Shoulderpadfoot @shoulderpadfoot - Tumblr Blog

Listen. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’m worried about Lizzo and I’m worried about Ross Gay and I’m worried about Jonathan Van Ness. I’m worried about the sun.

I tend to take on the role of Pep Factory for my colleagues and friends and family. It’s not that I’m foolishly ra!-ra!-ing shitty policies or spewing that attitude-of-gratitude baloney. Instead, I’m trying my best to smile within the storm and find delight that I can share. I feel a moral obligation to share the delight I do experience.

To share the delight is to offer a life preserver that can float even when the drain of the ocean has been unplugged and we’re all swirling in horror. I can remind people they are human and worthy of love. I can remind people that there are good things. I DO NOT tell people not to feel anger or sadness, and I am not exempt from feeling shitty a lot of the time myself. (And I know and recognize toxic positivity. There are many systemic problems. I’m working on those, too!) I simply say out loud things that I find delightful, and it tends to raise the mean energy level in a room, and that makes it possible to keep on fighting the larger problems. In my work, I do this for other adults and also a lot of teenagers.

It is exhausting. When I burn out from the energy expense of this work, it sometimes comes with declarations from people I’ve been cheering. They say things like, “You always make me feel better!” and “Your happiness is infectious!” and “Oh, you just make me smile!”

Folks, it’s nice to hear that. But it is also not an accident. I choose to do it. It is an act of love. And it is hard.

I’m going to keep doing it! It’s something I like about myself!

But what I mean to say is that those statements that are supposed to read as “thanks for reliably brightening my day” are not enough when they are alone. Here.

A PSA from Pep Factories all around: As nice as it is to hear that you like us to be around you, it would be even nicer if you could return the favor! What delights YOU? I’m dying to know.

A few years ago, when we were faced with the tragic and awful losses of such joy-inducing public figures as Kate Spade (queen of bright colors and a cheerful floral pattern) and Anthony Bordain (king of taking you out of yourself to see the humanity in all others in all places), people were like check on your strong friends. Yes. DO! But the real help is bigger than that.

Can you be a strong friend to your strong friend? That doesn’t mean pretending away the hard stuff, or being “happy all the time” (*shudder*), and it definitely doesn’t mean “I can CURE your clinical depression/bipolar disorder/very real grief for a world gone wrong.” It just means, instead of calling up your cheerful pal who isn’t cheering right now to say only, “Hey, are you okay? You haven’t been sunny lately.” Try adding, “OMG I saw something today that was so lovely and little. Can I tell you about it?”

So many of us admire Lizzo because in addition to making terrific music, she also lives in her body with no apologies. She models for us what it means to love your body no matter what some mainstream standard of beauty tells us we should hate. She is a miracle and a beacon. She’s also a HUMAN. And she’s hearing and has heard all the same messages as you and me, and the way she’s lighting the way for us is energy expensive.

I hope someone is calling up Lizzo to say, “Did you see the video of the lawyer who couldn’t turn off his cat filter in Zoom court? You will LAUGH.”

The TL; DR of this: You enjoy the presence of your friends who are open to experiencing and sharing delight. It’s a choice they make out of love for you. They are not less human than anyone else. They could use the favor returned.

So here! For all the Pep Factories out there who are ready to board up your windows and cry in the dark, here is Ross Gay reading 15 minutes of PURE LIGHT, his poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.” I listened to it this morning, and now I can go on, lighting other candles from my candle, which was lit from this poem this morning.

shoulderpadfoot

Reblogging because I just started watching Ted Lasso, and now I’m worried about him, too. Ted, you’ve got the energy this world needs, and I love you, and I want to give you a hug.

#Ted Lasso #jason sudeikis

abessinier

Stuff kids on tumblr better relearn

1. You are responsible for your own media experience.

2. There is such a thing as a healthy level of avoidance towards topics that make you feel unwell or even (in a real-life clinical definition of the term) trigger you - but you are the one to actively take care of what you view.

3. Avoiding does not mean policing others.

4. You have no right to tell artists to censor themselves - you may criticize what others do, you may dislike it, that’s fine - but actively asking for censorship when you could easily unfollow or block a person just makes you look incompetent in your use of the internet.

5. Do not give people on tumblr or /any/ website the responsibility for your emotional well-being. Because these people do not even know you so no, you have no right to ask them to take care of you.

vesperlionheart

6. Content creators are not your parents and owe you nothing, not even a breakdown on why their content isn’t problematic. You don’t get to demand a dissertation denouncing any and everything unhealthy in a piece you don’t like. Move on.

summerpipedream

7. Tagging is a nicety but not an obligation. You can message people, politely, and ask them to tag things, and many people will, but understand that it’s their blog and they aren’t obliged to say yes. Unfollow and block when you need to. Circling back to number 1, you are responsible for curating your own experience.

8. Don’t be a jerk. Remember at the end of the day, there are actual living, breathing people behind each screen name. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face in real life.

pixie-mage

I cannot stress enough how important it is to remember this.

ruinsplume

Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face in real life.

notmycatsname

Thinking about Remus Lupin just embracing being a werewolf. Just thinking actually why shouldn't enjoy this. This weird concept for him of self love and acceptance of his sharp claws and pointy teeth and rage that could kill someone but doesn't. He's allowed to like the parts of himself that other people think are terrible

ruinsplume

*you’re allowed to like the parts of yourself that other people think are terrible*

#needed this

sapphirepixiesworld

the tragic death of regulus black 😔

holdhard

An English gardener’s potting shed is their castle.

Victorian potting shed at the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall

fleur-aesthetic

instagram | the_otherchapter

babyanimalgifs

“That’s his chicken"

(via)

#this one is for the #teachers only #and everyone else #should look away

patrickhumphreys-deactivated202

The dining room at Claude Monet’s home at Giverny.

Photo by Guy Bouchet.

moonrisetowers

everyone at hogwarts knows about harrys gay dads but some people hear about these two older gay men and for the first time in their lives feel seen. some people, like a certain fruity slytherin kid.

basically draco would have been much less of a twat if he had a positive gay influence in his life, or at the very least someone to tell him he doesnt have to listen to his dad

hyperspacial

homunculus-argument

Hey also you know the thing where a dog is determined to lick your face, but you don't want to get your face licked, so you kinda cup the dog's head between your hands, but what you failed to consider is that the dog is D E T E R M I N E D to lick your face, so they'll stretch their whole skin off their skull to make it happen like

phthaloazzurro

Sad, sad boys.

Visiting a plant manufacturing the Moderna vaccine she helped to fund, Dolly Parton unwittingly shed a single hair into a vat of bubbling solution. It turned canary yellow, but the scientists could not detect any foreign substance that might cause the color change. When this batch of vaccine was administered, recipients were inoculated as expected, with the same instance of side effects, but they all noticed one major difference, alarming AND delightful in its seriousness.

For one hour after their shot was administered, each patient reported the following:

- Their hair became blond. Patients who already had blond hair reported their hair was “blonder,” in all cases.

- They experienced a shift in mood. One patient, age 17, described the feeling this way: “It was like, for that one hour, I had intense goodwill for everyone and everything. I wanted to sing! I wanted to show people patience and compassion. It was very alarming.”

- They noticed changes to their body size and shape. They gained or lost weight, sometimes drastically, resulting in scale readings of 105 pounds, across the board. Despite such a major shift, they all reported feeling remarkably healthy. One patient, a 63-year-old cis-gendered man, said, “My waist was just so, so — I don’t know how to describe it. I just felt like, in that moment, I understood what my wife meant when she told me she got dressed for herself every morning.” Patients also, mostly, noticed a decrease in height. One patient, who asked us to refer to him only by his nickname, “Tall Tim,” said he looked down to see “fully a foot” of extra material dragging from the ends of his pants legs. “I didn’t know who I WAS anymore. I mean — five feet! That’s it! Tall Tim? No. More like ‘Pretty Short Tim.’”

- They noted a change in intellect, specifically increased knowledge of country music and children’s literature.

Though dramatic and alarming, these new side effects wore off within an hour in 100% of patients who received vaccines from this batch. Remarkably, none of the affected patients has asked for compensation, explanation or apology. “Why would I do that?” asked Tall Tim. “It was fantastic. It was a beautiful experience.”

One patient, who received a dose of Moderna’s vaccine from the next batch, is in fact suing because she DIDN’T experience what she describes as “the Dolly Parton Effect.”

“Either they’re helping people or they’re not,” she said.

She’s in luck, though, folks, and so are you! Moderna is coming out with a non-vaccine version of the canary yellow goodness, thanks to even more research funding from Dolly Parton herself. This medication produces only the joyful side effects of that first happy accident, and you will see it on drugstore shelves soon under the name Dollyjuice Potion.

#dollyjuice potion #fake news #but great news!