How do you cope with the fact that theres so many films to see books to read music to listen people to befriend and things to see and do and only so much time man I need time to go on pause for a bit
I don't.
No seriously, this has previously been a huge ongoing issue for me.
My advice?
Give up.
I don't mean this in a harsh way, I just mean that its literally impossible in the current attention economy. The broadening of mainstream Media beyond the limitations of 20th Century forms (novels, newspapers, cinemas, Broadcast TV etc.) means there is too much for you to meaningfully consume, especially when you are being manipulated into believing every new release is "must watch" and the internet means you are hugely overexposed to people, places, things and activities that demand your attention.
Try flipping the script. Instead of saying "I'll read 20 books this year" or "I'll paint 50 mini figs this month" or whatever, aim to give up on as many things as possible.
Ignore what you "should" be doing with your free time (excluding important stuff like work, paying bills, exercising, looking after family etc.) and instead try each thing for 20 minutes and it hasn't actively hooked you then just ditch it and move on and if you can't do the thing without spending more money, bounce it to the bottom of the list.
Pretty soon you'll have a roster of things that interest you without costing you and the rate you quit stuff will slow. Sustain this for a year or so and you will have culled your "should" list massively, spent less money, accrued less crappy possessions and re-trained yourself to treat all this stuff as needing to earn your attention rather than an obligation to be met.
Don't get me wrong, there are many things that we should try that are not pleasant but if something you skipped really is a "must do" that is going to improve your life, it will still be around at the end of this period for you to return to. There's nothing wrong with prioritising your own enjoyment now and then if you are on top of the essential stuff.
TLDR: Cut yourself some slack, stop trying to "keep up" and instead make your attention something to be earned.
(Disclaimer: I AM NOT A QUALIFIED THERAPIST, PROFFESIONAL LIFE COACH OR FUNCTIONAL HUMAN BEING. I am a slightly odd stranger on the internet so make sure you treat this advice as accordingly disposable. Or don't. You decide, that's the point!)
summary: as he tends to get, carmen berzatto is stuck. and what's the best cure for this feeling that plagues his existence? throwing himself into his work while running his business with an iron fist, no matter the fact that uncle jimmy's attractive and distracting niece has started working alongside him (fem!reader x carmen berzatto)
take heed: reader and carmen are not related, cynical tone, self-deprecation, character analysis, mostly carmen's pov, season 3 setting (possible spoilers), claire mentions, depictions of anxiety, commentary on mental health, carmen's a dick, carmen and richie beef, avoidant!carmy, mikey references, slight angst, cigarettes, carmen's a little obsessive, perv!carmy, objectification, masturbation (m receiving), cursing, imagined oral, carmy's fantasies, sensory descriptions, religious illusions, angst, arguments, smut, comfort, reader has a nickname but no physical description, more warnings within the parts.
i. sunday's first light fades, cigarettes burn on gravel, shame shadows the day...
carmen's dedicated to fixing his past mistakes through overworking himself, his approach what others may consider as tyrannical. nothing is going as smoothly as he would like it and his mission further derails itself once uncle jimmy's niece starts working front of house.
ii. maul and tear and stare, search for the praise in the pain, the bird only mourns...
there's a sinister method carmen adapts in order to get away from you. as many of his self-sabotaging tendencies seem to do, it backfires.
iii. overheard a sound, about the sanctuary, ivory steals more…
issues have arisen with your landlord. carmen had no idea he would be so eager to help fix them until he offers something that even surprises himself.
iv. to tempt is to lure, chilled citrus bathes in brandy, oh what have we done…
you unknowingly, at least that’s what carmen initially believes, chip at carmen’s resolve until you whittle it down to scraps. it leaves him with a forbidden, inevitable choice, and one salaciously obvious option.
This post is going to make a lot of disability "allies" angry and/or uncomfortable. I do not care.
Im so fucking tired of OCD being painted as "the cleaning disorder" and "everything must be so neat and tidy disorder"
its not. its can be like that, sometimes. but just as often as OCD can cause (severely mentally and socially taxing) attention to being clean, often times it actually the opposite. and in my case, its severely the opposite.
im sharing pictures because i don't know how to better explain to people that i can not walk on the floor of my room. i walk on top of old clothes and books and trash. I hope you realize this is an incredibly vulnerable thing for me to do.
I. can. not. walk. on. my. floor.
i really cant show it any better. and yes, ive tried cleaning. ive tried cleaning with my meds. I've tried cleaning to music. ive tried throwing things away. every time it ends in me crying.
that suitcase was last used 6 months ago, i still haven't unpacked it.
that chick-fil-a bag has been there for over two years. why cant i throw it away? its full of worm on strings that i got as a joke and never tried to do anything with.
those paint splotches on the floor are three years old.
the last decent clean of my room was almost 6 months ago, and a lot of that mess was pushed under my bed. its still there.
and if you understand why my room is like this, you can only imagine how long its been since ive washed my hair
OCD isnt always clean. it isnt always neat or symmetrical or pretty
often times its filthy, its sleeping in trash. it smells horrible, it doesn't let me be clean or perfect. it doesnt want to be clean
OCD does not want to be clean. it wants everything to be correct.
and often times, correct means leving old towels on the floor becuase it would be wrong to move them.
I have more to say.
im going to make more posts about our OCD.
but for now, i am tired, and i feel like shit.
so i am going to go wash my hands
because that is the cleanest i know how to be
Summary: Being the only human on the task force is educational and entertaining- until you're compelled by the enemy to surrender information.
Task Force 141 x GN!Reader (implied??), Johnny "Soap" MacTavish x GN!Reader (implied), 1.3k words.
Era: MW2?
TW: Mind control, vampires (?), being tied up, compulsions, Price is a little... questionable when it comes to choices about his men lol. Don't mind control without consent if you're a vampire!
Trinket realizes he doesn't actually have to fully flesh out each and every prompt challenge, impossible.
Day 28 of my bastardized version of Russian Roulette Febuwhump/Kinktober for March that I'm affectionately calling Trinket's Cause of Death. It's basically 50/50 whump/kink where I generate a number corresponding to a prompt.
Day 28: Mind Control with Vamp!141 (whump)
For all intents and purposes, you’re the weak link in the 141. Not because of a lack of skills or experience or the like, nor because you’re younger than everybody else. It’s because you’re human.
You were assigned to work with the 141 task force both by Captain John Price and by the higher-ups within the SAS. It’s common knowledge that there’s something off about the boys within the force- eyes that look a bit too inhuman, canines a touch sharper than they should be. Reflexes quick enough to blur and a way in war that’s almost uncanny. Like a hunger buried just below the surface.
During your briefing to join the 141, you learned just what that was. Vampires. Not Twilight teen romance vampires, mind you, but the kind that’s just as likely to save an ally as to rip their throat out if they have a bad day. They needed a reminder of their humanity and that came in the package of little old you. Warm and human and so fragile.
Price looks at you as a tool- a way to realign his men with the good in the world, to jog their memories of what it was like to be so breakable. You don’t notice the way he looks at you at the end of a mission, the way he catalogues each and every injury on your body. Making sure you’re okay and not broken. Asset protection, he joked around his cigar when asked. “Can’t have the human go back in pieces, we might be next, love.”
Gaz seems uncertain about having you on the task force. He treats you well and is the one with the steadiest hands and most sated appetite when it comes to patching you up, but he looks at you as if thinking of a ghost, eyes lingering on bandages as if to make sure you don’t burn up and extinguish like a dying star.
Soap, to his credit, is utterly excited. Although his appetite is hard to keep in check sometimes, he adores having you around. He teaches you all the neat tips and tricks about vampires-compulsions, what it was like to be Ghost’s fledgling, things that can protect you and injure them. He’s trying to make you comfortable and feel at home simultaneously, always eager to soother over tensions.
Ghost is the scary one. How wouldn’t he be, huge and looming with those bloodred eyes and that skull mask staring you down without a word? You can feel the weight of his gaze on you every time you enter a room, thick and overbearing and begging for you to make a mistake that he can rectify by killing you. Even in your sleep, you can feel those eyes.
You don’t notice that he slips into the shadows of your room each and every night, eyes focused on ensuring you’re breathing. Making sure you stay tucked safe and sound into your bed, alive and warm and all too human. Or that he and Gaz take turns playing nightguard, memories of a long-lost loved one still haunting their minds. They won’t lose this one.
Nobody’s certain just how Graves and his Shadows got to you. You were never at Los Almas, spared from the situation entirely. There should’ve been no way for you to interact with the rival coven and the patch on your vest combined with the necklace around your throat marked you as coven 141 property and off-limits.
All the same, the room stinks of the American coven of vampires, the stench of a heavy compulsion laid by Graves rolling over you as you thrash and scream against the ropes keeping you tied down.
The look in your eyes is near-feral, hazed with the faint orange of Graves’s effect on you. The coven head himself somehow got around each and every protection laid on, in, and around you and mind-controlled you within an inch of your life. Your mission? Gather information, report back, and kill as many 141 men as possible.
You very nearly succeeded as well. Gaz is still patching up the hole in Soap’s chest from where you attempted to stake the Scot in his bed, still warm and sleepy from the night you’d spent together prior. He doesn’t have the heart to be upset with you, even as he curses and bitches at Gaz. No, Johnny is furious with whatever and whoever slipped up enough to put you in this situation in the first place.
When unable to obey a compulsion, the compulsed party goes insane, for lack of better phrasing. From the second that haze settles over you, the assigned task becomes your primary mission in life. It’s hard to complete a suicide mission when strapped to a chair.
Price works on freeing you of the compulsion while Ghost tracks down whatever information you may have already leaked to Shadow Company. It’s delicate work since without the ability to eliminate Graves, which would release you, John has to put you under a separate and stronger compulsion to undermine the first.
“Shhhh,” He tries to soothe your screaming, both hands holding onto your sweaty cheeks to keep you still while he works. “I know. I know, love, I know. It hurts, but you’re doing so well. So well, just listen, yeah?”
The pitch hits a new level as he lays your mind thicker and thicker with his own will overtop the Shadows’. Your body is rebelling, trembling and arching against the chair they tied you to.
Everything is screaming to kill, to obey Phillip’s order even while Price’s compulsion wraps around and tries to strangle it to nothingness. A gentle croon telling you to surrender your previous mission and sleep. Just sleep.
“Steamin’ Jesus,” Soap curses to Gaz, looking over with worry and a pale face. “The lungs on that bird are going tae explode my head.”
You’re slowly giving into John’s influence, the sweet smells of black tea and cigar smoke soothing and washing away the foreign influence over you. It’s easier to give into John, to surrender yourself to the ancient vampire you trust with your life. “Sorry. I’m s… I’m sorry…”
“Nobody’s mad at you, love,” Price promises as he brushes sweaty hair from your face. “We’re mad at ourselves for not protecting you. They should have never been able to compel you.”
John would never admit it- not to you, not in court, maybe not even to his own men, but he’d compelled you ages ago. Nothing sinister, of course, but he’d placed what was supposed to be a barrier of protection against non-141 vampires in your mind. The only ones who were supposed to get in were them.
However Graves got around it is worrying and disconcerting. It spells less than savoury things ahead, for you and for the covens as a whole.
Graves’s influence finally snaps with a pained scream for you, entire body tensing and arching against your bonds before immediately passing out. John was successful in easing you into rest.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Price has to steady himself on the arm of your chair for just a moment, nauseous and dizzy from the amount of effort this took. He wouldn’t say he’s out of practice in the art of mind control, but it is certainly no longer one of his main skills. Compulsion does not hold up in court, as it stands.
“Are they going to be okay, Cap?” Gaz looks away from where Soap is bandaged and resting against the wall. The Sergeants are trying to hide their concern, but it’s a useless endeavour. He can see the shine of worry even from here- one their faces and on Ghost’s as the Lieutenant steps back in, nodding that he did indeed stop the flow of information.
“They’ll be fine,” Price confirms as he straightens up, back popping from the awkward position. “The headache’ll be one to write home about, but Graves’s hold is broken. Let’s find out what the fuck he thought he was doing then, hm?”
