hello world

Starting a new learning resource (for beginners) for a few weeks/months, then quitting and starting a new learning resource (for beginners), getting stuck in a cycle of relearning the same material multiple times - if this is you, the solution is to STICK with 1 resource until you've completed it. (Or to stick with 1-4 resources if you are using different resources for reading, listening, speaking, writing etc.). If you find yourself jumping between apps, or resources, go ahead and keep jumping around until you find something you really like, so you can find that resource you'll stick to for months/a year. Basically, keep it simple, and stick with something.

No idea where to start or what to study first - if this is you, the solution is to pick a Structured Resource, so you can let the resource tell you what to do. Traditional classes in schools, MOOCs like Coursera, Textbooks labelled by 'level', Free Resources that have clear directions on what to do for how long. If you choose an app or an anki deck (something less structured), then make a study plan to do it a decent amount of time daily (more than 15 minutes) it until you complete it. If you struggle to judge what is useful and what's not, a Structured Resource that teaches basic grammar and 1000-3000 words, in listening and reading exercises (and optionally speaking and writing exercises/practice), is going to be the easiest thing to use.

Not putting in enough daily study time on average - if this is you, consider trying to make time for 1 hour or more of time engaging with the language daily. At least 30 minutes. 2+ hours if you're ambitious. Suggestions: consider using audio-only learning materials such as learner podcasts with other-language explanations (Glossika, Coffee Break Language, LanguagePod101/Innovative Language courses, Pimsleur, Paul Noble, audio sentence flashcards like japaneseaudiolessons.com), so you can study while doing chores, while getting ready, while commuting/traveling, while exercising, and see if you can fit in 30 minutes or more per day. Once you are no longer a beginner, it will be easier to make time for the language in your daily life, as you'll be able to engage with the language during more of your everyday hobbies. The beginning stage is the hardest, you got this.

Not seeing progress as fast as you wish - if this is you, the solution is increase your daily study time. I know, it sucks and is obvious. That's about the only way to see more progress in less days.

Losing motivation because you aren't seeing noticeable progress - if this is you, pick a short term monthly (or 3 month) goal, to be able to do something specific in the language. It could be any goal. Examples: read a Graded Reader story, finish X number of learner podcast episodes, read X chapters of a novel or comic (looking up words if needed), complete X chapters of textbook, go through X number of dialogues from class, watch a movie in the language (while looking words up as needed), watch a youtube video in the language (while looking words up as needed), read a short fanfiction in the language (while looking up words if needed), be able to speak a summary of your hobbies aloud, be able to write a diary entry about your day. These short term goals will give you something to achieve, will focus your studies on a particular thing you wish to do in the language, and will give you results you can see/measure for your efforts. These short term goals are also useful for if you like changing what you do every few months, and changing what you focus on improving - this is generally what I do, to keep interest and motivation up.

No idea if you've learned enough to move onto intermediate study resources and practice understanding the language - if this is you, a 'Grammar Guide Summary' and a 1000-3000 'Common Words List', both ideally with example sentences, will be your best friends. You can look these kinds of resources up online free, or if you have been studying with a Structured Resource then you should be able to quickly glance at that resource and see how much grammar and how many words it taught you (that information should be in the opening explanation of how to use the resource, or in the explanations and word lists of each chapter, or if it's an anki deck it will be the information on all the cards/the information on the deck's community page). Look up a "Grammar Guide Summary" and a 1000-3000 "Common Words List" and if most of the stuff on those resources looks familiar, then you're ready to start PRACTICING understanding the language, and you're ready to MOVE ON TO INTERMEDIATE RESOURCES. Congrats, you're no longer a beginner!

Not sure how to move into practicing what you are learning - if this is you, Graded Readers (containing a unique word count lower than the amount of vocabulary you've studied), Comprehensible Input Lessons (on youtube), and Learner Podcasts for Beginners to Lower Intermediate learners will be easiest for you to practice with. Also, if using a Structured Resource (like a class or textbook), any exercises it contains for practicing (writing sentences using the grammar and words taught that week, speaking the same sentences, listening to audio and answering questions about what it talked about, shadowing the audio - repeating what you hear as close to how it sounds, reading the text practice provided in the chapter/class).

A lot of home org advice fully misses this aspect. Kondo not only acknowledges it, but leans into it. And ultimately this helps motivste me to keep my space tidy - it's really hard to me to keep on the nebulous goal of self-care, but much easier to get up and put things away if I envision my salt and pepper grinders as like, retail workers who are now standing in an empty shop (my dining table) and just wanna go home (the spice rack where they live).

Normie tidying process: that heater should be put away for summer! I mean, I'm not gonna need it

Me: well it's just chilling and also I can't be arsed.

Kondo: that heater has done a good job keeping you warm over winter and now it should get to go have a rest in the cupboard

“Instead of changing your habits to keep clean, look at where the clutter is. Now put a bin under it.”

I tend to remove my socks at the computer and then there’s a mountain of socks on the floor? I put a small bin and now it looks tidy. There are piles of junk mail on the table near my front door because I can never bring them to the recycling bin? I put a smaller recycling bin there. Etc etc.

Another trick that helps me immensely are BOXES.

The bathroom sink is covered in small bottles and all sorts of products? I got small plastic crates and I put them over the toilet lid, one for my stuff, the other for my roomate’s. The linen closet is just piles of things that fall when you open the door? Baby I just got a bunch of baskets and I will separate them by function.

I have baskets and small boyxes for: my cleaning products; my bird’s toys and stuff; my workout accessories; my meds and daily skincare products; my tools; and pretty much all my art stuff. 

One change, and my floors are clear. And because they’re clear, they’re easier to keep clean.

here are tips I discovered very recently:

something is better than nothing. 5 minutes of work are better than zero. Just because you missed something on your schedule doesn’t mean you can’t still work on it, even for 5 minutes. Grow and build on this.

second drafts / reviews can be done after.

Don’t think you are going to do your very best work on the first try. Take the weight of perfectionism off your shoulders.

don’t think about doing it. just do it as fast as you can.

build on your productivity, not your failures.

If you come from a past of procrastinating and now feel motivated to change and discipline yourself, do NOT try to do everything at once.

if you have a set of different goals to accomplish, begin with the most important one. Wait until the rotine of working for that one settles in (you feel productive and comfortable-ish), and then begin with the next. Repeat.

this way you’ll be building your way up and not juggling everything at the same time, hoping everything works out.

be patient with yourself, you’ll get there!

set smaller deadlines for your goals

have monthly and weekly-ish deadlines

e.g. if you are doing a project, due 22nd Feb, set personal deadlines, like have Introduction written by 2nd Feb, have Methods written by 10th Feb, have project complete by 18th Feb.

take them as seriously as you possibly can, don’t miss out on yourself.

write realistic daily tasks and don’t stop until you finish them. after them you can do whatever you want

on writing realistic daily tasks, the secret is knowing you can only do so much in one day, but trusting you can accomplish everything in the course of any period of time (a week, or 2 weeks or a month, etc.) because you will combine the work from all these different days.

it’s very tempting to write down all the tasks you need to accomplish in one day to just get over with it, but the real deal is you won’t accomplish half of them. You’ll feel very unproductive then, wich leads to demotivation.

spread daily tasks in the time necessary.

have a consistent sleep schedule.

if your mind isn’t ready everything will fall apart.

have one rest day per week where you plan nothing, do whatever you want except studying. this can be harder than you expect!

It’s like gardening: if your flower isn’t blossoming like you want it to, you don’t rip out its leaves as punishment for failing to satisfy you. You recognize the problem and figure out what’s going wrong with its environment so you can modify it, giving the flower a chance to bloom in its own time.

I read once, don’t remembet where or know if it’s true, that in order to train an animal and to remain good friends with it, you need a 5/1 ratio of positive vs. negative interactions. So for every interaction that the animal considers negative - pilling a cat, for example - you need FIVE positive interactions, such as treats, cuddles, play, or praise if you want to remain on the best possible terms with it.

This applies to your relationship with yourself.

If you aren’t positively interacting with yourself but are instead consistently berating, punishing, or being disgusted with yourself, you are 100% going to have a lot of emotional pain.

You aren’t perfect. Nobody is and nobody should feel like they have to be. You will make mistakes. And contrary to what a lot of folks, self included, seem to believe, being mean to yourself because you think you “deserve” it won’t actually help you learn or becone a better person.

All it does is teach you not to trust yourself, and teach you that you will always disappoint yourself. You take on a toxic relationship with yourself where you play both parts. It’s terrible.

So yes, you HAVE to learn to forgive yourself. You actually cannot grow effectively in the confines of a toxic relationship. Including one you have with yourself.

Please, please I’m begging you, use firefox.

PLEASE install firefox as a mobile browser and then run adblock on your mobile browser it’s so good I promise.

Look.

Look.

I know I’m a total grind about open source stuff but browsers are the PERFECT place to learn to love open source software and for so long FireFox was a major part of the browser market and sometimes if you want to see what kind of fuckery google is up to it helps to see the kinds of things they block in firefox and just

There’s an organization that makes free, excellent, safe software that doesn’t collect and market your data but for some reason two thirds of the world uses a google product and most of the leftover population uses apple and just

I promise, firefox is so good - the extensions are incredible look - I can use lightbeam to see what sites I use and how they connect to other sites (bottom right should give you an idea how much time I spend on tumblr)

or I can look at ublock origin and see that it’s blocked over 2 million requests since I installed it or I can run the facebook container extension and stop facebook from tracking me and you know what I bet you can do a lot of that on chrome too but you’re doing that while chrome itself is tracking you and gobbling up your activity for google and

firefox is so fuckin great and it’s such a great ambassador for other open source projects please be a big old fuckin nerd with me and use firefox and run a bunch of funky extensions and customize the fuck out of your web experience.

Wanna be a hacker? Firefox.

Wanna use instagram on desktop? Firefox.

Wanna be a killer researcher? Firefox.

Wanna properly credit artists? Firefox.

Wanna read a whole shitload of books? Firefox.

Wanna make video responses to shitlord youtubers?

Wanna shoot cat lasers at bugs?

Wanna use youtube as a music streaming service?

FIREFOX.

Hey anon! Sorry I noticed your ask this kate ^^'

I don't have much experience with interviews either i am afraid, all the work I have done in companies was in cooperation with the university i am in.

If the job is focused on a skills ie data analysis, mobile development etc be prepared to answer some questions related to that. If you have some projects you have worked on, have a list of things you learned, challenges you overcame, reasoning for design decisions you made for each project. Thinking about these things in advance makes it easier to have a conversation about your projects if it comes up.

Also search up some common behavioural questions and practice answers for those as well. This will help you build a list of stories/projects/accomplishments that you can talk about while answering behavioural questions.

TIME MANAGEMENT STUFF / TERM 7 

I’ve got a lot of questions about this during my Art Center time, so I drew it ! This system came from when I had to manage my time during art high school (8am-5pm everyday) with 2 waitress jobs. Everybody has different working method, but I will be more than happy if anyone gets new idea from it ! 

i like tomato sauce because it’s cheap and i usually have some sad vegetables in my fridge that i can throw in. it’s easy to make variations and make it suitable for pasta, rice, potatoes, beans and so on, and makes a great pantry item. 

use a nice aromatic olive oil(doesn’t have to be expensive)

dont be afraid of onion and garlic

sauté(!) your tomato paste. it removes tinny, bitter flavours

use aromatics like rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, bay leves for more classic flavours, or add chili, cumin, coriander, paprika, fennel seeds, mustard seeds, kaffir lime leaves, ginger etc. and experiment with combinations! almost every country has it own style of tomato sauce.  try googling nationality + tomato sauce.

ADD VEGGIES TO YOUR ONION AND GARLIC! before adding canned tomatoes, add small cut pieces of vegetables and sauté/cook it down(called sofrito). it will take a long time and it will be delicious. you can add almost everything: carrots, beets, parsley root/parsnip, bell peber, celery, eggplant, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, cauliflower, green beans, you name it! 

ADD SOME FUNK! chop up olives, capers, sun dried tomatoes, anchovies, lemon peel, artichokes, sausage, pesto, ajvar, fish sauce, soy sauce, kimchi, curry paste, a splash of leftover wine, beer, whatever :) it’s a good idea especially if you don’t use meat. 

let it simmer for a very long time. it will develop more flavours and make it feel more ‘whole’. add more water if needed.

if you do have fresh herbs, chop some and add on top! basil, cilantro, dill, parsley, chives, mint, spring onions etc.

try to make a game out of it, look in your fridge / pantry and think about possible combinations. 

Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life by Susan Forward

IT HAS ALSO BEEN REALLY HELPFUL FOR UNDERSTANDING ONLINE MOB HARASSMENT.

So if you’ve ever been bombarded w threats to be raped/killed, (so…if you’re a minority and you’ve been on the Internet for a while), this book might be useful for getting clarity around the whole entitled, abusive mindset that drives certain kinds of people to behave that way. And by “getting clarity”, I mean (for me) being able to go “oh, that’s what’s happening” and not really feel scared anymore. Or angry, or drawn out into it, or anything.

claudia black’s book, changing course: healing from loss, abandonment and fear was life changing for me and tremendously healing & i highly recommend it for people who are adult survivors of chronic abandonment, loss, bullying. there are plenty of exercises to do, be warned that some may be overwhelming emotionally.