#where they do a ton of work pro bono because they know the people need help and cant afford it

[elflikesfrogs]

irks me when people say daredevil is the batman of marvel because there's one fundamental difference between them, and it's that daredevil is dirt poor and batman is a billionaire. their wealth gaps are absolutely integral to each of their characters. daredevil would not be who he is if he was a rich man and i will die on this hill

#daredevil #i know this at LEAST applies to netflix daredevil #but it may also apply to comic daredevil #from what ive read so far it doesnt really go in depth what his financial status is? #like from the scenes with his father its implied that he grew up in some semblance of poverty #also his interactions with foggy in annual 1 #(him basically automatically calling foggy a rich snob) #imply that he was poor as well #anyways his social class/wealth is absolutely integral to his character #he is not batman because he is not rich #and thats a major fundamental difference #idk much about batman canon so i cant speak to that #but daredevil is absolutely influenced by his poverty #especially in the show #where they do a ton of work pro bono because they know the people need help and cant afford it #(the difference is that foggy is also poor in the show. so theres that) #elf rants

[ejzah]

A/N: And here is part 2 of the Kensi marries Rich Deeks fic. Since this will end up being fairly long, what should I title it?

***

“Did you know a Gregory Morton?” Kensi asked, sitting on the edge of her seat. After the idiot she’d made of herself, she felt like she needed to be extra professional. It didn’t help that Mr. Deeks, or whatever the hell his name was, kept staring at her. It would make it infinitely less difficult to act aloof if she didn’t have to look directly into his extremely gorgeous blue eyes.

“I know of him,” he said vaguely. Something about his expression told Kensi there was more to the story.

“I thought you both worked for the same law firm.” He nodded.

“We do. I’m a founding member, but I’ve taken a backseat in the last few years. Greg is a recent hire. One that I wasn’t especially fond of.”

“Why was that?” she asked. Instead of answering immediately, he rubbed his thumb across his bottom lip and then leaned forward, his expression completely serious for a moment.

“I noticed you used the past tense when you talked about Greg, is he dead?” he said, neither seeming upset or glad about the idea. Maybe thoughtful was the right word.

“Yes. His body was found outside a condemned building in the packing district along with two active members of the military. They were all stabbed multiple times, suggesting they had been tortured.”

“Jesus,” Marty murmured, looking horrified. Keeping in mind his apparent dislike for Greg Morton, she watched his posture and face closely. He pressed his hand over his mouth, seeming to forget she was even there for a moment.

“Mr. Deeks,” she prompted. “Do you have any idea what Greg Morton might have been doing by that building. Or what he might have been involved in?” Startling, he shook his head slowly.

“No...I. We weren’t close at all. I don’t know much about his life outside of work. He didn’t like to share. In more ways than one.” He huffed out a bitter chuckle and then shook his head again. “God, I can’t believe he’s dead. I just saw him the other day.”

Kensi narrowed her eyes, not buying the shocked act.

“You indicated you two didn’t get along, yet you seem upset by his death.” Deeks looked up at her observation, looking horrified by the implication of her words.

“We didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I wanted him dead!” he insisted and she asked.

“Then what was the source of your disagreement?”

“Greg and I had different ideas about the type of cases and people we should be representing. To him, money was more important than worrying about if our clients were actually guilty or not.”

“And you’re saying you weren’t motivated by money?” Kensi said, glancing at the intricately carved and stained woodwork of the bookshelves, where which spoke of wealth.

“I never said that. But I do my best to make sure the people, or companies, I represent don’t actually belong in prison. Half the time, I work with celebrities who did something incredibly stupid and need some legal advice. Hell, I once defended a basketball player.” He grinned at her again and Kensi rolled her eyes.

“That’s very impressive, Mr. Deeks. But to get back on track, is there anything more you can tell me about Mr. Morton?”

Sobering again, he shook his head slowly.

“Honestly, not that I can think of. He ran with a different set of people. Represented different people. The only times we ever really associated was when we sat in on the same case, which happened rarely, or during staff meetings,” he explained. “But I can ask around. I think he was friendly with quite a few people around the office. They might know something.”

“That’s a very kind offer,” Kensi said. “But we’ll handle any and all interrogations.”

“See that’s the problem. You’re thinking of it from the point of view of an Agent. Whereas I look at it from the view of someone who knows how to convince people to change the way they think. I can be very persuasive.”

“I’m sure you can but-“

“What, you think the gardener can’t handle it?” he teased, grinning so his eyes crinkled at the corners. His smile was slightly crooked, Kensi noticed idly.

“No, I think that you’ll be interfering in a federal investigation and then I really will have a valid reason to arrest you,” she answered. A second too late, she realized she sounded a lot more flirtatious than she’d intended.

“Sounds kinky, but I’m afraid I have a couple more flats of petunias to plant.” Deeks winked at her and then stood up, effectively ending the interview. Trying to regain control of the situation, Kensi stood up too and extended her hand. He took it with a faint smile.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Deeks.”

“Anytime,” he said, somehow managing to make it sound slightly indecent. As she turned to leave, he held onto her hand and added, once again changing from playful to serious in a nanosecond, “You will let me know if you find out who did this, right?”

“Of course,” Kensi promised rashly.

***

“Why didn’t you send me a picture of Martin Brandel?” Kensi demanded when she walked into the bullpen later that day. She’d interviewed two more of Greg Morton’s acquaintances and both had turned out to be dead ends. Eric, who was sitting in a spare chair and munching on some kind of wrap, put it down, looking concerned.

On the way back, she’d had plenty of time to review every mortifying moment of her interview with Martin Deeks.

“Why, what happened?” Callen asked.

“I accused him of being the gardener,” she explained angrily as both Callen and Sam burst into laughter. “When you told me he was a lawyer, I expected a snooty suit, not some blond, blue-eyed surfer dude.”

“Interesting,” Sam commented, thoroughly undaunted by her rant.

“What’s interesting?”

“That you noticed his blond hair,” Callen said.

“And blue eyes. You got a picture of this guy, Eric?”

“Sure, give me a second,” Eric said, wiping his fingers off and retrieving his tablet, which was never far away. After a little tapping, he pulled up a picture of Deeks. He looked considerably more put together-and was actually wearing a suit, though the top two button were undone-than when she’d met him, but his hair was still a little messy and there was no mistaking those blue eyes or that smirk.

“Ooh, I can definitely see why you have a thing for him,” Callen said, sharing a glance with Sam.

“Mm-hm. He’s your type.”

“He is not my type. I don’t have a type,” Kensi insisted. “And if I did, he would not be it.”

“Me thinks the lady doth protest too much,” Eric added, earning an appreciative smile from Callen.

“Hilarious.” Kensi gestured at the screen, bringing the conversation back to the case.“ Do you have anything else on this guy? He claimed he didn’t know much about Morton, but there was something hinky about him.”

“Sure.” Eric grabbed his tablet again.

“Hinky. I think that means she likes him,” Sam said which Kensi ignored.

“Ok, what do you want to know about him, Kensi?” Eric asked, hand poised over the keyboard.

“Let’s start with what he’s been doing for the last ten years,” she said.

“Um, let me see, shortly after graduating from law school, he helped form the Martindale, Stevenson and Brandel law firm with two of his former roommates. Wow, that’s certainly a mouthful. I wonder if they ever shorten it to save time.”

“Eric.”

“Sorry. They managed to accrue a wealthy client base within a couple years of establishment. Most of their cases are civil or non-violent criminal cases.

“Yeah, he said that he works with a lot celebrities,” Kensi mentioned, distaste in her tone.

“Ooh, this is interesting,” Eric murmured. “Apparently he does a ton of pro bono work on the side. Mostly for victims of domestic abuse and such. I wouldn’t have expected that from a guy who lives in a three million dollar home.”

“Maybe he’s trying to hide something,” Sam suggested.

“Or maybe he just likes to help out,” Eric said.

“Maybe. But it’s unlikely,” Kensi said. A part of her hoped it was true, because despite everything, she didn’t want Martin Deeks to turn out to be one of the bad guys. “Keep looking, Eric. I want to know about anything sketchy this guy has done.”

“Will do.”

“And on that note, I think we’ll check out Morton’s law firm now,” Callen said, beginning to stand as he gestured to Sam.

“That won’t be necessary, gentleman,” Hetty said, appearing in the entryway. She stepped to the side and held out a hand as Marty Deeks sauntered in. He grinned at Kensi and nodded to Sam, Callen and Eric.

“What’s he doing here?” Sam asked, giving Deeks a once over, which clearly found him lacking.

“Mr. Deeks came to me with some very useful information and agreed to consult on the case,” Hetty answered, smiling fondly after Deeks. There was a calculating gleam in her eye that Kensi wasn’t sure she liked.

“No way.” Deeks sat down at the spare desk and grinned at Sam.

“It’s nice to meet you too.” Turning to Kensi, he winked at her, the gesture somehow simultaneously sarcastic and flirtatious.

She ignored the slight shiver that ran up her spine.

***

A/N: Just as a heads up, this is going to be shamelessly ridiculous at points.

#ncis la fanfiction #marty deeks #kensi blye #sam hanna #g callen #hetty lange #au #ejzah fanfiction

[darkshadowismyspiritanimal]

Can I get a fic where All Might starts dating someone and finds out later that they're Deku's Aunt please?

//Note: I typed this entire thing up and it deleted itself, so it took longer than I would have liked to upload it. But I had a lot of fun with this prompt. Hope you like it!//

Izuku’s Aunt?! All Might x Reader

Toshinori was a busy man. Even now, without One for All, he still found that he had little time to himself. Between working with the students at UA and acting as a sort of mediator between pro heroes and the police force in the League of Villains investigation, he was booked. He barely found time to go grocery shopping, for crying out loud.

Which is how he found himself in his current predicament. His right hand resting idly on the fridge door handle, staring into an empty fridge.

It wasn’t just devoid of meals, it was empty. There weren’t even long forgotten jars of obscure condiments. He didn’t even have ketchup, goddamn it.

Toshinori closed the fridge door and stood up to his full height, wondering what to do. He could go out to eat, but that would only be a short term solution. So he would have to go shopping. He had time; Midoriya had gotten injured in class so All Might didn’t have his normal training session with his successor.

He sighed, resigned to his decision. Time to go grocery shopping.

--- 

Now it wasn’t that Toshinori didn’t like grocery shopping. It’s just that after losing the last of One for All on live television, people had begun recognizing him in his other - now his only - form.

And he didn’t like that.

He didn’t like having the reminder that he can’t protect everyone anymore. Which is all that seemed to come from being recognized nowadays.

Toshinori methodically made his way through the small family-owned grocery store that he often frequented, picking out the items he needed. The last item on his list was strawberries.

He walked down the fruit aisle and stopped cold. Standing in front of the berry section was the most beautiful woman he might have ever seen. 

She was standing right in front of the strawberries. Toshinori would have to ask her to move so he could a carton. It was a simple task, so why was he so nervous?

Toshinori gathered up his courage and headed over there. He opened his mouth to say excuse me, when the woman spoke.

“Aren’t the strawberries just lovely right now?” She turned towards him, like she had been aware of him the whole time.

“I uh,” Toshinori’s hand flew to the back of his neck as he tried to regain his composure. Before he could, the woman spoke again.

“Here! You should stock up on them!” She handed Toshinori a stack of three containers of ripe strawberries. He took them and placed him in his basket, not sure what else to do.

“Do you work here?” He finally asked, noticing the name tag on her shirt.

“Only on Wednesdays, around now.” The woman replied with a smile. “I like to volunteer at smaller businesses whenever I have time - goodness knows they need to save all the money they can with all the villain attacks destroying people’s stores.”

--- 

Toshinori began to go grocery shopping almost exclusively on Wednesday afternoons.

He almost always left the store with an uncharacteristically genuine smile on his sunken face, having talked with the volunteer - Y/N.

She was inspiring. She was a lawyer at one of the most prestigious law firms in the city and worked for nearly all the top pro heroes. On top of that, she made a point to do whatever she could do to help those negatively impacted by all of the villain attacks. On top of volunteering as an employee in her spare time (though she must have little), she took pro bono cases whenever she could and had started a charity dedicated to helping out those in need of hospital bills, building repairs, and the like.

Toshinori could listen to her talk for hours about her work - and her life - which is what he planned on doing when he finally got the courage up to ask her out for coffee - and she said yes.

--- 

They were walking down a fairly uncrowded street, coffees in hand. Toshinori and Y/N had decided to go for a walk as it was such a nice day.

They were in a moment of comfortable silence, though it would be broken soon once Toshinori got the courage to say what was on his mind.

“You’re wondering if I realize you’re All Might?” Y/N asked. Toshinori stumbled.

“How do you always know what I’m thinking?” He asked, hoping he was imagining the feeling of heat rising to his face.

“You’re an open book.” Y/N replied bluntly. She was like that - always straight to the point, no time for social niceties.

“To answer your question,” She continued, pausing only to take a sip of her coffee. “I’ve known from the start.”

She paused again, giving Toshinori a chance to say something. When he didn’t - she continued.

“It must be hard, seeing the order you helped create crumble - all because you lost your power.”

“Yeah.” Toshinori agreed. “The hardest part is not being able to help. I’m powerless —“

“Bullshit.”

“What?” Toshinori stopped walking, turning to look at Y/N, stunned.

“I mean, sure, you can’t fight bad guys but we have plenty of people to do that. You are doing something more important - you are instilling your pro hero philosophy into the next generation of pro heroes. If that isn’t helping - if making way for a time when we have more then just one pillar of peace isn’t helping a fucking shit ton - then I don’t know what is.”

“I—“ Toshinori stopped. “But—“ He knew teaching the heroes was important. He knew, but to have someone outside of UA tell him...

“Look, I’m Quirkless. But does that stop me from doing my darnedest to help everyone? Because I’m not going around kicking bad guys does that mean I’m not helping?”

Toshinori was quiet for some time - and they resumed walking.

“You’re right.” he finally said. “The things you do, the police do, are heroic. The way people are standing against these increased villain attacks - is incredible.”

How forwardly Y/N admitted to being Quirkless was also admirable but he didn’t say that aloud. 

“I have a chance to do a lot of good,” Toshinori admitted. “but I still have a lot to learn about teaching.”

“Sounds like you are doing a pretty good job,” Y/N commented. “my nephew won’t shut up about how much he’s learned from you.”

“Your nephew?” Toshinori turned to look at Y/N in surprise. She was related to one of his students? He wondered who it was.

“Yeah, he’s in Class 1-A.” Y/N said, clearly proud of her nephew. “His name is Izuku - Izuku Midoriya.”

Toshinori spit out a mouthful of coffee and stood on the street, coughing. She was Izuku’s aunt?!

#my hero academia #mha x reader #all might #toshinori yagi #all might x reader

[remywrites5]

Hey there! I really love your fics, and ficlets, they brighten my day every time I read or re- read one! I'm sort of having a rough day, and I went through all your wolfstar, because wolfstar is one of my favourites, and then I really got into spideypool, but it seems I can't find that many good fics out there! Is there any chance you could write something where peter gets kidnapped because he photographed something he shouldn't? Only if you have free time of course!

I’m sorry you were having a tough day! Again this ask is from forever ago but I hope all is well. Thanks for you prompt! 

******          

 This was just…well…humiliating was the word that came to mind. Peter had been kidnapped –or abducted seemed more appropriate because he wasn’t a child no matter what Mr. Stark said. It wasn’t his fault that these big, muscle-y guys had jumped him as Peter. He couldn’t exactly fight them off without giving away his secret identity. It’s not like mild-mannered Peter Parker could fight off five guys.

           He had a feeling he knew exactly what this was about too. He’d been snooping around Oscorp and had taken some pictures of them doing human testing for some new kind of drug that appeared to be some kind aggression hormone based on the way the subjects freaked out. That was all the world needed, more Hulks. He’d hadn’t had a chance to sell the pictures to the Daily Bugle yet because Jamison was a grade A asshole who had chosen to haggle with Peter over the price.

           Now he was chained to a chair and he probably could have busted out of them if he’d given it his whole strength but again Peter Parker can’t break out of chains. So Peter sat stewing in a ball of frustration when he heard gunshots. His eyes widened and he wondered if he was going to have to blow his secret identity just to not get shot in the fucking head by whoever was coming.

           He was just about to break the chains when the door swung open and in strolled Deadpool. “You coulda had a bad bitch! Noncommittal!”

           Peter groaned and shook his head. If the Avengers found out he was rescued by Deadpool, of all people, he would never live it down. The only saving grace was that Deadpool didn’t know Peter’s secret identity.

           “Oooh!” Wade said, holstering his guns. “I must have walked into the pantry because I just found me a snack!”

           Peter rolled his eyes. “A little help, please?”

           Wade cocked his head to the side. “Say, aren’t you the guy who takes pictures of Spider-man? Do you know him? Can you get me an autograph?”

           “Why would I know him just because I take pictures of him?” Peter asked, shuffling uncomfortably in his seat. “Do you think everyone that works for US Weekly knows Taylor Swift?”

           “You’re my looooover!” Wade sang out.

           “Can we focus?” Peter asked impatiently. Although he knew Deadpool had a thing for leaving a stack of bodies in his wake, he didn’t want to chance that someone might come along.

           “Right, right, more helping, less talking,” Wade said, going over and inspecting the chains. “I need a key. Hold on, I think I killed a guy with some down the hallway. Don’t go anywhere, sexy!”

           “Where am I meant to go?” Peter growled after him in frustration.

           He sat there with Taylor Swift stuck in his head while he waited for Wade to return and rescue him. This pretending to be helpless thing was the worst. He was about to just break the chains and claim a rat ate them when Deadpool reappeared. “Fancy meeting you here!”

           “What are you even doing here, anyway?” Peter asked as Wade unlocked the chains. “I doubt you came here just to save me.”

           “I mean, if I had known a cutie like you was in peril I would have done this job pro-bono, but Justin Hammer paid me a lot of dineros to sneak in here and steal some science-y information, and also kill a bunch of people. But, since you’re here and I’m here and I’m about to be filthy rich, why don’t you and I do dinner?”

           Peter shot Wade an absolutely baffled expression. “Does this really seem like the time to be asking me out?”

           “No time like the present, baby boy,” Wade said with a shrug. “I don’t wanna wait for our lives to be over!”

           “Please for the love of god, stop singing,” Peter begged, looking up and down the hallway to try and figure out where his camera might be stashed. He supposed he would just have to go room by room, which would be much quicker if he could lose Deadpool and go about it as Spider-man.

           “Not a fan of the creek, huh?” Wade asked, following Peter as he took a left and began opening doors one after the other. “How do you feel about Golden Girls?”

           “Wade,” Peter said, walking over and putting his hand over Wade’s mouth. “Is there anyone alive left on this ship?”

           Wade shook his head no.

           Peter groaned. “Shit! This is going to take forever to find my camera.”

           “I saw a camera!” Wade said as soon as Peter removed his hand and began his search again. “Come with me!”

           Wade grabbed Peter and hauled him over his shoulder, carrying him like a sack of potatoes. “I can walk you know!” Peter said, huffing indignantly.

           “I know,” Wade said with a grin that stretched his mask. “I just wanted a close up look at that ass. Do you do yoga? Pilates? It’s fairly toned for such a nerd.”

           “Wade?” Peter said as evenly as he could.

           “Yeah?”

           “Get your hand off my ass.”

           “Whoops.”

                                                                       ***

           Once he got back to his apartment, Peter posted the pictures on the internet for free, not wanting the hassle of fighting with Jamison over them. At least the word would get out about what Oscorp was doing. More than anything, Peter just wanted to put the whole ordeal behind him.

           Which was extremely difficult to do considering Deadpool was currently breaking into his apartment through the window, and making a fuck ton of noise while he was at it.

           ‘Hey Petey!” Wade said, tumbling into Peter’s bedroom.

           Peter watched Wade scramble to his feet. “So you found out my name, huh?”

           “Yup!” Wade said, strutting around the room like he was proud of himself. He wasn’t in his full Deadpool gear, just sweatpants and a hoodie with his Deadpool mask.

           “And you’re here because…” Peter gestured for Wade to fill in the blanks because Peter really had no clue.

           “I’m your new bodyguard!” Wade said, puffing up his chest. “And don’t worry, I know you’re a struggling college kid, so you’ll only have to pay me in food. Or kisses. Whichever one you prefer.”

           “Why do I need a bodyguard?” Peter asked, watching Wade walk about his room and rifle through his stuff.

           “Word on the street is that Norman Osborne is pissed about the pictures you took and posted online,” Wade explained, holding up a pair of Peter’s underwear that had Cap’s shield on them. Peter jumped up and shoved them back in the drawer before closing it forcefully. “So I’m here to offer my services.”

           Peter chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully. If Osborne was gunning for him then it might not be a bad idea to have some backup. Getting abducted had been really stupid and at least with Deadpool around the chances of that happening were significantly decreased.

           “Fine,” Peter said, holding his hand out to Wade. “You’re hired.”

           “Oh Petey!” Wade said, ignoring his hand and pulling him into a bear hug. “You won’t regret this!”

           Peter doubted that very much.

                                                           ***

           It had been three weeks of round the clock Deadpool and nothing had happened. No attacks, no retribution, no nothing. The worst part of all was that Peter was kind of starting to…like Wade? Having him around wasn’t quite as annoying as he had thought. It was actually nice to have some company for once and despite what he had said, Wade was the one who provided the food most of the time. He did mention the kissing more than a few times but it obviously never amounted to anything.

           Which is why Peter really hated what he was about to do. “There was no threat against my life, was there?” he asked, already having a feeling about the answer.

           Wade looked around for a moment to avoid answering the question and then slumped down. “No,” he grumbled.

           Peter huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I mean, I’m relieved but why did you lie?”

           Wade shrugged. “I wanted a reason to see you again.”

           Peter laughed. “We could have just hung out, Wade, you didn’t have to make me fear for my life.”

           “People don’t really hang out with me if they can help it,” Wade informed him unhappily.

           Peter figured that was probably true. He thought about all the times he had blown Wade off as Spider-man, declining his offers of epic team ups. Maybe Wade had a point and it was kind of hard for Peter to stay mad at him.

           “Hey Wade,” Peter said, scooting closer to him. “You can come over whenever you want. Just no more busting in on me in the shower, okay?”

           “I had to make sure you were safe!”

           “We just established that I wasn’t in danger!”

           “Better safe than sorry, Petey.”

                                                                       ***

           Peter was a little offended when Deadpool kissed Spider-man, which made no fucking sense because he was Spider-man. But Wade didn’t know that and something about that hurt. Like Wade was cheating on him with him, and the whole thing made Peter’s head hurt.

           Peter had texted Deadpool for help patrolling the city one night, wanting to see Wade and figuring he could make up excuses to see him. It only seemed fair. They’d stopped a bodega from getting robbed and a purse snatcher. It hadn’t been the most exciting night but it had been fun. When they sat down on a roof to eat their hard earned tacos, Wade had pounced the moment Peter had rolled his mask up.

           Peter found himself flat on his back on the roof with Wade’s tongue slipping into his mouth. He would have enjoyed it if he hadn’t been so offended on behalf of his alter-ego.

           “Mm, Petey,” Wade murmured, sucking on Peter’s lower lip.

           “Wait,” Peter said, shoving Wade off of him. “You know?”

           “Puh-lease,” Wade said, rolling his eyes. “Like I wouldn’t recognize that Spider-man and the guy I’ve been spending all my time with lately are the same? Not to mention that ass.”

           “Oh,” Peter said dumbly, propping himself up on his elbows. “Well, that’s okay then.”

           “So we can go back to the kissing part, then?” Wade asked, crawling back over Peter. “I mean you do owe me for three weeks of service.”

           “You didn’t do anything!”

           “I protected your sweet ass, Petey,” Wade said, nipping at Peter’s chin. “Made sure it wasn’t violated by nefarious persons unknown.”

           “The only nefarious person my ass was in danger from was you,” Peter quipped, capturing Wade’s lips again.

           “Mm,” Wade hummed, cupping Peter’s face in his hands. “I’ll violate that ass any time, baby boy.”

           “If I let you do that I’m pretty sure that makes me a prostitute,” Peter said, laughing softly. “Selling my body for good and services.”

           “It worked for Julia Roberts.”

           “Are you going to scale a fire escape with some flowers and profess your love to me?”

           “Any time, any place, you just name the day, Petey.”

           “White limo too, or it doesn’t count,” Peter teased, wrapping his legs around Wade.

           “Obviously,” Wade said, kissing Peter breathless. After several moments he pulled back. “Although I think our story is more like The Bodyguard.”

           Peter laughed. “I’ve never seen it.”

           “What??” Wade shook his head. “Whitney Huston? Kevin Costner. And I-I-I will always loooove youuuu.”

           Peter grinned. “Wanna go home and not watch it while we make-out on my couch?”

           Wade matched his smile and then stole Peter’s breath away with another kiss. “I fucking love you.”

           “Love you too,” Peter said, pressing kisses against Wade’s scarred cheek. “I don’t know if I ever said it but thanks for rescuing me.”

           “And you rescued me right back.”

           “Nice Pretty Woman call back.”

           “It’s what I do, Petey.”

           Peter gently pushed Wade off of him and grabbed the bag of tacos. He put his arm around Wade’s waist and held him close. “Come on, let’s go home.” Peter shot out a web to the building across the street and took of swinging in the direction of his apartment with Wade signing “Rewrite the Stars from the Greatest Showman in his ear the entire time.

           Peter couldn’t even find it in him to mind it all that much.

#spideypool #i write things #peter parker x wade wilson #fluff #flirting #movie references galore #long post #anon prompt

[canaryatlaw]

alright I really need to get to bed. I was set to write this like twenty minutes ago but then I realized I hadn’t taken my pills yet so I went to do that and then swallowed them all at once because I’m impatient when I usually due it in two batches and inevitably one got stuck in my throat because my esophagus occasionally tries to choke me to death randomly when I do things like swallow too many pills at much so then I felt like I was going to throw up and had to swallow like 4 spoonfuls of honey until it finally went away. and then I returned to my computer and then got distracted by the BTS performance video and watched half of that before returning to actually write this. so that was a playback of the last twenty minutes of my life, but we can get on to the rest of it now. I had set my alarm for 11 just so that I didn’t sleep in too much but when it went off I still wanted to sleep more so I slept for like another hour then got up and discovered bagels had already been obtained, which was helpful because I thought I was going to have to go obtain them myself, so that made my life easier. so I ate a bagel that was very good. We were gonna keep some for tomorrow morning but then I think it was decided that we’re gonna go out to breakfast so hopefully I can steal a few bagels and shove them into my bag before I leave, I had some space when I finished packing on the way here and I didn’t buy anything, so I should be able to fit a few. we kinda just chilled for a while after that until around 3 when we left to go to the movies since my mom wanted to see the mr rogers movie (”A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood”) so my parents, my brother, and I went to do that. It was a really good movie, Tom Hanks portrayal was phenomenal, he embodied him so well and the whole thing was just so well done it made me really happy to see. I also may have texted a bit during the movie (but with my phone brightness all the way down so nobody could actually see it, I’m not that much of an asshole) because the dude I went on a date with last week texted me back, and I asked if he wanted to go to the jingle bash concert next weekend because I had an extra ticket, but like he could definitely say no if it was too much, and he was basically like “so I really hate pop music” and I just laughed and was like that’s totally fine, I wouldn’t want to put you through a night of torture, especially since I hadn’t mentioned there was gonna be two kpop bands there that were the actual reasons I wanted to go, and I would probably inevitably thirst after them watching them perform and this probably was not a good dating activity lol. I’ll probably ask my roommate if she wants to go and if she can’t I may just sell the ticket on stubhub and be a loner for the night (which I don’t particularly want to do because I don’t like doing things by myself, but I might not really have a choice). but yeah, after the movie we dropped my brother off at home and then went to get italian food for dinner. I had previously googled fred rogers because I wanted to see when he had died (2003, in case you were wondering), and one of the articles that popped up first was a review of the movie that was like “Christian faith is the one thing that was missing from [movie]” and I was like huh that’s an interesting take (especially when there was definitely a scene where he was praying and it was mentioned that he was an ordained minister) and it was just like this review trashing the movie as being humanistic and secularist and how all of its hope and goodwill were empty and meaningless without an acknowledgement of his Christianity and I was just like.....what the fuck movie did you watch??? Both my parents had loved the movie and I told them about this and they were both like wtf too because that’s such a shallow and short sighted perspective to think that no good can come from a piece of media without an explicit gospel message coming through. and that was like, a huge part of my college Christian artist perspective with the idea being working on “redemptive” art that doesn’t necessarily have to focus on evangelizing (and tbh, the more explicitly gospel aimed productions were usually the weaker ones). and like, reading that just irritated me so much like...imagine thinking that any kindness you express is worthless unless you’re shoving Jesus down their throat at the same time and that’s just like....that makes no sense at all and is completely unrealistic. There’s a Christian song i’m partial to called Live Like That which contains the lyrics “people pass/and even if they don’t know my name/is there evidence that I’ve been changed/when they see me do they see You?” and that’s just always what I’m focusing on- spreading God’s love without the need for words even, just through action alone. I shouldn’t have to spout off the gospel to show love to someone, it doesn’t work like that. and I mean, I don’t automatically devalue any explicitly Christian productions as there have been a few that were actually very well done (though admittedly most of them are pretty crappy). there had been a trailer playing before the movie for the movie coming out about Jeremy Camp (who’s a fairly well known Christian singer) that has KJ Apa in the lead role and it actually looks like it could be really good, but the audience that’s actually going to see that movie is barely a fraction of the audience that would go to the mr rogers movie. This was such an awesome opportunity to share love and kindness and they did it so damn well, I just thought it was so callous and ignorant to totally dismiss the movie because it didn’t contain an explicit gospel message. I’m rambling now, I know, though before I totally get off the topic I did also want to mention we also saw a trailer for the movie adaptation of Just Mercy, which was a book written by Bryan Stevenson, the founder of Equal Justice Works, which is a huge public interest law group that provides a ton of fellowships funding new attorneys who want to work do public interest work, and I know several people who had such fellowships with them (I came very close to applying but I had gotten the info about it too close to the deadline to really come up with a good proposal so I decided against it). so I’m super pumped for that movie as well, I do have a copy of the book that I received from that pro bono training we did at the fancy law firm a few weeks ago, I might have to sit down and read through it (which isn’t something I’ve really done with physical books since law school, you just do so much reading for school it kinda kills reading for pleasure for you, though I do still read plenty of fanfiction, lol). but now, anyway. the italian food was good, though when we got home I had a got a pretty bad stomach ache, but I don’t really know if it was the food or some other random reason because my body is crappy like that. but yeah, for most of the rest of the night I just chilled on the couch with my parents and a heating pad which I still have on my stomach currently, though it’s mostly feeling better. and yeah, eventually people went to go to bed and I showered and then came back here to start writing and went through the sequence of events recounted at the beginning of this post, and now I’m here. It’s now 1:30 am and I do have to wake up at some point not too late in order to go to breakfast because the car is coming to take me to the airport at 2:30 (I know that sounds so pretentious and spoiled and every time I say something like that I feel the need to explain my dad is really good friends with the owner of a limo company and he gives us free airport rides whenever we want, which is very generous of him, and my parents hate laguardia airport more than anything so I tend to get driven by them fairly often) so we’d obviously have to go sometime before that, and henceforth, I should go to bed now, so that is what I’m going to do. Goodnight friends. Goodbye November, hello December. 

#daily journal #November 2019

[twtd11]

Legally blonde Hicsqueak AU! (I’m sorry I’ve sent so many😬) I just have so many ideas and requests swimming around my head.

Sorta what you asked for:

1993

"You should be my moot court partner," Pippa said to a surprised Hecate Hardbroom. Through high school and university, and despite her excellent grades, no one ever volunteered to be her partner at anything. As such, despite its prestige, she hadn't thought about doing the moot court competition at all.

"What?" Hecate knew it was inarticulate, but she was so taken aback, it was all she could come up with. Pippa took her arm, completely ignoring the air of reclusiveness Hecate carefully cultivated.

"You're the only person in class who knows more of the answers than I do and you're not afraid to say them. I'm in this to win and you're the obvious choice in partners to make that happen." Pippa's smile was disarming. "So, will you do it?"

Of course, Hecate accepts, not that Pippa gives her much of a choice. They go on to crush the competition. Somehow, it wins Pippa a ton of new friends and Hecate a ton of new enemies. The long, late hours they spend together prepping cements their friendship though. They're basically inseparable from then on. They sit together and they study together and fight each other for the top spot in their classes.

Hecate excels in Contracts and Civil Procedure and Property Law. Pippa excels in Criminal Law and Constitutional Law and Torts. In their writing and research class, Hecate is better at research and Pippa is a better writer, but only just. They both make it onto Law Review at the end of the year.

There are lots and lots of late night study sessions. Lots of them. Pippa and Hecate end up moving in together their second year. They're only in a couple of the same classes together, but they still study together and push each other to be better.

Pippa starts dating someone during their second year and Hecate gets withdrawn and sullen and she doesn't know why because Pippa is still spending time with her and they still see each other at school all the time, but something doesn't feel right anymore.

Pippa breaks up with the boy because he thinks her heart isn't in it. They stay friends though.

It's Hecate who figures out her feelings first. They're curled up on the couch together watching a movie when Hecate is suddenly overcome by the desire to kiss Pippa. She promptly freaks out and hides in her room. How is she supposed to keep living with someone she's in love with? Somehow she manages it, though there's lots of pining and an oblivious Pippa.

They get halfway through their third year (despite many of her peers disliking her, Hecate still gets made editor of the Law Review. Pippa is the Student Bar Association President) and Pippa starts dating someone else. It looks like things are getting serious and Hecate is despondent. It looks like she missed her change, not that she ever thought about taking it.

They graduate. They're supposed to study for the bar together before Hecate goes off to work for the public defender and Pippa goes off to work for legal aid, but Hecate doesn't show up for the first day of classes. Pippa frets. She goes back to their apartment to check on Hecate only to find all of Hecate's stuff gone. Hecate leaves her a curt note explaining that she's joining Broomhead's firm in New York (it actually has one of those three name important law firm names but I don't feel like coming up with one) and she's moving there immedately and will study for the bar there. New York has never felt so far away from Boston.

Pippa is heartbroken. Hecate won't return her calls. Pippa marries the man she was dating and works at legal aid just like she planned.

They both move on with their lives. Hecate becomes a big name defense attorney but after years of doing that she burns out. Ada Cackle offers her a position on the faculty at Harvard where she's the dean. Hecate accepts and moves back to Boston.

Pippa's now in charge of the pro bono arm of a giant law firm and uses their nearly infinite resources to help all sorts of people. She's divorced and has several adult children. Her daughter gets accused of some sort of grisly murder that he didn't commit. Pippa will spare no expense to get her acquitted, but the best defense attorney in Boston is teaching at Harvard and just happens to have been her former roommate who abandoned her for no reason.

Pippa shows up at Hecate's office prepared to beg Hecate to take the case. Hecate tries to demure by saying she isn't in practice anymore. It's all very awkward and tentative. Hecate eventually agrees to take the case but only if her students can work on it with her. Pippa agrees.

Hecate assembles a group of students to work on the case: Maud, Enid, Ethel, and of course a very unorthodox but very promising Mildred Hubble.

Cue the actual Legally Blonde AU with Mildred as Elle.

Pippa insists on being involved in the case and she and Hecate end up spending more night together researching. They end up having a heart to heat one night where Hecate tells Pippa that she left because she was in love with her but Pippa was dead set on her former husband. They officially make up. There are tears. They keep working together.

Mildred gets Pippa's daughter off of the murder charges through some bit of brilliance only she would know.

Throughout all of this, Pippa falls in love with Hecate. Hecate never really stopped loving Pippa (she totally kept track of Pippa's career, just like Pippa kept track of hers). They kiss in the law library. The students are all like, "it's about damned time, but also can you take it somewhere else because I need the books you're standing in front of if I'm going to pass my International Law final. Yeah, thanks."

#hicsqueak #hecate hardbroom #pippa pentangle #my fic #fic ideas

[ponyregrets]

That last ep was A MESS can you please do a fluffy bellarke fic for some therapy? :)

I was working on something else but idk when I’m gonna post that, so here’s something quicker. @apanoplyofsong pointed out that a question from a recent My Brother, My Brother, and Me sounded like a Bellarke AU, and she was def right.

Also on AO3!

"So, what's the correct reaction when you find out someone is going to be naked on TV and didn't tell you?"

Wells' hand stops with his croissant halfway to his mouth, and he puts it down and just cocks his head at her. "One more time."

Clarke sighs. "You remember Bellamy?"

"Your roommate's brother? The hot one?"

"That would be him."

Wells nods. "I can see why this is a crisis."

"It's weird, right?"

"I still don't know what it is, I just assume everything involving Bellamy is a crisis for you."

This is, unfortunately, kind of accurate. Bellamy is a problem because the first few times Clarke met him, she hated him but also wanted to make out with him, and while the hate faded, the desire to make out with him never did, which just leaves her with a huge, stupid crush on her college roommate's brother, and nothing to do about it because Bellamy, despite no longer hating her and, by all appearances, being pretty fond of her, has showed no signs of wanting to make out with her.

But he also didn't tell her he's going to be naked on TV, and she's not sure what to make of that. All she knows is that she's been reading into it non-stop.

"He got cast on a new show. It sounds really good, like--one of those prestige things, on Showtime, probably really great for his career. He's been really excited? We've been talking about it a lot. But he didn't tell me he's apparently got nude scenes."

"So how did you find out?"

"Octavia brought it up. And it felt like everyone else already knew? She was like, I hope he tells me when the nudity is so I can skip it, and Raven was like, I hope he tells me so I can have a viewing party. And I didn't know at all."

"So you're upset he didn't tell you he was going to be naked."

"Not upset. I'm trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do. Like, do I act like I don't know? Do I watch the episode and tell him--I don't even know what I'd tell him."

"Look, I get why you're overthinking this. I've met you, I know how you are. But he's on a TV show where he's getting naked and he told you about it. He's got to know that you might see him naked."

"So why wouldn't he tell me? Just, like--as a head's up"

Wells shrugs. "You could ask him."

"Yeah, that's normal. Hey, Bellamy, why didn't you warn me I was going to see your dick on TV?"

"Okay, first off. Let's pretend for a second that this isn't the guy you've got a crush on. I know you love pretending you don't have a crush on him."

Clarke glares. "Shut up."

"What if it was me? What if it was my dick?"

"If it was you, you would have told me you were going to be naked." She sighs. "It just bothers me? Like--he told his sister and Raven, why wouldn'the tell me? I thought we were friends."

"Maybe it just came up when he was talking to them and it hasn't come up with you yet. And Octavia is his sister," he adds. "If I was going to be naked on TV, I'd tell all my immediate family so they'd be prepared."

"But not your friends."

He taps his jaw. "I guess it depends. Like, maybe he thinks he shouldn't assume you care. You're an adult, you've seen a dick before."

"So has Raven. I think she's seen his dick."

"So it's probably not a big deal for her." He sighs. "Seriously, I don't know what you want me to tell you. Do I think it's weird? Sure. Do I have any idea what I'd do if I was appearing on TV naked? No. So if you want to know what he's thinking? You've got to ask him."

"You're no help," she mutters.

"I don't know why you thought I would be. You knew this was what I was going to say."

"Would you ask him? If it was you."

Wells opens and closes his mouth, apparently changing his mind a couple times before he finally says, "Honestly? I'd probably try to figure out how to get him to bring it up. Like--drop some hints or whatever."

Clarke chokes on her coffee. "So, on a scale from one to ten, how much nudity is in this? Asking for a friend."

"I was thinking about watching this with my grandmother, any reason I shouldn't?."

"Perfect, yeah." She sighs. "How bad is it that I'm really looking forward to the episode?"

"It's bad because you should be putting more effort into actually seeing him naked and less into worrying about seeing him naked on TV. Maybe he didn't tell you because he's hoping his dick will impress you and he doesn't want you to miss out."

"Is that what you would do?"

"I still don't think there's a ton of point in putting me in hypothetical situations where I'm naked on TV," says Wells. "What would you do?"

It's a valid question, and Clarke clucks her tongue. "I think I'd tell him because I'd feel weirder if he found out on his own. But I don't know how I'd tell him."

"So maybe he's just waiting for the opening. You just need to give him one."

"Like asking if I can watch with my grandmother."

Wells smiles. "For a start. You know when the episode is on?"

"Not yet. The show premieres next month, I think?"

"Cool. Let me know when he's going to be naked."

"Obviously," says Clarke. "What are friends for?"

*

"I think you're going to regret this."

Bellamy scowls, more at his computer than Clarke. "I already regret this. Jesus, how do I decide who to follow? Why are people already following me?"

Intrepid is Bellamy's first really big recurring role, a significant part on a prestige show that's got a lot of network support. It's not necessarily his big break, but it's the best shot he's had, probably ever, which means he's putting in some real effort to capitalizing on it.

Which means he signed up for twitter and then called Clarke as soon as people found out he was on twitter, because now he's terrified. Not shockingly.

"Because the show account welcomed you to twitter and people are excited."

"The show hasn't even started yet."

"Do you understand how publicity works?"

This time, he is scowling at her. "Clearly not. I've been told if I understood how publicity worked I would have already had a twitter."

"Probably, yeah."

"I don't see how it helps me if I don't use it."

"The idea is that you use it."

"Thanks for the update."

"You did call me."

A smile tugs at his mouth. "I did. I saw you followed me."

"Well, I'm a fan."

"Thanks." He cracks his neck. "I can follow you back, right?"

The question actually requires some thought. "It depends on who else you follow."

"Why?"

"Well, if you follow me and like--no other regular people? You're showing that I'm your friend."

"You are my friend."

"I'm just saying, people might read into it."

He rubs his face. "Fuck, am I really expecting people to read into my twitter follows? Is that a thing?"

"I don't know," she says, slow. She's not actually involved in the industry at all, but she grew up around Hollywood, and she does brand management for companies, which is kind of similar. Bellamy's not a big enough deal to hire an actual dedicated person for social media, but she also likes him. She's willing to advise him pro-bono. "But it's better to start off careful than realize you need to be careful and haven't been."

"I guess. Can't I follow you because you're a professional? You do--things."

"It's my personal twitter. I do professional tweets from the agency account. And I'm not exactly famous on any of my accounts."

He thinks it over. "I'm following you anyway."

She's his first follow, which is flattering, even if it's also a kind of terrible tactical decision.

"Okay, you should follow the show too, and the other actors." She worries her lip. "What kind of fan base are you expecting?"

He shoots her a sidelong glance. "What are my options?"

It's not exactly how she planned to bring up the whole nudity issue, but since she didn't really have a plan, the excuse is appreciated. "Are you hot?"

Adorably, he looks down at himself. "Uh, I think so? I look pretty good."

She bites back on her smile. "I meant--is your character showing off how hot you are? Do you think a lot of people are going to follow you because you're attractive in the context of the show? Or are they not going to know you're hot?"

"Oh." He rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah, I think being hot is kind of a character trait."

"Okay, so you should expect to get a bunch of followers who just think you're hot. I'd probably try to go for kind of--normal vibe."

"What does that mean?"

"Tweet every couple days with just stuff about your life. Engage with the other actors. Do you have a love interest?"

The pause stretches. "I have a sex scene."

"With a guy or a girl?"

"Guy. It's pretty good, honestly. In terms of being--I don't know. It's how they reveal my character is queer, they haven't specified exactly how yet, and I don't love that, but the scene was well written and I liked how they handled it."

"How explicit?"

"The actual sex scene is pretty tame, but I wander around naked after."

"So you're telling me as soon as that episode airs, you're going to pick up ten million twitter followers."

"You're telling me that. I'm humble."

Clarke smiles. "Okay, fine. Here."

He blinks as she hands over her phone. "What?"

"Log into twitter. I'm taking over your social media presence. I've got this."

"Don't you usually charge for that?" he asks, but he's already putting in his information.

"Usually, yeah. But we're friends." She bites her lip. "Were you going to tell me about the sex scene?"

"Is that something I was supposed to disclose?"

"What if my mom was visiting and I told her we should watch your show together?"

"I assume your mom has seen a dick before." He sighs. "I don't know, it's weird, right? But I wanted you to watch the show."

"And you thought your dick would scare me off?"

"This is why I didn't want to have this conversation."

He really does look a little uncomfortable, and Clarke feels guilt rush over her. It probably is really awkward for him. Just because she's hurt doesn't mean he did anything to hurt her, and he doesn't deserve her petulance.

"Sorry," she says. "It's not--I'm curious. It's not like it's a big deal. It's your job, right?"

"Yeah. And it's a good job, I don't mind. But this is a first for me."

"Hey, at least you look good naked," she says, and he smirks.

"Are you spying on me or just going on blind faith?"

"Not blind faith. Informed faith. I know you have a great workout routine, and you look good with clothes on, so--" He's still smirking, and she glares. "I'm trying to make you feel better, shut up!"

"It's working, keep going."

"I thought you didn't want to have this conversation."

"I didn't realize it would involve you telling me how good I look naked." His expression softens, going gentle in the way that always makes her heart lurch. "I was trying to figure out how to tell you. Without it being like--hey, check out my dick. Or beware of my dick."

"That's what you told Octavia, I'm guessing."

He winces. "She told you? You knew?"

"She and Raven were talking about it. It felt a little weird being the only one who didn't know about your dick."

"Raven's my roommate, she got the first freakout. Right place, right time. Or wrong place, wrong time, I guess? Depending on how much you want to hear about my dick." He clears his throat. "And, yeah, I warned O. She was asking how embarrassing it would be to watch. And then--honestly, yeah, you probably are the only one who didn't know."

It stings a little. "So, you could tell everyone else to check out your dick?"

"Well, Miller and Raven have already seen it." He bites the corner of his mouth. "I was trying to figure out the right approach. Raven told me I was a total failure if I couldn't turn it into a pick-up line, but I wasn't having much luck."

"Hey, check out my dick?" Clarke supplies, heart racing. "It was right there."

"Yeah, but it's not exactly romantic. And I was hoping to, uh--I was really going to do better than freaking out at you about twitter and accidentally talking about my dick. A lot. When you already knew about it. Fuck."

Clarke can't help it; she starts laughing. Bellamy doesn't join her, but his mouth does twitch up into a sheepish smile, and Clarke gets her own reaction under control. "Sorry, just--Bellamy, come on. You didn't have to do anything special. You didn't even have to bring up your dick! Just--hey, do you want to get dinner sometime?"

"That's it?"

"You seem really invested in making this complicated." She smiles. "I like you. It doesn't have to be some big thing. Just--yeah. Do you want to get dinner sometime?"

He laughs, leans in and presses his mouth against hers, a kiss that's supposed to be quick, but she doesn't want to kiss him quickly. She wants to kiss him for hours.

"I definitely want to get dinner," he murmurs, when he finally pulls away. His grin is almost blinding. "You want to check out my dick sometime?"

"Before the episode airs?"

"Special sneak preview. Any time you want."

She leans in to kiss him again. "I'd love to."

*

Raven does have a viewing party for the episode, but since she's done that for every episode, Clarke assumes it won't actually be a big deal.

In retrospect, this was a stupid assumption.

"I didn't even know they made this much dick-shaped food," says Clarke, leaning over the bowl of dick pasta.

"Bachelorette parties. Gag gifts. Trolling your friend about his big sex scene. They're good for every occasion. And some of them aren't technically dicks. The cake is supposed to be a palm tree on an island or some shit. But hey, anything can be a dick if you believe in yourself."

"And you're very dedicated to trolling your friend."

"And I am." Her eyes flick over Clarke. "How weird is this going to be? Watching your boyfriend be naked on TV with all your closest friends?"

"Probably less weird than if I wasn't dating him. This way at least I already know I get to fuck him after."

"Yeah, I guess that would be a plus. I assume you're not going to be overcome with lust or anything."

"Depends on how good the sex scene is."

Raven rolls her eyes. "You two are disgusting. But congrats, I guess. I'm glad he actually managed to leverage a nude scene into a relationship."

"I'm very smooth," Bellamy says, coming up behind Clarke and grabbing a gummy dick out of the bowl on the table. "Shut up."

"Literally all he had to do was ask, and he didn't," Clarke says. "Leverage is a strong word."

"You asked me out during a conversation about my dick. Which was causing you a major crisis. I'm counting it as an overall win."

Clarke grins, leaning back into him. "Definitely a win."

And it is, admittedly, a little weird to watch the scene, but it's the usual kind of surreality that comes along with having a boyfriend who's on TV. Bellamy's a great actor, and it's not really like watching him. The sex he has on screen is nothing like the sex she and Bellamy have with each other.

It's great and all, good direction, good acting, but it doesn't even come close to the real thing. And that's all hers.

#Anonymous

[rileymcdaniels]

community resources you should try to find if you’re struggling

(this is a quick list i whipped up and i want you guys to reblog and add to it with your ideas)

note: this is based on my limited knowledge of community resources that exist generally in the USA. i’m not a professional social services provider or anything like that.

i know most of these things require applications. and i know it sucks. but i don’t think a lot of people know about these things so i’m just trying to help spread some knowledge.

general info on social services

local libraries: my dudes, libraries are the shit. sometimes library systems have social workers who can provide you with information and connect you to social services. even if they don’t, it’s a good place to start for anything you need. 

government websites: this will get you started with general (but sometimes specific) information about housing, places to get food, and other things like medical care. might take some searching because government sites are not always............ well-designed or user-friendly

check if your local government has some kind of resource helpline! in king county, you can call 211 and get information on social services. your local government might have something similar.

housing

vouchers: local/state governments often offer help affording rent on the private market. i live in king county in washington state in the US. we have what are called section 8 vouchers, so i’ll use them as an example. if you have them where you live, you need to look up how to get them bc the process and exact numbers will be different.  you apply for section 8 vouchers and there’s a waiting list. when you get one, you can rent from any landlord in the county who takes section 8 vouchers, and you’ll pay at least 28% of your rent but not more than 40%

subsidized housing: this type of government-funded housing means you will only pay X% of your household’s income for rent and utilities. this can include public housing which is owned and managed by the local housing authority. this also requires an application process through the local housing authority.

moderate-income housing: my county has this, and in king county, you have to contact the property management for properties on a list the county maintains to see if you qualify or how to apply. from how i understand it works in king county, property owners/managers/developers/whoever get tax breaks or something to set aside units in their buildings/complexes as low-income units for this program.

if you are a college/university student, talk to your school to see what your options are if you don’t have housing over breaks.

food

if you’re in the US, you can call:  1-866-3-HUNGRY (1-866-348-6479) or 1-877-8-HAMBRE (1-877-842-6273) in Spanish from 7am-10pm EST.

find local food banks. if you live in a big city, there’s probably more than one.

contact local religious organizations. they might run food banks or soup kitchens. exercise reasonable care when interacting with them if you’re LGBTQ+ unless you know they’re cool. 

food stamps/SNAP/WIC: the US government runs its own program, and states probably do, too. if you’re a parent (especially a cis mother) with kids, there’s extra programs to help you. there are income limits and an application process.

if you go to school, check with your school to see if they have a food bank specifically for students.

legal aid

contact your local bar organization for the free/”pro bono” services they offer. they might have income restrictions (usually around 200% of the federal poverty line, but in washington, ours tends to cap out at 400%) for pro bono lawyers who represent you. pro bono lawyers are lawyers who work in private practice but choose to take on clients at no cost to the client. HOWEVER, if you need advice on how to proceed or help filling out a document, there are usually programs where you can speak to a lawyer in person for usually an hour and get their advice.

check to see if there are non-profit legal aid organizations near you. some of them will be issue-specific. for example, i’m interning at a non-profit which only does unemployment benefits hearings. others do a wide variety of law. even if they don’t have the resources to represent you, they will be able to give you information. their websites are usually very informative. 

see if your local courthouse has walk-in legal services. these services are probably run by the county or state bar and run by volunteer lawyers and assistants (who are usually law students). 

if you live near a law school, they might run clinics for certain areas of law where students give advice and represent you while they are supervised by real attorneys. my law school has clinics for immigration, workers rights, and international human rights, among others. it is worth a look and a call to see if they might be able to help you.

your state or county bar association might also have videos and information on various legal issues. the law is complicated -- don’t always trust what you read on tumblr, for example. there are resources out there compiled by people who are licensed to practice law. USE THOSE. 

know your rights: the ACLU has a ton of “know your rights” pamphlets, and your local bar association and local legal organizations will have a shit ton of ones specific to your area. landlords will try to fuck you over, but there are things they cannot legally do under federal law or state law (there’s such a thing as the implied warranty of habitability). 

there are so many more that i don’t know about specifically or know enough about to list. there are whole organizations and departments of government that exist to provide resources and help. you don’t have to go this alone or rely on the kindness of internet strangers (who can’t be relied upon). 

#resources #housing #food #legal aid #do reblog

[wesleybates]

15 Tips for Designing Your Own Writing Portfolio Website

Designing any website can be difficult if you don���t know where to start. Trying to put together a writing portfolio website may be challenging, but having the right tools and tips at your disposal will definitely help.

Why Design a Writing Portfolio Website?

Freelancing continues to become a more popular way to make money than ever before. With a current shift to work at home, one of the best ways to make extra money is by becoming a freelance writer.

Now, there are several things you will want to think about on the path to becoming a successful freelance writer. One of the most important things is figuring out not only how to get jobs, but also how to get your work and name out there.

One of the best ways to do this (if not the best way) is to design a writing portfolio website. This will allow you to get the word out about who you are, what type of freelance writing you do, and most importantly, allow you to show off a writing portfolio.

This is important because it allows potential clients to see the quality and type of work you do. These representations of you not only save time and questions from a possible client, but they also justify your pricing and timetables of your work.

So basically, when thinking about reasons to build a writing portfolio website, the three main ones should be:

Help get work

Sell work (when applicable)

To build an online presence

How to Start the Process?

Aside from the tips I am going to give you below. This may be the very best question to ask. Not only are there a ton of different options to choose from when it comes to web design, but there are also different web hosting options as well.

A portfolio website can be tricky because you want to push your content and brand without seeming overly aggressive. Not only is that an issue, but trying to decide how to lay out a portfolio and what to put in it can be daunting as well.

The best place to start might be with a simple writing blog. However, even with this type of thing, you need to have a lot happen for it to fall in place the right way.

With that being said, the very best place to start is finding a web host and choosing a CMS. I recommend WordPress and everything that comes with it. This will definitely help get your writing portfolio website off on the right foot.

Not only is it very user friendly, but there are also a ton of tutorials and resources that you will be able to access at any time. These will help you get through any issues you may have while you build your portfolio of writing.

Once you start the process, the issue may become what exactly you should put into your writing portfolio. Let’s take a look at some suggestions.

What to Add in Your Writing Portfolio Website

One of the main obstacles people face is figuring out what exactly to add into their writing portfolio website. The answer to this will depend on what kind of writing you are actually doing, or willing to do.

However, let’s take this from a standpoint of a freelance writer who writes about anything, and performs a number of different writing jobs. You can pick and choose from this list, as this will give you some good ideas about what to add.

Remember, this is going to showcase your work and help get you more jobs. We want it to be clean, crisp, clear, and professional. You want to try to add a wide range of items to showcase your abilities. Here are some writing portfolio items to consider adding:

Blog Posts

Community Writings

Press release

Promotion Material

Essay on Controversial Topic

Profile on Interesting Person or Place

Short-Form Piece

Breaking News Articles

Long-Form Piece

Research Paper

An Editorial and/or an Op-Ed

Personal Essay

Multimedia Story (storytelling structure)

Collaborative Piece

Content Marketing

Resumes

eBooks

Business Plans

Remember, many of the above will be in the “if applicable” category for your writing portfolio. However, they are all excellent things to add.

Extra Tip: Adding a spreadsheet of all your published works could add even more to a writing portfolio. You can include all sorts of items like articles, eBooks, documents, and more. Include all titles, publication dates, links, and any other relevant info.

Always show real work, and it doesn’t hurt to even add and show your prices when relevant. Possible clients like detail, so the more you have in your writing portfolio website, the more likely you are to land the job.

15 Tips for Your Writing Portfolio Website

Now, you have a lot of the process in place from above, and you now have a pretty good idea of the types of things you should add to your writing portfolio website. Here are 15 more tips to think about using during the build process.

These will all help you put forth the very best writing portfolio website possible.

1. Make it Easy For Clients

Simply put, one of the most important aspects of a writing portfolio website is how easy it is for clients to access and navigate. You want to make sure the site is clean, smooth, flat, mobile-friendly, and easy to understand.

You also want to make sure your site page speed is fast, otherwise you run the risk of people leaving your site. The average page speed load time should be 2-5 seconds. Anything more than that is too slow.

Furthermore, the actual portfolio part of the site should also be easy to view and understand. Keep in mind, less is more. So, think minimalism when it comes to how easy you want to make it for clients.

2. Use a WordPress Portfolio Plugin

Earlier in this article, I wrote a little about where to get started with your website. That included finding a host and using WordPress. One of the main reasons I suggest WordPress is because they have a plugin repository that includes over 50,000 plugins.

In this case, you should use one of their portfolio plugins to help build your site. Not only will this make the process of building the actual portfolio easier, but it will also allow you to show a dynamic and clean portfolio to possible clients.

There are a lot of good portfolio plugins to choose from, so get one and use it.

3. Choose Quality Over Quantity

This can get tricky, especially if you are new to the game and don’t have a lot of content yet either way. That being said, if you do have quite a bit of content to choose from, then always make the right choice of selecting quality over quantity for your writing portfolio website.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t add a lot of content for potential clients to view. It simply means if you have 1,000 different things to choose from, don’t put them all in. Choose all the top of the line items and use those.

4. Keep Your Portfolio Design Clean, Smooth, Simple, and Mobile-Friendly

This may seem like a lot, but it actually isn’t. This is kind of a combination of some of the items above. If you are using WordPress and a plugin, then automatically you will have a mobile-friendly writing portfolio website.

Not overloading it with items will keep it professional, and having a user-friendly layout with plenty of minimalism and whitespace will keep it clean.

5. Don’t Display Full Articles

Don’t display full articles inside your writing portfolio website. Instead, provide links, images, and samples that open into other pages that are free from distraction. This is how someone can properly view your work.

6. Keep Portfolio Up-To-Date

Your portfolio should always be treated as a work in progress. This isn’t a bad thing at all. You will need to add new items periodically, clean it up from time to time, and make sure all articles and links are still relevant and working.

It doesn’t get much worse than someone trying to click through and view an outdated portfolio where half the content is old and/or missing.

7. Tailor Your Portfolio

By all means, add as many types of writing samples as you like. However, more than likely, you do have some sort of client base or a niche that you are good at. Tailor your writing portfolio website to that niche.

Are you better at content writing than you are and resume writing? That’s great, tailor your portfolio to show that and you will land the type of clients you enjoy most.

8. Use Thumbnail Images

This may be something you haven’t even thought about since this is a portfolio built around writing samples. However, it is still important to use thumbnail images as part of the layout.

Proper use of thumbnails will encourage site users to click through items, read content, and explore your writing portfolio. Plus, they add a level of professionalism and help tremendously with the layout.

9. Add a Portfolio Description

Whether you have one singular writing portfolio on the website, or several different ones broken down into different types of writing, it is always a good idea to add a description.

You can do this at the top of each portfolio page. This will give the user a better idea of what type of writings they may find on the relevant page.

10. Make Sure Portfolio Navigation is Simple

We spoke a little about navigation earlier in the article. However, it is definitely important to remember that you want to make portfolio navigation as easy as possible.

All links should be working properly, and it shouldn’t take a site user 3 or 4 clicks to get to a portfolio item. That is just too many and you will lose a lot of interest that way.

11. Don’t Treat Your Portfolio Like Your Blog

Try and limit certain types of writing samples to just a few. This is especially important if you have a lot of different types of writing on display. 3-5 pieces in each writing niche is plenty.

You don’t need to have 20-30 of the same type of content pieces laid out in your portfolio. It isn’t a personal blog roll. Keep the content tight and smooth.

12. Show

Paid and Pro Bono Work

Just because you did something for free does not mean it isn’t good. Matter of fact, this can be some of the best material a freelance writer produces. Go ahead and show both paid and pro bono jobs in your portfolio.

Personal and pro bono projects usually have a lot of passion behind them. Show them off!

13. Let the Work Do the Talking

Earlier in this article, we talked about adding a portfolio description. That is a good thing. However, that is about as detailed as you need to get about portfolio items. You may want to add a sentence or two within each item, but try not to oversell or overcrowd the layout.

Instead, let the work do the talking for you. That is the whole point of building a writing portfolio website.

14. Use a WordPress Page Builder

We touch on the importance of using a WordPress portfolio plugin above. The same can be said for page builders. If you are having a tough time with design and layout, then use a WordPress page builder to help you put the writing portfolio website together.

These offer a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) layout design. This makes it much easier to put out something that is clean and smooth.

15. Add a Call to Action

Last, but definitely not least, add a call to action (CTA) to your writing portfolio website. After all, the whole point of doing this is to gain clients and showcase work.

Make sure you have something in place that is easily accessible and will help you close the deal. Having a call to action will also act as a little push for the site user to get in touch with you.

Final Thoughts

If you haven’t yet built a writing portfolio website, then now is the perfect opportunity to do so. You have a lot of the information above, along with some great tips on how to make your site a success.

This will act as a terrific marketing tool for your services, and will help to get your name and work out there to clients who may be interested in hiring you.

While it may take a little elbow grease to get your portfolio how you want it, the final product will definitely be worth the effort. Remember, always keep the portfolio updated and fresh as well. This is important.

Finally, have fun with the process. Use some of your own personal touches along with the above. Good luck!

By using professional Website Designers in Arvada, CO you’ll have a site built that is pleasing to the eye, intuitive to use and packed with valuable content that helps serve as a valuable tool for your customers.

#Website Design #Web Designers

[whatdoesseostandfor]

My Last Day at Moz. My First Day at SparkToro.

17 years ago, I dropped out of college to work with my mom, Gillian, on the business that became Moz. For 7 years (from 2007-2014), I was that company’s CEO. For the last 4, I’ve been in a variety of individual contributor roles. And today, for me, that journey ends.

On a scale of 0-10, where 0 is “fired and escorted out of the building by security” and 10 is “left entirely of his own accord on wonderful terms,” my departure is around a 4. That makes today a hard one, cognitively and emotionally. I have a lot of sadness, a heap of regrets, and a smattering of resentment too. But I am, deeply, deeply thankful to all the people who supported me and Moz over the last two decades. The experience of building a company like this, of helping to change and mature an industry, of learning so much about entrepreneurship, marketing, and myself has been an honor and a privilege.

What’s Next?

Three things:

A new software company! I’ve got a bit of a chip on my shoulder, and a lot to prove — mostly to myself. That’s always been a superb motivator for me (even if it’s not the most emotionally healthy reason to take on the crazy risk that is startup-building). SparkToro is in a different field of marketing: influencer and audience intelligence. I’m hoping we can solve the thorny, painful problem of discovering where a given audience spends time, who and what they listen to, and where they engage. Some folks call this “influencer marketing” but I’ve found that terminology to be too limiting. It’s often exclusively associated with paying Instagram and YouTube celebrities to post about a product, and that’s not where this product/company is going. In the next year, I hope to have a product I can show you

A book! I’ve spent the last 18 months writing and polishing Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World with a terrifically talented team at Penguin/Random House’s Portfolio imprint. The book’s central tenet is this: A ton of traditional Silicon Valley startup “wisdom” biases companies and founders to do a lot of dumb stuff. This book will help you avoid those pitfalls. It’s told through stories from Moz’s years of growth and struggles, paired with advice and hard-won experience that’s helped us. If you’re a contrarian, or a skeptic of valley startup culture, you’ll probably love it. And if you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or technologist who believes all the hype, maybe it can at least help you know what to watch for.

A non-profit project to help makes conferences and events safer. It is un-fucking-believable what women (and some men) have had to put up with at events in the marketing and tech worlds. This is a hard arena in which to make a dent, but I’ve been working with a pro bono legal team from Davis Wright Tremaine on a structure that can hopefully help give codes of conduct more teeth and bad behavior more consequence. More to come on this in the months ahead.

Of course, I’ll also be speaking at a number of events, blogging a lot more, and spending a lot of quality time on phone calls with state tax offices (because startup life is glamorous, yo!).

Are You Totally Done With Moz?

No, not entirely. You’ll still see me on Whiteboard Friday (I filmed a good dozen episodes before departing and will likely be back in the office to shoot some more). I’m still working with one internal team on a big product release that didn’t get finished before my departure (a project I’m really proud of and excited about, with a team of people I love). And I’m still on Moz’s board of directors as the chairperson, and still the single largest shareholder (Geraldine and I own ~24% of the outstanding shares).

Thus, I still have a lot of reasons to cheer for, support, and keep my fingers crossed for Moz. I have high hopes that in the years ahead, the product will once again be the leader in its field and the best solution out there for many in the SEO world.

No Vacation?

This seems to be the first question I get when folks hear I’m leaving Moz, so I’ll address it here. Slight spoiler for the book, but it turns out being a startup founder, even if your company has tens of millions in revenue, doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of liquidity. Dollars are at a premium, my severance will only last so long, and thus I need to get this next business off the ground as fast as possible. Perhaps someday Moz will have a liquidity event and I’ll take a few months to relax and unwind. Or maybe this next project will go so well that I’ll have the flexibility to do that (although, knowing myself, I suspect a few weeks > a few months).

Geraldine and I do have a short trip to Portugal planned with our dear friends, Wil and Nora, in late April. Maybe that kinda counts

A Massive Thank You to Nicci Herron

If you’ve worked to schedule something with me in the last 5 years, or visited the Moz office, you know that I’ve been supported by an incredible EA, Nicci Herron. Every week, Nicci does an immense load of work to help not just me, but people all across the Moz organization. She’s so detail-oriented that across thousands of days and no fewer than 20,000 unique events, meetings, and calls, I think she’s made fewer than 5 mistakes total (and most of those were probably her just apologizing for someone else).

When she heard the news that Moz and I would be parting ways, she elected not to stay with the company. Her words to me were “if you’re not here, I don’t want to be either.” I have thought about that loyalty and kindness hundreds of times over the last year when feeling down.

Nicci doesn’t yet know what she’s planning to do next, which means there’s a tiny, brief window where a very lucky organization might snap her up. If you have need of someone with her extraordinary skills, please drop her a line via LinkedIn (or ping me directly and I can connect you).

Five Tidbits of Advice

Not many people stay with one job or one company for such a huge percent of their lives, especially not in the technology world. To some degree, this has almost certainly had a myopic impact on what I can see and perceive of a professional career, but it’s also a unique position to be in. I suspect that, with time and distance, I’ll be able to see the experience of Moz more clearly, but some things I can take away now (that aren’t already covered in Lost and Founder) include:

The best skill I’ve developed and the one that’s served me best as a founder, a CEO, and a marketer is empathy. Being able to put myself in the shoes of other people and imagine their pain, their problems, their workflows and speed bumps has been invaluable both on the product side and in creating content. Side note: this does not come naturally (or at least, doesn’t *only* come naturally). Spending lots of time with people I want to learn about, getting to know them personally, and asking questions, listening, and watching has been huge, too.

My number one tip for marketers seeking to grow their career opportunities is this: specialize. Specialize deeply. I don’t mean “SEO” or “Email marketing,” I mean specialization like “I’m the best link-focused SEO for the mobile gaming world.” Expanding from a specialization (if you so choose) is vastly easier, in my experience, than becoming known for a broad practice. This is equally true for companies as for individuals.

Video served as a dramatic accelerant for my personal brand, vastly more than I ever expected. Whiteboard Friday begat more conference invitations and interviews and awareness than even my most successful blog posts. I think the branding and stickiness value of video means that every viewer is worth (in the marketing sense) 10X more than a reader of text content (maybe more).

At Moz, weighting powerful, important, high-profile people’s opinions higher than our customers opinions inevitably led to doom. That was usually me putting more stock in what a handful of VCs who turned me down for investment thought over what hundreds of customers and potential customers were telling me they wanted. Granted, when you’re a VC-backed company, paying attention to investors matters because your next round is crucial (unless you’re profitable, in which case you don’t necessarily need to raise more, even though the startup culture will convince you it’s the only way). But, I also over-indexed on what highly influential authors and bloggers thought, and what I heard from a few folks I hoped might be potential acquirers. Dumb. When building a company, customers (and potential customers) > almost everyone else.

Tricks, hacks, and individual point solutions never made a big impact for us (and honestly, they’ve never made a big impact for any other company I’ve worked with or advised, either). Coming from the SEO world (and being bombarded by the emergent culture of “growth hacking”), this hit hard. For years I thought that the one right move would accelerate growth or the one right feature would make everyone love our product. But in fact, it’s when the whole became better than the sum of its parts that magic happened. That proved true in marketing, in product, in internal culture, even in recruiting. Crafting holistic, consistent, high quality experiences always beat out that “one magic trick” for improving… whatever. I think this is equally applicable in one’s personal life. The house, the car, the boyfriend, the vacation — none can, alone, produce the “and now I’m finally happy!” result.

Thank you again to everyone who’s been so kind to me and to Moz. I hope that I can continue to return those favors and to help many more people do better marketing.

p.s. Moz is shutting off my old email address there; if you’d like to reach me in the future, drop a line to rand at sparktoro.com.

The post My Last Day at Moz. My First Day at SparkToro. appeared first on SparkToro.

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#My Last Day at Moz. My First Day at SparkToro.

[chemorygunko]

5D Business Ideas

5D business ideas

So as the world and economy are moving, shifting and changing, many of us are starting to question how we make money.

We realise we HAVE TO make money to survive in the 3D world, but for many of us, we can’t stomach doing exactly what we did before, and we’re looking for alternate options that allow us to transition to a more 5D way of being…. and allow us to survive the transition financially.

Cos really, we are not much use as soldiers if we’re starving, freezing, and/or dead ;) LOL :)

But what if you can’t transition to a more 5D way of business?

Yes, there are some businesses that won’t allow for more 5D approaches, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change your business practices :)

You could lower your prices.

You could offer clients a discount, or a chance to pay late, or forgo charging interest.

If you’re flush enough, you could even forgive the debt of some your debtors and take the pressure off them. Chances are that if they haven’t paid you, they haven’t paid others either.

You could offer to do some pro bono work for people or organizations that really need the help.

You could sell unused or redundant stock and donate the proceeds to a charity that will use the funds properly.

Or you could give that stock away to a group that could resell, reuse or repurpose it.

You could use your marketing and PR streams to raise awareness or funds for issues and charities near to your heart - or you could arrange a fundraiser.

One really cool project example I did back in my marketing days, was to get my boss to match the book donations of staff, and the collection was given to a underprivileged school library.

I was also involved in projects like collecting old computer devices to donate to kids in needy schools. People never know what to do with old devices…. so you pick them up, format them and you have a machine that a needy child can learn on. It doesn’t need to be perfect - it just needs to be functional. And it reduces the load of electronic waste going into dump sites.

Or you could do something cool like arrange for instructions on something - like building a home out of old soft drink bottles or tyres - to be printed and distributed to those in need.

Or you could stretch yourself and give up a bit of profit that you’re making, and CREATE a few extra jobs on your staff - even if they are temporary or casual jobs.

And importantly, you can keep money moving.

There’s a great parable of a traveller who stops in in a town one night - a town hit by economic hardship.

He arrives at the hotel in a blustering storm and asks the innkeeper for a room for the night. He pays and goes upstairs to warm himself.

The delighted innkeeper realizes he can pay his butcher’s bill and runs off to the butcher to pay his bill. The butcher gladly accepts and runs off to the local lady of the night to settle his tab.

The lady in question owes money to the innkeeper, and she dashes off to settle her bill with him. He gladly accepts - just before the guest comes down the stairs and requests a refund, because he won’t be staying for the night anymore.

Nobody made any money…but the movement of money settled the debts, took pressure off, and lightened the load of a whole bunch of people.

When people are scared about lack, they tend to hoard - money is no different. But if we have a chance of moving the economy upwards again, it will be because we keep the money moving.

It’s hard to trust in that process at first, but the practice is worth it. And when you are okay with money flowing, you will find that what you need flows to you as well.

Okay that’s more about bigger businesses that may have less flexibility, but anyone can apply any of these.

Now onto the 5D small business ideas...

The point of these is not to be business plan or lay it out in detail - it’s to give you direction. Ideas. Ways to think about it.

Haridressers…. this is a fascinating one, cos your hair becomes very important on the journey at a stage. So, for example, I’m not allowed to cut my hair.

Hair is an extension of the nervous system, and each strand becomes a tendril of connection into the morphic field - so longer hair gives you better information, cos there’s more surface. That’s why spiritual types always have long hair and lean towards it.

So on the first level, hairdressers start battling with how badly people treat their hair, and what that shows about the person’s development. On the second level, they battle working with the actual chemicals - and the use of those is dictated by what the client wants.

A 5D workaround would be to offer a completely organic hairdressing service - masks made from oils and egg and other foodstuff ingredients, for example. And limit coloring to only coloring with henna - as organic and pure as you can find the henna.

You can offer elements like braiding and styling and cutting as well, and you can eliminate hair products. You can also cater to the growing number of woman who are opting for no shampoo.

You could also offer treatments hairdressers usually won’t - like helping moms with lice. Man, even when I was flat broke, I would have gladly paid someone to help me with Jelly’s lice. And she got them more than a few times.

You could also offer head, scalp and shoulder massages, and you could combine the hairdresser and beauty salon with a healing element, like acupressure or crystals, or even just inviting the ladies to come in and offload. So talk therapy while you have your hair done or get a massage.

The same could apply to a beauty salon or nail bar - completely organic with a talk therapy element.

Scrubs made from rough salt and crushed eggshells - you have no idea how amazing this makes your skin feel afterwards.

Hair removal with honey based waxes. Threading to avoid the use of wax for eyebrows, so you limit HOW MUCH you throw away. Foodstuff based masks, organic oils for massages etc.

Completely avoid chemical based stuff altogether... the rule becomes, you only put on your body what you would put in it. With the exception of henna of course lol :)

Another completely organic service you could offer is organic cleaning services.

So instead of using harmful chemicals, you use old fashioned solutions like baking soda (bicarbonate of soda), lemon and vinegar. Coconut oil and other oils.

This would be great for targeting daycares and moms with young kids who want a cleaning service. You could also sell the cleaning products in DIY kits - pre packed little sachets of baking soda etc, already measured out for people.

If you’re into crystals and crafts, you could make spiritual art pieces.

So, for example, little packs of crystals, in specific numbers, with instructions on how to stick them up in designs like crosses, stars, or to use them create crystal grids of power.

There’s also an option for spiritual clothing and fabric items…. you could embroider or design important spiritual symbols onto them - hidden and visible.

Or you could work crystals into the designs, or into hidden pouches on the clothing. I mean, how awesome would it be if every item you put on had some spiritual element to it?

Other options for products are things like carved candles, blessed candles, holy water and holy oil. Many people want access to these items but don’t know how - and don’t trust themselves enough - to make them themselves.

There are a lot of people out there creating “we’ll do the work for you” style events and resources, but as people grow, what they will really want is resources that educate them how to work on themselves and others.

So if you’re thinking educational, aim to arm and empower people with tools they can apply in many situations - there are more than enough of the people catering to those who want to be spoonfed.

Speaking of spoonfed - premade meals, ready to heat meals and school lunches that are real, healthy and organic is an option too.

As is a coffee or tea shop with homemade stuff, maybe a cannabis smoking garden, and large table-style seating for people who want to find company, or need to have a real healing chat with the owner and staff. So all the staff double as healers and can sit down and chat with clients…. coffee with soul ;)

You could also look at ideas like delivering fruit and veg, or healthy lunches, to offices in your area. People often buy junk food for a lack of a better option. so give them an option - and make it easy for them to choose that option.

Speaking of education…. schools for kids who live alternate lifestyles or kids that aren’t vaccinated. Where parents have opted not to vaccinate, they don’t qualify for public schooling or government assistance…. this doesn’t mean they don’t have to go to school though. Affordable schooling for these parents will be a winner in years to come.

So for this, you could become a registered homeschool academy, for example, where you have a curriculum provided by a homeschool provider already, but the rest of the school is lived by 5D standards.

Organic, vegetarian and vegan meals, classes on spirituality and even religions, crystals and healing. These can be taught 5D style - so no exams or tests for these classes you create yourself.

You could cater to ADHD kids where the parents don’t want to medicate, for example, as well as offer real guidance and communication skills to kids - 5D style. Also give them spaces to explore all religions, modalities and practices.

Another great area is tiny homes and alternate lifestyle communities… people will want to start living together in communities again. Moving away from the big homes and sprawling space. Living more simply.

If you are a writer, please use your writing ability. Now - at the level you’re currently at.

You spend a shit ton of time on the journey thinking you aren’t worthy, aren’t good enough, doubting yourself as a healer, and doubting that you have anything of worth to contribute - but you forget about contrast.

We have high standards, and most of us are aiming for God level. That’s a VERY high benchmark.

But if you look at us compared to (contrast) other people, then we are more advanced than most.

This is where contrast steps in - you can really “talk to” the people just above and just below you on the development scale - so we need teachers at every level. Someone like me, I teach the teachers, but there’s only a limited amount of people like me needed.

The people below have a much wider market to work with, because there are way more people at that level. And we need teachers at every level - enough to cater to the amount of people at that level.

So when you write, write from your level of experience, and cherish that. You’re only writing about it to coalesce the info, and because you’re moving on from that stage. Leave the info behind for the people coming after you.

When you’re on the journey, ideas often seem to conflict and contradict each other for a while, with one idea replacing the next. But later on you’ll see why you needed all that understanding in single, bite sized pieces, and how it all ties together in one coherent thread.

Don’t be afraid to show that your thinking has changed - and don’t be surprised when people are shocked at the 180s you do. I’ve lost more than a few friends along the way - and business as well. But you will be well glad you took this risks later on, once you see how it all fits together.

We’re the transition team - and what we do is pave the way for the coming stage and age.

It’s our job to figure out how to put this new way of being into the existing world, to match the new desires arising in people, and to help the world evolve.

And we’re receivers for cosmic information…. so if you have an idea, share it.

There is place for more than one business in the world, of all the necessary types.

The information we’re getting now in shifts is info for everyone - we’re moving towards unification and a sharing economy. So share the ideas please - you’ll only be rewarded with more ideas.

Light, peace and harmony, Amara xo  

#5d #3d to 5d #lightworkers #lightworker #lightwarrior #Lightwarriors

[athousandheartsattack]

I started paying real attention to music in 1989. I was at summer camp and I taped two U2 albums, War and Unforgettable Fire, on someone’s boombox that had two cassette players so you could make tape copies (also, later on that same summer, I bought The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry, my first purchased cassette). I was 14 years old. I listened to Unforgettable Fire a lot, War not so much (I got into that album much later) but at the time I gravitated towards The Cure more. It isn’t until Achtung Baby (an album that, over 25 years later, still gets tons of play in my home) that I fell in love. Every U2 album released since then has, on first listen, been a letdown. They’ll never make Achtung Baby again. It is a messy, beautiful, dark, noisy masterpiece. Let’s do the post AB rundown: Zooropa has a few classics but also has many (too many) throwaway tracks. Pop is admirable in its bold attempt at, basically, anti-pop pop, but I still can’t make up my mind about whether or not it’s any good (I like it, though I spent years unable to stand it). All That You Can’t Leave Behind was well received because it basically wasn’t Pop, but it’s a bland album that has very few keepers (I’m a guy who cannot stand Elevation, but there’s no denying Beautiful Day is great). How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb is a great late U2 offering (what a great album title!) and while it’s uneven – especially in the back half – it has some truly amazing songs and renewed my faith that the band was capable of greatness. Then they release No Line On The Horizon, which is their worst album by a mile. It opens AMAZINGLY well, the first few moments of the title track are a burst of great, noisy guitar and really dynamic singing and everything works so goddamn well and then they shit the bed with a chorus that stops the momentum of the song dead. The album never recuperates. It has songs that range from “it’s ok, I guess” to “awful”. I love this band, but there you have it. Here’s the funny thing, though: that album is bookended by the release of two U2 classic singles: Window In The Sky, a fantastic single released in 2006 that was never on any album, and the powerful Invisible, released in 2014 as a single and later showing up as a hidden song on the deluxe edition of their next album, Songs Of Innocence. Again, both of these tracks are top of the shelve U2. Just when you think that’s it, they’re out of ideas; they give you a nugget of gold to prove you wrong. This brings us to Songs Of Innocence, and album best described as fine. It has some good songs, no classics, and a few throwaways on the b side. So the post Achtung Baby U2 is a band that is easy to love (they keep coming up with great singles) and easy to be let down by (other than Atomic Bomb – which comes closest to being a fully great album - most of those albums are good to great EPs padded up to long players with a handful of disposable tracks…)

And this all leads us to Songs Of Experience, their best, most even album since Achtung Baby. Not as good as AB, but what a relief to hear a U2 album with no skippable tracks. Not a one. The quality varies, they’re not all classics, but there’s nothing on here that makes me ashamed of liking that band (I’m looking at you, Stand Up Comedy). So let’s have at it, shall we?

It’s earnest. I think that’s what I like the most about it. It wears it all on its sleeve. It’s fragile and vulnerable and scared and angry and in love and thankful and happy and romantic and loving. So it’s cheesy. It’s corny. Three songs have the word “love” in the title. There’s a lot of talk about the power of love all over these songs. To me that’s a good thing. I like cheesy, my friends know this. Show me a teen movie third act victorious prom scene and I will cry, guaranteed. So I’m fine with someone one belting out that Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way. You, however, might not be. This is my review. Go be cynical somewhere else.

Another thing that will maybe put some people off is how clean and safe the album is. This is a white glove album. Nothing here will upset anyone. U2 have done stuff in the past that, umm, flustered some folks (I won’t get into any of that here, this is about the music) so I think they had a very strong desire to please. That being said, this is superb, efficient song writing. So let’s talk about the songs. All of them. Yes, this will be that type of review.

The album opener is called Love Is All We Have Left. It’s great. It reminds me of Unforgettable Fire era U2, more specifically its B side. It’s a subdued, short song (under three minutes) with no drums and no guitar (unless it’s heavily filtered and I didn’t recognize it as such). Just strings, voice and studio fidgiting. It’s lovely and earnest and full of grace. Maybe it’s cheesy. It’s a fantastic start to the album. It also has the only weird, out of left feel move on the entire album: on the second verse the voice is auto-tuned. I love it. It feels a little like Bon-Iver, maybe. It works, and when the voice returns to swoon us into its chorus, it’s all the more effective. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea, though.

That is followed by Lights Of Home, which is kind of part Rolling Stones, part White Stripes, with a great gospel bridge at the end. Simple chords with no showy effects. I think it would have fit nicely on Rattle And Hum, an album I really like. The Haim sisters are on this track. I really like the gospel bit.

You’re The Best Thing About me is the weakest song on the album, but it has such a great, catchy and infectious chorus that I can’t skip it. I’m just not crazy about how it starts, but I like everything after those first 30 seconds. There’s a lovely bit of The Edge singing (who, by the way, does stellar backing vocal almost throughout the album) towards the end, something about someone needing to be loved quietly, which I think is beautiful.

Get Out Of Your Own Way is stadium-sized U2. A big, Beautiful Day-style anthem full of hooks that, like some other songs on this album, could be faulted with trying a little too hard, but I like that. It’s better than not trying at all (and in U2’s defence it has never felt, in 40+ years of making music, like they didn’t care about the music they are making. These guys try, like, all the damn time). That song ends (and the next one starts) with a powerful guest spot by Kendrik Lamar. I’m just mentioning this. Maybe you like him? He’s there.

American Soul is GREAT. I loooove how that song starts: Kendrik Lamar says what he has to say and then some big, fat, dirty chords are banged out of a guitar, it feels like White Stripes again, with the drum pounding in time. Just two chords. Bam-Bam. Then silence. Then two more. BAM-BAM. Then two more again. Then the song takes off. An angry, anti-Trump, pro-refugee, pro America (the inspiring, idea of America, not the travesty of that dream that’s on the news every fucking day). That song is the first of two songs that borrow from Songs Of Innocence. In this case the chorus is taken straight from a bridge in the song Volcano. It is used better here, in a song that is better than Volcano. This happens again on the album closer, we’ll get to that in a bit.

Summer Of Love is a great little diddy, with a beautiful vocal melody and simple chords stripped once again of the big fat pedals effects that The Edge is normally so fond of. The song is great, it never goes for epicness, it never tries to be more than what it is. Just a lovely little song. Well written, everyone in the band understanding where this thing needs to go (this is true of the entire album: it is played by a band whose members are all on the same page about tone and feeling and purpose, it shows). I have a criticism, though. In the middle of the song there is a switch. It’s good. The guitar becomes a bit distorted (just a bit, calm down) and the vocals become more dramatic for a bit and then the song returns to its status quo in a formidable bit of manoeuvering and strings come in and it’s all good, but that initial switch is a bit weird. It feels like another song was tacked onto the one you’re listening to. It’s a rushed bit of mixing. But that doesn’t kill the song, it’s just a transition that maybe could’ve been smoother. Or maybe that’s how they want this to sound, who am I to judge?

Red Flag day is one of the stand-out tracks from the album (certainly from the A side – the B-side of this album is unbelievably strong). This song sounds like War-era U2. It feels rebellious and youthful. The guitar and bass hooks are so fucking good. Very propulsive. Again, very simple chords, very little effects. Just good song writing.

I love the next song so much, but some people won’t stomach it I think. It’s called The Showman (Little More Better) and it sounds like early Beatles. For real. It’s a light, insanely catchy little pop gem that hasn’t failed to put a smile on my face since my first listen. Maybe U2 aren’t supposed to do Beatles-type songs, but here I am, glad that they did.

The Little Things That Give You Away is a highlight for me. It could fit on Achtung Baby (after So Cruel or something). It starts off slow and builds up to one of the most classic, chill-inducing U2 moments on the album. It starts like something on Unforgettable Fire, with vague (but beautiful) echo-y guitar melodies that support the gorgeous vocal work. The chorus is achingly melancholic, and the final bridge builds and builds until you realize your feet aren’t touching the ground anymore. Definitely a keeper.

Landlady is a love letter from Bono to his wife. It has a classic U2-sounding guitar, think Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree, a lovely vocal melody, and a lot of respect, love and gratitude. It’s another one that doesn’t strive for big anthemic swells of melody, it is content to just be as beautiful as possible. What is interesting is that they could have easily made that song bigger, the final third begs to escalate, but the restraint is more powerful.

The Blackout is another rocker like American Soul. It is very much Adam Clayton’s song (the bass is so good). It has a good sing-along chorus but everytime you get back to the verse the song shines more. It’s fist-pumping, feet-stomping rock and roll. They have been trying to write that song for a long time, it seems (what with the Vertigos, the Get On Your Boots and so on) and here it feels like they know what they have is special.

Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way, the penultimate song on the record, will test you. It is really, sublimely cheesy. I like it a lot. I find that there is something defiant in being so boldly hopeful in these difficult times, to place all you have on the unstoppable, all-consuming urgency of love. The song is filled with gorgeous melodies, but there is, in particular, a chant that happens towards the end of the song that is so joyful, so buoyantly optimistic in the face of adversity, that it lifts the entire thing a mile into the sky. This is, once again, really big U2.

The album closes with 13 (There Is A Light). This is the second song to borrow from Songs Of Innocence, this time they re-purpose the entire chorus of Song For Someone, and once again I believe the end result is more powerful. This song mirrors the tone of the album opener. It is more atmospheric, with Bono quietly crooning to a slow subtle emotional build that pays off in beauty but not flamboyance. The song never gets big, it gets softly magnificent. Its restraint is resplendent. It’s a perfect way to end the album.

#U2 #songs of experience #Review #Music

[android-for-life]

"Google.org Fellows bring transparency to local jail data nationwide"

In recent years, we’ve seen a bipartisan focus on criminal justice reform in the U.S., but to measure progress—and understand the breadth of the issue—we need data on who is being incarcerated and why. The last nationwide jailcensus was conducted in 2013, and the federal government’s most recent estimate of the U.S. jail population is from 2017. Because it takes so long to get up-to-date information on jail populations, Vera--an organization working to improve justice systems--started a project to collect the data themselves. 

In Our Backyards looks at jail population data from state and local government websites to understand who’s behind bars simply because they can’t afford bail, or who’s being charged with a non-criminal offense like unpaid child support. As part of our work using data science and technology to help solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges, Google.org contributed to the project with a $4 million grant. Additionally, 12 Google.org Fellows spent six months doing full-time pro-bono work on the project. 

Today, Vera released the results of this project: People In Jails in 2019. We learned that while the U.S. has made strides in prison reform, rural jail occupancy is actually on the rise. Cities like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia are reducing jail populations, but over the last several years, rural counties and smaller cities have sent more people to jail, driving an increase in the nation’s total jail population. 

 I sat down with Google.org Fellow, Aria Ashton, who participated in the Fellowship with Vera.

 Google.org Fellows with Vera Sr. Data Scientist, Oliver Hinds. Pictured: Rasmi Elasmar, Zachary Lawrence, Arian Karbasi, Charniece Huff, Colin Adams, Oliver Hinds, Terin Patel-Wilson, James Wallace-Lee, Aria Ashton Not pictured: Zach Garcia, Sonia Chokshi, Jennie Lai, Carole Touma

What exactly did your team set out to achieve during the Fellowship with Vera?

Our goal was to support Vera in building a nationwide jail monitoring and alerting system that shines a light on local justice systems in the United States. The ambition was to get a full picture of how many people are in county jails in near real-time, and for what reasons. Compiling this kind of data allows Vera to derive data-based insights about how county jails are being used. For example, in one county, 50 percent of the jailed population was incarcerated with bond amounts under $500. If we presume that these are individuals who would otherwise be free but cannot afford a $500 bail amount, does this mean that half of the beds in this particular jail are low-level offenders below the poverty line? 

What motivated you to spend six months working full-time with Vera on this Fellowship project?

My brother spent a lot of his life incarcerated. He’d always been troubled with mental illness which led to drug dependency. If it weren’t for these two factors, my brother wouldn’t have been incarcerated at all. One year, after spending six years in a correctional facility in California, he was released to a halfway house where he eventually succumbed to his addiction and died. At this point I began to wonder, “How many brothers and sisters, how many mothers and fathers are cycling in and out of the system because they can’t find proper treatment for mental health and addiction issues?” Using jails and prisons to address mental illness and addiction is unfortunately widespread, and I hope our work with Vera will put an end to these practices.

Aria with her brother.

What do you want the world to know about the Vera project?

Society is losing so much because of the lack of visibility into the use of county jails. I hope that when the data is shared, and personal stories are told, everyone gets a sense that this is a black box and someone needs to shine a light on it. There are so many people who are lost in this system. Even though Vera understands this world holistically, they couldn’t get an accurate picture of the jail population through existing data.

How did Google help move this ambitious project along? 

First, we had a ton of technical expertise on our Google.org Fellowship team—engineering resources can go a long way toward developing a technical solution like this. Second, we hadn’t been in this space for as long as Vera, so we brought a fresh perspective. We didn’t have the same assumptions, so we were able to question approaches and offer new solutions.

What surprised you about the Fellowship experience and this project in particular?

When you think about the millions of people who go in and out of jails, inevitably you start to wonder what their stories might be. Many have lost their jobs, can’t pay bills, and no longer have access to their children. Immersing ourselves with Vera and this project drove home that this system has a real human cost.Many corporations are trying to raise awareness about  social justice issues, but awareness doesn’t always translate into action or advance a cause. This Fellowship is a “put your money where your mouth is” program. I hope the Google.org Fellowship can inspire more corporations to do the same.

What did you learn from the Fellowship experience and how have you applied that to your life?

First, I’m proud of the work the Fellowship team did. I’ll have that with me for the rest of my life. Working on something that really matters made me become the most efficient and effective version of myself. Second, I met a lot of people who are involved in criminal justice reform and learned about the ways advocates are trying to change the system. I realized the importance of my voice as a person who hasn’t been incarcerated but has been directly impacted by the dysfunction of the system. By raising my voice, I can perhaps help policymakers and ordinary citizens understand how much suffering this system causes. As a result of the contacts I made doing this kind of work, I am taking part in restorative justice events in prisons, so that I can do as much as I can to drive change and hopefully save other families from bleak futures, punctuated by tragedies.

Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information

#jeprog

[motherof4dragons]

Sample Chapter

I've been writing fan fiction, but I recently started a fan fic that I really enjoyed the premise of.  I thought I could really do something with it outside of the fandom.  I read a ton, and did some research on 2nd chance fictions and friends to lovers stroeis and I think this would be pretty unique in the genre.  

So I stripped the story of all of the original content that connected it to the fandom and tried to write a first chapter, or first several chapters depending on size for a "real" book.  Please tell me if it's ok, and if it is too closely resembling it's origin content.  I'm purposefully leaving out any tags so that maybe someone who doesn't normally know what I write about can read it hopefully not draw the connections to the fandom.  Does that make sense?  Try to read it as if you just picked the book up off of Kindle's 1.99 list.

------------------

May 2018

I’m in the middle of discussing today’s surgery with my patient and her family when I hear my phone and my pager go off simultaneously.  That’s never a good sign.  Giving my patient my best Anderson smile, I look at my pager, then swipe across the front of my phone.  Both alert me to the same thing.

MASS SHOOTING ETA 15 minutes out.

I learned long ago to turn the news alerts off on my phone, otherwise I wouldn't be able to concentrate on my day without worrying about what my day could turn into.  So 15 minutes out for us means the shooting probably started a half hour to an hour ago, which means I need to get a move on it.

 I turn back to my patient and her family and put an end to our pre-op conversations.

“Excuse me guys, I am so sorry. It looks like we may have to put todays surgery on hold, there’s been an emergency. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” I pat my patient on her back, shake her husband’s hand and leave the room as quickly as I can.

Heading out of the patient’s room and to the nurse’s station, I put the tablet back on the charging station then head to the surgery board where I know everybody will be meeting. Sean, though not technically our chief of staff anymore, is up front leading the charge.

“Ok people, we have a mass casualty event. Shooting at the mall. We can expect the majority of the victims to come to us. We don’t have an estimate yet as to how many that may be, but it sounds like he got a lot of rounds off before he was taken down by a civilian. The ambulances are waiting on the all clear to start scooping them up. I want OR’s 1-5 on constant rotation. Don’t take the time to make it pretty people, get in and get out. All elective and non-emergent surgeries have been cancelled and the patients that can be are being discharged. Move all non-critical ER patients to the clinic. The blood bank is sending up all available units. I want every available surgeon in the pit in 5. Get a move on it.”

I’m a reconstructive surgeon.  I trained as a plastic surgeon, but I really dislike that title.  I don’t work with plastic.  I work with people.  That’s not to say that plastic doesn’t have its place.  I think every human has the right to feel good about themselves, and if that means a person needs a boob job or a butt implant, then the more power to them.  And that’s not to say that I don’t still do the occasional ‘plastics’ job.  Liposuction keeps the lights on as my old mentor used to say.  But my specialty is reconstructive surgery.  I take something that was once beautiful, but damaged due to life and circumstance, and make it beautiful once again.  I specialize in burn victims and gender reaffirmation surgeries.  Two of the toughest life events any person will ever have to face. I’m to the point in my career where I can pick and choose what surgeries I want to do, so I do the occasional pro-bono cleft palate surgery to make the soul feel good too.  I’m a board certified ENT as well, but that really only falls into play with burn victims, and the occasional hard intubation in the emergency room. But no matter their specialty, a surgeon is still a surgeon. And a requirement for working at a hospital like Riley’s Memorial is that you have to be proficient in trauma.  We’re the largest hospital in the state, with a trauma and burn department that is world renown.  If you get severely hurt in the state of Colorado, there’s a large possibility that you’ll end up with us.

Noah takes the time to swing by his locker to hang his coat up then heads  down to the pit.

--

 “Anderson, have you talked to Lizzy today?” Sean stops and sticks his head into the trauma room Noah is just finishing up in. Superficial injuries, but she cut herself pretty bad on something running away from the shooting, and had an eight inch laceration that required stitched. Normally I would have a resident or intern do it, but it’s in a pretty visible spot, and I wanted it done right.  Every wound I can repair properly now is one I won’t have to go back in to fix at a later date.

“No, why?”

“Because several of the victims are saying they were triaged on scene by someone who says they were a doctor.”

“So what?”

“A redheaded female doctor.”

Elizabeth Marie Stewart, former trauma surgeon and current Assistant Department Head of Public Health.  She also happens to be the mother of my children, my ex-wife, and the probable love of my life.  And yes, she is a red headed female doctor.

We’ve gotten the first wave of ambulances emptied and into the emergency department. I did notice that some patients have the trauma triage color codes written on their bodies, but I just assumed that they didn’t have the tags at the scene.  However, that’s a trick they use out in the field in the military, and both Sean and I know it.

The chances of that being Lizzy are pretty small, but I snap off my gloves and pull my phone out of my pocket anyways. We just went to church together with Lillian this past weekend. She didn’t mention going to the mall this week, but then why would she. We may share a daughter, and since her accident, we’re back to being good friends, but long gone are the days where I got daily reports of her plans and movements.

After 4 rings it goes to her voicemail. “Hey Liz It’s me. Listen, I know this is going to sound weird, but there was a shooting at the mall, I’m sure you’ll have heard about it by the time you get this, And I bet you’ll get a kick out of this but some of the patients are saying they were triaged by a redheaded dr. So now I’m worried about you. Call me back."

Thought of her at that mall, despite how improbable that may be makes my heart speed up a little. I decide to shoot her a text too.

Noah: Hey. Mass shooting at the mall. Check in with me please.

I debate sending a text to her husband, but I think Lizzy said he’s out of town, so I put my phone back in my pocket and try to shake it off, then head back into the fray.

  --

“Next wave coming in guys!”

I’m in the middle of assessing a middle aged man with a gunshot wound to the thigh, through and through. Whoever is on the scene knows what they were doing, that’s for sure. The patient’s own belt is wrapped around his upper leg to stem the blood loss and the words “yellow tag” were written in blue ink across his forearm. He told a more exaggerated story of the redheaded angel running into the middle of the bloodshed single handedly saving every person she touched.  The guy is seriously smitten.  It’s one of the more extreme versions of the story of the red head I’ve heard today, and I’ve heard variations of the same thing from multiple sources over the last hour.  The more we hear, the more I’m afraid it may really be Lizzy.  She hasn’t replied back to my messages yet.

And then he hears Her.

“22 yr old female, 3 gun shot wounds to the right arm, hip and thigh. Approx. 2 liters blood loss in the field. 2 large bore ivs placed in route. Her driver’s license states she’s o+ so let’s get a trauma panel, type and cross match and get blood hung. We also gave 4 of morphine. She’s passed out but she’s going to hurt like a bitch when she comes to. I need ortho in here stat, her pelvis is probably shattered. Get me x-rays and then let’s get her up to an OR. And someone find me a pair of scrubs please.”

Lizzy’s voice is authoritative and electric. The sound of it issuing out commands flashes me back to ages before. The ER is her domain, even if she hasn’t stepped foot in it for over 2 years. I can’t see her, but I can see the ER’s response to her. Residents and nurses that know her are scattering in different directions to obey her orders. The interns in the room with me are watching the chaos in awe, this stranger who can waltz in and command everyone’s immediate obedience. She yells out louder than the other orders, “also someone find Davis to give me privileges!” I look up and meet Emma’s eyes to see my grin echoed on her face. “Stewart’s back” she says and snaps her gloves off to go help Lizzy.

Emma takes two steps out of the trauma room and freezes. “Shit” she says with passion, then quieter, “Noah.”

I move to where she is standing, and feel the grin melt off my face and my blood run cold. Lizzy is in skinny jeans and what may have once been a lighter colored t shirt. Her red medusa like hair is piled on her head in a messy bun with hair streaming down around her face. And Lizzy is covered head to foot in blood and gore. While most of it probably isn’t hers, some of it obviously is. She has a bandage wrapped haphazardly around her left upper arm, and there is a small trickle of blood still dripping down off of her bent elbow. She’s wearing gloves, but it’s apparent from the distorted color of them that there is just as much blood inside the gloves as outside.  Seeing the blood all over her body, I feel all the blood drain completely out of mine.

“Lizzy, oh my god Lizzy were you shot?”  Emma’s the first to react, moving towards Lizzy and the patient.

She looks down at her arm like she’d forgotten about it and shrugs, hands still on the patient.

“It was just a flesh wound. Noah, can you call the nanny and have her pick up Lillian today?  Have them go back to your house. Nathan and River are going to be at his parents’ house for the rest of the week still. I told the paramedics on scene to send all non-critical to St. Mary’s Hospital so that we could concentrate on the critical. The first paramedics to arrive tried to give me push back until Warren showed up, then they let me control the scene. Where’s my ortho consult?”

I’m standing there looking at her like an idiot.  I hear her speaking, but for some reason none of it is computing in my mind.  She’s just so casual, like this is an everyday occurrence.  Yes, rearranging childcare isn’t exactly a new situation, seeing how our entire community are either doctors or in the medical field.  But this, this catastrophe she just walked in with?  This certainly isn’t our normal operating method.  Wait a minute? Warren knew she was there and didn’t bother to give us a heads up? As soon as I see him I’m going to kick his fucking ass.

The sight of a nurse coming in with a set of black scrubs finally spurs me into motion, and I take them from her.

“Emma, take over the patient. Lizzy, come on, let’s get you stitched up.”

“Just throw some antiseptic on it and I’ll worry about it later.” The portable x-ray is in here now and she steps back, momentarily putting the safety coveralls on while the pictures are taken.  I cringe at the amount of blood I can now see on the inside of the x-ray shield.  It’ll need to be hosed down before it can be used again. And why am I worried about the x-ray shields?  I wonder if I’m going into shock just from the close contact of Lizzy. 

“ELIZABETH!”  I yell it out into the room, voice laced with all the fear and anger and frustration I possess and feel rather than see half the department stop and look at me.

When she finally turns to face me head on, her shoulders fall and her face softens. I don’t know what she sees on my face, but it makes her acquiesce to my request. She nods sharply and starts to remove her gloves, tossing them onto the floor with the rest of the trash.

Alex comes into the trauma room grinning, arms crossed over his chest, light on his feet despite the situation. “You know Stewart, if you missed us that much all you had to do was call. There was no need to get yourself shot.”

Lizzy returns his grin ear to ear. “You know me Davis, I like the drama. I’ll meet you guys upstairs, which OR?”

Davis’ eyes flick to me momentarily and I read the concern in them with years of practice. I nod, not giving my ok but acknowledging that I’ll take care of her.

“OR 4 should be ready for turnover in 20. I expect you clean and stitched before you enter my scrub room Stewart.”

“Sheesh Davis, the power’s gone to your head hasn’t it? Fine. Have ortho stabilize her before she goes up.”

We start to walk out of the trauma bays towards the elevator when we hear Davis call out “good to have to you back Stewart.”

--

We head into the attending’s locker room and I walk straight thru to the bathing area to turn on the shower. I put the scrubs on the counter and go back out into the locker area to find some soap and shampoo for her. She’s taking off her tennis shoes and examines them critically before tossing them into the corner. Her t-shirt comes off and goes straight into the trash. She has her hands on her jeans and is halfway thru pulling down the zipper when she looks at me. It takes her cocking her eyebrow at me before I realize I’m staring at her half naked. God she’s beautiful. But that’s not what I’m staring at, not really.

If our bodies are a road map, hers has taken some very painful turns.  I can see the faint outlines of her chest tube scars across her chest, upraised and evident with the goo coating her. I see the jagged c section scar low under her belly button above her panty line where our daughter was pulled from her body. The dried blood all over her torso is horrifying.  It’s left weird patterns on her skin as it’s dried through and from the contact of her clothing.  She almost looks like a walking Rorschach painting.   And I think, this is the third time she’s almost been taken from me. The thought makes me sick.

I put the bottles I took out if Amanda’s locker into the shower stall, then turn and pull her towards me. I embrace her harder then I mean to, and seeing as she’s married to another man, and half naked, it’s completely inappropriate, but I can’t let her go.  

“Noah? I know Noah, I know.”  She squeezes me back tight, then takes in a shaking breath herself.  “I can’t, I can’t fall apart yet Noah.  There’s still stuff to do.  We can’t fall apart yet.”  She sounds like she’s trying to separate herself from me but still, she doesn’t try to pull away and I tighten my hold just a little more.  She runs her hands soothingly over my back and I bury my nose in her hair. Even under all of the blood I can still smell her flowery conditioner.  “I’m alright Noah. I’m alright”  

When I feel myself on the verge of cracking, I let her go and quickly wipe the moisture from my eyes. “You shower, I’m going to go get a suture kit. We have about 15 minutes before they’ll be ready for you. I’m assuming you’re wanting to operate? You haven’t been in a surgery suite in a while.”

“I’ve kept all my certifications up to date and done more continuing education credits than I’m required to, due to boredom mainly.  I still do ride alongs on a quarterly basis.  And I think I proved today my trauma skills are still sharp."  She points at me before she resumes the removal of her pants.  "You need to change your scrubs too, you’re covered in blood now.” I look at myself and see that she’s right. Her blood covered imprint is now on my shirt.  It’s hard to tell from the dark color of the material, but I can see the strange patterns the blood has left on the fabric.

I decide to ignore the boredom statement, but push it into the back of my mind to consider later. “Ok. I’ll be right back.” I pull her to me one more time and kiss her forehead, blood and all, then leave the bathing area and shut the door behind me. I lean against the door after I shut it and try to gather my thoughts.  Lizzy, my Lizzy, was shot.  Never before have I been so happy we got Lillian into that fancy preschool. I don’t know what I would have done if they had both been there. The thought makes my knees weak. But there’s luck there for another reason too. There are a lot of people alive right now because Lizzy was in that mall today. If Lillian had been with her she would have been protecting her instead of helping all those people. She’s a hero.  Another wave of adrenalin or some other hormone shoots thru me, and I will myself to calm down.  I’ve felt on the verge of a panic attack since I first laid eyes on her, but she’s right.  Now is not the time.  We still have stuff to do today.  

Get yourself together Anderson. Scrubbing my hands vigorously over my head, I push off from the door and head out in search of a suture kit. When I see a supply cart, I grab supplies to draw some blood too. With that much blood mixing over her we’d better do some blood tests at well. Rapid HIV, blood counts, std’s, pregnancy, the works.  Oh god.  The thought of Lizzy pregnant makes me feel sick.  I let myself into the drug closet and grab the lidocaine and some pain killers, then head back into the lounge and place it all on the table. I’m getting everything set up with a bottle of water on the table for her when she comes back out of the shower.

To my surprise, she has the scrub bottoms on but not the scrub top. She has the towel wrapped around her torso, but they aren’t really made to wrap all the way around a woman’s curves, so there’s a damp line of bare skin showing from her shoulder to where the scrubs start low on her hip. She’s run her hair through the towel, and it is hanging damp down her back, wavy from the water instead of her usual beach curls. It’s darker that way, and I’m transported to a time when she would leave the bathroom like that, towel dried and damp, and climb naked into the bed we shared.

I have no idea what has gotten into me all of a sudden, and luckily she doesn’t seem to notice as she wanders over to the lockers. I should not be thinking of Lizzy this way. The only excuse I have is the stress and hormones pushing thru my system at the thought of her being hurt at that mall.

“I had to toss my bra, I couldn’t put that thing back on again, and I didn’t want to put the scrub top on until you stitched me up in case I got blood on it too. As you can see I kept the bandage on and it’s probably pretty gnarly under there. Emma used to keep a full change of clothes in her locker. Do you think she still does?” She pops the door open and bends down to the bag in the bottom. “Aha” she says, so I assume she found what she was looking for. “Don’t peek” she says, then drops the towel after she moves so that her back is facing the door. She puts the bra on upside down and backwards in the way that women do, and begins to rotate it to the front. I do the complete opposite of not peeking and stare at her as I have been since she walked into the ER this morning until I feel my cock start to twitch, then I quickly avert my eyes.

When she comes and sits at the table with me, I find that looking at her with Emma’s bra on is worse than seeing her bare back and sides. Whereas Lizzy always favored bras with the firm cups that offered extra support, this bra is low and lacy, and I can see the outline of her nipples thru the thin fabric.

Clearing my throat, I hand her the Tylenol and the water bottle and wrap the band around her good arm to draw her blood.

“Any chance you could be pregnant?”

”No.  Definitely not.”  I ignore the wave of relief that passes through me at her firm assurance.  I tell myself it’s just because I hate the thought of her endangering an unborn child with her stunt today and not because I hate the idea of her having another man’s baby.

”I’m going to test for everything ok?”  Her only response is a nod.

That done, I turn her to the side so that I have access to her bad arm as it rests on the table.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“Well really, this is all your fault.”

“MY fault?! How so?”

“Well, you know Lilly starts dance class next week. And I was going to go to payless to get her tap and ballet shoes, and then I heard your voice in my head going ‘really Liz, Payless?’ So I went to that specialty store in the mall that costs 4 times as much for the exact same thing.”

I scoff at her, then tell her “This is going to burn” As I unwrap her arm.  She was right about it being gnarly. I know from past experience that she has a high pain tolerance, but she must have a pain tolerance thru the roof, because the wound is ugly and jagged, and deeper than I feel comfortable with. It’s more a thru and thru than a graze in my opinion, but there doesn’t appear to be any muscle compromise, and she’s obviously been using it ok. I grab the antiseptic to clean in.  I nod my head in her direction and tell her, “Go On.” Her face pinches tight for a minute, but whether it’s from the pain or the story I don’t know.

“I was in line to pay when it started. I heard the first shot and froze, unsure about what I was hearing, but then the next started rapid and close together and there was no doubt. I dropped my bag onto the register counter and told the clerk to go hide in the back room. She told me to come with her, but I knew there’d be injured. I’m a war trained trauma surgeon so…” She trails off and shrugs again, then winces. With the adrenalin fading I bet she’s starting to feel it more now.

“I grabbed a sharpie I saw on the counter, and started heading towards where everyone was leaving. He started in the food court I think. It’s a weekday, so it’s not as bad as it could have been, but it was bad enough. I was able to hug the wall and inch towards where it was coming from. There were two civilians, ex-military from the look of them, doing the same thing. They told me to scram, but I told them I was an army surgeon, and if there were wounded I was going to help. I couldn’t get too close to the action for fear of being shot myself, but when he started strolling, he was just walking as calm as could be Noah, like he didn’t have a care in the world.  That was more disconcerting than him opening fire.  He didn’t seem mad, or insane.  He was just going for a stroll in the mall.  With a bag full of automatic weapons.”

Aa a trauma center, we often see the results from the worse of humanity.  I’ve treated rape victims and rapists.  Assault victims and people arrested for murder.  This isn’t even our first face to face with an active gunman.  But this time feels different.  And hearing her retell the story to me is haunting.

“He was going the opposite direction from us, so I started darting in and pulling wounded to the side, triaging as I went. I used the marker to tag them as I felt appropriate, did what I could to stop the bleeding or ease the patient with what little I had, which was nothing of course, and went on to the next one. Ike and Mike we’ll call them, split, one on either side of the corridor, so when he dropped both guns to grab another pair they went at him from both sides. That’s when I got hit. He got a spray off as he was being brought down and I’d gotten too close pulling a victim with an abdominal wound to safety. They broke his arm. Bad.”

“Good.” Somehow I managed to keep my hands steady through her story despite my heart rate racing and my system flooding with adrenalin. So she didn’t just happen to be close to the shooting. She ran into it. The fucking mother of my children ran towards gunfire with no regard for her, her children or anyone who cares about her. I close my eyes and take a hissing breath in through my nose, trying to calm my raging emotions.  I place my hands flat on the table for a moment to try to center myself.  I can feel her watching me.  This is going to be a make or break moment between us.  If I react wrong, this could end very badly.  I pull my composure out of the surgeons vault, and when I reach for my supplies again my hands are steady.  I can actually see some of the tension leave her body at my choice not to throw down with her right now.

“Here comes the stitching.” I’m going to kill her with my bare hands. I don’t think I’ve ever been this angry in my entire life, and lord knows Lizzy’s done a lot to piss me off over the years. Her phone rings, and she picks it up and hits ignore. 20 seconds later it’s ringing again. Releasing a big sigh, she answers it this time. Her voice is overly perky and it takes me off guard for a minute, helping to calm my raw nerves.

“Yea I heard about that. Crazy huh? No no, of course we’re ok. I was thinking about going to the hospital though and seeing if they need any help.” There’s a lull in her side of the conversation here, and I can tell by the tightening of her posture that whatever being said is making her less than happy. “Of course, no, you’re right, they don’t need me. Yea. Ok. You too.” She puts her phone down and turns her face to me giving me a half smile.

“I’ve been contemplating coming back to the hospital, have I told you that?” Her statement takes me by surprise. She hasn’t given me any indication that she was anything less than satisfied with her work at the clinic.  I wonder if she’s told anyone else this.

“Nathan, he doesn’t want me to. If I told him about all, this” and here she uses her free hand and wiggles it around in the air, indicating everything and nothing at once “He’d probably think I arranged the shooting on purpose.”

“Lizzy, he’s your husband. Don’t you think he’d want to know you’ve been hurt?”

“I’ll tell him later tonight. It’s not a big deal, and you took care of me.”  She says it with surety and confidence and fixes me with a sweet smile.  I’ll always take care of her. “Are we almost done?” She twists sideways to try to get a look at the wound. I could have done it a lot quicker, but I’m tired of seeing scars all over her body. So I took my time, and hopefully in a few months we’ll have only the faintest memory that this ever happened. I put some gauze over it, then a bandage over that, when wrap some of the double sided sticky wrap over top of all of that. The need to continue to touch her, to reassure myself that she is in fact ok is overwhelming, so I push her hair behind her ears and cup her face in my hand. Instead of pulling away, she leans into it, putting one of her hands over mine and closing her eyes, breathing in deep.  We stay that way for a few moments.  Breathing and ensuring each other of our presence.  But times a ticking and I’m sure they’ve started without her.

“Come oh trauma goddess, let’s get you to the OR.” I pull her to her feet, watch her put her top on, and then follow her out of the room.

[thenakedhusband]

My Last Day at Moz. My First Day at SparkToro.

17 years ago, I dropped out of college to work with my mom, Gillian, on the business that became Moz. For 7 years (from 2007-2014), I was that company’s CEO. For the last 4, I’ve been in a variety of individual contributor roles. And today, for me, that journey ends.

On a scale of 0-10, where 0 is “fired and escorted out of the building by security” and 10 is “left entirely of his own accord on wonderful terms,” my departure is around a 4. That makes today a hard one, cognitively and emotionally. I have a lot of sadness, a heap of regrets, and a smattering of resentment too. But I am, deeply, deeply thankful to all the people who supported me and Moz over the last two decades. The experience of building a company like this, of helping to change and mature an industry, of learning so much about entrepreneurship, marketing, and myself has been an honor and a privilege.

What’s Next?

Three things:

A new software company! I’ve got a bit of a chip on my shoulder, and a lot to prove — mostly to myself. That’s always been a superb motivator for me (even if it’s not the most emotionally healthy reason to take on the crazy risk that is startup-building). SparkToro is in a different field of marketing: influencer and audience intelligence. I’m hoping we can solve the thorny, painful problem of discovering where a given audience spends time, who and what they listen to, and where they engage. Some folks call this “influencer marketing” but I’ve found that terminology to be too limiting. It’s often exclusively associated with paying Instagram and YouTube celebrities to post about a product, and that’s not where this product/company is going. In the next year, I hope to have a product I can show you

A book! I’ve spent the last 18 months writing and polishing Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World with a terrifically talented team at Penguin/Random House’s Portfolio imprint. The book’s central tenet is this: A ton of traditional Silicon Valley startup “wisdom” biases companies and founders to do a lot of dumb stuff. This book will help you avoid those pitfalls. It’s told through stories from Moz’s years of growth and struggles, paired with advice and hard-won experience that’s helped us. If you’re a contrarian, or a skeptic of valley startup culture, you’ll probably love it. And if you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or technologist who believes all the hype, maybe it can at least help you know what to watch for.

A non-profit project to help makes conferences and events safer. It is un-fucking-believable what women (and some men) have had to put up with at events in the marketing and tech worlds. This is a hard arena in which to make a dent, but I’ve been working with a pro bono legal team from Davis Wright Tremaine on a structure that can hopefully help give codes of conduct more teeth and bad behavior more consequence. More to come on this in the months ahead.

Of course, I’ll also be speaking at a number of events, blogging a lot more, and spending a lot of quality time on phone calls with state tax offices (because startup life is glamorous, yo!).

Are You Totally Done With Moz?

No, not entirely. You’ll still see me on Whiteboard Friday (I filmed a good dozen episodes before departing and will likely be back in the office to shoot some more). I’m still working with one internal team on a big product release that didn’t get finished before my departure (a project I’m really proud of and excited about, with a team of people I love). And I’m still on Moz’s board of directors as the chairperson, and still the single largest shareholder (Geraldine and I own ~24% of the outstanding shares).

Thus, I still have a lot of reasons to cheer for, support, and keep my fingers crossed for Moz. I have high hopes that in the years ahead, the product will once again be the leader in its field and the best solution out there for many in the SEO world.

No Vacation?

This seems to be the first question I get when folks hear I’m leaving Moz, so I’ll address it here. Slight spoiler for the book, but it turns out being a startup founder, even if your company has tens of millions in revenue, doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of liquidity. Dollars are at a premium, my severance will only last so long, and thus I need to get this next business off the ground as fast as possible. Perhaps someday Moz will have a liquidity event and I’ll take a few months to relax and unwind. Or maybe this next project will go so well that I’ll have the flexibility to do that (although, knowing myself, I suspect a few weeks > a few months).

Geraldine and I do have a short trip to Portugal planned with our dear friends, Wil and Nora, in late April. Maybe that kinda counts

A Massive Thank You to Nicci Herron

If you’ve worked to schedule something with me in the last 5 years, or visited the Moz office, you know that I’ve been supported by an incredible EA, Nicci Herron. Every week, Nicci does an immense load of work to help not just me, but people all across the Moz organization. She’s so detail-oriented that across thousands of days and no fewer than 20,000 unique events, meetings, and calls, I think she’s made fewer than 5 mistakes total (and most of those were probably her just apologizing for someone else).

When she heard the news that Moz and I would be parting ways, she elected not to stay with the company. Her words to me were “if you’re not here, I don’t want to be either.” I have thought about that loyalty and kindness hundreds of times over the last year when feeling down.

Nicci doesn’t yet know what she’s planning to do next, which means there’s a tiny, brief window where a very lucky organization might snap her up. If you have need of someone with her extraordinary skills, please drop her a line via LinkedIn (or ping me directly and I can connect you).

Five Tidbits of Advice

Not many people stay with one job or one company for such a huge percent of their lives, especially not in the technology world. To some degree, this has almost certainly had a myopic impact on what I can see and perceive of a professional career, but it’s also a unique position to be in. I suspect that, with time and distance, I’ll be able to see the experience of Moz more clearly, but some things I can take away now (that aren’t already covered in Lost and Founder) include:

The best skill I’ve developed and the one that’s served me best as a founder, a CEO, and a marketer is empathy. Being able to put myself in the shoes of other people and imagine their pain, their problems, their workflows and speed bumps has been invaluable both on the product side and in creating content. Side note: this does not come naturally (or at least, doesn’t *only* come naturally). Spending lots of time with people I want to learn about, getting to know them personally, and asking questions, listening, and watching has been huge, too.

My number one tip for marketers seeking to grow their career opportunities is this: specialize. Specialize deeply. I don’t mean “SEO” or “Email marketing,” I mean specialization like “I’m the best link-focused SEO for the mobile gaming world.” Expanding from a specialization (if you so choose) is vastly easier, in my experience, than becoming known for a broad practice. This is equally true for companies as for individuals.

Video served as a dramatic accelerant for my personal brand, vastly more than I ever expected. Whiteboard Friday begat more conference invitations and interviews and awareness than even my most successful blog posts. I think the branding and stickiness value of video means that every viewer is worth (in the marketing sense) 10X more than a reader of text content (maybe more).

At Moz, weighting powerful, important, high-profile people’s opinions higher than our customers opinions inevitably led to doom. That was usually me putting more stock in what a handful of VCs who turned me down for investment thought over what hundreds of customers and potential customers were telling me they wanted. Granted, when you’re a VC-backed company, paying attention to investors matters because your next round is crucial (unless you’re profitable, in which case you don’t necessarily need to raise more, even though the startup culture will convince you it’s the only way). But, I also over-indexed on what highly influential authors and bloggers thought, and what I heard from a few folks I hoped might be potential acquirers. Dumb. When building a company, customers (and potential customers) > almost everyone else.

Tricks, hacks, and individual point solutions never made a big impact for us (and honestly, they’ve never made a big impact for any other company I’ve worked with or advised, either). Coming from the SEO world (and being bombarded by the emergent culture of “growth hacking”), this hit hard. For years I thought that the one right move would accelerate growth or the one right feature would make everyone love our product. But in fact, it’s when the whole became better than the sum of its parts that magic happened. That proved true in marketing, in product, in internal culture, even in recruiting. Crafting holistic, consistent, high quality experiences always beat out that “one magic trick” for improving… whatever. I think this is equally applicable in one’s personal life. The house, the car, the boyfriend, the vacation — none can, alone, produce the “and now I’m finally happy!” result.

Thank you again to everyone who’s been so kind to me and to Moz. I hope that I can continue to return those favors and to help many more people do better marketing.

p.s. Moz is shutting off my old email address there; if you’d like to reach me in the future, drop a line to rand at sparktoro.com.

The post My Last Day at Moz. My First Day at SparkToro. appeared first on SparkToro.

from Online Marketing http://ift.tt/2CNnhN0 via Online Marketing

#Online Marketing

[rmil2k]

16 Things You Can Do This Weekend to Streamline and Scale Your Business

Just in case at any point this year you’re sitting around wondering if there’s a unique weekend adventure you can embark on to help scale your business, I recommend bookmarking and saving this article. There’s lots to come back to. And if you experience a slow point with your business, you can use one of these activities to make sure you’re still growing and building.

P.S. This post was originally published in January 14, 2014, but has since been revamped and republished.

P.P.S. If you want a book version of this post with 36 more weekend activities (so yes, 52, one for each weekend of the year), please sign up below and I’ll send it over when it’s ready—which will be early January 2018.

16 Ideas You Can Choose from (This Weekend) to Help Streamline and Scale Your Business

1. Launch the MVP (minimum viable product) version of your course.

If you want to test out a course/training idea before building the full thing, then creating a landing page and minimum viable product version of your course is your new best friend.

Check out the checklist below for an idea of what goes on your MVP course landing page, but also check out the video directly below (ignore my voice that sounds like I’m fighting allergies—I was) that reviews some of my favorite MVP landing pages people made (some, in just one weekend) during a challenge I hosted.

The MVP Course Landing Page Checklist Here’s what you’ll want to have on hand or do:

working title for your course

URL for your landing page

rough outline of course content

optional: hashtag for your course

trademark check and Google check 
(this is a good idea because you will be using this course name and brand in commerce)

bonus freebie related to your course topic 
(think: checklist, tutorial, workshop, challenge, mini-course, or other resource you can send via email to interested audience members in exchange for their email address)

mockup of your bonus freebie

professional email address 
(this can be at your main business domain or your new course domain)

marketing email delivery platform (such as: ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, or MailChimp)

high-quality photo of a scene related to your course topic or of you
to use on your MVP course landing page and/or in your marketing emails

content idea list related to your course topic 
(you can use this to send out engaging resources and keep your audience members engaged before your course launches)

optional: info packet about your course

optional: link and payment method to reserve a spot

2. Make a plan to crowdfund something.

Crowdfunding is kinda what it sounds like—a crowd (whether 10 people or 10,000) funding your idea. You can use sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter to run your own crowdfunding campaign (which usually includes “prizes” for people who fund you, since the money is not a loan, you don’t have to pay it back).

Crowdfunding campaigns are not just good for the $$, but also the exposure. Several products have become somewhat to all the way “Internet famous” after a crowdfunding campaign.

Why? Friends, and even people who don’t know you, are motivated to share your brand and your campaign if they connect with something about it. You can use one of these sites to launch/re-launch a business, a book, a product, a product line, a creative project, really almost anything. 90% of the projects that I’ve supported are by people I don’t know at all.

Crowdfunding even allows you to get out there and start providing consulting services if you want to. Two examples for you: (1) A woman I know in real life “sold” $1000 consulting packages as some of the prizes for supporting her book release. No seriously, look at this thing. She raised almost $12,000. (2) A couple who wrote a children’s book also listed $1000 consultations, among other prizes, for the release of their book and raised over $10,000.

3. Create an online quiz with helpful results or a “prescription” of sorts.

One of the most irresistible types of audience magnets or freebie opt-ins (translation: something people will give you their email address to access) is an online quiz people can take to get some clarity in a field/goal they’re interested in.

Examples:

Discover Your Brand Tone: Are you a Serious Sally or a Irreverent Irene?

Take the Content Prescription Quiz—Know What to Send to Your Audience via Email and Why

What’s Your Dating Style? Take This Quiz to Find Out Why You’re Getting Bored So Fast

Why are quizzes so powerful though?

Well, not only do they appeal to the thing most humans have where we like to talk about ourselves and understand ourselves better, but they also provide you as the brand owner a unique opportunity that few other “opt-in magnets” offer: you can easily create some “next steps” prescriptions or recommendations based on the results people get from your quiz.

One thing I highly recommend, always, is to know where your customer is in their journey of whatever it is you help with. Let’s take a slide from one of my recent presentations to illustrate this point and tie it into the power of quizzes.

Let’s say you’re a personal trainer or a nutritionist (or both) who is specifically helping people with weight loss. Your clients may be at many points on the “Interest to Action Spectrum” . . . and keep in mind, there may be even more points/stops than the illustration below, this is something each brand owner must logically imagine, experience, and build for themselves.

Can you imagine how the free content, and perhaps even the paid product or service, you’d want to serve to a person in Position A (truly making up their mind to lose weight) should be different than the content and product you present to someone in Position C (already committed, already on some sort of program)?

To A, you might want to create a series that helps them envision the benefits of weight loss then talks about the healthiest ways to go about it. You might pitch a low-cost eBook or consultation session. To C, you might want to create a series that helps your audience see the benefits of the methods you teach and builds on their spirit of commitment that is already present. You might pitch a free coaching call or 3-month online program to this person who has already shown the ability and desire to act.

See what I mean?

And guess what?

With a quiz, you can use your magical genius mind and ask questions that help you see which place on the “Interest to Action Spectrum” your new audience member is, and you can create multiple different follow-up sequences (via email, for example) and content pieces to meet them where they are and move them towards where you are.

Awesome, right? I like to use Typeform for quizzes, but you might also try Interact. And psst—if you are a part of PublishYourThing.com, one of the first lessons inside Audience Magnet Arsenal contains two tutorial videos that show you exactly how I designed my popular quiz with 16 different results paths.

4. Create some standard reply emails that you can quickly personalize whenever a potential client emails you.

I use the Gmail extension/app called “Canned Responses” to have some pre-loaded emails ready to go that I can customize for the person/situation I’m responding to. This saves me (or perhaps even a virtual assistant you hire to help you) a ton of time in my inbox.

Think of creating standard responses for:

someone asking you if you have any openings in your coaching/freelance schedule

someone asking for recommendations for _____ (whatever question you get frequently)

someone who wants more information about your _____ (most popular product or service)

times when you’re not taking on new clients and want to direct people to other options or to your waitlist

emails in which someone is thanking you for your work/articles/resources/etc. and you want to respond graciously

emails in which you need to urge your client to get back to you in a more timely manner for a project you’re trying to complete for them—drafting this beforehand will make it not as painful/hard when you have to actually customize and send it

when you are a bit overloaded but want to acknowledge that you got the person’s email

any other situations/needs you run into frequently with your particular brand and audience members

5. Take an online class this weekend to learn a new helpful/creative skill.

Skillshare is highly recommended for online classes. You can also find amazing things on Udemy and through a general YouTube search.

You can even Start Your Book This Weekend with moi, or go for something not directly related to what you do that will help spark some new creativity. Think about:

hand-lettering courses

graphic design courses

speed reading courses

meditation courses

dating or self-love courses

etc.

6. Volunteer some pro bono work to a charity, business, or other organization.

Now only will it be good for the world and good for your portfolio, but a little free work for an organization can:

offer you further experience in something you want to do more of

get you some referral clients from the client you do pro bono for

allow you to possibly offer the free work as a giveaway that people can nominate their organization or that of a friend for

etc.

In these ways above ^^, you can use pro bono work to grow your business, even if it just expands your portfolio or the roster of client logos and testimonials of entities you’ve done work for.

7. Create an engaging challenge for your audience.

A while back, when I was studying for one of my fitness certifications, we spent a good portion of time on the science of motivating people to do things that are good for them . . . even when they might not feel like it or might not know exactly what to do.

This certainly fits for working out for many people, but it can also fit for other things . . . like getting clearer skin, or becoming profitable with your craft business, or learning how to do your own home repairs, or mastering a new language . . . we want the end result, but sometimes the frustrating or repetitive training/actions to get there are not desirable.

But, even if you teach people something they absolutely love every single step of the way, motivating people in smart ways can definitely be worth your time.

Challenges are so powerful because they organically help motivate people by providing small wins, which helps people increase their self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is basically your confidence in your ability to achieve a specific goal or complete a task. Think about something that is either a bit daunting or that seems wholly insurmountable to you at times. For some people it might be achieving fluency in a new language, for others it might be switching to eating a vegan/plant-based diet.

Now, think of someone extremely approachable and friendly coming along . . . someone who used to be equally overwhelmed by the same task but has now mastered it. Pretend they take you step-by-step through it. Maybe they start by explaining everything vegans can eat and they make you a delicious dish that’s better than anything you’ve eaten in months.

Maybe you think, “Okay, well, I can do it for a day.”

Then, maybe they come over and show you how to prepare an amazing vegan breakfast and lunch. All you know are those two meals, but you get good at them.

Maybe you think to yourself, “Okay, well, actually, I can do this for a few days.”

And so on. When the person showed you how to make two meals that you were able to make well, your self-efficacy increased. You believed in your ability to make an enjoyable vegan meal. And this probably also led you to logically believe that there are other vegan meals you can prepare well.

Even though it may just be a week’s time, how much would your outlook on trying to switch to a plant-based diet change after those successful experiences?

You can design your challenge to create small wins for your audience that majorly affect their beliefs about their capabilities. This can have a lifelong affect on someone and increase their overall confidence so much.

That is powerful . . . and should not (in my opinion) be taken lightly.

The first challenge I crafted for my audience was what I like to call a “happy accident.” You know those times when you mess up something in Photoshop and end up loving it? Or those times when you plan a 30-day challenge that you think only a handful of people will care about and it turns out to be one of the things that grows your brand the most in a certain year?

Yeah. Creating my 30-Day Creative Business Cleanse was my happy accident of 2014, and I want you to have one too, except on purpose.

Planning what you want your audience to accomplish, what you want them to feel, how involved you will be during the challenge, and the format and delivery of the challenge content will help. Head to the next page for info on the types of challenges you can create.

Types of Engaging Challenges You Can Try With Your Audience

1. Habit-Forming Challenges 
(typically spread over a specific timeline) 
 Ex: 14 Days to Yoga (for newbies who’ve never done yoga)

2. Habit-Changing Challenges 
(usually done over a specific number of days/weeks) 
Ex: The 6-Week Sugar Elimination Challenge

3. Cleanses or Detoxes 
(which can really fit in as one of the above challenges) 
Ex: 30-Day Creative Business Cleanse

4. Goal-Based challenges 
(with the ideal final result of goal completion) 
 Ex: Sew Your Own Dress Challenge

5. Activity-Based Challenges 
Ex: February Photo-a-Day

6. Knowledge-Gaining Challenges 
Ex: Learn Spanish for Tourists in 3 Weeks

7. People-Based Challenges 
 Ex: The 4-week Date Your Spouse Challenge 
Ex: 30-Day Business Cleanse for Freelancers

8. Fun Challenges 
 Ex: The 30-Day Guide to Getting Flirty in Your Thirties

9. Awareness Challenges 
 Ex: Live Trash Free for a Week

8. Spend some time learning (really, really learning) a social media platform you think might be valuable to your business.

For example: Play around in Pinterest for a few days. Note the pins that draw your attention, read descriptions and see which ones are most effective, find some top pinners in your industry and see what they’re doing right.

Learn the slang, etiquette, and way of life on the social media channel of your choice. Read a book on it, find some good blog posts on it, and then dive into creating content for your business social media profile/page.

9. Get some new photos of you, your products, your office, or your customers enjoying your products. Doing this in a large weekend batch will give you content for weeks/months to come.

Whether you get some professional photos taken (which is a great idea to lend credibility to you) or you learn a few photography tricks with your iPhone or Android device, new pictures always entice readers, regular visitors, new visitors, social media followers, etc.

Plus, have you ever noticed that you’re more excited about promoting something when you have an awesome image of it? Even if you offer a digital service (such as online coaching or a freelance service), you can get images of you at work or images that represent the kind of work you do. If you’re a digital business owner, you have the opportunity to get creative with how you present your work visually.

10. Create an arsenal of visual templates that complement each other.

For some examples, check out the list of “5 Graphic Templates to Make and Use for Your Brand” below.

1. Article, podcast episode, or blog post templates
 Shoot for a well-designed graphic that is perhaps Pinterest-friendly (so maybe 800×1200 pixels) that you can use for posts, articles, or other resources you will create more than once. When you make templates (like Jorden of WritingRevolt.com does), you will save yourself tons of time and create brand consistency.

2. “Click to share” graphics As an attractive way to encourage more people to share your blog posts, emails, and other resources, consider making “click to Tweet” or “tweet this” graphics. You can even consider making share graphics for Facebook or other platforms—just make sure you link the image to Facebook/Twitter/etc. with a ready-to-go post to be shared. You can use the site clicktotweet.com to help.

3. Infographics When you want to display information graphically (which of course explains the term: info-graphic), there are a few tools (my favorites are Piktochart and Canva) to help you. They make creating attractive infographics fun and fast.

You can use infographics inside emails and blog posts, on your funnel signup page or sales page, and so much more.

4. Facebook ads Whether you create an image like the one below to promote your free meditation series or you dip your toes into video ads, budgeting a little each month to boost your Facebook Page posts or to create custom ads can be a very solid idea when you’re trying to grow your audience and sell your products. Having some pre-designed templates can drastically cut down the time and hassle to get a successful ad up and running.

5. Email headers Though you don’t have to use images in your emails, if you choose to do so, creating a header (like the example above to the right) for your content can help remind your audience member what they’re receiving, re-engage them in your content, and get them excited to scroll down and read.

To discover 5 more types of graphic templates I recommend making during your weekend of creating your Visual Arsenal, don’t forget to sign up for the 52 Things You Can Do for Your Business This Weekend to Scale It eBook.

11. Create a physical product that you don’t have to carry inventory for or fulfill orders on.

Not only can you create services, digital tools, and scalable “passive income” information products for your audience, but you can also consider:

Physical tools or products that help your clients

Physical products that have branded themes or fun messaging

Printed books, workbooks, etc. that customers can use

And the awesome thing is there are ways for you to get other companies/providers to process your client orders, create the products, and ship them to customers for you. This is called 3rd-party fulfillment. What kinds of things can you get created for you?

Here are some ideas of products you can create (and get fulfilled for you):

Tote bags

iPhone + iPad skins

Art prints

Wall art

Mugs

Posters

Canvases

T-shirts

Throw pillows

Hats

Fabric

Leggings

Board games

Laptop sleeves

Wallpaper

Calendars

Planners

Aprons

Bibs

Sunglasses

And so, so, so much more

To create products like the ones listed above, check out companies such as:

Printful (pictured above)

Print Aura

Society6

Red Bubble

Spoonflower

PrintNinja

And if you’re creating books or workbooks, don’t forget companies such as:

CreateSpace

PrintNinja

Blurb

Lulu

IngramSpark

12. Spend the weekend “Buffering” all your current posts/videos/audio/resources to your social media accounts. Use unique phrases and schedule enough content for 1 – 3 months.

There are many scheduling tools you can use for this, but my favorite is Buffer.

13. Create a funnel to educate and entertain your audience as well as to sell to them.

A funnel is simply one or more of your ideal audience members being drawn in by an amazing resource or gift you offer, then being taken through a series of content pieces you’ve created, in which each piece is meant to: (1) educate and motivate your audience to act on something helpful to them, and (2) accomplish a specific brand goal for you.

My belief is that even though your funnel may have one general goal, the most feel-good, customer-centric, and sensitive funnels are ones that are highly valuable even if someone doesn’t purchase anything and/or ones that have a few stop-off points for people just in case your end goal is not what they need.

To illustrate what a funnel is, let’s take the example of my totally real friend (I didn’t make him up or anything) named Theo to illustrate extremely helpful funnels. In this content series, Theo is not only selling his $35 guide to being a digital nomad in Playa del Carmen, but he is also dishing out essential, valuable information for people who might only need a few additional details or for people who can’t yet afford his book.

That funnel looks super sexy and helpful, right?

But you may have noticed a very key thing is missing. “Traffic” as the marketers say. Humans as I like to call them. How are human-actual-people going to become aware of Theo’s amazing free video on “A day in the life of a digital nomad in Playa del Carmen” to begin with? Head to this post on funnels for more details/ideas on this.

14. Develop your first teaching + sales webinar (combo).

There are two main ways to arrive at a really great topic for your sales webinar—obviously assuming you know exactly what you’re selling. Okay, so you have a product or service that (in theory) you can:

outline the steps or sections of; or

come up with a clear end result or goal for (ex: you’ll know how to sew your own dress after you take this course, your website will be built when I’m done building it for you, you’ll have a healthier mindset on what to eat now that you’ve gone gluten-free after we’re done with my coaching service)

. . . then you have everything you need to come up with your webinar topic. Simply outline your product or service (by breaking it down into steps or topics), whether it’s something you do for a client or something you teach your client to do for themselves, then do two things:

Think about what it would be like to deliver/teach the first 10 – 30% of your product (give or take—you can of course go outside of these numbers) as a webinar.

Think about what it would look like to teach/present 10% or more of each section or step of your product or service as a webinar.

One method takes people on a deep dive of the first parts of your product and the other method gives people an overview and actionable information on your whole process. Either way, your audience will have enough information/ideas to get excited and know what they need, so your “job” with the webinar is to present your product or service as the logical way for your audience to get the rest of what they need.

15. Create a smart content plan, with your business goals and business model in mind.

You can watch the secret, unlisted video training below to find out the five questions you’ll want to answer to create a content plan that won’t waste/suck your time and that will be on target with your business model.

16. Create an epic email course that you can use as an audience magnet or even a funnel, of sorts.

You can download the planning sheets below by just clicking here or clicking the image, then you can head to this article on creating an email course.

Don’t forget that you can get 52 Things You Can Do For Your Business This Weekend to Scale It for free, below. I’ll send it to you as soon as the book is ready.

Which weekend activity will you try for your business? Please let me know in the comments below. Oh, and, quick favor: Please share this post with other business owners or freelancers you know, so that they can add some fun to their weekend or be inspired during lulls in business. Thank you!

The post 16 Things You Can Do This Weekend to Streamline and Scale Your Business appeared first on by Regina [for infopreneurs + independents].

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