#fourohfourlifenotfound

(Reviewing a problem with a group of peers before a Java test) Me: —and you know what a constructor is, right? Three of four peers: *blink, exhausted* Fourth peer: No, we weren’t taught anything. Me: *incoherent squeaking* *erases stuff on white board to make room for a new wave of illegible handwriting*

Assumptions about what people are thinking/saying about you are huge signs of either sign of anxiety, like “God they must think I’m dumb”or wanting to eavesdrop so you know what they really think of you. Or, in the same vein, ‘knowing’ what people are gonna say or do when you approach them for something or with a question and that ‘knowing’ always ending up being negative. Taking an hour or the like to fall asleep, or needing to walk around a lot or fidgeting or  J I G G L E  L E G are really common symptoms. But also a short fuse; if you sometimes get irritated by small things out of proportion that could just be a different way the anxiety surfaces. Perfectionism is also a way anxiety channels itself.Quelling anxiety and social anxiety is about grounding skills like concentrating on five things you see, four you hear, three you can touch, and so forth, or moving your toes/fingers and concentrating on how it feels or breathing exercises. Those help in times of anxiety and should be practiced while you’re not anxious so your brain can absorb them and trust them better. Actually lowering the frequency and level of anxiety is more difficult. That’s about challenging your anxiety. Something that helps is keeping a ledger of every time your anxiety acts up but whatever horrible thing you’re imagining doesn’t occur. That way you’re building up proof (preferably written out by hand, physical proof) that so much anxiety isn’t needed. Keeping record of what happened right before anxiety spikes can help you know your triggers, and practicing speaking to remove filler words like “um” and “you know” or whatever you say when you get frazzled helps you sound and feel more confident to combat social anxiety. When you find yourself spiraling, talking to your anxiety like it’s a person and has the ability to shut up can help. One of the things I do that really helps is that, when I can’t sleep because of anxiety, is write out whatever I’m being anxious about. My dad taught me too to, when unable to sleep or stop freaking out, is go through every room in my apartment mentally saying “is there anything in here that will fix what I’m being anxious about, right now?”. If not, then you have permission to think about something else. If you start being anxious again, go through your house again. Supportive friends and family are of course deeply helpful, and yoga (no matter how simple) and meditation a few times a week have been proven to help decrease all kinds of anxiety.

I’m going to be completely honest with you here: Voidpunk was created as a coping method for members of marginalized groups who face dehumanization from the rest of society. It’s fun, yes, and that’s part of the point, but at the end of the day these origins have to be remembered. Voidpunk isn’t a sexuality, voidpunk isn’t a political stance, voidpunk is us trying to do something fun to make the fact that those around us consider us less than human easier to bear.

What do you need to be a writeblr?

I’m going to get a little bit deeper than you intended here, so I apologize in advanced (and the simple answer is, yes, you can still be a writeblr no matter how short your typical writing is), but the long answer is this:

There’s no such thing as a writeblr.

#writeblr is literally just a name a bunch of writers came up with so they could have a tag to find each other’s writing in. 

Many people have tried very hard to turn that into a proper community (both for better and for worse) with lists and activities and guidelines and things, but at the end of the day, we’re not a part of a guild. No one here applied for something specific. No one was given a set of rules and told to sign their name at the bottom. Writeblr is just a fun tag that helps people find each other.

Writers on tumblr (both “writeblrs” and others) are not apart of a gated community. We’re just a bunch of leaderless hobos who all pitched tents in the general vicinity to each other, some in little circles around the same camp fire and some in the distant mountains. Because of the nature of how tumblr functions as a blogging platform, that’s never going to change.

1) Tweet to the people mentioned on the announcement. 

2) Report the app on the Apple Store and Playstore!