If you like cars or hate rats, you’ll see a flashy ride or a hairy critter crossing the road just as you’re about to witness something important. And since almost everyone either loves or hates themselves, the Mist also employs aspects of your own personality and body against you: a passing thought about your future, an inexplica- ble bad feeling that never leaves you, or a sudden hunger for burritos – all of these can be carefully placed by the Mist at the exact moment some- thing else is happening at the corner of your eye, something legendary, something that will provide answers.

If that’s the way it works on you, imagine how it works on Sleepers. Sleepers are obsessed with their own lives. They don’t care what’s happen- ing around them. Sometimes you think it’s like they wear helmets made of pure noise, constant- ly dealing with “Me, me, me!”. Well, in a way, you’re the same, but at least your eyes are open some of the time.

So while this mysterious force prevents others from seeing you as you are, it also makes it more difficult for you to find the answers you are looking for.

An important fact you will learn is that the Mist does NOT change reality (at least not abruptly enough for you to notice). While trying to get answers from a violent gang of cultists, for example, if you beat them up with your ancient bronze staff and you all end up getting arrested, they’ll report “This freak came at me with some weird metal shaft!” If you do so by turning your arm into stone, they’ll say, “That crazy son of a bitch hit me with a brick!” However, they will still be injured, for real, and forensics may be able to tell if they were hurt by bronze or stone. This is to say the consequences of your Mythos powers are very much real. Just because the Mist covers up all perception of the legendary aspects of your actions doesn’t mean you will not be held responsible for them.

Only the legendary miracles and wonders are forgotten. Some of the ordinary residents of the City are quite sharp and focused: that police detective, that bohemian musician at the jazz club, that kid in the basketball court. They’re not zombies or drones, they’re just under a spell. They can tell you’re up to something, even if they can’t see it for what it is. And there is always the possibility that they too will awaken. .

#siteinfo #shadowsandbone #jcink

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loveandknowledge · 7 years

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A Guide to Wisdom

It’s one of the grandest and oddest words out there, so lofty, it doesn’t sound like something we could ever consciously strive to be. Others could perhaps compliment you on your wisdom, but it wouldn’t be something you would announce you possessed. Nevertheless, wisdom deserves to be rehabilitated and take its place among a host of other, more typical aspirations we might have. We should be as keen to end up wise as we are to be thin or prosperous. Wisdom is ultimately just a beautiful word for a set of qualities of character that enable us to face reality with serenity, good humour, kindness and resilience. Crucially, being wise is not something we are ever born. It is a skill that can be learnt, in part, by knowing what it is we are aiming at. This is a guide to what wisdom can be and at the same time, a gentle invitation to be as wise as we can. 1. REALISM The wise are, first and foremost, ‘realistic’ about how difficult many things will be. They aren’t devoid of hope (that would be a folly of its own), but they are conscious of the complexities entailed in any project: for example, raising a child, starting a business, spending an agreeable weekend with the family, changing the nation, falling in love… Knowing that something difficult is being attempted doesn’t rob the wise of ambitions, but it makes them more steadfast, calmer and less prone to panic about the problems that will invariably come their way. 2. GRATITUDE Properly aware that much can and does go wrong, the wise are unusually alive to moments of calm and beauty, even extremely modest ones (a sunny morning, a piece of toast, a bath), of the kind that those with grander plans rush past. With the dangers and tragedies of existence firmly in mind, the wise take pleasure in a single, uneventful, sunny day, or some pretty flowers growing by a brick wall, the charm of a three-year-old playing in a garden or an evening of banter among a few friends. It isn’t that they are sentimental and naive, precisely the opposite: because they have seen how hard things can get, they know how to draw the full value from the peaceful and the sweet – whenever and wherever these arise. 3. FOLLY The wise know that all human beings, themselves included, are deeply sunk in folly: we have irrational desires and incompatible aims, we are unaware of ourselves, we are prone to mood swings, we are visited by all kinds of fantasies and delusions – and are always buffeted by the curious demands of our sexuality. The wise are unsurprised by the ongoing co-existence of deep immaturity and perversity alongside quite adult qualities like intelligence and morality. They know that we are barely evolved apes. Aware that at least half of life is irrational, they try – wherever possible – to budget for madness and are slow to panic when it (reliably) rears its head. The wise take the business of laughing at themselves seriously. They hedge their pronouncements, they are sceptical in their conclusions. Their certainties are not as brittle as those of others. They laugh from the constant collisions between the noble way they’d like things to be, and the demented way they in fact often turn out. 4. POLITENESS The wise are realistic about social relations, in particular, about how difficult it is to change people’s minds and have an effect on their lives. They are therefore extremely reticent about telling people too frankly what they think. They have a sense of how seldom it is useful to get censorious with others. They want – above all – that things be nice between people, even if this means they are not totally authentic. So they will sit with someone of an opposite political persuasion and not try to convert them; they will hold their tongue at someone who seems to be announcing a wrong-headed plan for reforming the country, educating their child or directing their personal life. They’ll be aware of how differently things can look through the eyes of others and will search more for what people have in common than what separates them. 5. SELF-ACCEPTANCE The wise have made their peace with the yawning gap between how they would ideally want to be and what they are actually like. They have come to terms with their idiocies, flaws, ugliness, limitations and drawbacks. They are not ashamed of themselves – and therefore, don’t have to lie or dissemble in front of others. Without self-love or vanity, they can give those close to them a fairly accurate map of their neuroses and faults and of the reasons why they will be hard to live around (and therefore, often, they aren’t such difficult companions). 6. FORGIVENESS The wise are realistic about other people. They recognise the extraordinary pressures everyone is under to pursue their own ambitions, defend their interests and seek their own pleasures. It can make others appear extremely ‘mean’ and purposefully evil, but this would be to over-personalise the issue. The wise know that most hurt is not intentional, it’s a by-product of the constant collision of blind competing egos in a world of scarce resources. The wise are therefore slow to anger and judge. They don’t leap to the worst conclusions about what is going on in the minds of others. They will be readier to forgive from a proper sense of how difficult every life is: harbouring as it does so many frustrated ambitions, disappointments and longings. The wise appreciate the pressures people are under. Of course they shouted, of course they were rude, naturally they want to overtake… The wise are generous to the reasons for which people might not be nice. They feel less persecuted by the aggression and meanness of others, because they have a sense of where it comes from: a place of hurt. 7. RESILIENCE The wise have a solid sense of what they can survive. They know just how much can go wrong and things will still be – just about – liveable. The unwise person draws the boundaries of their contentment far too far out: so that it encompasses, and depends upon, fame, money, personal relationships, popularity, health… The wise person sees the advantages of all of these, but also knows that they may – before too long, at a time of fate’s choosing – have to draw the borders right back and find contentment within a more bounded space. 8. ENVY The wise person doesn’t envy idly: they realise that there are some good reasons why they don’t have many of the things they really want. They look at the tycoon or the star and have a decent grasp of why they didn’t ever make it to that level. It looks like just an accident, an unfair one, but there were in fact some logical grounds: they didn’t work as hard, they don’t have anything like the drive or mental capacity… At the same time, the wise see that some destinies are truly shaped by nothing more than accident. Some people are promoted randomly. Companies that aren’t especially deserving can suddenly make it big. Some people have the right parents. The winners aren’t all noble and good. The wise appreciate the role of luck and don’t curse themselves overly at those junctures where they have evidently not had as much of it as they would have liked. The wise emerge as realistic about the consequences of winning and succeeding. They may want to win as much as the next person, but they are aware of how many fundamentals will remain unchanged, whatever the outcome. They don’t exaggerate the transformations available to us. They know how much we remain tethered to some basic dynamics in our personalities, whatever job we have or material possession we acquire. This is both cautionary (for those who succeed) and hopeful (for those who won’t). The wise see the continuities across those two categories over-emphasised by modern consumer capitalism: ‘success’ and ‘failure’. 9. REGRETS In our ambitious age, it is common to begin with dreams of being able to pull off an unblemished life, where one can hope to get the major decisions – in love and work – right. But the wise realise that it is impossible to fashion a spotless life; one will make some extremely large and utterly uncorrectable errors in a number of areas. Perfectionism is a wicked illusion. Regret is unavoidable. But regret lessens the more we see that error is endemic across the species. One can’t look at anyone’s life story without seeing some devastating mistakes etched across it. These errors are not coincidental but structural; they arise because we all lack the information we need to make choices in time-sensitive situations. We are all, where it counts, steering almost blind. 10. CALM So much of our culture is directed to stimulating and exciting us. The wise know that turmoil is always around the corner – and they have come to fear and sense its approach. That’s why they nurture such a strong commitment to calm. A quiet evening feels like an achievement. A day without anxiety is something to be celebrated. They are not afraid of having a somewhat boring time. Things could be so much worse - and certainly will again. The wise see calm as a skill - a learned quality, not a lucky gift of temperament. They take note of the things that quieten them: watching the clouds move across the sky, going for a walk, reading about disasters that occurred long ago or observing the buds on a tree. They like things that invite a radically different perspective and can thus make their own troubles feel less impressive: mountains, pictures of deserts, ants ferrying some crumbs across a paving stone. They don’t just wait for chance to bring such things to their attention: they plan for serenity, when they can. - Alain de Botton, The School of Life

#alain de botton #the school of life #wisdom #wise quotes #wisewords #wise #realism #gratitude #folly #politeness #self acceptance #forgiveness #resilience #envy #no regrets #calm

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appdevelopmentcompanyinusa · 5 years

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Why ‘Smart Spaces’ is in Trend in 2019?

Traditional workspace with table and chairs having big size desktops are becoming a scene of some 90’s movies as today employees want everything Hi-tech. With the involvement of emerging technologies and Smart Spaces, the boring workplace has become a trend and fascination and people love to spend their working hours in a connected environment.

Previously it was a dream of every employee that their workspace can automatically anticipate and respond to their needs throughout the day. Now with Artificial Intelligence Solutions, their dream has become true, it has enabled a more productive work experience by automating people to interact with spaces.

Not only the IT industry but all most every industry are availing Artificial Intelligence services in their offices to make their walls smart. And people rely on robots for their chore tasks. The increasing demand for smart revolution has changed all the aspects of offices and turning them a decorative cube.

Technologies Used in Smart Spaces:

These are the following technologies that are bind in Smart Spaces:

Smart evaluation

Intelligent lighting

Smart space management

Ambient controls

Smart ventilation

Seasonal awareness technology

Smart Parking and traffic reduction technology

Smart sensors in commercial spaces

According to Gartner’s study “Smart Spaces is one of the key technology areas to consider over the next few years” but what exactly Smart Spaces is? Let’s discuss in a brief.

What is Smart Spaces?

Smart Space is physical environments that are built by collections of sensors, analytics which use IoT-powered technology to optimize energy efficiency, improve productivity levels for businesses & public services and actuators to manage the communication between the physical environment and its space users.

Smart Spaces spectrum varies in size from a workplace to a stadium, or even a city and they all have common requirements, only the scale of deployment changing. Soon Smart Spaces will become an unavoidable part of the offices and public spaces and its future looks bright.

Benefits of Smart Spaces in Various Industries

With the help of Smart Spaces, humans and technologies can smoothly interact with each other in a physical environment. Where meetings can start quickly, with all the arrangements related to teleconferencing and video conferencing.

Here are the industries that are availing boons of Smart Spaces:

Hospitality Industry:

The hospitality industry is known for services related to leisure and customer satisfaction. Now with Smart Spaces, this industry has become more powerful and luxurious. Hospitality service providers are considering IoT development solutions to offer services like a personalized wake-up setting, play music and TV from smartphone, hoteliers can save electricity by automatically turning off lights and AC if rooms are unoccupied to facilitate their guests from each ends.

Construction Industry:

The construction industry is evolving rapidly, every year new trends appear within the industry, from technological advancements to a stronger emphasis on sustainability. Smart Spaces are empowering this industry with smart home systems; amenities, appliances connected via apps, Wi-Fi, sensors, and a system management dashboard.

Grocery Stores:

Smart Spaces has modified the way people shop. With interactive shelf labels, people can place orders more quickly and can track orders through mobile apps. They can also get digital coupons, nutrition information, and other details regarding products by scanning the barcode.

Aviation Industry:

Now Airports with facial recognition provides security and quicker check-ins through Artificial Intelligence Services. It provides facilities for better traveler’s movement in crowded areas. Self-service kiosks for check-ins, bag drops, and messaging service allows passengers to check on their flights throughout the airport.

Summing Up

In the past few years, the way we live, work and interact with our surroundings has been substantially changed as focused on our life has shifted from nature to technologies. The speedy development of science and the constant development of new technologies has largely influenced our environment. And blurring the line between the virtual and physical world.

#smart meeting room iot #Artificial Intelligence Solutions #Artificial Intelligence Services #IoT-powered technology #IoT development solutions #AI App Development Company #Mobile App Developers #Mobile Application Development #App Development Companies #Mobile App Development Companies

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castyourline · 7 years

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Alain de Botton

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mozillogames · 7 years

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I Personally Loved Persona 5

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That’s read like Persona-lly. A hard O.

Persona 5 is a delightful entry to the series. It’s been smoothed down from its previous, more brutal, predecessors and is incredibly more accessible and modernized for the gaming world today. Oozing with style, the game is rife with visually stunning menus and scenarios that make your eyes water from its stylistic design. Quite frankly, it’s a wonderful game.

The game shows off it’s rather outstanding stylistic design right from the word go with it’s opening title sequence being a classy musical number with minimalistic colours and smooth musical number, straight down to the title select screen itself with silhouettes of the characters lazing around a train station as the camera spins and rotates around with each selection, revealing the hidden words and menus around the room.

It’s this level of detail that shows off one of Persona 5’s strong points, it knows it’s a JRPG and thusly you’ll be spending a lot of time in combat and rooting through menus so the game just makes them rather beautiful to look at. Selecting one item from the main menu causes the cut out main character to move around into a new position to maybe get a look at his gun as you’re changing your equipment or moving towards his mask and face to observe your persona. Even the main shops have this similar level of pizazz as the merchants in the background shift around striking a new pose, whether it is the punk doctor moving her long legs into a new slouching position or the cool, mafia dad hiding his face with his cap.

Loading times are all hidden behind these stylistic turns that involve a brief animation of people hustling and bustling on an underground tube train and these small touches make the game so wonderful. I realize I’m over three paragraphs into a review and I’ve exclusively talked about menu screens. Odd, I understand, but you need to understand how pleasant these things are.

The meat and bones of the game is living the life of an average Japanese high schooler, studying with your friends by day, helping a politician out by night then maybe breaking into someone’s mind with your magical powers to change their personality and their heart. Does that count as the generic “All Japanese schoolers fight magical monsters, gosh how do they cope?” joke? I hope so, don’t dismiss the game being based around kids in school, surprisingly little of the game actually takes place in the school, for better or for worse.

The most you’ll see of the school building itself is in the opening segments of the game which introduce you to everything at a blistering 3 hour introduction (roughly). While the introduction does have some gameplay and dungeon crawling to it, it is a lengthy turn off events before you’re allowed to properly play the game. That said, the turn of events that transpire in the game are both shocking and gripping. The introduction of an abusive gym teacher who takes capital punishment to all new levels, even going so far as to try and elicit physical relations from one student and when that fails potentially rapes another, all leading to the attempted suicide of a student, which you watch happen.

The fun high school romp with colourful hair that you thought you might be getting quickly burns away to dark stories based around abuse and corrupt authoriative figures, which is why playing as high schoolers is so important to the game. Living your rebellious nature and taking on the world that acts constantly against you, as those in a position of power abuse it to live like kings, with the idea that those of the younger generation can do nothing but accept it. The main characters are those who fight back against this system of being told what to do by those in assumed positions of power and the theme of rebelling against unwarranted authority permeates through a lot of the social links as well.

There are stories of doctors who were almost forced out of the business due to their seniors throwing them under the bus or child prodigies being exploited by their guardian for money. Persona 5 continues in tradition of the rest of the series in that it is filled with these dark and odd stories as you meet people and learn about them and their problems eventually helping them out in your own oddly silent way.

But what about the meat of the gameplay? Well, that’s it for the most part, your day to day is a mixture of talking to your friends, working with your social links, maybe going to the local café to study and drink coffee. Perhaps you spend the day fishing, working at one of your part time jobs or maybe spending some time at the batting cages trying to hit some dingers. Time management is the game and bling panic is your name, is that how that saying works? There’s a lot to do in Persona 5 to the point where you’d be hard pressed to complete everything in a truly blind run, honestly I’d suggest to just make a go of it, see how you do as there’s always a second playthrough which you carry over a fair amount of progress in which you could always follow a walkthrough on.

When you’re not hanging out in beautiful Tokyo with the lights and the people, you’ll be thieving your way through dungeons, thieving in style. Persona 5 has decided to have structured dungeons instead of randomly generated ones that its predecessors had and this works wonderfully. Dungeons can have great design behind them as they now represent the inner psyche of your targets as they warp more and more as you go deeper into the palace. With stealth added to the mix for traversing around shadows and monsters for safety and getting the drop on them for a wonderful ambush. Dungeons are now full of great set pieces and even oddly surreal segments like jumping into paintings in a gallery to traverse the land between pictures, like it’s something out of Harry Potter.

Turn based combat makes a comeback and it’s not a slog. The various elemental weaknesses that you can exploit and can be exploited adds a lot more strategy to the battles than you may think would initially be there. Swapping between your personas to vary up your tactics as the need arises as well as changing your party members around in the middle of a dungeon to allow them to recover or make use of their undepleted, or is it pleted, mana pools. With a sprawling multi-tiered randomly generated dungeon, Mementos, to act as the extra dungeon for you to explore inbetween your main targets you’ve also got a host of smaller side targets with the requests that you get, these all have a little bit of story that can be as simple as evil person is evil, but even then you get a slight look into their inner weaknesses that may drive someone to bully through their insecurities or failure in other areas.

Persona 5 obviously has a few small flaws that could potentially annoy you a large amount, depending on how quickly you can get into the game or not. Combat lines are repeated with an upsetting fervor that, added with the single general combat music, things can become a little grating at times. This mixed with instant death skills that still persist to this day, despite the inclusion of normal magic skills to take advantage of the light and dark weaknesses, can still cause an unavoidable death and game over that’ll leave you rather annoyed, it’s less punishing now with regular checkpoints, but defeat that you could do nothing about is still a pain nonetheless.

Finally one of the biggest issues just comes from time management. Time management is a big deal in this game, every segment of time is precious, every day can be vital to your teenage life, let’s ignore my wasted years playing MMOs in my pants as a teenager, that during heavy story segments you can find yourself rocketing through days like there’s no tomorrow, although still finding yourself stuck in your room at the end of each day with your cat telling you you’re too tired to do anything so may as well go to sleep. The story is still wonderful and in traditional Persona style it ramps up quickly and you begin to fight gods or something, but having the reigns taken from you for so long in a game that’s designed around using each day to its fullest can be a little annoying. You’ll be sat there sweating as you think about how you’ll ever fit in time to hang out with the best character, Yusuke, while everyone keeps on forcing you to hang out and investigate the next target. I just want to hang out with my main gang dammit!

Overall, Persona 5 is a wonderful game. It has a few niggling annoyances but to say I put in over 100 hours into my first playthrough and don’t really remember any major moments that I’d regret playing it is a massive testament to its variation and griping nature. With enough style to make Paris Fashion Week blush and a soundtrack that’ll have you tapping your foot to most segments I can greatly recommend Persona 5 to just about anyone. Don’t be put off by the length playtime, it keeps you driven enough that there’s always something to work towards and keep you moving. Delightful characters and there are moments in Persona 5 that I don’t think I’ll forget for some time, the themes of rebellion and society are great and the constant dabbling in Jungian psychology and the collective unconscious that the Persona games are known for continues to be a major strength.

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idolizerp · 6 years

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[ LOADING INFORMATION ON 99 TRAINEE JIHO…. ]

DETAILS

CURRENT AGE: 20 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 15 SKILL POINTS: 03 VOCAL | 04 DANCE | 04 RAP | 04 PERFORMANCE

INTERVIEW

the way people see you, your image, is arguably the most important aspect of an idol. the perfectly crafted piece of a an ever growing puzzle, forced into being not too much but never too little. a person being poked and prodded at, never alone and never safe, as a mold for whatever their company wants from them. it’s unavoidable. however, in an industry full of fakes, it’s easy to forget that they’re people and go nabi is a pitch to show just that. naturally, no company in their right business mind would let an idol run free and do as they pleased. but they can give that illusion.

nabi isn’t a very memorable person—not exceptionally attractive, no unique personality traits, nothing to make you take a double take. at first glance, he’s exactly the person that a company would turn away or change completely. boring was the word that followed him whenever he went. he was the standard korean teenager—innocent yet mischievous and someone to go to just if you wanted to talk or hang out. he was the simple boy next door that no one ever looked twice at, a background character in the life of everyone else around him. but he still had star quality. an undeniable charisma and charm to him whenever a mic was put in his hand or when the music cue sent him straight into his dance. his plain features and blank page of a personality gave room for someone else to be born with each stage performance. whethis he was meant to be cute, a bad boy or even sexy when he got old enough, he could become that person with the power and skill to back it up. one would assume a company would love to shape him, love to break him down completely to build a new, to paint a masterpiece on the canvas. however, things don’t always go the way we expect.

as of now, his company is simply allowing his to be hisself—or at least a heavily censored and far more glamorous version of it. they’re trying to ride the “refreshing little brother” vibes until the end. idols people can relate to in the sea of fakes and perfection, the man mothers and fathers love as much as their children, the easily marketable type. he’s not too much, not too little. the perfect cool resting area that seemingly gives no one a reason to despise him and everyone a reason to like him. the perfect contrast from the powerful yet graceful performance he always gives. his rather plain personality makes his stage presence seem even more impressive, appearing as if a switch inside him is flipped as soon as music plays. his reverse charms never fail to put smiles on the trainers faces and even those of the othis trainees, breaking whatever idea they have of him and never repairing it. however, the slippery slope he’s forced to operate on makes things much harder for him. he has to know when he’s blending in too much or not enough, when he’s being more annoying, and what jokes are appropriate. despite the leniency he has when compared to a lot of his fellow trainees, he still has to work hard to be, well, himself as odd as it seems. how much of himself is a little too much?

BIOGRAPHY

MAY 2003

as only a small child, things that catch go nabi’s attention for long are few and far between. his short attention span latching onto the newest colorful and unknown thing but this, this he loves with all his tiny little heart.

watching his older sister perform with members of her dance academy with his mother holding tightly to his small hand and his father resting his on his head of silky black hair was like witnessing someone perform magic. he doesn’t understand it, but he doesn’t feel he has to. his naturally curious self doesn’t think he needs to look deeper, to know what it means, he just loves watching, admiring. go nari moves with passion and confidence. she knows she’s good and she wants to show that off, drawing all eyes on her despite the group around her. nabi wants that too, he wants to be just like nabi when he grows up. his tiny body and high pitched voice expresses only that dream as they walk home as a family, nari holding her younger brother in her arms and their parents follow behind. his excited babbling and wild gestures makes the family laugh, they love radiating from them and making even those around them smile.

JANUARY 2004

the night of nabi’s first performance, he spends most of his time crying into his sisters arms. after he begged and he pleaded with his parents, they allowed his to join a simple dance class, geared more toward diversity in the craft rather than one genre. he’d excelled, truly, especially when it came to areas like hip hop and contemporary but he was still a child and he was dreadfully afraid to get up on stage.

in the days leading up to it, he wanted nothing more than for the day to come quickly so he could perform with everyone and even do the solo he was assigned for doing so well. it was all he’d ever talk about, even to strangers on the street. it was clear he wanted it more than anything, but when the time came he couldn’t do it. his arms had wrapped around his sister’s neck and never let go, no matter who tried to talk to into it. he was scared. so so scared. it wasn’t like when it was just his, the other kids and the teachers. this was real. parents and other people would be watching his all by himself. it was too much. so he continued to cry, small body trembling with the intensity of his sobs. “ nabi-yah, why are you crying? don’t you want to go up and perform for everyone? “ he’d always loved his sister’s voice, it was nice and calming, perfect for her dream of becoming a singer. despite his still hiccuping sobs, he opened his tightly shut eyes to look at her, bottom lip trembling. “noona, I’m scared.” he admits, tiny fits holding onto him so tight his nails left imprints in his palm through the fabric of the shirt.

“ that can’t be true! the nabi i know was so excited to be here and do his solo. he was ready to travel in time to get here“ his eyes narrowed at her but he wasn’t crying anymore. “ the nabi i know is really strong and brave, even more brave than the big boys at the park, “ nabi started to smile and so nari continued. “ he’s even more strong than me. the nabi i know is going to do amazing on his stage. “

and just like that he went. running to jump in line with all the others just before it was time to start. despite the obvious jitters, nabi performed amazingly and with a big smile, one that made his eyes crinkle and his chubby cheeks becoming more prominent. at the end, his tiny little hand reached as high as it could to wave to his sister who was smiling just as proud as their parents.

JUNE 2008

on june 23, 2008, the go family spends their time together celebrating. nari had been scouted by a company, she was going to live her dream. nabi was happy for him, he really way. she was the one who made him realize he shared the same dream and passion—the desperate want for that stage and the natural talent just for it. it was what she always wanted. and yet he still felt that she shouldn’t go. that she should just stay with them, be his older sister. once she was gone, that was just it for them, for a long time. the times they spent practicing together at the dance school she attended, the times they would sneak midnight snacks together with hushed laughter, the times he’d be so overwhelmed he could only cry. being aware of that, knowing he wouldn’t have his rock anymore, felt like some was stripping him of his whole world. he was dependent on her, way too much, but she was the person that made his who he was. he didn’t feel whole without her.

on the day she moved into the trainee dorm in Seoul from their humble home in Chuncheon, he spent the night crying in his room. he was happy for her, so so happy, but the ache in him overpowered it. it wasn’t like she was far, just a few miles away, but that made it even worse. the thought that the two would drift apart and become to separate so close together hurt him. it had always been them against the world but now nabi was alone.

JUNE 2011

by the time nabi was 13, he’d gone through changes. changes in his appearance, changes in his personality, changes in his interests. despite that, his one constant remained his love of dance. with his sister away, working to achieve her dream, and him not being very popular among his peers—just fading into the background as he did but that was okay—he fell completely and happily into his dancing. he was too old for the group he used to be in but not skilled enough to run with the big boys at a dance academy, still very juvenile. however, when the open events happened, he made it to everyone and was always front and center with a determination to make his sister and even himself proud. it was this that got his noticed, what got his a place at the most popular dance academy in the area once he was old enough. they were nothing special or unique, not so close to the hub that was Seoul, but solely having the opportunity made him feel like he was on top of the world.

he worked hard, as hard as he could, every single spare moment he got. by day, he was a diligent student. ranked average in his class, loved by teachers, participating but not showing off. just typical. but by evening, when he was assigned new choreo, he became a superstar. the sharp eyes, the fluid movement, the beautiful smile just at the end to contrast with his intense performance and bring everyone around his to a sense of awe. it was only natural the next step was to get his an audition. it was lucky for his, that he didn’t even need to go looking. with his activity at the academy, every single free moment being spent learning and performing different choreo—original and cover, it made sense he was in a majority of their posted videos. even if he wasn’t the center or focus, he still managed to draw attention. he showed he was there and he wasn’t going anywhere. it was the perfect aura to get attention from a scout.

JUNE 2013

after spending less than years with the dance academy, nabi had discovered how to make dance his own. it used to be his connection to his sister, the thing the go siblings shared. in nabi’s mind, they’d always been a pair but the longer they went apart, he knew that had never been true. it was always his holding onto her, afraid to take a step away. as he went through his dance classes, he learned to take that step. to make it his, no matter whose it was.

given his roots in a variety of dances, he was versatile and never made an attempt to settle. constantly stepping out of and redefining his comfort zone was what made dancing fun. he never wanted to get comfortable—he was a pusher. when things stopped being challenging, they got boring and dancing offered his not only happiness but also an escape. an escape from his boring everyday life in his boring home in Chuncheon. it was exciting with so much variety. he never thought of it as good or bad, impressive or underwhelming. it was just his.

so never in a million years would he have expected to be contacted by a scout. he didn’t believe he was “talented” or “perfect for become an idol”, he just thought he was hard working and a good student. but the sweet talk and the thought of being able to be with his sister again, to be close with her again. being an idol was never his dream but he supposed he could make it be.

JANUARY 2015

nabi lasted less than two years before he broke. it wasn’t the workload—piling the intense schedule of a trainee to the life of a student was hard but he kept his grades up just as he had before and he never fell behind—nor was it the homesickness that got so many. it was an injury.

through his years in dance he had suffered injuries of course, sprained ankles and broken arms. none of it ever worried or stopped his for long. he was one to bounce back, bright smile on his face as he yelled to others to keep up. but this. this stopped him dead in his tracks.

it wasn’t during a solo practice session, just him and the music that ran through him as he moved. it was during a monthly evaluation. all eyes were on his, some with awe and others with envy, as he moved to the rhythm. despite being in his own beautiful world of dance, his facial expressions were always in check. wink here smirk here. it was all going well, so everyone thought. until he fell.

his moves weren’t particularly complex, just fast movements and turns. and yet it still broke him down. the immediate reaction was that it was a simple broken ankle. it wasn’t a big deal, despite the terrible pain. he would simply spend time healing at home and then be back. even if it ruined his evaluation, he was still be fine. he thought that all the way to the emergency room, even after the inflammation and pain set in. he was going to be alright.

he’d torn his meniscus, he learned with his mother holding onto his hand tightly. she’d spent the time the doctor was away crying, feeling guilty for her baby getting hurt. nabi had been assuring her the entire time up until he heard the news. it was a white-white zone tear, a bad one in other words, and would require surgery. as a dancer most of his life, he knew what meniscus tears were and how people rarely recovered fully. returning pains, the occasional lock of the knee. all things that would hold his back. still, nabi wanted to have hope.

JUNE 2016

nabi was healed—had been for a while—and yet he was hesitating to dance for the first time in his life. everytime he took a step to go for it, to shine like he always had, he would break out in a sweat. he was at high risk now, with his surgery. it was almost guaranteed he’d have trouble with his knee down the road, 15 to 20 years away, and the more he pushed himself the faster it would come. but he was fine, the doctor assured him. he was fine, he assured his mother. he still spent nights in the practice room crying into his hands. he’d have to go home, give up on being an idol and living the glamorous life. he had to. he couldn’t keep this up, not with the fear of ruining his knee again or worse. but he stayed.

he worked, harder than anyone else. he didn’t have a choice. but he couldn’t be trusted to dance front and center, not by himself and not by his company. he started being trained in other things, rapping was something that truly clicked for his. maybe it was his vocal tone or it was the contrast between the harsh way he delivered his lines and his sweet facial expressions but whenever he practiced, it brought smiles to his trainers faces. but he felt he could do and be more. he’d already lost his biggest asset and strongest skill. he wanted, more than anything, to make up for it. that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard, didn’t mean he didn’t spend late nights practicing and early mornings studying for school in a few hours, didn’t mean he didn’t absolutely hate it. but he’d made it this far. he’d made it this long. he had to stay. what else would he do?

singing and rapping was never something he loved as much as dance. he simply tolerated it. it was his only option, he tried convincing hisself. he couldn’t trust hisself to be relied on to be center and deliver excellent choreo like he used to. he’s was too scared and he didn’t have anyone to convince his he could do it all on his own. if he was just a rapper or a vocalist, he could give excuses to cover his mistakes. it was the wrong reasons but he worked and worked, diligent as always.

AUGUST 2018

now nabi’s waiting. waiting for an opportunity, waiting for his confidence to come back, waiting for it all to come crashing down on his. waiting. having given up his possible dance position, all the fun and excitement of it all was gone. all of it had simply become routine. wake up early, spend an hour training, showering, going to school, coming back to train until late at night, study, go to bed. repeat, repeat, repeat. even as others around him came and went, whether they debuted or couldn’t handle it all, he still stayed. even if he himself no longer wanted to be there, he stayed and he waited. what he’s aiting for, he wasn’t sure. he just continues his routine, continues being a creature of habit. after five years, he doesn’t see a point in leaving anymore. even if he hates rapping and loathes his singing voice, he does it. it’s what’s asked of him after all.

he wants to learn to be happy. learn to appreciate and love himself, grow confident and who he’s becoming. but it’s hard to let go of who he was. he was always the dancing machine, the one to own the spotlight. but now he hides, shrinks away from the center and lets others take his place. it hurts. it’s him keeping himself here, him keeping himself locked away and trapped, letting every opportunity slip away. but that’s okay. so he just waits. waits and hides away.

#id.bio #id.99 #id.trainee #id.lee chan

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florchis · 7 years

Text

[TFSN Secret Santa] Look at the window, at that storm [Fic]

Hello @redhead-and-proud, I'm your pinch hitter FS Secret Santa! I’m sorry for the delay, but your gift is finally here! I hope is at least close to what you wanted.

Prompt: Fitzsimmons get caught in a storm

Summary: Jemma has to cancel a date because of a snowstorm. Just because things don’t go as planned doesn’t mean they don’t go as she wants. (Even though she has to deal with Fitz’s thick, thick head.)

[AO3]

Notes: This is probably the fluffiest thing I have written in a long time. Nevertheless, it’s probably not very fluffy because I’m an awful person or something like that. On the same topic, I tried to fulfill the prompt at the best of my capacity, that it’s not, of course, the best-est. I’m sorry for that. (Also, in other controversial topics, I can not write Jemma as other thing that as demiromantic, and that shows a little here. The way she feels/experiences/lives things is not universal and does not invalidate or contradict the experiences or feelings of anyone else.)

They don’t know how long it takes, wait for love like this

Jemma tries to be upset for the change in the course of events. She really really tries, she just doesn’t… succeed . She can try to chastise herself, but the truth is that just because things aren’t going as she planned doesn’t mean that they are not going as she wants them to. Jemma looks down at her cellphone and bites her lower lip. She still hasn’t made up her mind about the correct etiquette on this situations, especially when one is so particularly happy that things are going… not well.

“Have you texted him yet?” Jemma almost drops her phone at hearing Fitz’s voice, not because she was unaware that he was behind her, but because of the not completely platonic thoughts that started going through her head since it started snowing, feeling like he could peek inside her head or something- because, sometimes, it feels like he can.

“Um, no, not yet.”

Fitz makes a face and Jemma tries to not grimace back. He gets antsy and a little bit upset when she goes on dates, because, quote unquote, it messes up with our schedule and, Jemma, to be quite honest it makes you distracted and we can’t afford the time setback (he says it with a straight face, which makes it easier to believe, but the exact same words every time, like he memorises them instead of feel them, and Jemma doesn’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing).

“I’m sorry, um, that you have to cancel your date. You deserve a nice night out.”

There is a million things Jemma could say to that, from Yes, I do to It would only be nice if you were the one taking me out , and let not forget the honest I only agreed on this date hoping that it would make you slightly jealous, so, who cares anyway middle. Of course, what she actually says is:

“Oh, don’t you worry about it. It’s just fine.”

Fitz looks at her for a long beat, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, and he looks like he is about to say something that he doesn’t fully dare, and for a marvellous second, a flame of hope flares inside Jemma. But it’s not the first time and it probably won’t be the last something like that happens, and the moment pass and vanishes as quickly as it came.

“Popcorn and netflix?” He finally says, squeezing her right arm. Jemma repress the tremendous need to counter-argument Why not netflix and chill?

“Popcorn and netflix, alright.”

They cuddle up on the couch under a ton of blankets watching Downton Abbey - he let her choose as a pick-me-up, and even though she is not feeling down at all, she is not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. It is a bittersweet situation anyway: it puts under the light everything Jemma aches for, and at the same time it’s a constant reminder of what she can’t have.

Jemma can date back her realization about this ambiguous feelings about six months ago, but really, it probably was just an unavoidable sequence from the day they met. It’s not that she thinks that friendship is impossible between two people of compatible sexual and romantic orientations, it’s just that she doesn’t understand how other people manage to get as close to someone as she is to Fitz and be detached anyway, how they manage to not want everything when they already have so much. She even has a little of a reputation with her ex-boyfriends or ex-somethings about her tendency to be aloof, too-logical, even a little impersonal, and some other terms that Jemma rather not repeat inside her own mind even though she owns up to them with pride: she is her own woman and she doesn’t need no man, and usually she doesn’t even want them that much.

It took her a long time to understand that she just needed to accept her particular way of feeling things instead of trying to fit her experiences into that big moment of clarity and certainty at first sight that romantic dramedies sell as the be-all end-all. It possibly was the hardest equation she had to crack, but she finally understood that even though she always knew that she loves Fitz- because everything always comes back to Fitz, there is not logical reasoning behind that, it just happens -, their affinity, their friendship, their mutual interest, their shared likings, their inside jokes and their memories made together also mean that she is, in fact, in love with him. It’s not that she fell for Fitz quickly and violently, it’s just that it felt that way when she understood the correlation between what she feels and that until-then cultural-strange term of romantic love.

If that journey of discovery wasn’t quite easy, there is something that is even harder: letting Fitz know what she feels for him. Jemma is a scientist, and she can’t dive in head-first without being sure that there is water in the pool (Is that taking the metaphor too far? Maybe. She doesn’t truly care.). Ergo, using her best clothes and a little bit more of make-up than usual, and agreeing to dates that she has not actual interest in, just to see if she can elicit one, any reaction from him. If she, Jemma Simmons, a nubile young prodigy with an above average fashion sense, needed that much time to figure everything out, maybe Fitz also needs a nudge in the right direction to follow her path, and she is more than willing to do it, because she has a lot of good qualities, but patience is not one of them.

Sadly, she hasn’t obtained so far anything to support her desire to just come clean with him him and accept the outcome, for better or for worse. And that brings them to this point, cuddling together under the blankets, watching a show while it snows heavily outside, Jemma’s back against Fitz’s chest, his hand splayed wide on her abdomen, her hand drawing slow circles on his knee. Everything she feels and breathes and wants is him , and maybe she should wait more, maybe she should see his lack of acknowledgement of her efforts for what it is, but Jemma Simmons is not one to give up without a fight, and fight is exactly what she is going to do.

She places her hand on top of his, and brings her head closer to his neck, in part to draw strength from him, in part to make him see how ridiculous this situation is.

“Fitz.” When he just answers with a noncommittal sound, she insists. “Fitz.”

“Yeah, Simmons, I’m listening.”

She debates between turning around to look him in the eyes while she says it and staying like this and using their atypical position and the comfort it provides for her own benefit. She finally decides that she is a fighter but not a masochist, and if he is going to reject her, she doesn’t want to be able to read it on his eyes.

“It’s snowing outside.”

He snorts.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“I have never been more glad of snow before in my life.”

His other hand goes to her right hip and, really, when have their lives become so entangled that this is second nature for them? How can he not notice it?

“And why is that?”

“Because I had a date.”

She can feel him stiffening behind her, and a warm wave goes through all her body.

“I don’t know what to say, Simmons, I already said that-”

“Shhh, I don’t want you to say anything. Not yet. Just listen.” Maybe now is the time to turn around, but here, in his arms, is where she belongs, and she is not ready to give it up just yet. “Didn’t you just hear that I said I was glad for the snow?”

Jemma is almost sure he is taking a sharp intake of breath, but she can’t be sure sure, the frenetic beating of her own heart almost the only thing she is able to hear

“Um yeah.” His voice is a strange mix of thick and stuttering, and if the fact that she finds even that appealing is not a indication of how head over heels she actually is, she doesn’t know what it is.

“Because I didn’t want to go on that date. I much rather be here watching telly, having a nice night in with you.”

“And why is that?” He is repeating himself, and even though Simmons feels like she may die inside if this doesn’t resolve quickly, she can’t stop a smile at his short-circuited brain. She takes a deep breath, because this is it. Time to tell him.

“Because I only agreed on that date to try to get you to notice me.”

He is silent for a long beat and, really, Jemma is pretty sure that this is how an aneurysm feels like. His voice is low and soft when he finally speaks.

“I always notice you, Jemma.”

That’s not entirely true, she wants to say, but a thing she is always learning with him is that one needs to choose their battles, and denying his own experience, even if she doesn’t see it the same way, is never a good idea. So, instead, she uses it to her advantage.

“You do? Because I have been trying to send signals your way for ages .”

It’s strange, she realises, to be having this conversation without looking him in the eyes, but it’s not uncomfortable, she feels connected to him anyway feeling his body react and tremble against hers, watching his hands saying what he does not dare to say.

“What, um, signals for what, exactly?”

She knows for a fact that he has a PhD, owns a couple dozen of patents and is somewhat fluent in at least three languages; how can he be so damn dense about this?

“I don’t mind being stranded on this storm with you, Fitz, because the only person I want to take me out is you, and as long as we are together, going out, staying in, is all the same to me.”

“Because we are best friends, yeah?”

Is he actually joking? She can’t tell for sure, but he has to be, because there is no way on earth he can be so smart and so dumb at the same time.

“Yes, Fitz. But also because I’m in love with you.”

She feels him growing tense, or maybe she is growing tense herself, but this is it, everything is out in the open and now is up to him.

“You have never been in love with anyone.”

That’s… a strange reply to her confession, so Simmons turns around to watch him in the eyes, and she discovers that he looks equal parts terrified and awestruck. She tangles her fingers with his, and he lets her.

“Maybe because I didn’t know what being in love meant.”

“And what makes you believe that you know now?”

Jemma squints. Of all the reactions she imagined he could have, this one was not on the list.

“Fitz, why are you fighting me on this?” And then is when a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea strikes her. “It is because you don’t feel the same way? Because you don’t have to invalidate my feelings to make yours valid, you know.”

He inhales deeply, and she knows him so well, he is bracing himself for what he is about to say and even though she thought about the possibility of him not reciprocating her feelings, now she is terrified of that being true. She lets his hand go.

“No, Simmons. I’m not fighting you on this because I don’t feel the same way. I’m fighting you on this because I do.”

Now it’s her turn to be awestruck.

“You do?” A smile is slowly fighting its way onto her face, but she resists it, because he looks distressed instead of ecstatic while he nods. “Fitz, what’s wrong?” She tilts his chin up with her finger, so he looks her in the eyes.

“It’s just… I dreamed with this for so long, Jemma, you have no idea. And now you are telling me it’s true, and I’m waiting to be awaken from this amazingly real dream.”

Maybe this is not how she imagined things to go when she finally told him, maybe she expected big declarations and kisses a little desperate, but this fits with their entire relationship, the conversation and the shared fears and setting the ground so they can build upon it later.

“I want to believe in what you are saying, Jemma, because I believe so much in you, I just don’t wanna get hurt.”

She rises her hand up in the air, like she is on class and wanting to answer a teacher’s question.

“Do you trust me, Fitz?”

“Yes, of course I trust you.”

“Do you believe in us?”

It’s a strange thing to ask, she knows, but she needs him to answer it truly and thoughtfully.

“Jemma, you don’t even have to ask.”

“Then believe in everything we have accomplished and everything we have built together. Believe in all the things we share and believe in our years of friendship. Believe in this storm that made us stay here together.” He scoffs at that, and she smiles, because this is her Fitz. “Believe in what your heart is telling you and, please, please , believe in mine.”

There are so many emotions crossing his blue eyes, and Jemma wants to know them all, wants to treasure and enjoy and share them all. His lips are trembling, and she knows that her entire body is shaking, and she has never been more sure of anything in her life and that terrified at the same time.

“I feel like I mucked it all up.”

She puts her hand over his and squeezes it a little.

“Who cares? We specialize in fixing things up. This is us and-”

Thats is when he lunges and kisses her. It’s not the Perfect First Kiss Jemma always dreamed, it’s messy and uncoordinated, but it’s with her person, so she can’t really complain, because these are his hands on her cheeks, his nice, talented, thoughtful hands, and his soft lips on hers, and everything is him, his taste and his smell and his breathing and Jemma never wants to let go.

But he lets go, with his eyes still closed, and Jemma wants to kiss every golden glint on his long eyelashes.

“Yeah, that is what I was trying to say.”

He chuckles and Jemma goes over his lower lip with her index finger.

“So, you fell in love with me?” She knows he is trying to sound smug, but there is more than a hint of uncertainty still on his voice. She shrugs.

“Don’t get cocky, but what can I say? You are my best friend.”

She is afraid of what she just said for a moment, because it’s the core of everything she discovered and everything she feels and maybe he won’t take it the best way, but he grins and she can't help but mirror him.

“What a pair of dorks we make, we needed a snowstorm that paralyzed half the city to get our heads out of our asses.” He pauses for a beat, and Jemma doesn’t say anything, she is too busy smiling to him like a fool. “What did he say, anyway?” It takes her a minute to understand his question, but when she does, her jaw drops open. He tries to look scandalized, but his gleaming eyes betray him. “Oh my god, Simmons, you didn’t tell him?”

She tries to look- and feel- ashamed, but to no avail when everything she can feel is giddiness.

“In my defence, he wasn’t exactly at the top of my list of priorities!”

“Because what? Because you were too busy doing popcorn and netflix with me?”

He is teasing her and she knows it, so she teases him back.

“Or maybe because I was too busy repressing the need to suggest we replaced popcorn and netflix with netflix and chill .”

“Oh my god! ” Fitz covers his face with his hands, and Jemma almost doubles herself over with laugh. “I can’t believe you! You are, like, the worst.”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m the worst.” She leans over to kiss his knuckles, and she can shee him smiling through his fingers. “But I’m pretty sure that I am the best for you.”

“That you are. That you are.”

#thefitzsimmonsnetwork #fitzsimmonssecretsanta #redhead and proud #fsfic #fstag #fitzsimmons #my stuff #florchis writes things

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anawrecksyou-blog1 · 7 years

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a message to my flatmates

tomorrow I go back to university, I’m excited to go back, but also terrified. my ED is a million times worse at uni. it’s not the only reason; but I think it’s easier at home because, at home my eating disorder is - almost - a secret. and I’m prepared to work hard to keep it that way. I don’t have this motivation at uni, all three people that I live with know. I wish more than anything that they didn’t. nevertheless they are all brilliant with it - I cannot fault them.

however, they don’t understand. this is not their fault - they’ve all tried to. but I can’t talk about my ED without sobbing, getting worked up and saying all of the wrong things. so I’m gonna write down what I wish I could say to them. the whole truth. I’ll probably never show this to them, but it’ll be nice and therapeutic to get it all of my chest.

~~~

to Lucy, Dan and Teddy

I will start with an apology. I am so sorry for bringing this into your lives; sorry for every time I have cried on your shoulders, sorry for all the worry, and sorry for all the lies. there were a lot of lies. especially first year.

‘I ate dinner’ ‘I’ve not been sick’ ‘’I’ve got no more diet pills’ and the biggest one: ‘I’m trying to recover.’

1st year I did nothing to fight my ED. why would I? my ED was my best friend. I never felt good enough, and my ED offered me a way to cope with this. here’s why:

I have never felt smart, pretty or even vaguely likeable in any way. the only good quality I never doubt is skinny - so I needed to be flawlessly fat free. it was all I had to feel good about.

the less I eat, the lighter and freer I feel - the starvation high. when I feel this way, all my other worries melt away

I like punishing myself. when I do something wrong, I feel like I can repent by starving myself - it shows how sorry I am. I don’t feel worthy of food, I feel I’m doing the right thing by depriving my body. which is way I have to ask that you always let me repay my debts - even if you think I owe you nothing - because if not the guilt will eat at me, and I will eat nothing.

1st year I wanted anorexia an bulimia. the advantages shone so brightly to me. I never cared about the dangerous effects it was all having on my health. I wasn’t bothered in the slightest that I was always exhausted - to the point where I would need to lie down after climbing the stairs to our flat. I gave zero shits about my constant lightheadedness - which meant that I’d sit on the sofa with you and I wouldn’t be able to focus on what you were saying.. sometimes I couldn’t even see or hear you. and I wasn’t even massively worried when you found me unconscious on my bedroom floor. I was more stressed about the implications for you guys than I was for myself - I didn’t want you to worry about me. that is just how little I cared about myself - as long as I was getting thinner, nothing else mattered.

over the summer things picked up. mum placed meals in front of me and I can’t disappoint her. I have less to worry about at home. I feel valued and important. I categorically know that my mum and sister would never think me fat. I know people like me there. so I managed to cut down my ED behaviours and cope with just diet pills. one before and one after eating. I got through a pack of 150 (which should last 150 days) in six weeks. by the end of summer I’d cut it down to only taking pills when I was desperate. I figured my ED had ended. but I was wrong. I never fixed my eating disorder, I never tackled it, I just hid from it for a bit. it was still waiting for me.

last semester things were tough. but there was one big change from first year - I wanted recovery. the strains of the lifestyle - after being lifted from me for a few months - suddenly seemed overwhelming and unnecessary. last year I was crying myself to sleep because I was fat and worthless - now I cry myself to to sleep because I have an eating disorder. I always knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I wasn’t aware of just how tough it was:

before I only got out of bed because I promised myself ‘you don’t need to eat today’ but now I have to say ‘somehow today, you’ll need to have some food’ it’s a battle to get out of bed

before it was ‘how will I skip dinner’ which is simple; just don’t eat. but now it’s ‘how am I going to eat tonight’ which is an impossibly difficult question; what will I eat, when will I eat, how will I make sure no one sees, how will I keep it down? it’s a battle to have dinner

before it was natural to be sick - I was good at it. now after eating I instantly feel sick, but can’t let myself eliviate the feeling. it’s a battle to stay out of the bathroom

before I had my ED to give me confidence, now I have none. it’s a battle to leave my bedroom

and it’s all exhausting. nevertheless, it’s necessary and unavoidable, I have to go through this. I will come out the other side. I’ve made more progress than you guys realise. it was so easy to hide it from you last year, but now we live in a house with thin walls and shared bathrooms. last year I ate 2/3 times a week, threw up 4/5 times, popped way too many diet pills and consumed my body weight in alcohol most nights. this year I’ve been eating almost every day and I’ve only thrown up seven times. my successes are quiet, whereas my failures are loud - you only notice when I mess up - but I promise I’m having more successes than failures. I’m feeling relatively optimistic actually. I have a plan:

plan meals and actually go food shopping - I went three times last semester for a proper food shop, this is not enough

follow said meal plan, and stick it on my bedroom wall so I can’t avoid it

never drink on an empty stomach

destroy the laxatives

after eating, avoid being alone - even if I just sit in the living room in silence with you guys

but equally, leave the room when I feel uncomfortable

stop trying to hide when I’m eating - it’s not needed and makes the ordeal 100% more stressful

stop buying tiny sized clothes

open my eyes to the fact that I actually have loads and loads of friends in Aber, I don’t need anorexia and bulimia to be my friends too

ask for help when I need it

and acting upon number ten; here are some little things you could - only if you don’t mind of course - do to help me:

never tell me I’m skinny, even if I’m screaming at you that I’m fat - unless you use the term ‘anorexically thin’ I won’t think I’m thin enough, I’ll pick up that you’re paying attention to my waistline and that’s motivation to lose weight

please avoid me when I’m cooking. I worry that if you see me eating then you’ll think I’m lying about having an eating disorder. I don’t want what happened to Becca to happen to me

if I come and sit in the living room after having obviously been crying, don’t ask. if I’ve come downstairs then I want a distraction

let me apologise to you and never let me be in your debt. the guilt will get at me too badly

if you hear me crying, leave me alone. as much as I desperately want someone to help me, in the long run it is not productive you coming in and telling me that it’s fine. it’s not fine. and I won’t get better as long as I have you telling me this. you’re saying exactly what I need to hear in the moment, but when you tell me it’s okay, I’ll do it again. I’m beyond grateful that you’ve come to help me, but I need recovery motivation right now, so unless you’re going to come into my room and scream at me that anorexia will kill me, please leave me alone

when I’m being sick, give me space. I’m already beyond ashamed, I don’t need to feel embarrassed as well. again don’t try and comfort me. comfort me and I’ll do it again. although maybe drop me a message just to tell me that you’ve heard it, I don’t wanna get it in my head that you guys don’t hear me

Dan, keep with our little plan. it is working well. I trust your judgement as to whether you think I should have them, so maybe start being a little stricter with me. only when you think it’ll actually help me eat

other than that, treat me completely normally

I’m going to finish with a thank you. I could never express into words how unbelievably grateful I am to all of you. without you guys I know that my ED would be so much worse, because although I never do talk to you about it, it is so reassuring to know that I could. please never think I take you for granted. I dunno what happens next, but I’m aware that I have a serious problem, and for the first time in my life, I am serious about beating this.

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meraenthusiast · 4 years

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Chop Wood Carry Water Summary: 9 Success Principles

Chop Wood Carry Water Summary

I’m always in search for a good self-improvement book. Lord knows I need all the help I can get!

Most of the time I get new book ideas from authors that I’ve already read before.

If I like them then I usually pull the trigger and purchase their recommendations.

Even better is when someone walks up and hands me a book that they think I’d enjoy based on their knowledge of my interests.

This was the case recently while sitting in church. One of our Life Group members handed me a copy of Joshua Medcalf’s book, Chop Wood Carry Water.

The title piqued my curiosity but I have to admit, I didn’t think the book would resonate with me. Now, I didn’t tell the person that passed it along to me (Holly), so I decided to read it (and glad that I did).

Do you want to become great at your profession? At real estate investing? Becoming a better parent got you confused?

No worries. This book’s got you covered with 9 success principles.

Enjoy!

Chop Wood Carry Water Summary – 9 Success Principles

#1 It’s important what you become in the process

For all of the work that you do (treating patients, working a job, family projects) in the end you’re ultimately working ON yourself and for yourself.

It’s for that reason that you should love what you do no matter what you’re doing throughout the day.

This helps with dealing with the different outcomes that life throws us.

Outcomes are either:

Controllable

Uncontrollable

For instance, let’s say that you recently applied for a new job that happens to be in the best hospital in the country. You know that if you got the job then your career path would be set for life.

Look at what’s controllable in this situation. You have your qualifications and letters of recommendations that could be written on your behalf but you also have to take into account those things that you can’t control.

These uncontrollable things would be the competition (their unique qualifications) and possibly who they know that may work at the hospital.

So what can you do?

Surrender the outcome.

This means being at peace at what is OUTSIDE of your control without having to sacrifice the efforts for what is INSIDE of your control.

So what do you control?

You control the:

Process

How to get there

The way to get there

What do you NOT control?

The pure outcome.

Bottom line. Focus on the PROCESS and one thing at a time. You’ll be much happier if you do.

#2 Success contains hard work

Principle #2 in the Chop Wood Carry Water summary is one that is missed the most these days (especially by the younger generation).

This principle was brought to my attention when recently watching the documentary The Last Dance. It was filmed during the Chicago Bulls 1997-98 season as they went for their 6th NBA title in eight seasons.

It highlighted the star of the team, Michael Jordan. During the time that they were winning championships, I was attending high school and college.

Looking back, I never figured someone like MJ had to work hard to be as good as he was.

I thought he was just a great basketball player.

The documentary proved me wrong. He was a grinder that focused on the little things to make both him and his players better.

He demanded success.

His teammates actually feared him. I love that guy!

Most people don’t get what they want in life because they settle for average. It’s the small things done with persistence in life that makes success.

Small choices you make can add up to a BIG effect over time. Speaking of adding up, let’s look at compound interest.

Compound interest

Compound interest is nothing more than interest on interest. We have taught our kids that focusing and being persistent with the small things is what brings about healthy habits.

We had this discussion at lunch the other day regarding the money they’re making this summer. I told them that I understand that they’re not making much, but it’s the saving, spending and giving habits I want them to get.

With regards to savings, they realize that getting into the habit of saving a portion of every dollar they earn will lead to a MUCH larger amount thanks to compound interest.

Example

Here’s an example that I showed them in the past from the Ben and Arthur story that Dave Ramsey told during one of his conferences.

Ben started out investing $2,000 a year from age 19 and stopped at 26. Arthur started at age 27 but continued until age 65.

Ben’s total investment = $16,000

Arthur’s total investment = $78,000

source: DaveRamsey.com

Once they reached age 65:

Ben accumulated $2,288,996

Arthur accumulated $1,532,166 (not bad for a janitor)

Ben came out $756,830 ahead!

It was the small, consistent hard work performed early in life that allowed Ben to accomplish what he did.

#3 Our value is constant

When you’re on a winning team, it’s easy to feel good about yourself. But when you’re on the losing team, it’s just as easy to feel down and depressed.

Our value doesn’t change regarding the results produced in life. Don’t tie yourself too close to your performance.

Instead, find your identity in something that can’t be easily taken away.

#4 The pain of regret is far worse than the pain of discipline

Principle #4 in the Chop Wood Carry Water summary has to do with pain and regret.

Jim Rohn once said, “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

Let’s face it. We all deal with and face pain both mentally and physically on a monthly basis.

I started feeling the affects of years of playing sports and treating patients once I turned 40.

I miss those pain-free mornings getting out of bed but that’s just part of life. 🙁

Once we accept that pain is unavoidable, then we shouldn’t hide in fear from it. It’s a natural part of life.

Unfortunately, there’s people that aren’t willing to accept this fact and attempt to avoid pain no matter the cost.

By doing this, they constantly focus on the negative and forget to enjoy and appreciate the joys of life.

Now that we know that pain is unavoidable, we then get to choose between the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

The pain of discipline is felt every day. That’s why it only weighs ounces.

It’s the discipline to sprint while everyone else is jogging.

It’s the discipline to track your workouts before hitting the gym.

It’s the discipline to avoid the cake while trying to lose weight.

But each individual moment weighs very little, but added up overtime they weigh tons. That ton of pain can begin to form into regret.

For example:

You regret not knowing what you’re capable of.

You regret not chasing your dreams.

You regret stopping short of your potential.

It’s this pain of regret that becomes a heavy weight that unfortunately you carry around your entire life.

On the other hand, the pain of discipline is a series of small pains that quickly disappear.

#5 Your memories are created through the stories you tell yourself

Whenever we experience something, our brains will either label them positive or negative.

We have little control over many things in life but we do have control over what those things mean to us.

Our words and stories determine the stories that life creates for us.

Those pictures affect our feelings and what we do with them. By doing this, we set ourselves up for either failure or success.

#6 Comparison is the thief of all joy

Too many of us today live our lives trying to keep up with everyone else (the Joneses!).

Many times social media paints an unrealistic picture of what’s really going on in society.

There’s always someone out there that’s going to be smarter, stronger or richer than yourself.

Constant comparison does nothing but suck all of the joy out of life.

Instead, focus on life’s journey and be thankful for all things in life, no matter how big or small.

#7 Live by principles rather than feelings

Principle #7 in the Chop Wood Carry Water summary has to do with the way you live…whether that be by principles or feelings.

If you live your life by feelings, then you must know that feelings change. You can feel happy or sad within the blink of an eye.

Living by principles is different. Whereas feelings change, principles stay the same.

Examples include:

Think Big…such as in the book, The Magic of Thinking Big

Set Goals

Work Hard

#8 The map you’re given by society is outdated

It seems as if most people today follow the map given by society but there’s one problem. That map is OUTDATED.

Maps don’t change with the times. Instead of using them, find successful people to mentor you in whatever field you’re interested in.

For instance, when I wanted to learn more about real estate investing, I searched for and located a local mentor with tons of experience.

He explained that the way he invested twenty years ago is MUCH different than how is approaches it now.

You must learn to change and adapt to the times or get left behind.

#9 You still need permission even when you are equipped with life changing wisdom

Even when you have knowledge that can benefit others, there’s no point in trying to “force” it on others.

Especially when they’re not ready to listen.

It reminds me of the quote, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

Would you tell someone how to lose weight if they didn’t think they needed to? Probably not.

But once they’re ready to commit to eating better and exercising then you can share your knowledge with them.

Bottom Line

Chop Wood Carry Water is one of those types of books that can be easily read in a few hours but the impact can be life changing.

Let’s face it. We’ve all been through tough times and will continue to do so while we’re here on Earth. There’s no way around it.

But you have a choice. You can allow life to win and stay beaten down or get up, brush off your clothes, learn from your failures/mistakes and keep moving forward.

This book gives you the tools needed to keep you working towards your goals despite setbacks.

The main takeaway I got out of the book was this:

“Success lies in doing simple things over a long period of time. If you learn to chop wood, carry water then success will eventually come.”

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