i am.

jae • 30

[youwantedadog]

please consider donating to the north gaza cruelty-free kitchen/camp + cruelty-free water project

[stuckinapril]

Not immediately jumping to unsolicited advice when someone confides in you

Avoiding absolute statements when you do give someone advice. You do not know someone better than they know themself. All you can do is offer guidance. Thinking otherwise in any capacity is symptomatic of ego and lack of empathy.

Accepting the fallibility of being a person lol. A lot of people will say they “get angry” when they notice someone floundering, so their solution is to yell at them or get extremely cruel with their words. In this case you don’t have the capacity to give advice, and you would do more than damage than good in giving it.

Never using being honest as an excuse to be cruel

Asking your friend questions. Gently prompting them into the answer that fits them best. It is better than immediately giving commands as to their next step

Knowing that time and place matter. When someone is fresh off a difficult situation, the last thing they want to be slammed with is advice. They just want to be listened to. Active listening > advice in that scenario.

Kindness costs you 0. Not coddling someone ≠ being liberally rude to them under the guise of honesty

Asking yourself if you really have their best interest in mind or if you’re reacting out of a selfish place and disguising it as “caring” for your friend

Being patient …. Many people need to be told this

Is it emotional labor or are you just poisoned by therapy speak?? There does reach a reasonable point where we all hit the ceiling about “helping” our friend / finding it difficult to see them self sabotage / whatever the situation may be… but I feel like a lot of people forget what friendship really is tbh. Not everything is emotional labor. Taking a little bit out of your day to listen to a recurring issue isn’t the end of the world. I won’t harp on this too much bc people have varying limits, but I don’t like the weaponization of just being there for your friends these days

Remembering your compassion. We are all struggling all tripping out all trying to get it together. I just hate how some people don’t find it in them to empathize. If you can’t empathize then why are you trying to give advice? How do you expect to put yourself in their shoes? Compassion informs sound advice.

Asking yourself if you’re okay with being spoken to the way you’re speaking to someone right now, even if their excuse is just that they’re giving advice / trying to help. If you dish it but can’t take it, that’s a good sign you’re saying something fucked up

Delivery matters. A lot of people seem to forget this. Does it make it okay if someone is yelling at you / tearing into you / lambasting you with a “good” point? Like we all deserve a base foundation of respect and common decency. No one is wrong for centering their feelings in that scenario.

[intactics-deactivated20250505]

tactics to remain intact ❔

keep a part of yourself reserved for yourself alone and build a relationship with the silence at the heart of your solitude. who you are before that silence is the closest thing you can get to an unobstructed view of yourself. the noisier it is in your head, the further away you are from the middle. take medication if it helps keep the volume down. remain in your body and listen to it. whatever the day disintegrates within you, make some attempt to reintegrate it each night. whatever emotion is shaking you like a rabbit in the jaws of a dog, go limp and wait for the dog to finish before you take action or speak rashly. keep all promises to yourself. eat and sleep and drink as well as you can. figure out what makes the integity of your self worse and quit doing it. show up every day to the job of taking care of yourself. forge close personal bonds with your peers, if you can locate some peers. dance.

[artemisiasea]

I’d be long dead in a ditch somewhere or just an absolute shell of myself if I internalized even a quarter of the things people said I was after I didn’t give them what they wanted. This period of my life keeps reminding me of Baldwin’s: “You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not its idea of you.” And Audre Lorde’s: “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

Getting closer to 30 has been about realizing how deep self-betrayal runs in me and how profoundly I want to be liberated from acting like this. It’s boring and predictable. Sacrificing myself has never led to any real growth, fulfillment, or strength… I would much rather the discomfort of loss. I love and respect myself too much now to lay down for people. They will kill you if you let them.

People are going to decide who you are based on a myriad of factors completely out of your control and relevant only to their perspective and experience. I’ve learned it’s best just to say that ain’t got shit to do with me and move on for your peace of mind and spirit.

[stuckinapril]

“To try to not be more interesting but be more interested” literally changed my life perspective btw

[stuckinapril]

To do things not for the sake of coming off a certain way or fitting a certain aesthetic or to grab ppl’s attention more …. But to simply do them bc you’re curious and invested and would do them regardless of whether anyone was perceiving you or not …. That is literally the point

[stuckinapril]

I’m genuinely understating how important this lesson has been for me bc we literally live in a world that’s all about aesthetics and branding and how to package urself even if you’re not even an influencer… dating tips that advise you to “focus on yourself” “take on more hobbies to have something to talk about and be interesting” like what if you just did those things bc you want to …. for the whimsy ….. bc we have one life ….. and then the rest just naturally follows . What if being interesting does not presuppose the interest. What if that sabotages it actually . What if the only actual way to be interesting and to evoke something in ppl and to capture their interest is by doing things bc you truly love them and for no other purpose

[wizardarchetypes]

my advice to you is to never waste your time trying to fit into a club or hobby or any community who makes you beg for acceptance and approval just to participate when you could do the alternative—get involved in a niche and endangered hobby run primarily by old people.

i wanted to learn how to hunt ruffed grouse and train bird dogs so i sent an email to my local chapter of the ruffed grouse society explaining that getting into wildlife groups is intimidating to me because I’m trans

and all they saw was that someone under 60 wanted to learn to hunt grouse & several months into my mentorship I was told that like 7 old guys argued over me until they had to pick a number between 1 and 100 to decide who got to personally mentor me.

imagine vying for the acceptance of some gatekeeping weirdos when your mere interest could be inciting verbal combat among retirees

[wizardarchetypes]

my mentor was so sweet & funny too. he suggested we meet over lunch first so he could tell me about what to expect before we got started & I emailed back “I’m ready to get started right away!”

and he said “I was actually suggesting lunch first for your comfort on the assumption you wouldn’t want to get together with a man you’ve never met, in the woods with a gun.”

Like, I trusted him because of the referrals I got from one of my professors but like, right you are sir fair enough. Lunch it is.

[lovely-v]

It’s crazy and fucked up that being yourself is actually the solution.

[lovely-v]

It’s like. When I was told to “just be yourself” as a kid I thought it was a passive thing. Like oh easy I just have to sit here and be myself. but the reason so many people think that “being yourself” is bullshit advice is because you actually have to make active choices to do this and it WILL make your life way more fun. You have to wear t-shirts of bands that were popular ten years ago because you like them. You have to do your hair in a way that you find cute or comfortable even if it’s “so nineties”. If your friend says a food you enjoy is gross to them, you can’t be afraid to admit you casually disagree. You have to do hobbies that you’re interested in even if you’re bad at them and you cant feel like you have to get good at something before you tell people it’s an activity you do. You have to read manga and comic books in public and get piercings your relatives think are unattractive. You don’t have to tell people you dislike that you dislike them, but you don’t have to give them your time and attention either. You have to rewatch that kids show you’re nostalgic for even if you’re in your 30s. You have to change your name if you hate it, even if only a few close friends can know. You have to get fun girly drinks at the bar. You have to order hot chocolate when you don’t like coffee and black coffee when you don’t like sweet things. I am still bad at practicing this but it is the only way to make it all tolerable.

[lapetitsyrene]

I should be allowed into every museum’s archives actually

[flower-tea-fairies]

You should be furious that people trying to escape genocide in Gaza, Sudan, Congo all need raise an absurd amount of money just to survive

You should be furious at how these people went through atrocity after atrocity and still need raise tens of thousands of dollars to get away

You should be furious at this insidious thing that completely encapsulates how capitalism feeds off of blood

[2productive]

[pointnclick]

"No one wants to work anymore." Damn right brother. If I could sit in a beautiful field for 40 hours every week of my singular precious life I would

[thenarator]

as someone with a bachelor’s degree in english, i am inexpressibly tired of people telling me to get highly specific jobs that often require highly specific degrees. “just go write for a magazine!” you need a journalism degree for that. “just teach!” you need a teaching certificate, and also fuck you. “just go work at a tutoring place!” tutoring children with learning disabilities, which make up the majority of the clientele at those places, requires not only a teaching certificate but a specialized master’s degree. “just go work at a library!” you need a master’s degree in library science to be a librarian. it is actually a highly skilled and extremely competitive field. you don’t just “go work at a library,” you train for years in the vain hope that you will get one of handful of available jobs. “just go work at a library.” the nerve. the unmitigated gall. “just go work at a library.” ugh.

[notchainedtotrauma]

The room smells like aging paper and bookbinding glue—a joy for an archivist. Solange is, after all, as is widely documented on her own social-media channels and on the Saint Heron site, drawn to the archival, the deep cut.

from Kaitlyn Greenidge's story about Solange for Harper's BAZAAR

[fallahifag-deactivated20240722]

btw palestinians have been saying this would happen for 130 days and all leaders in the world have brushed us off. everyone refused to listen to us when we said they were going to kill our people regardless of where they stay. we have been saying again and again, they will gather these people in the south in order to kill them all at once.

وين نروح ؟؟؟

palestinians in the north of gaza are getting killed for staying, but those leaving to the south (which was called a “safe zone”) are killed on their way there. those who got to the south are killed by snipers and, now, carpet bombing. palestinians can’t even go to egypt anymore . they are killed before they get there.

سأكرر … وين نروح ؟

[glorious-spoon]

every genius who thinks mandatory two-factor authentication is a good idea should be forced to do tech support for a public library that serves a lot of elderly poor people

[glorious-spoon]

way too many people are interpreting this as 'old people are too ignorant to understand technology' instead of 'poor people, especially elderly poor people, often do not have reliable access to a cell phone'.

i know 2fa is more secure. everyone knows that 2fa is more secure. the problem is, when you make your very secure 2fa reliant on a cell phone, people who do not have cell phones can no longer use your service. when the service in question includes every major email provider, and you are required to have an email to access many basic kinds of assistance, people without cell phones are cut off from accessing those things.

and this is a fucking problem.

[jay-jay7712]

"I recall your soul and it taste like...gardens, flowers, warm winds."

- SZA, “Warm Winds”

[pizzaback]

as a fellow Public Library Enthusiast i am begging people to consider the fact that not everywhere has an accessible public library or indeed public libraries at all. just saying “get a library card” at strangers when you have no idea about their background or their life isn’t very helpful. let them pirate in peace

[pizzaback]

some library systems require that people pay to get a library card, some library systems require forms of ID that not everyone has because of homelessness (i had to bring 2 forms of ID and a piece of mail to get my library card in the last city i lived in!). some children can’t get library cards because their parents don’t let them, more and more schools are shutting down their libraries. and that’s just some examples of unequal access to libraries in the USA, many countries have 0 public libraries whatsoever. public libraries are not a universal thing.