When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:
“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”
Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either.
Op I’d like to thank you for sharing this. Ever since the first time I’ve read it I’ve held it in my mind and it really has helped me to be kinder to others and to myself.
Mean things I can’t tell my least-favourite coworker cause it would be hurtful and I’d feel bad
Sometimes the things you get worked up and angry about are so utterly inconsequential that they make me imagine a time before written language where I may have been carried off and eaten by leopards as a small child, and I feel a kind of strange longing
Do you ever want more from life or is this genuinely it for you
You give off the perpetual aura of a distant relative’s small and untrained dog which may either let you pet it or suddenly maul you with little to no warning at the drop of a hat and because of this whenever I see you nearby I can feel my asscheeks clench so if you could maybe wear a hat or vest of some kind to indicate whether or not you are in a bad mood I would greatly appreciate it
I have difficulty imagining you as a child. You are entirely without wonder or whimsy. I imagine you once broke off as a slab of granite from the side of a mountain and slid into an employment office where you remained for years until someone dressed you in a uniform as a joke and brought you to life exactly as you are like an irritable corporate Frosty the Snowman
My determination to treat others with kindness confronted with your determination to see only the worst in all my actions constantly forces me to reevaluate my moral principals in a way that is much like a crisis of religious faith, as though your existence were a tangible proof that God was never real
I cannot imagine that you are happy the way that you are. I want to believe that you are, but all evidence available indicates otherwise. Are you like this because you are suffering, or are you suffering because you are like this
Do you ever wonder about life beyond our constructed social prison. Do you ever find yourself gazing skyward in the rain. Have you ever felt tempted to get off the bus in the middle of nowhere on your way to work just to see what happens
I am glad that you are older than me because I think that if I wait long enough you may retire so I no longer have to work with you without something terrible happening to either of us
Do you ever think about how you’re gonna die someday or do you just perpetually live in the precise moment wherein whatever obstacle in front of you is at once both entirely novel and the most infuriating thing in all of existence, like a baby with no object permanence trapped in a revolving door
I’m going to be near you for the minimal amount of time required to accomplish this one task and if you could just pretend I don’t exist for that duration I think we’d both prefer that
Recently, I was standing outside my son’s classroom waiting to talk to his teacher. I stood on one side of the hallway, not even close to the center. At some point, a man came walking along. I was standing right in his path, but the hallway was empty, so I logically expected him to swerve around me. Instead he kept walking right toward me, got to me, and stopped, as if waiting for me to get out of his way. I didn’t; I just smiled politely at him. He finally walked around me, clearly annoyed that I hadn’t leapt out of his manly path.
Now I’m wishing I’d leapt aside, taken off my jacket and laid it on the floor before him, then bowed deeply and said, “My Liege!”
I also work at a college campus. I smack shoulders sometimes, but I find that if I stare straight ahead and follow the advice below, people get the heck out of the way.
Honestly this post changed how I carry myself when walking alone in public, or in a situation where I’m the one leading. People definitely move for the murder gaze.
Confirmed. I once had to rush back inside a convention hall as the con was closing in order to a retrieve a sick friend’s medication, and I didn’t understand why people in the crowd were jumping out of my way (literally—one guy vaulted a table) until I realized I was dressed as the Winter Soldier and doing the Murder Walk because that’s just how I walk in those boots. I got the meds, got out, and made a mental note.
I repeated the experiment later, wearing the boots but otherwise my usual clothing and mimicking the expression I thought I’d had at that moment. People parted like I was Charlton Heston.
I now wear that style of boots whenever possible. I recently had a man do a double-take as I walked by and ask me, politely, where I had served because I “looked like a soldier.” I’m not current or former military. I was wearing a flowy purple peasant top and looked as un-soldierlike as possible.
Moral of the story: wear comfortable shoes, square your shoulders, and walk like you’ve been sent to murder Captain America.
IT’S BACK!!!!!! I was searching for this to show my daughter the other day and couldn’t find it. I’m so glad IT’S BACK!! I will always reblog the Murder Strut!!
In case you were wondering, yes you can do this in a wheelchair. Same look in your eyes and let ‘em know you will run them down. Just picture yourself in a sports car accelerating towards someone with the intention of flattening them.
If there’s anything more satisfying than watching Abled men leap out of my way when they realize I’m not moving for them, I can’t think of it atm.
ok so I looked it up, and it turns out they made a track out of PVC pipes, down a hill. The owner didn't realise PVC expanded in the heat, so on a turn the track just fell apart and the dude inside went over a fucking free way and into a swamp.
The funniest part is that the inspector was watching the whole time, and once the ball stopped he left without saying anything. Park management just shut it down then and there.
"The ball cleared a small hill, briefly going airborne, then zipped right across Route 94, the two-lane road splitting the park. Cars honked and slammed on their brakes. If there had been opposing traffic, Frank would have become part of a real-life game of Pong, volleying from one bumper to another.
Still in pursuit, we followed the ball toward a small lake in Motor World that had been earmarked for a fleet of tiny bumper boats for children. The area wasn’t open yet, but the empty boats were being tested and floated on the surface. The ball soared over the grass and smashed into several of them, scattering the others with rippling waves from the impact, which launched some of the boats several feet in the air.
Charlie and Ken waded into the water looking for the hatch. After some difficulty, they got it open. Charlie pulled Frank out by grabbing him under his armpits like a baby. Frank crawled up the bank, coughing and sputtering. He splayed across the grass as we all stared at the ball, which bobbed in the water like it was attached to a fishing lure.
We did not ask for the inspector’s report, nor did we ever hear of one being filed. Ken Bailey returned to Canada. The snow-makers cleared away the PVC. Told to dispose of the Bailey Ball, they rolled it into the woods, where it remained for many years."
I don't know that this beats the teeth story, but it's pretty great.
You decide to go hiking. The trail you go to is lovely, and you have a very pleasant time before you get distracted and accidentally walk off the path.
You don't notice at first, the woods are so pretty and your attention is on the birds, the bugs, the leaves on the dirt... The dirt. Shit. You can't see the trail anywhere.
You don't worry too much, though, and just keep walking, because how big can these woods really be? You've seen the maps, it should be possible to cross them from one end to the other in less than half a day. Plus since you're probably close to the middle, it shouldn't take too long.
So you pick a direction and walk. The only way out is through!
You walk. You walk. You could take a break but you're really not that tired... So you walk.
It feels like it's been hours, but you don't have a watch. It feels like it's been days, but the Sun hasn't moved. It has been hours. Days. Weeks. Months.
Years.
But you don't have the time.
The trees don't look real anymore, like they're a word you've said too many times in a row. You're not sure what trees look like, and you can't quite find the sky or the ground.
You no longer know your name, or where you're from, or why you're here, or what here is. You know trees.
After long enough, you realize the trees have gradually been getting bigger since you got here. Someone who hadn't been walking these woods for decades, centuries wouldn't have noticed. But you have.
And it really can't have been more than five minutes, but you did not bring a watch. You don't know what a watch is. But the Sun hasn't set. You think. What did the Sun look like again?
You wonder if this is hell, or maybe purgatory, but you know it isn't. Because you know what this is. It's trees.
As you walk the woods these tree filled woods as you walk past the trees through the trees among the trees you give up on the foolish dream you once had of "making it out." There is no out.
There is only trees.
Trees. And you. And you, and trees. And trees and you and you and trees and trees and trees and you and trees and trees and trees and trees and—
You hope that someday you'll die and the roots of the trees will slowly wrap around your dead body and drain it for sustenance so they can grow ever stronger, so you can be a part of them. That the trees will consume you and change you until you are no longer recognizable
as something that is not a tree.
//
and this, dear reader, is what trying to read may 5th in dracula feels like.
“Batman wishes I was dead.” Jason no, baby, he just wants you to stop cutting random dude’s heads off in the middle of the night in Gotham. And not even because he disagrees with you, but because Batman is the one Jim Gordon calls to come deal with the mysterious cut-off heads at 5:00 am. That man just got off patrol and now he’s gotta go look at some bloodstained duffel bag in the Narrows with Jim Gordon who’s hitting his emotional support vape like it’s an oxygen mask. Bruce can’t stand the smell of cotton candy. Do you see where I’m going with this, Jason?
#things James Gordon would say for 500 (via @sillybirdhole)
no but really, how long do you think Jason runs around being Red Hood before Jim Gordon corners him one night, sucks on his vape hard enough to make Jason genuinely worried for his lung health, and says "you know...your old man's gettin' real tired" and Jason instantly does the whole "oh so he's tired of pretending to care about me when--" and Jim cuts him off, waving. hits his vape again for an alarming amount of time, exhales pure 100% cotton candy into the night, and says "I mean tired. like he isn't sleeping." and Jason shrugs all "well what do you want me to do about that?" and Jim Gordon turns around, looks him directly in the eyes of his helmet, raises his vape up and says "stop fucking killing people and cutting their heads off in the middle of the night" like it's obvious. which, it kinda is. the man is TIRED. and Jim Gordon is tired of Batman being tired around him. it's making them both exhausted. like oh boy, another duffel bag of cut-off heads! what a mystery! and it's fuckin' gross. it's gross and it's not even an actual complex crime for them to solve and yet. yet. they are getting up out of bed -- scratch that, they're not even going to bed before this -- to come deal with this bullshit. middle of the night, random stinking warehouse. every. single. goddamned. time. so when Jim Gordon says Batman cares about you, he means he is the only one other than me who's patient enough to deal with your dumbass cut-off heads at three in the morning. STOP. fucking. cutting. off. HEADS.
