Captain's Journal

Photo is Rosie the Wonder Dog. Disabled | Spoonie | gay | writer | Decidedly anti trans-exclusionary radical feminism, or "terf" |  You can find my OCs under the tags "The Princess and the Bard" and "Connor Gwyn Chronicles" You can find my fics at Mary Reed's Writing on AO3

[finnglas]

I’m going to give you the best piece of Adult Life Is Hard advice I’ve ever learned:

Talk to people when things go to shit.

I don’t just mean get it off your chest, although that’s good. I mean: Something’s wrong with your paycheck/you lost your job/you had unexpected emergency car repairs and now you’re broke so your credit card payment is late. Like, not just 15 days late. We’re talking, shit got crazy and now you’re 90 days late with compounded interest and late fees and the Minimum Payment Due is, like, $390, and you’ve got about $3.90 in your bank account. Call the credit card company. 

I know it’s scary. I know you feel like you’re going to get in trouble, like you’re gong to get yelled at or scolded for not having your life together. But the credit card company isn’t your parents; they’re just interested in getting money from you. And you can’t squeeze blood from a stone or money from someone who doesn’t have any. So what you do is you call them. You explain you’re experiencing temporary financial hardships, and you’re currently unable to bring your account up to date, but you don’t want to just let it get worse. Can you maybe talk to someone about a payment plan so you can work something out? Nine times out of ten you’ll be able to negotiate something so that at least it’s not just taking a constant, giant shit on your credit score.

- Can’t pay your power bill? Call the power company.

- Can’t pay your full rent? Talk to your landlord.

- Had to go to the hospital without insurance and have giant medical bills looming in your place? Call the hospital and ask if they have someone who helps people with financial hardships. Many do.

- Got super sick and missed half a semester of class because flu/pneumonia/auto-immune problems/depressive episode? Talk to your professor. If that doesn’t help, talk to your advisor.

You may not be able to fix everything, but you’ll likely be able to make improvements. At the very least, it’s possible that they have a list of people you can contact to help you with things. (Also, don’t be afraid to google things like, “I can’t pay my power bill [state you live in]” because you’d be surprised at what turns up on Google!) But the thing is, people in these positions gain nothing if you fail. There’s no emotional satisfaction for them if your attempts at having your life together completely bite the dust. In fact, they stand to benefit if things work out for you! And chances are, they’ll be completely happy to take $20 a month from you over getting $0 a month from you, your account will be considered current because you’ve talked to them and made an agreement, you won’t get reported to a collections agency, and your credit score won’t completely tank.

Here’s some helpful tips to keep in mind:

1. Be polite. Don’t demand things; request them. Let me tell you about how customer service people hold your life in their hands and how many extra miles they’ll go for someone who is nice to them.

2. Stick to the facts, and keep them minimal unless asked for them. Chances are they’re not really interested in the details. “We had several family emergencies in a row, and now I’m having trouble making the payments” is better than “Well, two months ago my husband wrecked his bike, and then he had a reaction to the muscle relaxer they gave him, and then our dog swallowed a shoestring and we had to take him to the emergency clinic, and just last week MY car broke down, and now my account’s in the negatives and I don’t know how I’m gonna get it back out.” The person you’re talking to is aware shit happens to everyone; they don’t need the details to prove you’re somehow “worthy” of being helped. They may ask you for details at a certain point if they have to fill out any kind of request form, but let them do that.

3. Ask questions. “Is there anything we can do about X?” “Would it be possible to move my payment date to Y day instead so it’s not coming out of the same paycheck as my rent?” The answer may be “no.” That’s not a failure on your part. But a good customer service person may have an alternate solution. 

Anyway! I hope that helps! Don’t just assume the answer is “no” before you’ve even begun. There is more help out there than you ever imagined.

[finnglas]

Hey guys, this is an old post, but it’s still relevant, and I thought I’d re-up it for living in COVID times when a lot of people are losing income. Don’t be afraid to toss that in when you call to ask for help! “I’ve experienced a loss of income due to COVID-19″ is gonna be all you need to say for most places, because wow let me tell you how much this is the case. A lot of places are setting up COVID-19 specific relief policies, so this may be even easier than normal. 

Good luck, stay safe, stay inside if you can, and wash your hands. <3 

[veresfika]

day 19(?): boredom got way worse, trying to make myself a victorian friend

[veresfika]

gained conciousness, not ashamed to show some tits

[veresfika]

no more bare tits

[veresfika]

oh shit a bow

[veresfika]

[veresfika]

having a moment

[veresfika]

[veresfika]

🎶sleeves sleeves sleeves makin puffsleeves gonna look like french meringue doesnt even rhyme at all not even a little bit🎵 shhhh shhhh go away kitty

[veresfika]

aight folks that’s it for today i have some booing to do at the tv about some shitty and inaccurate costumes

[veresfika]

good morning sluts, back to work

[veresfika]

fellas im straight up not having a good time im in the middle of a lil meltdown over how much time i’ve spent sewing roses on my skirt before realizing they were anuses (or ani like cacti? 🤔)

[veresfika]

we’re gonna be so pretty

[veresfika]

wig snatched

[veresfika]

[veresfika]

shit do i gotta act like a lady now?

[veresfika]

if I play dead it might goes away

[veresfika]

oh my im getting hotter by the minute

[veresfika]

what a lovely creature im having a real beuty and the beast moment… wait no that bitch is a furry

[improveordie]

[veresfika]

I’m SO flattered (and self-centered) i had to hang up your amd @a-sip-of-anxietea ’s drawings I just love them ❤️

[veresfika]

girl’s night out(ish) 🍻

[arcsin27]

Is she single asking for a friend

[veresfika]

No❤️

[vampirebriar]

[pointed-in-a-crooked-line]

fuck this is amazing

[meangirlnurse]

what i really want is a trucking game with a gay subplot but i realize that’s niche

[meangirlnurse]

yeah i want to drive across Nebraska in a big rig but i also want to pick up a troubled hitchhiker with a mysterious past and have sexually tense conversations while we drive by an unending ocean of corn 

[starscapades]

[thinkpozitiv]

Dear self, stay strong. https://ift.tt/320ErU7

[bo-katan]

HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN visiting Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland

[apxlllo]

chronically ill person: i need help managing my illness and its symptoms bc im really struggling here

doctor: have you tried exercising, eating fruit and losing weight?

chronically ill person:

[bespangeled]

[copperbadge]

You know, this would explain why Picard, the most English person ever to walk aboard a starship, continues to claim he’s French. 

[eandh99]

Too funny and yet painful.

[exigencelost]

The problem with having lesbian moms is you try to be super cool and cut all your hair off and buy a leather jacket and wear boots all the time and then you go to some event in your neighborhood and all these women three times your age start cooing “oh you look JUST like your mother when she was your age, my gosh what a blast from the past, oh I just love your hair”

[exigencelost]

And let me be very clear, okay: I’ve seen pictures of my mom when she was my age, and she looked cooler than I ever will. My mom had exactly my fashion sense except she was two point five degrees butcher and habitually took over government buildings. My other mom was about six degrees butcher than that, and SHE had a motorcycle. Both of them have been charged with felony arson. I’m the prep member of my family and there’s nothing I can do about it.

[redstitcher]

Please tell me at some point in your life some dick was like “we’re calling your parents over your behavior” only to have a bigger, more badass version of you come strolling in

[exigencelost]

Look obviously that happened many many times, usually with misogynist or ableist teachers. But I have a BETTER story than that, which is that when I was in 3rd grade, I went to this tiny alternative hippy school—it was a regular public school, it was just small and staffed/run by hippie communists—and my 3rd grade teacher was a woman who had been in an organization with my mother, and they had done direct action together more than a few times. We’ll call her D. One day I was sitting in D’s class, eight years old and bored out of my mind, and I scratched my name into the back of my plastic chair with a rock. Was this reasonable behavior? No. Why did I do it? Only the gods can say. I don’t actually remember doing the scratching, I just remember looking at the rock in my hand and my name on the chair and going, “HUH. That’s not good.”  So obviously I got caught, bc I couldn’t reasonably convince anyone that I wasn’t the one who had done it, since it was MY NAME, and as punishment for this act of arbitrary vandalism I was sentenced to recess detention for two weeks. It was October so this included Halloween. Halloween, to be clear, is a high holy day in San Francisco, and I was devastated to miss the informal festivities that would be occurring at recess that day, and I wept and wailed about this at home for some time until my mother decided that this was disproportionate punishment and took it into her own hands to do something about it.   So my mom walks into D’s office on a day when my mother does not have to be at work at a scheduled time, but D has to get her students from the yard in about ten minutes, and my mom sits down and says to her old friend and comrade, “Miranda is really upset about having detention on Halloween.” And D explains to my mother why the detention was issued, what the circumstances were, and my mother nods, and listens, and doesn’t argue, and doesn’t show any sign of getting up from her chair. And just says again “She’s really upset about having detention on Halloween.”  And D looks at my mother, and she looks at the clock in her office, which is telling her that she has to be on the yard in 2 minutes now, and then looks at my mother again, who shows no sign of having anywhere to be, my mother with whom D has organized and successfully executed multiple sit-ins and takeovers of government & corporate offices, and D says, “Okay, she doesn’t have to have detention on Halloween.”

[local-weirdo]

Tell your moms that we love them.

[exigencelost]

You can express your love by donating to their organization, Prison Radio, which works relentlessly on a shoestring budget to amplify the voices of incarcerated people in the United States!

https://donate.prisonradio.org

[local-weirdo]

An important update!

[dtjunosteel]

Nureyev is relatable because I too am gay and stressed about money

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The father of the most hostile piece of street furniture in world history explains why he thinks he's right to make life harder for homeless people and socializing kids

Dean Harvey is the co-founder of Factory Furniture, the company that created the Camden Bench, a piece of street furniture designed to stop anyone from using it for anything except sitting very briefly; it is the nadir of the “Unpleasant Design” movement, a bizarre response to rising homelessness and hostility to children in public spaces, in which cities and private companies try to shove the problem out of sight by making street furniture as inhospitable as possible.

In a CNN debate with anti-unpleasant-design architect James Furzer, Harvey defends his practice, by simply defining all the things that people without privilege want to do in public spaces as “anti-social” and everything that makes life worse for those people as “pro-social.” For example, he defends his “Serpentine bench” (designed to prevent people from sleeping on it)  and other anti-lie-down boobytraps by saying that “I find it difficult to think why anyone would want to sleep on a bench. It’s no place for anyone to spend the night.”

The problems that these unpleasant designs are trying to solve are only going to get worse with rising inequality and privatization of public spaces. Unpleasant design is being used to make life harder for refugees with nowhere to sleep; to saturate homeless peoples’ clothes and belongings with icy water if they try to sleep in church doorways; and to stop people from resting their legs in public places.

The whole piece is fascinating. It uses an undefined “general public” to describe whose public space needs are legitimate, and excludes everyone else from legitimacy. As many have pointed out, when affluent people pitch tents on Sunset Boulevard to wait for Star Wars tickets, the police don’t beat them up, arrest them and destroy their belongings. But when homeless people pitch tents in the same spot so they have somewhere to sleep, that’s what happens to them.

https://boingboing.net/2017/12/07/out-of-sight-and-mind.html

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Honestly this is the most apalling thing I have ever read.

Okay, so first of all, spraying the homeless with water outside church doorways sounds like something the bad guys would do in a Victorian moralistic short story entitled something like “The True Christian”. It just feels wrong in a way that borders on the blasphemous.

Secondly, what does this guy think people use benches in cities for? What world does he live in where people only use them for sitting briefly (how brief is briefly anyway) and then get up immediately and keep on shopping?

A world where nobody ever, say, gets separated from he group and has to spend ages waiting at the designated meeting point. A world where nobody ever wants to eat their lunch at a bench. A world where nobody has to sit waiting with young children while their partner shops, because the shop has delicate things and the kids can’t be trusted not to break them.

I mean, what the fuck?

[white-throated-packrat]

A world where there are no elderly or disabled people who need to sit on a bench for a while to regain their stamina.

[iraprince]

sometimes the shit that trips me up, eats up my time, and stops me from getting shit done is so small that i don’t even realize im doing it. im taking notes to help me remember bc it all really adds up

[altarofistus]

day II: static/memories

[taz-ids]

[ID] A full color drawing of Lucretia, doing dishes aboard the Starblaster. Lucretia has her back towards the viewer, standing in front of a sink in a small kitchen. She is a young human woman with dark skin and bright white hair, pulled back into a bun. She’s wearing a light blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, blue jeans, and a long red robe tied around her waist. She’s levitating a few of the plates she has, one up above the sink, another floating up into a cabinet. She has one hand held up, a red washcloth in it. Next to the sink is a fridge with several bits of papers and magnets strewn across the front, a long green scarf tied to one of the handles. Above the sink several seashells are hanging, and there is a large plant growing up the wall. The overall feel of the kitchen is cozy and lived in. [end ID]

[animalcrossingcommune]

[fleurdemeth]

Portrait of a Young Woman, Jean-Etienne Liotard 

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer 

[heartfeltdelight]

#they look like theyve been having a chat about u and u just walked in

[antimony-ore]

I’m on mobile, somebody edit them into this please

[antimony-ore]

Y'all take too long

[noa89]

Day 22+23: Black Sea Nettle Combining the two days cause this one was a little intense along with Day 21…. Had quite a different color scheme in mind when I first started drawing it, but changed it during the coloring phase. =v=; something that happens quite a lot actually…

[hatepotion]

the end of an era