King Nimbus

I WAS PROMISED A BATTLE

*throws down gauntlet*

There’s about ten thousand people tagging this with “but what if i feel bad in the mornings” or “welp i feel like shit in the afternoon” and I think you’re willfully misinterpreting this post for many reasons.

First off, this post is about knowing when to let yourself rest. Anxieties are stronger at the time when you meditate on your day and the events of your world slow down. (A lot of people have different sleep schedules, too, so “9 PM” can mean whenever your day is over and before you go to sleep.)

I don’t ignore these anxieties, I do take them in but just remind myself that I am resting now. It’s a mindfulness technique. I look at the clock to ground myself about where and when I am and what physical state I’m in as it relates to my mental state. It’s a reminder to myself that I feel these emotions and they do not control my actions. I do not need to do anything about them. Right now, I am at rest. You can’t fool me into taking action on things when I am at rest. I see a lot of funny tags on this saying “mental business hours are from 9 AM to 8:59 PM” and I LOVE that.

Secondly, this advice is geared towards the idea that your mental state is for the most part dependent on your physical state. In this specific case, I felt bad because the day was ending and my mind and body were tired. I was ready for bed. My body needed sleep and my mind deprived of it started acting up. But your body doesn’t need only sleep. Your mental state can depend on whether or not you’ve eaten something substantial, drank water, taken your medicine, gone to the bathroom, exercised, showered or bathed, brushed your teeth, breathed fresh air… and to go on: had an orgasm, changed into clean clothes recently, been properly cool or warm, or given someone a hug. These things are not linked to a time of day, these are round-the-clock concerns. If you feel bad and haven’t done many of these things recently, I really recommend you take your negative feelings with a grain of salt and see how you feel after you’ve improved your physical state.

Thirdly, this post is also predicated on the idea that you should worry about things when you can control them. For me, 9 PM is when everything shuts down. My energy is pretty sapped, as is my friends’ energy, stores are mostly closed, nobody answers phones, most of my immediate world is done for the night. I can’t start anything at 9 PM. Right now, I’m worried about getting a job. I feel bad at all times of day that I don’t have a job yet. But I can’t be worried about applying for jobs at 10:26 PM, I’m tired and no hiring managers are going to see my applications before 9 AM tomorrow. I can’t improve my life while lying in bed, and I need to lie in bed, so I’m going to improve my life when my day starts. I deserve rest, I need sleep, and I observe but neatly package and set aside the worry to be dealt with at 9 AM tomorrow.

It seems like platitudinous boomer-level “must be nice to be neurotypical” COMPLETE BULLSHIT to a lot of you, I know. But here’s my secret: you don’t need to believe it. You just need to tell yourself that’s how it is. With practice — and I say practice because this kind of thinking took me years (and growing out of being a teenager) to cultivate — it stops being platitudinous.

And if you’re sitting here thinking I’m lying or that I’m not REALLY mentally ill, I’d like to remind you that A) you know nothing about me and my life B) assuming I don’t know what I’m talking about is both silly and incredibly cruel and C) that’s your own self-sabotage talking. “Oh, she feels better by doing this. Well, she must not be As Bad As Me. Therefore this will not work on me.” That is the Devil speaking, the one who tells you not to brush your teeth at night and to text your ex. That is the demon in your head that likes watching you hurt. You don’t want to hurt. Even if you do want to hurt, I promise, you do not want to hurt.

It’s true that this will not work for many, many people. Not everyone’s brains work the same. We are all unique people with unique situations and for me to even pretend otherwise would be preposterous. And I’m not going to pretend that every worry you have is unfounded and can be solved with a nap and a sandwich. That’s not what this post is about. You’re allowed to feel bad. It’s an emotion. It happens. But it’s healthy for you to ask yourself why you’re feeling a negative emotion, if it is possible to fix why you are feeling that way, what you can do to fix it, and whether or not right now is the time to fix it.

When it’s 10:26 PM and I’m angry at myself about losing an online chess game and being unemployed, I look at the clock and say… this negative emotion is real but the reasoning behind it is not something I can fix right now. I can’t fix my life right now. I need to go to bed, and my brain can’t Fucking Fool Me.

I’m giving you this advice because I want you to SEE if it helps. Even if you try it and this mindset is not what is right for you… I’m proud of you and impressed of you for trying it, because trying to get better is the first step to getting better.

Hemingwayapp.com is a writing tool that lets you paste in your text and suggests edits for you.

It highlights sentences that are hard to read, alerts you of phrases that are written in passive voice, keeps count of your adverbs, and tells you the grade reading level of your writing. 

she was just accepted into 3 major art schools. she wrote me a letter. inside was a picture from when she was younger. monochrome pink. 

These types are almost exclusively men. You don’t get hilarious, idiotic women being lorded as icons of our culture. Diane Abbott is dismissed as a cretin while Boris Johnson is a joker.

Which begs the question: is conscious male incompetence a form of misogyny?

If you labour the point that you can’t cook, then chances are that you won’t be made to cook. If you make a hash out of doing the laundry or hoovering, you’re forcing someone else to take over.

Few have the patience to watch someone do a job badly over and over again and so often, they’ll just take it upon themselves to do your chores as well as their own. Emotional labour is doubled when you’ve got an incompetent clown on your hands.

I was recently listening Semi Circles, a BBC radio comedy starring Paula Wilcox, first broadcast in 1989.

It’s about a housewife who recently wakes up to the fact that she’s spent the past eight years being a slave to her kids and nice-but-emotionally-dim husband.

Part of this awakening is the realisation that she does all the housework because her husband is crap at it. Left alone, he makes inedible food. He lets the kids stay up well beyond their bedtime. He leaves the house a tip. 

He doesn’t even try to do a good job because he fears that if he’s too good at these jobs, his wife will make him do more of them.

https://metro.co.uk/2017/11/01/male-incompetence-is-a-subtle-form-of-misogyny-7046248/

He literally puts his mere convenience over her actual well being. This guy thought up and executed a plan where she has to do *all* the work (because of course it wasn’t just this one specific thing) while he watches her tire herself out from the sidelines. Imagine this going on for *years*. …now imagine this with kids. You think this guy cares if she gets off during sex? Would he take care of her if she were to get sick? Would he ever lift a finger if he could get away not doing it? 

See below for a chart on what household cleaners to NEVER EVER MIX EVER OR YOU CAN (AND WILL PROBABLY) DIE OR OTHERWISE BECOME EXTREMELY FUCKED UP AND NOT IN A FUN WAY BUT IN THE HOSPITAL AND/OR GRAVEYARD WAY:

The above is not a complete list, but these are extremely common in most households and therefore are the most likely chemical fuck-ups to occur. 

DO NOT MIX HOUSEHOLD CHEMICALS. 

DO NOT MIX CLEANING AGENTS.

DO NOT MIX CERTAIN ASTRINGENTS. (HYDROGEN PEROXIDE IS OFTEN IN FIRST AID KITS OR WOUND SPRAYS AND CAN CAUSE A REACTION IN SMALL AMOUNTS IF MIXED WITH THINGS IT SHOULD NOT BE MIXED WITH EVEN ACCIDENTALLY ON A SURFACE ETC.) 

DO NOT MIX ANY CHEMICALS THAT YOU ARE NOT 100% SURE ARE SAFE TO MIX. (SPOILER: MOST THINGS ARE NOT REALLY SAFE TO MIX AND SOMETIMES COMBINING SAFE ONES ACTUALLY MAKES THEM LESS EFFECTIVE ANYWAY, SO JUST DON’T COMBINE THIS KIND OF SHIT!) 

YOU ARE PROBABLY NOT A CHEMIST. PLEASE DO NOT TURN YOUR KITCHEN/BATHROOM/HOME INTO A LAB ACCIDENT. 

IF YOU ARE A CHEMIST, YOU SHOULD STILL NOT FUCK AROUND. MANY OF YOU DO NOT RELIABLY USE YOUR SAFETY GOGGLES OR THE CORRECT TYPE OF SAFETY GOGGLES. (IF YOU’RE THE TYPE OF CHEMIST WHO DOESN’T ENSURE ADEQUATE VENTILATION IN YOUR WORK AREA, I WILL NOT TRUST YOU WITH BLEACH. COMPLACENCY KILLS.) 

CONCLUSION: STOP MIXING CHEMICALS! 

YOU ARE NOT PROFESSOR X, AND YOU WILL NOT END UP CREATING THE POWERPUFF GIRLS. 

YOU WILL ONLY CREATE A NEW INVOICE FOR YOUR LOCAL FUNERAL HOME. 

I AM YELLING AT YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU AND WANT YOU TO BE SAFE.

TO ANY DUMBASS TEENAGERS OUT THERE, I WANT YOU TO SURVIVE LONG ENOUGH TO BECOME DUMBASS ADULTS. 

Like this young person didn't even know about goddamn Gutenberg which is a SHAME. I linked to it and they went "aw yiss time to do a theft" and I was like "I mean yo ho ho and all that, sure, but. you know gutenberg is entirely legal, right?"

Project Gutenberg is a gigantic collection of books that are in the public domain.  You can read the books through the site or you can download them in various formats so you can get the format you prefer for your eReader of choice.

It is free. 

It is legal.

I was reviewing the list of the top 100 books downloaded yesterday and I saw a fair few that I had to read for college classes - so if you’re a college student and your professor assigns you to read Plato or any number of older works, check here before you buy a copy.

If you look at the first reblog from me I also recommended a few other resources, most of which were from www.archive.org, home of the Wayback Machine! They run openlibrary.org, where you can check out ebooks of some public domain titles! They even have the Bone series by Jeff Smith!

And archive.org itself has all kinds of public domain media including music and movies! For Dracula fans, here's a radio show adaptation of the book, starring Orson Welles! And here's a 1920 movie adaptation of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring John Barrymore, the grandfather of Drew Barrymore!

“Thank you for this incredibly stressful 30 minutes that I have had to re-structure my entire day around and which will give me anxiety poos for the next 24 hours.”

I didn’t get the job.

However, a few weeks later, I was called in to interview with another editor in the same company, and I did get that job. I found out later from the initial editor (the one who didn’t hire me) that he had planned to offer me the job, but since I didn’t follow up with a thank you letter, he assumed I didn’t really want it. He offered the job to another contender–but when he got my letter in the mail shortly after the offer had already been made, he went to HR and gave me a glowing recommendation. It was based on that recommendation that I got called in for the second interview.

So: send an email thank you immediately (same day!) after the interview. If you’re feeling extra, go ahead and send a written one too. OR go immediately to a coffee shop, write the letter, and return to the office and give it to the secretary.