baby, you're not lost

Life can show no mercy, it can tear your soul apart. It can make you feel like you've gone crazy, but you're not.

[forestgreenlesbian]

obsessed with how often women describe falling in love with other women as a quieting, a moment of stillness and calm where before there was noise.

[forestgreenlesbian]

Kathee Muzin on the first time she fell in love with a woman, from The Montreal Gazette, 1991

Poetry published in Come Out, 1972

First Love Poem in Recent Memory, Julien Baker

[lightheartedsuggestion]

What’s going to make you happy right now? Is it some cake? Is it a nap? Is it calling your mom? Is it going on a drive and blasting music? Is it taking a bath? Is it reading a book?

Check in with yourself because you deserve that happiness, whatever it is.

[thecatwhowalksbyherself-deactiv]

I use this with my hospice patients a lot. Because “is there anything I can do to help?” rarely gets a response. But, “I’ll be here till 6:30 and would like to do one thing to make your room more comfortable before I head out” frequently does get an answer. Often something they deem “too small to bug anyone with” like closing the blinds so there’s no reflection on the tv, or repositioning their socks because the heels have wandered into the front and are uncomfortable, or they want ice cream before dinner today, or getting an extra blanket.

I also use this on myself. What’s one thing I could do to make my environment more comfortable right now? Does it cure my mental illness? Hell no! Does it make me feel more in control of my feelings and the world around me? You betcha!

[ladynorbert]

I’m going to try to apply this to my current situation, since right now things feel very out of control. Thanks!

[plain-flavoured-english]

Your purpose in life is not to love yourself but to love being yourself.

If you goal is to love yourself, then your focus is directed inward toward yourself, and you end up constantly watching yourself from the outside, disconnected, trying to summon the “correct” feelings towards yourself or fashion yourself into something you can approve of.

If your goal is to love being yourself, then your focus is directed outward towards life, on living and making decisions based on what brings you pleasure and fulfillment.

Be the subject, not the object. It doesn’t matter what you think of yourself. You are experiencing life. Life is not experiencing you.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

Thank you this is the first post about self love that hasn’t made me want to throw things

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

I’ve seen the Ursula K LeGuin quote about capitalism going around, but to really appreciate it you have to know the context.

The year is 2014. She has been given a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Awards. Neil Gaiman puts it on her neck in front of a crowd of booksellers who bankrolled the event, and it’s time to make a standard “thank you for this award, insert story here, something about diversity, blah blah blah” speech. She starts off doing just that, thanking her friends and fellow authors. All is well.

Then this old lady from Oregon looks her audience of executives dead in the eye, and says “Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.”

She rails against the reduction of her art to a commodity produced only for profit. She denounces publishers who overcharge libraries for their products and censor writers in favor of something “more profitable”. She specifically denounces Amazon and its business practices, knowing full well that her audience is filled with Amazon employees. And to cap it off, she warns them: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”

Ursula K LeGuin got up in front of an audience of some of the most powerful people in publishing, was expected to give a trite and politically safe argument about literature, and instead told them directly “Your empire will fall. And I will help it along.”

[woolandcoffee]

We stan an icon.

[rican-remade-deactivated2020111]

happy bi visibility day to my sexc bisexuals! no matter how much digusting biphobia and erasure and mistelling of our community we face, we are still here. i love u all and pls have a good day <3

[viewfromthetardis]

#late post but yeah

[mumblingsage]

“Before I believed that my desires mattered, it was nearly impossible for me to tell if attraction was mutual, because when I was sober I couldn’t believe anyone would really be attracted to me. Now I’m only into people who are worshipful with my body and my heart and who inspire that in me. And I can assess that mutual quality of worship after a few moments of good flirtation.”

— adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activisim

[theoppositeofadults]

[remy-labelle-purple]

[Image description: A twitter thread by Alexandra Erin @AlexandraErin, dated 6 June 2018

So I just saw someone wondering how liberals can cut ties with conservative friends and family members over immigration policies when most Americans (including most conservatives) support immigration reform.

I’m going to talk about what I call the Shirley Exception.

The Shirley Exception is a bit of mental sleight of hand that allows people to support a policy they profess to disagree with. It’s called the Shirley Exception because… well, I mean, *surely* there must be exceptions, right?

Let’s imagine that in response to suspicions about overbroad use of service animal rules, a city somewhere decides to just swing the pendulum 100% in the other direction. Restaurants, public accommodations, etc., no longer have to recognize any service animals.

And in the aftermath of the change, existing rules about where animals may and may no go apply full force.

A lot of people would back the change because Obviously Some People Take Advantage. (Positing that someone, somewhere is taking advantage is a great way to get the masses on your side in our politics, sadly.)

Now if you point out the existence of a blind person or an epileptic person who has a service dog for everyday navigation of life or for live-saving purposes, the Good People who just don’t want anyone to take advantage will tell you:

“No one’s talking about legitimate cases.”

And if you point out that the rule that they’re backing would affect what they call “legitimate cases”, the response will be:

“But surely there will be an exception.”

If you back up an anti-abortion activist to the point where they actually have to grapple with a case where the parent would 100% die delivering a 100% non-viable fetus, you’ll get the same answers: “No one is talking about those cases.” and “But surely there will be exceptions.”

All of those studies of people in Trump Country USA who were shocked, shocked, that the kind man next door who is a good father and a great neighbor and a real part of the community was dragged away by ICE?

They all thought that surely he’d be an exception.

If you point out that the laws/policies they’re talking about *don’t* offer such exceptions and in some cases explicitly forbid them, if you say “So let’s put those exceptions in writing.”… well, then you’re back to Surely People Will Take Advantage.

See, the people who are sure that Surely There Will Be Exceptions are very comfortable with the idea of justice being decided on a case-by-case basis. They’ve always had teachers, bosses, bureaucrats, even traffic cops giving them some slack for reasons of compassion and logic.

I mean, if Officer Smalltown von Cul-De-Sac could give them a warning when they were caught with recreational amounts of pot as kids because it was harmless and they Had Futures, then Surely there must be similar exceptions for everyone?

That post about “I never thought the leopards would eat my face, sobbed woman who voted for Face-Eating Leopards Party” is very true, and it goes farther than personal immunity to a very generalized and broad Just World Fallacy.

Surely, they think, surely the leopards will know to only eat the *right* faces, the faces that need eating, and leave alone all the faces that don’t deserve that.

But if we try to lay out rules to protect faces from being eaten by leopards, people will take advantage. Best to keep is simple and count on decency and reason to rule the day.

So moderate conservatives, what we might call “everyday conservatives”, the ones who don’t wear MAGA hats or tea party costumes and think that Mr. Trump fella should maybe stay off of Twitter, they will vote for candidates and policies that they don’t actually agree with…

…because in their mind the exact law being prescribed is just a tool in the chest, an option on the table, which they expect to be wielded fairly and judiciously. Surely no one would do anything so unreasonable as actually enforcing it as written! Not when that would be bad!

And then they are confused, shocked, and even insulted when people hold them accountable for their support of the monstrous policy.

“I didn’t vote for leopards to eat *your* face! I just thought we needed some face-eating leopards generally. Surely you can’t blame me for that!”

The old “Defense of Marriage” laws are another textbook example of this.

Many of them included language that expressly forbade giving similar benefits (like hospital visitation) to same-sex relationships.

Yet the people who voted for them, in many cases, wanted it to be known that No One Is Talking About Stopping You From Visiting Your Loved One In The Hospital. And Surely There Will Be An Exception.

The Shirley Exception is how people who are only mundanely monstrous, moderately monstrous, wind up supporting policies that are completely monstrous.

And when they do, they always want credit for their good intentions towards those they see as deserving, not the outcomes.

I’m describing a phenomenon here and I don’t have a solution to its existence. While convincing people that laws that don’t specify exceptions functionally *don’t have them* might work sometimes on (ironically) a case-by-case basis, what is really needed is a broader shift.

People need to get used to thinking about the harm policies will do as a real part of the policy, not a hypothetical that Reasonable People of Good Will Can Surely Work Around.

Maybe the tack of saying, “If it was your life on the line, wouldn’t you want that to be in writing?” would work. I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t have a solution here. This is just a thing that happens.

end ID]

[ripe]

deanmason.wow on ig

[radicarian]

it is past time we jettisoned the useless false dichotomy of introversion vs. extroversion and just accepted that everybody has a minimum amount of social interaction, failing which, they get really weird. and everybody has a maximum amount of social interaction, exceeding which, they get really weird. these levels are different for everyone, for a variety of reasons, and have no moral dimension. and that is all.

[mjalti]

why would you come to this club and just shoot Myers & Briggs like this

[masaotheheckindog]

they deserved it

[catchymemes]

[vagueenthusiast]

And the award for most relatable Harry Potter quote goes to:

“No, I’m fine,” said Harry, wondering why he kept telling people this, and wondering whether he had ever been less fine.

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

Being a good person is a choice. Don’t let people fool you into believing that truly good people never have bad thoughts, are never tempted by the easier path, by the low road, never mess up or act out selfishly. Never believe a person can be good without making a conscious effort.

Every single time you do something good, you’ve made a decision to make the world a little brighter.

Goodness is not an inherent trait, it is a choice. Keep making it! I see you, I’m proud of you, and I’m rooting for you!

[naturalpalettes]

Mt Rainier

[somecutething]

[prettystuff]

[fictionadventurer]

One of the more profound things I’ve heard recently came from a Mr. Rogers documentary. In a clip from his show, Mr. Rogers had just visited with a musician, and tells his audience that some people play music, and some people don’t, and that’s okay.

And then he said, “The important thing is to find something you feel good about doing.”

That phrasing struck me. “Something you feel good about doing”. Most people would have phrased it as “something you enjoy doing”. Or “something you’re good at doing”. But Mr. Rogers’ subtly different phrasing leads to a profoundly different connotation. “Something you feel good about doing” may not be enjoyable–people who work in hospitals or in disaster zones might not enjoy much of their day, but they probably feel good about helping people. “Something you feel good about doing“ may not be something you’re particularly good at–you may be a terrible artist by any objective standard, but if you feel good about making your art, then it’s a worthwhile endeavor. Looking for “something you feel good about doing” can help you find a truly satisfying life path.

That phrase is also helpful with daily decision-making. Too often, I can make choices based on “what feels good.” I put aside tasks that are too stressful or avoid activities that seem too difficult, in favor of mindlessly browsing the internet. And I enjoy myself. I feel good while I’m doing that. But at the end of the day, I don’t feel good about how I spent my time. However, reminding myself to do “something I feel good about doing” can motivate me to accomplish those more difficult tasks. It can push me to do something outside of my comfort zone, to try something new that I might not be much good at. And maybe this is a blindingly obvious philosophy to everyone else. But I’m grateful for the reminder. 

[miseducatedmelanicmuse]