Welcome to the Ivrileague

I’ve been thinking about it all morning. What would the plot points be for that? What makes a 30 year old coming of age story?

Rather than beginnings like teenage coming of age stories, a 30's coming of age is about change.

The thing about turning 30 is that you know yourself better, and you are usually just starting to have the means to seek what you want. You have enough life experience to know what you like and don't like. You may have a little disposable income, freedom from family, or finally be treating something like depression.

It isn't like being a teenager where the coming of age is new experiences; it's coming of age in knowing what you want and changing your circumstances. You look around and think, "I want and deserve better than this, and I can do it," and you make the change.

Getting a new job. Going back to school. Dating someone new. Moving somewhere else. Going on a long trip. Trying a new hobby. Or even just dressing differently! There's so many ways this coming of age can occur.

But there are layers to this. Unlike a teenage growing up story where you're writing on a blank slate, a 30's coming of age is turning the page. You might have to do something painful. Quit your job. Break up with someone. Say goodbye to your hometown. There's change. And with that, comes apprehension for the future and grief over the past, but you work through that anyway to seek something better for yourself.

To quote the article above, one of my favorite quotes of all time: "There’s something so deliriously pleasurable in the idea of trusting myself enough to know exactly what I want.”

Oh and by the way. This doesn't just have to be the plot of a book or fic. This can be your life, too. You can always do better.

It’s scabbing and so it itches A LOT and I’m struggling a lot to not touch it... but it’s beautiful and perfect and everything I wanted.

The tattoo is drawn from the Pazyryk Ice Maiden, an unintentional mummy that accidentally led to an absurd amount of knowledge about Scythian culture. I have a whole tag about her which should give you the basics - essentially, she was a priestess of some kind, she was disabled at a young age, she died of bone cancer. I intended to get my tattoo years earlier, but it doesn’t escape me that the tattoo was a present to myself on my 33rd birthday, which is probably the oldest the person who originally bore it was when she died.

If you can love a person across time, I love her. I love her humanity, the story we can infer from her bones - and, as I’m studying forensic anthropology, the story inferred from bones is particularly important to me. As a disabled person, her existence, and the fact that she was loved enough to bury her the way they would warriors, when there was no way this woman ever went to war... it’s important to me. We have always cared for one another. Disabled people have always been of great importance within their culture. And she and her grave have become our greatest evidence of what Scythian culture was actually like - this woman disabled from a fairly young age, dead of cancer young as well... she was loved and cared for and so important in that society that they built a burial mound for her that (unintentionally) stood the test of time better than any other.

...I got her tattoo not only because I love ancient art (I’m literally planning an entire sleeve of ancient art on my other arm), but because to me she’s a symbol of humanity. That humans are meant to care for each other, that even in ancient times, disabled people were able to be important and beloved in their community. That the worst right wing assholes are wrong about human nature, because I have proof from antiquity that our nature is to love and care for each other.

Of course we were all like, “Oh yeah we’re dead inside, you haven’t noticed?”

And he snapped shut the textbook, threw up his hands and said, “That’s not healthy! No more vocab! Time for dancing!”

Here he is all grown up!

His name is Maui and he still takes a pat like no phrawblem

But he’s still giving you the stink eye because he’s actually a New York bodega cat at Willy’s Deli in Brooklyn and you know how New Yorkers are about Bostonians

That’s a great cat right there

tumblr, which is held together with duct tape and madness, run by three raccoons in blood stained Yahoo! hats and a handful of crabs, its only discernible source of income the sale of shoelaces from an inside joke so inside no one knows the original source anymore and fake blue checkmarks... that website still lives on

take it easy but take it <- litany against burnout/apathy cycle

fuck it we ball <- litany against perfectionism