Jules

Cowabummer, man…

[stuckinapril]

“Do it scared” “do it alone” are all great tips, but my biggest takeaway from therapy is do it messy. This is especially true if you’re getting out of a burnout, which I experience often. Literally just do it messy. You don’t need to pick the perfect trail to walk, the perfect playlist to listen to, whatever the fuck it is. You don’t need to have a meticulous to do list and wake up at the exact time you planned and drink the exact amount of water you planned to drink. Like the biggest thing for people like me to remember is sometimes it’s okay to do it messy. Put on a random yt workout and just get it done in sweats. Do 5 minutes of a daunting task and go from there. Sometimes just getting up is a win during intense burnouts or depressive funks. Literally just do it messy.

[julessuretries]

people being like "omg no you shouldn't feel shame about that! What is this? The medieval ages?" feels the same as when a doctor is like "You're too young to be having these symptoms! You should be fine!"

Even if it's true in a broad sense it's completely unhelpful to the individual, dismisses their feelings and experiences regarding the matter, does nothing to actually help them work through their crap, and completely ignores the reality that people grow up in very different environments that shape their perception of themselves and the world around them.

[lesslaivyy]

[vitchuatlocalhost-deactivated20]

[julessuretries]

having a sensitive stomach is so fun and cool bc how come my body can handle an ICED matcha with honey and oat milk just fine but a HOT matcha with honey and oat milk makes me gassy and bloated beyond measure and uncomfortable for the whole work day?????

[tinylittletwig]

Silly guys so so silly they may save the universe

[butchgangle]

[julessuretries]

Zooble is so supportive but every now and then Gangle's chronic onlineness shines through just a liiittle too hard

[twistedangelboness]

having friends is cool until they worry too much and get in the way of your self-destructive tendencies

[julessuretries]

me the entirety of college bro OOF

[caezavio]

[stuckinapril]

I’m not the woman I was a few years ago or even a year ago but I still like to hold her hand and remind her she did her best with what she knew

[julessuretries]

taking an exam that encompasses everything I've learned in the past two years is anxiety inducing, yes. I am honestly fighting the urge to crash out nearly every single day.

HOWEVER!

I think it's developing my character and teaching me how to manage stress. No matter what, I have to show up and study. That's literally all I can do, and it's not going to pay off all in one day or even in one week. It's a test of patience and learning to just show up. Sometimes you just have to trust the process and believe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. In addition, you have to find ways to keep yourself regulated in the process. I've been making time to read in the morning and work out at least a few times week. I've also been reaching out to friends to study with so I'm not totally alone during the process.

That being said...

God help me!!!!

[julessuretries]

The results are in and I PASSED babyyyyy!!!!!!

[angele-darliing]

She would be lovely.

[julessuretries]

Obsession was so good dawg. It was so good. I might write up an analysis of it later but I need some time to put my thoughts together so wow what a 10/10 movie.

[julessuretries]

ok so now that I don't have to vaguepost about TADC

I think my favorite thing about Jax's arc was how he (tbh I'm not sure what pronouns to use since they never came out) explored the emotionally avoidant fantasy of having someone smash all your walls and defense mechanisms down for you because you're too scared/cowardly to do it yourself. And to be fair, in TADC's case, he got someone pretty darn close to doing that for him through Pomni, who was even willing to physically fight him if it got him to open up. And yet, even with her extreme willingness to pry this character open, it

still. didn't. work.

Because NO ONE can make you open up. No one can make you speak up on what's bothering you. No one can make you ask for help. The existence of a person who somehow will magically see through every facade, every wall, every edgy or cynical remark to find the person struggling inside is incredibly RARE, and even if you do find that person, they still cannot help you if you don't give them something, anything, to work with.

I know that Jax's arc more specifically has to do with transness but I think generally I found the exploration of emotionally avoidant coping mechanisms to be really powerful.

TLDR: tadc really said "change or you're going to die like this"

[spacechanneldelta]

ART JOURNEY MASTERPOST

The DrawABox chronicles: About a year into drawing, I felt like I was plateauing and needed some guidance. So I started DrawABox! Here's my documented experience with each of the lessons and challenges!

Lesson 1

Lesson 2

Lesson 3

Lesson 4

Lesson 5

Lesson 6

Lesson 7

[julessuretries]

*drags myself towards you out of breath and exhausted*

I FINALLY FINISHED THE DRAWABOX LESSONS DAWG GO CHECK IT OUT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE I NEED ATTENTION FOR IT TO FEEL LIKE IT WAS WORTH SOMETHING PLEASE /j

[julessuretries]

I think the Chimptopia indie pilot trailer/pitch thing explains exactly what my issue is when conservatives attempt to make art, especially in our divisive political climate. They view art as so inherently political (which don't get me wrong, it is) but to such an extreme that everything creative immediately becomes propaganda. Nothing can actually be taken as a creative's genuine attempt to express a struggle, theme, idea, or question because "NO! It's about WOKE-IFYING the masses!!!" Which then makes it impossible for them to actually make anything interesting and real because they constantly have to police their own work for the exact messages they're sending to make sure it's anti-woke instead of just using art to express themselves like its meant to do. This creates an insufferable and boring panopticon no one wants to create under which I feel like is why so many of them resort to "self-aware" comedy/parody genres that rely heavily on making jabs at things they don't like.

Their mindset around creativity is so subtractive that it's always like "alright unlike these dirty LIBERALS we're gonna make a story that doesn't have all this woke crap" only to realize that it's pretty hard to a guide a narrative and make something interesting when you're solely working through a mentality of "any story is fine just as long as it isn't woke". But stories are meant TO say something, not to NOT say something. Many conservative creatives fail to understand that which is how we end up with the regurgitative "WOKE IS CRINGE RIGHT GUYS???" that has nothing original to say like the New Norm.

[julessuretries]

I think this is a vague enough post about TADC that I can make it before the finale airs on YouTube but I think the one thing I really wish had been explored more in the show was the side of Pomni that was willing and able to beat the crap out of Jax in the gun episode. I know it wasn't real violence and all that but, still. You gotta have a specific kind of bite to you to choke someone out like that and I wish we had learned more about her personality/backstory/whatever it was that made her that way.

[julessuretries]

I feel a pre-emptive pity for Digital Circus simply because there's no possible way the finale can live up to the astronomical hype that was built around the show since day 1.

I've been a big fan of TADC since it came out and always thought it was very creative, original, and inspired. However, I also felt it got excessively, excessively glazed online. As in, I would regularly see thumbnails on YT videos talking about how TADC was a "modern masterpiece", on its way to become a "timeless classic", and, of course, "singlehandedly destroying Disney/Netflix/[insert Big Studio here]". I know some of those videos were to farm views but I think a lot of them were genuine, which was odd to me because how can you say something like that when less than half the episodes for the series are out?? Like yeah dawg I'm a fan too but are we not getting ahead of ourselves here? When there's still half the show's runtime left to go and things could absolutely go downhill, or, you know, just not live up to the impossible expectations people developed for it in the six month gap between the cliffhanger at the end of the pilot and episode two??

I'm going to be honest, as someone who's seen spoilers for the finale, I'm worried that it's not going to tie everything up neatly (although tbh I don't think I needed to see the spoilers to think that since I admit I was getting worried the show was offloading it's plot to the last minute since episode 7). That's not me saying it's going to be disastrous by any means, but I have this nagging feeling that once it comes out and doesn't live up to the immense hype the Internet^tm cultivated around the series (because that would be impossible for literally any show to do), people are going to do a 180 spin on it and we're gonna get the inevitable "TADC was trash and here's why" videos when, like, maybe if people had any actual patience and media literacy they wouldn't have built up the show to be the next Matrix or Breaking Bad or whatever other genre-defining entry they wanted it to be until it had, I don't know, actually managed to finish its narrative?

Idk maybe I'll be wrong. But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[julessuretries]

so I watched it and... yeah, I liked it. Some aspects were hard to accept as part of the plot because they were kind of depressing, but I also think that's what made them resonate with me? I think the show, at the end of the day, posed interesting questions with certain characters (take a wild guess which), and I think that's, like, important in the grand scope of media, actually?

I try not to rope personal baggage into things I watch, because I hate getting projection-y, but as once a former "difficult kid" I think I'll always have a soft spot for stories that aren't afraid to display morally dubious characters that you aren't explicitly told how to feel about. You kind of have to just watch their stories unfold and contend with difficult questions like "how much can I attribute this to real trauma they've experienced?" and "how much do I acknowledge them as free agents capable of choosing to do right or do wrong?". It's always a messy topic to discuss, especially in modern-day internet climate because people want clean-cut answers to everything, when the reality is that things can be quite messy.

Viktor Frankl said in Man's Search for Meaning that: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

That space is a hard thing to get a grasp on, and some people only grasp it too late, if at all.