This Is Me

So unlike in the movies, there are no “breakthrough moments”, where you suddenly realize one thing and the whole house is clean.  Oh there may be important turning points – moments when you realize that those aren’t frosted windows, that’s dirt, and you need to clean it off, and that’s why it’s so fugging dark in here.  And that is an important breakthrough, in the sense that without it you would not succeed in cleaning the house, but then you still have to clean the windows.

Therapy is just someone who’s had experience with post-hurricane cleanup, Consulting over the phone, recommending tools and giving you advice. “Start with the floor,” they say, when you’re too overwhelmed to even begin, and they tell you what shovel to buy.  So you start shoveling, and it’s HARD, and you’re exhausted all the time, and you’ve only shoveled out the front hallway, and it feels like it’s never going to really get better.

But you do get good at shoveling, and slowly you build up your strength, and after a few months you can shovel as much as you need to, but there’s still a LOT of mud here, so it takes a year to get that shoveled out, and your house is still muddy and the windows are cracked (and frosted), and there’s still debris everywhere, and every time you walk around you’re stepping an a quarter-inch of mud, but you CAN walk around, you can get anywhere you need to go, and the house is still a fucking mess, you’re a fucking mess, a disaster not fit for human habitation, but on the other hand you can no longer convince yourself that “nothing’s ever going to work”.  It can get better.  You can point at things that used to be super-fucked-up and now are only moderately-fucked-up.  Progress is possible.

But then again, you’re not making any progress anymore. You thought you had the hang of it, but now the shovel isn’t working, and every time you shovel mud out of one place it slides into another and you’re not making any headway and you can barely pick up any mud with your shovel anyway and so maybe that was it – you had a nice run, but this is as good as it’s ever gonna get, you’re still gonna be fucked up forever, and you finally bring it up to your therapist, and they nod, and tell you to buy a hose.

So now you’re hosing down the floors, and that’s a new skill set to learn, and it splashes everywhere, and now you’ve got mud on your walls, but it does get the floor clear.  But you hosed out the front hallway, and then realized that to clear out the living room you’re gonna have to hose it out into the front hallway, which means the hallway’s just gonna get messy again, so then you have to redo the front hallway, but you start planning out which rooms to do in which order, so it goes pretty smoothly after that, until the day when you’ve got all the big mud puddles gone, but there’s still mud on the walls, and stuck in corners, and no matter how hard you spray you still end up with this thin coating of mud-dirt-dust on the floor after it dries, and honestly you’re making more of a mess than you are cleaning up a mess at this point. And you express your frustration, and the therapist tells you where to find, and how to use, a mop.

So you mop all the floors, and it’s actually looking pretty good, and you remembered to start mopping from the inside out, so that’s not a big deal, until you open a door and realize you forgot to shovel out the pantry. You didn’t think it could get into the pantry, with the door shut, but there it is, mud 3 inches thick, and the only way to get it out is to shovel it, and you’ll have to take it through the kitchen, so you have to shovel out the pantry, and then hose down the pantry, and then re-hose the kitchen, and then mop the pantry, and then re-mop the kitchen, and EUUURGHHHJHH.

But you’re really good at it, at this point, so it’s not like it’s a big deal.  It’s irritating af, and you’re sick to death of doing this, but it’s not scary, or overwhelming, or horrifying.  It’s just really, really annoying.

And the fact is, you will never be done cleaning.  Even if there’s never another hurricane, there’s dishes, and dust settling on counters, and spills, and mud tracked in after snowstorms, and laundry.  There’s not some magical moment when you’re “done”, and you can stop working forever (except possibly, depending on who’s right about the afterlife, after you die).  But you do reach a point where you it transitions from “impossible” to “meh, just a thing”

You do reach a point where you look around, and you’re kinda proud of what you’ve done You do reach a point where you recognize that your current tools aren’t doing the job you need, and you research and find and learn how to use a tool all on your own. You do reach a point where, when you see a storm coming, you know how to prepare for it, and you purchase and lay out all the supplies you need, and when the storm finishes, you can get your house back up and ready in practically no time at all. You do reach a point where storms aren’t so scary, because you know how to weather them and you know for a fact that you can recover from them. You do reach a point where friends ask you for tips on how to clean their houses You do reach a point where, every time you need a tool, it’s one you already posses. You do reach a point where you’ve replaced all the windows and sealed up all the cracks and replaced the insulation, and for the first time, you’re comfortable all the way through a winter. You do reach a point where someone compliments you on how clean and comfortable your house is. You do reach a point where you’ve done all the remediation, and you can start remodeling the house to fit your needs.

by me, a fool who doesnt wanna die anymore 

never make a suicide joke again. yes this includes “i wanna die” as a figure of speech. swear off of it. actually make an effort to change how you think about things.

find something to compliment someone for at least 4 times a day. notice the little things about the world that make you happy, and use that to make other people happy.

talk to people. initiate conversation as often as you possibly can. keep your mind busy and you wont have to worry anymore

picture the bad intrusive thoughts in youe head as an edgy 13 year old and tell them to go be emo somewhere else

Like every time I trip and fall, instead of saying “l’m just a disaster human” I say “I’m the epitome of grace and beauty”

Or like, when I draw a picture I’m not 100% happy with, instead of saying “my art is trash” I say something like “you know I think it’s time we replaced the Mona Lisa”

When you do that you get to make a joke, but you’re ALSO getting practice building yourself up, y’know?

Eeveelutions 

MY EDITS (please don’t steal)

Hiya! I made these simple eeveelution lockscreens

I would appreciate if you could reblog or leave a like if you do use them 😊

some pokemon lockscreens of eevee and its evolutions ^^

i work at a restaurant. i make $12 an hour, plus tips. minimum wage where i live is relatively high for my country - the national minimum wage is $7.25/hr, and has not been raised since 2009. before taxes, working full time, my yearly income is about $22,000 a year. ($25,000 if you count tips)

at my job, we sell various dishes, with an average price of about $10-$15. we get printouts every week detailing how much money we made that week; in one week, our restaurant makes about $30,000. (one of our other locations actually makes this much on a daily basis!)

i’m not going to go into details, but after the costs of production (payroll for employees, rent for the building, maintenance, and wholesale food purchasing) are accounted for, the restaurant makes an estimated profit of $20,000 per week.

this profit goes directly to the owner, who does not work at this location. the owner of my restaurant has actually been on vacation for a few months, but still profits from the restaurant, because they own it. i have met the owner exactly twice in my year of working here.

to put this into perspective, the owner of this restaurant earns in 2 days what they pay me in one year. and that’s just from this single location - the owner has several other restaurants, all of which make more money than the one i work at. this ends up resulting in the owner having an estimated net worth of tens of millions of dollars, even after accounting for the payroll for every single worker in their employ.

now, i have to ask you: does the owner of my restaurant deserve this income? did they earn it? did their labor result in this value being created?

the naive answer would be “yes”; the owner purchased the location and arranged for the raw ingredients to be delivered, did they not?

the actual answer is “no”. the owner may have used their initial capital to start the location, but the profit is a result of my labor, and the labor of my co-workers.

the owner purchases rice at a very low bulk price of about 25 cents a pound. i cook the rice, and within a few minutes, that pound of rice is suddenly worth about $30. the owner did not create this value, i did. the owner simply provided the initial capital investment required to start the process.

what needs to be understood here is that capitalists do not create value. they use the labor of their employees to create value, and then take the excess profit and keep it.

what needs to be understood is that capitalists accrue income by already HAVING money. the owner of my restaurant was only able to get this far because they started off, from the very beginning, with enough money to purchase a building, purchase food in bulk, and hire hundreds of employees.

that is to say: the rich get richer, and they do so by exploiting the labor of the poor.

the owner of my restaurant could afford to triple the income of every single person in their employee if they felt like it, but this would mean that they were generating less profit for themselves, so they do not.

the owner of my restaurant pays me the current minimum wage of my area, because to them, i am not a person. i am an investment. i am an asset. i am a means to create more money. 

when you are paid minimum wage, the message your boss is sending you is this: “legally, if i could pay you less, i would.”

It isn’t

It is not dumb

Stop using that phrase as some sort of liability statement in case the person you’re talking to thinks your thoughts aren’t valuable

If they think it’s lame then they don’t deserve the privilege of hearing what you had to say

Your words hold meaning and your passionate opinions are precious

Anyone would be so lucky to hear your words honestly????? It isn’t dumb at all

Patreon wallpapers from last month! 1080p desktop, 1080p mobile.

You pass by a small crowd of hungry children, and decide you’d rather 455 apples go rotten than give them to some snotty brat who isn’t your problem.

It doesn’t matter how hard you’ve worked for your 500 apples, or that you aren’t the parent of any of those kids. in the moment you decide to walk away, it doesn’t matter why they’re hungry, or who owes who what.

You had the opportunity to help people, you had the ability to help people, you had the resources to help people. You had everything you needed to make a small, tiny little difference in someone’s life, and you decided not to.