"firewood not yet dried"

(⁠ ⁠˶⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ꁞ⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠˶⁠ ⁠) honhonhon

And this is how the war actually ended XD, based on this post by @ladykissingfish

Anyway I found the portfolio they made of me back then and honestly this one entry almost made me cry when I got to the end.

Yes, we do have the right to make demands on public behavior. Of course we do. Have you never heard of laws and etiquette? I’m not allowed to grocery shop naked. You can’t rummage through my purse. I can’t have a work meeting in the middle of a movie theatre.

I remember when it was taboo simply to answer your cell phone in public. The person answering would apologize and try to go to a more private area. Then public calls were normalized. Then putting people on speaker. Then listening to music without headphones. Do you know how many times I have hiked up a mountain or driven to the beach, only to be met with someone blaring shitty top 40 music from their portable speaker, because Heaven forbid you go one hour without noise?

It was obnoxious when it was youtube.

It was obnoxious when it was music.

It was obnoxious when it was the radio. 

It was obnoxious when it was dudes wanting to talk to you instead of letting you just read your freaking book.

Do you want to be this guy? Because being obnoxious in shared spaces is how you become this guy. 

The powerhouse of YOUR cell

Bacteria in Nature (Strong Shiba Inu):

eating literal dirt

defying the physical limits of life

this is my third eukaryotic extinction in a row (cheering hands)

Bacteria in the lab (smaller Shiba Inu):

not my favorite sugar :( :( :(

the pH is off by 0.001

And then I guess tofu had a moment and brands got scared of losing people to trial-and-error and started manufacturing extra-firm tofu you could use to break a window and escape a house fire with.

And the more Americanized brands went that direction while the traditional brands said “no that’s fucking stupid we’re not changing anything” and SOME brands said “what if we do like the middle of that?”

Asking you to grate the tofu on a cheese grater and bake it? Westernized. You want that red brick tofu. You want Whole Foods amount of extra firm or SUPER firm because if that thing has any amount of moisture left in it it’ll disintegrate like Tubby Custard on the grater.

Tofu scrambled eggs? You want the OG extra firm. You want it to hold its form but still have that softness and give unless your goal is to imitate sad dining hall scrambled eggs.

Hello??

Hello!!!???

Shaking your hand shaking your hand shaking your hand???????

"I truly do not want to go" and

Loads of people in the tags are asking how I do it? I feel this won't be groundbreaking advice, but here is what I have learned:

Previous experience. Really no way around it. Now that I hit thirty, I feel like I have done enough things to know, intellectually, from experience, what will feel nice if I overcome the avoidance, and what won't. For example, every time I go to the beach, I wake up early and would rather eat a tire than get off the bed. But I remember that every time I got up and went to the beach, I was glad I did it. So I just get up, feeling like shit, and get ready, feeling like shit, and I get to the beach and magic!! I feel great, I love the beach!! Sometimes you just gotta do it scared feeling kinda like shit.

Am I avoiding the thing or getting to the thing? I have a lot of demand avoidance around just, y'know, getting up, getting ready and going out the door. Universal human experience. If I notice that doing the actual thing (Swim in the pool!) sounds nice, but I'm avoiding having to rally myself to go do that (Fetch swimsuit! Sunscreen! Towel!), then I know it's demand avoidance and I should just fucking go.

Is the thing making me feel excited at all or just anxious? I have had previous occasions when I did the opposite; I convinced myself it was just demand avoidance when I really just. Hated the thing. And wanted to stop. If you feel a mix of excitement and dread, or excitement and anxiety, that might be demand avoidance. But if thinking of doing the thing just makes you feel actively anxious, then yeah. You don't want to do the thing.

It can be very effective, and it can be really hard to learn to second-guess it, especially if you come from an environment where you couldn't check or trust people to be honest with you. But you have to learn to second-guess that instinct -- because it's not empathy, it's projection. You don't "know" what someone's feeling, you're assuming, based on an assumption that's kept you safe in the past.