BURN MY DREAD

Make cabbages do your bidding

(via bsky)

In case anyone hasn't heard, the cyclospora outbreak affecting tons of people in the US right now is coming from Taylor Farms produce. Best to stay away from bagged lettuce and prepared salads completely right now, but especially the ones mentioned in the screenshot:

Taylor Farms Earthbound Farms Little Salad Bar (Aldi) Marketside (Walmart) Kroger House Brand Target private label greens Costco salads and greens etc Trader Joe's chopped salad kits and fresh produce Fast food: McDonalds, Taco Bell, (Yum! Brands), Chipotle, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC, Olive Garden, Top Golf, Red Lobster, Burger King, etc.

This is not the first time I've heard about a Taylor Farms foodborne illness outbreak. I stopped eating their salads after reading a description of the conditions in their facilities. Doesn't sound like they've improved anything.

↳ What lie do they tell themselves to sleep at night? Seriously. What’s the little piece of denial that keeps them functioning? Do they pretend they don’t care what people think? Tell themselves they’re over that one person? Convinced they’re not the villain of someone else’s story? We all lie to ourselves; your OC is no exception.

↳ What’s their emotional kryptonite? A specific thing that absolutely shatters them, like someone crying? Being ignored? Praise from a parent figure? The sound of an old song? The smell of something nostalgic? Find it and use it against them (lovingly, of course).

↳ When do they feel the most alive? Is it mid-battle, mid-baking, mid-breakup? Does adrenaline light them up, or do they find joy in the quiet, mundane things, like folding laundry while listening to sad girl music? This can reveal a LOT about what drives them.

↳ What would totally ruin their day? A bad haircut? Someone touching their stuff? Or is it something deeper, like being reminded of their failures, or seeing someone else succeed where they couldn’t?

↳ Who do they think they should be? And who are they really? This one’s juicy. Do they think they should be a hero, but keep acting like a villain?

↳ What’s the one thing they’d never admit out loud, even under duress? The shameful thought. The inappropriate desire. The thing they desperately want but don’t think they deserve. DONT FORGET: Characters are built on what they repress.

↳ What are they petty about? Don’t pretend your OC is above this, I mean everyone’s petty about something. Do they hold grudges over stolen pens? Get irrationally jealous of someone’s hair? Still mad about a game of Uno from 2007? Petty makes them fucking real.

↳ How do they act when they think no one’s watching? Do they let their mask slip? Dance around the kitchen? Talk to their cat in baby voice? Cry a little?

↳ What would make them snap? Where is the breaking point? What line has to be crossed for them to finally say “Enough”? Is it injustice? Betrayal? Feeling powerless? You’ll know you’ve found it when it scares you a little (Or a lot).

*caveat that im not an expert in anything but myself so maybe im using these terms differently than experts would. brain too tired to do that much googling rn but dont take anything im saying here as any kind of Professional Advice

for instance my job involves a lot of sending the same 6 kinds of emails over and over, so i've got my templates in a text expander (if you do similar kind of work and don't use one: get thee a text expander). when i've got some of these emails to send, even if i'm feeling too foggy to prepare a whole Communication i can at least fill out the parts of the template that are easiest (copying and pasting data from elsewhere, attaching files already prepared, etc) and come back to it later when i feel like i can complete the task. i do a Lot of this both in work and my day to day life and it really makes the difference between an unconquerable big task and a thing i managed to get done. even for non-form emails, i'll sometimes frontload a message i'm writing by simply jotting down the bullet points of what i need to cover, and when i come back to it later, it is SO much easier to draft a final email from an outline than try and disgorge it whole from my foggy brain

and the nice thing about this approach is sometimes in my frontloading i will develop the momentum to actually finish the email i'm writing. i rarely make this the goal, but it actually winds up happening pretty often, so it feels like a delightful surprise i can pat myself on the back for. you werent even trying to do the whole thing but you did!

another brain-saving strategy: scheduling emails 10 mins in advance. i rarely trust myself to get everything right the first time so i like to schedule an email, then look at it in my outbox before it sends bc it looks like a sent email and is easier to proof for things like "are these the correct attachments" and "did i forget to fill out part of this template" and "did i CC the correct email addresses". i catch errors more frequently than not and its pretty much my default practice now. this practice originated when i worked in-office in a place where ppl could and would simply go to your office to talk in person if they felt like it so any time i wanted to reply to a non-urgent email right away but didnt want them to know i was presently at my desk, i'd schedule it for like 30-60 mins out. sometimes to times after i was planning to leave the office. but its also massively useful in catching errors!

Designed this character based off of Spanish Moon Moths.