boys of summer

lywinis​:

lywinis​:

Please Boost: Medical Supplies needed! [UPDATE]

Hello, lovelies. A couple of things have gone down.

So, I was weaning myself off my anti-depressants, because they weren’t working correctly. (Under doctor recommendation, of course. I have appointments to check in and everything.) Unfortunately, they were making me so tired I was dozing off at work.

And in a job like that, I couldn’t make mistakes. Not as a supervisor.

They dragged me into a meeting where my boss’s boss lambasted me, after working my hardest for the last four years, being available whenever they needed me, coming in to pull overtime, and doing many other tasks that were asked of me outside my scope of work.

“If I didn’t respect [your boss] so much, I would have fired you myself.”

I was left in tears when the meeting ended (and set out to find a new job). About a week later, my boss calls me into her office that Monday, to ‘just check in, as friends’. (She’d been telling me since I started that we were friends, and that was my first mistake, trusting her.) I told her about my struggle with medication, and that I was doing my best. She nodded and made the appropriate noises, and I went on with my day.

The next day, she Teams’d me and asked me to call her from her office. I found out that the purpose of the call was to write me up - she didn’t even bother to do it in person, since our shifts don’t overlap and she had ‘things to do’. Citing the talk we had the previous day as my ‘verbal warning’, it was a final written warning - one strike, and I’m out. After years of keeping my nose clean, doing good work – including training all the people that work there now AND rewriting the training manual from scratch. I was tired of the abuse.

I quit on the spot. That was April 13th.

Now they’re fighting me on unemployment, citing that all of my complaints are hearsay, rather than constructive dismissal. While I get that sorted, I’ve been slowly hemorrhaging money. I’ve got enough to cover my bills thanks to some generous friends of mine, but now I’m strapped until I can get my unemployment untangled.

This job has cost me my mental health, my sleep, and now my physical health. I ballooned to 530 pounds due to poor diet/hasty meals, my depression spiked hard (which is why I went for the antidepressants in the first place.) My inability to exercise due to the strenuous, fluctuating work schedule has taken a toll on me in the form of lymphedema/lipodema, which has resulted in a slow-healing set of ulcers on my legs. I’m down to my last bits of care equipment for this medical issue, and with the way this is going, I am at risk of infection if I don’t keep the wounds clean and covered. (I won’t post pictures, mostly because they’re grody.)

That said, I might need a bit of help - and I will post an Amazon wishlist for you, so if you feel so inclined, you can donate and help me keep up my routine until I can get back on my feet.

This is not to say I’m not looking for work - I am, putting in more than ten applications per day - but until I’m hired, I need to still keep up my routine. Risking infection can lead to antibiotics, or worse, gangrene and possibly amputation.

If you’re so inclined, you can buy me a Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/lywinis

You can donate here as well: https://paypal.me/lywinis

And if you want to be sure that the money goes ONLY to what I’ve listed up here, this is my Amazon wishlist for items: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3OVEAUFCUBO03?ref_=wl_share

Thank you for reading about my bullshit. If you can’t spare a donation, boosting is also helpful! I appreciate you all, you’re all aces.

So this is what my week’s been looking like so far. If you can, please keep spreading this until I can get it sorted. It’s barely enough to live on but with budgeting I can cover all my bills with UI payments.

Even reblogs help, tumblr fam, I thank you all for the support and help you’ve been so far. Every single one of you is amazing.

I didn’t leave because I was offended at the way I was written up, Alaska. I left because my bosses (both direct and her boss) triggered my diagnosed PTSD with their antics and caused me to have a two week long nervous breakdown!!!!

Please keep reblogging friends, anything helps me out. I’m fighting this but it takes forever. I hate this.

.

.

.

In their reply to the audience they then say they are picking her up from middle school, again implying that their girlfriend is underage, but quickly state she’s grading papers letting us know she’s a teacher, definitely an adult, and there no reason to be upset.

The rollercoaster gif portrays how switching from upset and worried to relieved in such a short period of time feels emotionally.

Example: I downloaded Friday the 13th because it’s free on psn. I dunno how to play, so I just enter quick play and I’m matched with 3-4 kids on mic. Immediately on mic they’re shitty and disparaging to each other. They laugh at each others deaths, they actively work against team mates and self sabotage, they call each other “fags”, etc. From the sounds of the voices they cannot be older than 13-14.

I put on my mic and just decide I ain’t havin it. I am nice. I thank them for barricading doors or leaving me items. When they break free from Jason’s grasp I say “good job!” or I try to help them. One kid survived for most of the match by himself. When he dies, I tell him he did a fantastic job.

The mood shift is practically INSTANT. These kids almost immediately stop being dick heads. They start encouraging each other and being kind. After the match all of them try to friend request me. Which should tell you a couple of things:

A) kids want to be kind, and they want to have a nice time playing games. But encounters with adults like me or so rare that they’ve trained themselves to instantly put on a toxic, shitty, defensive veneer when encountering any new person online. It’s literally just THAT EASY to not groom a horrible gaming community, it’s just that NO ONE does it.

B) the speed of which they all tried to friend me was cute, but paints for me such a sad picture? Like these kids are SO desperate to find people to play with who aren’t crappy jerks. They played with me for 10 minutes TOPS and all instantly tried to reach out to me.

Now here’s the thing. Most of these boys, my brother included, have ADD/ADHD. About a week into the project all they had in their shared world was chaos. Somebody filled the place with tnt and lit it up. Holes everywhere. Whenever one would attempt to try and build something (mostly wood huts and not the actual project) it would be destroyed within minutes as the boys began to insult each other heavily and complain that the design was ugly.

I brought my own ipad with me and decided to sit with the boys while they continued their reign of terror. I joined the world and built a hallway out of brick at the very center of this war zone. Immediately one of them tried to destroy it under the impression that “it looks bad”.

“Well, what should I make it out of?”

“Diamond.”

The ten year old mind is a mystery to me…

Anyway, then I showed him some pictures similar to these:

I reasoned that it would be easier to sway this kid toward another pretty block than trying to get him to stick to the materials of the time, so I asked him if he would like to help me replace my brick design with quartz (eh, it’s white).

Bam! One of the ten year old anarchists is dutifully building me a glittering gem hallway for our insanely rich monks.

The other three are off somewhere still yelling at each other and setting off explosives, but we have something built. Much to my surprise the kid asked if he could build the church next because he “wanted to build the most important part”.

Here’s where I learned something important. I don’t have ADD or ADHD but as I said before my brother does. When he gets fixated on something, he’s really gets into it. Once a few minutes had passed and this kid already had four walls up I decided to grid up the entire mission. One gets the church, one gets the farm, etc.

After playing the game with them for an hour, I had a pretty good idea of where each kid should go.

Church kid, I found, was very particular about materials and shape(hence his hangup over the brick). I gave him free reign over the outer walls of the mission and showed him the reference pictures to get him started.

My brother liked the farms most (he was building dirt domes over the cows don’t ask me how I made this connection it just worked, okay), so he was in charge of building pens for the animals.

Another kid was, at first glance, very loud and bossy when it came to decorating (constantly said we were making chairs wrong). Turns out he likes interior design, like putting benches and beds in the little rooms, so his bossiness was just frustration with my brother’s artistic sense I guess.

Another was very good with placing trees and plants around the exterior (I guessed this because he covered the place in a ridiculous amount of trees and I asked him if he would like to know where they are supposed to go). He got to make a vineyard for us and organized how the crops should go.

So how did it turn out?

Actually very nice!!

So what did we learn? Kids actually like to play games and be praised for their creativity and intuition. If I had just told them to stop messing around rather than direct their attention to areas within their interests, they never would have gotten anything done.

After an hour of gaming they:

Mirrored my language; “thank you!”, “which part are you working on?”, “I like this block.”

Realized each other’s strengths; “hey [kid name] can you help me with the roof?” “How do you make the big trees [kid name]?”

Were able to articulate exactly what they did or didn’t like without using force; “that looks good!”, “how about we put it there?”, “I don’t like that block, how about this one?”