I have adopted a new policy few years ago and I can’t even begin to tell you how high my quality of life has soared since then.
I don’t help anyone unless they explicitly ask me to.
It sounds selfish and callous because we (especially women) have been trained into acting like working ourselves to death to please others is our reason for living. But this is self-preservation, both physical and mental health.
What I do now, instead of rushing in, is ask. Offer my help. “Hey, do you need a hand?” If the answer is no, i shrug and go my way.
People won’t ask for two reasons: a) they expect you to be useful, b) they don’t want to be helped.
Type A, screw them. Unless they are paying you for your time (and even then) they have no right to demand anything of you.
Type B, if you need help you’re in a bad spot. You’re in a position of weakness. Seen from below a helping hand might be anything from a punch to flipping its finger to an attempt to squash you, especially if you’re not expecting it.
You can’t help those who don’t want to be helped. You can’t take other people’s problems on your own shoulders or force yourself into their lives to fix them.
Offer your help freely and repeatedly if you need, but if they say no just accept it and move on.
Imagine thinking your spouse is a sexy secret agent for decades only to find out he’s a restaurant critic for fat tire boy magazine
Better yet imagine a real spy getting in trouble and mistaking a restaurant critic for a fellow agent. But the critic takes their job very seriously and won’t reveal themselves and so gets pulled into some kind of huge dangerous conspiracy whilst continuing to take notes on the quality of every restaurant they almost get shot in.
make the movie make the movie right now
You might enjoy The Man Who Knew Too Little, then. Except he’s an insurance agent.
I realized as I sat down to write some fic that I needed a real timeline for this series. I haven’t been involved in the online fandom for very long, so it’s quite possible others have one this before, but I love picking through things like this, so I made my own. I’m posting it on tumblr in case anyone else would be interested!
The Thief is the only book that’s tightly plotted to the point where I can actually name almost every day in the book; for the others I’m using significant events +the next day or +two days later or what have you. If a day is given with a + it means I have concrete proof of when the next thing happens, either because the narration or a character says something like “the next morning” or “two weeks later.” If there’s a ~ it means I’m guessing, and I give reasons for my estimate. A lot of the travel in Queen of Attolia and A Conspiracy of Kings is estimated, but it is very consistent.
In cases where large chunks of time pass with only a few scenes described in detail (like the timeline of battles in the war, or Sounis’s time as a slave), I’ve focused more of my attention on the bigger-picture stuff and skipped over the smaller scenes.
As an aside: in the course of compiling this, I may have unsnarled some of the things that bugged me about the timing of Costis/Ornon’s arrival(s) in the Mede Empire. It might be pure speculation, but if it’s not, then the timing and the textual clues are actually extremely clever and I am left, once again, marveling at MWT’s foreshadowing. Everything that initially made me think “that seems weird” or “this is just being handwaved/forgotten about” in KoA, CoA, and the first part of TaT would turn out to have been either foreshadowing or the neat conclusion of a previous book’s political intrigue.
My graduate adviser gave me the best, least painful, constructive criticism I have ever received. Whenever she needed to tell me to do something differently, she would start by saying, “a lot of grad students have problems with this…”
That calmed me and helped me fully process what she was about to say. It normalized whatever mistake I was making. It helped me realize that it wasn’t going to jeopardize my acceptance in the lab, my university, or academia.
Most of all, I think it was her way of telling me, “I don’t want you to think of this as a disability thing that makes you different and less than everyone else. I don’t want you to spiral into feeling like you’re not good enough and you don’t belong here. I want you to learn from the mistake without feeling bad about yourself.” That was probably what helped most–knowing she cared enough, and understood me well enough, to say that.
This was the first time anyone had actually responded in a helpful way to my deep spirals of self-hatred and frustration in response to criticism. I still don’t understand how she knew. She’d known me for less than a year when she started communicating this way, and had never actually seen most of the symptoms. Yet she intuited a way to help me get past what people now call “rejection sensitive dysphoria” or “RSD.” And I will never forget it.
I hope someday to offer similarly sensitive constructive criticism to other people.
In the meantime, I try to say it to myself. When I drop a plate or glass and spill the contents all over the floor. When I say the wrong word in a sentence, or can’t remember the right one. When I show up late. Whenever I do some annoying disability-related thing.
Maybe saying it to yourself will help you, too: “Remember, you’re not the only one. A lot of people are working on this.”
From someone who worked at starbucks. If you have a milk/dairy allergy AT ALL. DO NOT. I repeat. DO NOT. Drink Pumpkin Spice.
It contains dairy IN the syrup that is used to make the drink. Even if you get it made with soy, you will still be getting doses of dairy in there.
Depending on the severity and intolerance it can and will cause reactions. I found that as a barista I was constantly warning people about the dairy in the product. No one ever seemed to tell them that there was dairy in the mix. More times than I can count I heard people realize that’s why they kept having reactions, or that’s why it made them sick.
People legitimately do not know that pumpkin spice no matter what you do will always contain some amount of dairy.
So, a while back I saw a claim about one of the Robin’s height that really threw me off. My first thought was ‘oh man, really? that Robin was super TINY’ and then a few moment’s later I realized that considering Batman is 188(6′2′’)ish there was no way that Robin could be that height because that would mean that they only came up to his hip, which… we’ve got some small Robin’s but not THAT small. I was pretty curious how tall they actually were so I tried to look it up, but sadly only a characters current stats are available (if even that *cough* Carrie Kelly *cough*). At this point, it’s really bugging me so I decided to look. though a lot of the early comics to try and see if I could figure it out.
i just got a super predatory debt collection letter. it was for a $113 debt from citizens bank, who i had an account with when i was 16 (20 years ago). the letter appeared to be an offer to cancel the debt if i paid them $22.75. HOWEVER, the actual wording is, “The amount of the debt is $113.77 and we will accept $22.75.” so, no MENTION of canceling the debt, but the implication is there because many collectors of current debt offer to settle for a percentage.
at the bottom of the letter, it says: “Because of the age of your debt, we cannot sue you for it and we cannot report to any credit reporting agency. In many circumstances, you can renew the debt and start the time period for the filing of a lawsuit against you if you take specific actions such as making payments on the debt or making a written promise to pay.”
basically… i don’t owe this money anymore, the debt is so old they can’t legally sue me for it OR put it on my credit report, BUT if i take their generous offer of paying them $22.75… they can sue me for the full amount because making a payment makes the debt current.
no thanks, jefferson capital systems llc.
always, always read the entire letter! it is so important because of semantic awfulness like this!
Alright shitstains listen up because I just found god in a bottle.
If you’re a nerd like me your body’s probably riddled with a few nerd tattoos yeah? Some of ‘em in some pretty obvious places? Maybe you work in a professional environment that frowns upon body ink? Maybe you’re a cosplayer and you have some revealing outfits that you need to cover up for, yeah? Tattoos that you can’t afford that $30 Kat Von D Tattoo cover up because you’re a cheap broke shit?
Story of my life bud.
Now I have a pretty obvious Squad 11 tattoo, because I’m a Bleach nerd and Zaraki Kenpachi is my husband, and honestly it’s difficult to hide it in some of my cosplays because it’s bright and black and right smack dab on my shoulder. Poor planning on my part but hey, squad represent.
You see that glorious miracle up there? That’s Mehron Tattoo Cover. You see those pictures underneath it? Tattoo? What fucking tattoo?! It’s gone!!!! Vamoosed!!! Like I never got the ink in the first place!!!!
This shit is durable, and I mean durable. It’s completely waterproof and that first picture of my tattoo is actually what it looked like after scrubbing at it with two makeup wipes. TWO. It’s not going anywhere
And the best part?
IT COMES IN DIFFERENT SKINTONES. BAM. WHAT.
I mean it’s not phenomenal but hey at least it’s not just “pale as fuck”.
Yeah. $12. Not $30. Because $12 is much more reasonable than $30.
As for size reference, that’s how big it is in that third picture right there. It’s honestly the best investment I could have made and everybody should know about it.
Go forth and conquer with your newfound knowledge. You’re all welcome.
As someone who used to chair a stage makeup department, Mehron and Ben Nye are going to be cheaper and better than whatever concealer/orange eye shadow/green lipstick whatever weird tutorial you found or expensive-ass luxury concealer.
Why you ask?
Because Mehron and Ben Nye are stage makeup. They’re meant to give thick, full coverage in one layer that can stand up to cameras and stage lights. Blend it out, powder it, and you’ll never look back. Plus it’s cheap enough that you can buy 2 and mix the perfect shade.
This will work on scars, too.
Just an FYI for folks I know who may want to cover for cosplays, work, or personal reasons.
Honestly this would be a life saver for people with tats stuck looking for jobs in places that frown on them.
I’ve watched people not get jobs at places I work even though their personalities and experience levels were exactly what we were looking for purely because of personal adornment (tattoos, piercings, etc.). So to anyone who might need a product like this, I hope you see this post.
Reblogging in case anyone wants to know how to hide scars specifically.
DarkestElemental616 