Tag: advice

eighteen hours

inouken:

wilwheaton:

I realize that I’ve been going in circle for an hour, hoping that I’ll bump into something that unlocks a solution to Anne’s suffering. Maybe there’s something in the refrigerator. Maybe there’s something on the patio. Maybe it’s between the cushions in the couch. Maybe if I walk into our bedroom and sit next to her on the bed. Maybe if I hold her hand. Maybe if I don’t hold her hand. Maybe…

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I’m sorry to hear Anne had to suffer through this, that you had to experience it with her, that it took as long as it did for her to receive a proper diagnosis along with the care and treatment she needed in order to resolve her pain.

I’ve been in the same place as Anne before. I was just there, in fact. But if a friend hadn’t shared this post with me two days ago, I might not have been anyplace at all today.

I might not have gone to the ER in time. I might not have convinced myself that the pain in my lower left side was severe “enough”.  

You see, I’m no stranger to the agony that a ruptured ovarian cyst can cause, and I’ve been on the proverbial merry-go-round at the ER numerous times in the past when I’d presented with the same symptoms.

What they’d tell me was the same each time. They’d run their battery of tests, and then invariably say there was nothing they could do. They’d tell me the cysts would go away on their own one way or another. They’d tell me to just wait it out. They’d tell me to go home and try to make myself as comfortable as possible, and to only come back if I started running a fever or if the searing pain failed to lessen within a few days.

What they neglected to tell me time after time was that sometimes ovarian cysts can actually be life-threatening.

Even without the fever.

Ovarian torsion? They’ve never mentioned this possible complication once. Maybe because they never wanted to scare me. Maybe because the complication itself is relatively rare. Only 6 out of 100,000 women will ever have one of their ovaries twist around until its literally strangled itself of all life and oxygen inside their body.

Whatever their reason was for not fully informing me, it made me adopt a really blasé attitude about my pain, to the point where I was prepared to tough it out on my own because I had been conditioned to believe that even if the pain became excruciating there was nothing the medical professionals would’ve done for me.  Cysts come and cysts go is the message I had received countless times, and it’s what I firmly believed in all cases until I read this post.

Please, to all my fellow ovary-bearers, if you start experiencing blinding pain in the lower abdominal region on either the left or right side, always go the ER. Always.

Even if you routinely get ovarian cysts. Even if the doctors and nurses have previously given you the impression that it’s just ‘something that happens’ to some women sometimes. Get it checked out. Demand that they perform a pelvic ultrasound early on, especially if the pain coincides with your time of the month. I cannot tell you the number of times I have received unnecessary CT scans from male ER doctors who failed to consider that my pain was likely gynecological in nature, so please, please, please, do not let their relative unfamiliarity with the female reproductive cycle happen to you, too.  Request an additional consult with an OB/GYN if they do not think to request one themselves, and always, always arrive at the ER as soon as you possibly can because you’ll likely have to wait awhile to a.) be seen and b.) get a proper diagnosis even if you do all of the above.

For me personally, it took six hours to get through the chaos of the ER two days ago. By the time they concluded I needed to be on the operating table, I had already internally hemorrhaged close to a full liter of blood.

So again, I beg you guys, if you start experiencing blinding pain in your ovary regions, always get to the ER right away. Don’t just assume it’s a bad cramp or a burst cyst that will recover on its own. If my friend hadn’t linked me to this post when she had, I know that’s what I would’ve done and I’d probably be dead right now because of it. 

Always listen to your body, you guys, seek the help you need, and spread awareness when you can to possibly save a life. I’m down a lot of blood and part of my left ovary had to be removed, but I’m doing fine now. I’m so thankful I’m doing fine now. My ovary didn’t kill me and I couldn’t be happier to be alive.

andallthatmishigas:

thebestpersonherelovesbucky:

noseforahtwo:

thebaconsandwichofregret:

kedreeva:

noseforahtwo:

As a chick married to an ex-cop, I say this all the time to people close to me, but it bears repeating here: No cop is your friend after you’ve been detained.

Get rear ended by a drunk at a red light? That cop will direct traffic around your vehicle, document the accident, sure. Call animal control on your piece of shit neighbor? You’ve got a pretty good chance the officer who shows up helps out in a meaningful way.

But after you’ve been arrested, when a police officer says, “Just be honest with me and I’ll do the same.” or the old “Help me and I’ll help you.” Politely ask for a lawyer. Shake your head. Ignore them. Pretend you’re Hollywood royalty being asked for a selfie. “ …mmmm… Sorry, but no.”

Keep your mouth shut. Don’t do their work for them. Wait for a lawyer.

I worked as a police dispatcher for a year and a half, and I’d agree with this. My cops were generally nice people (and I say this having been on the wrong end of their sirens twice, once before and once after being hired), and they often helped in good ways… on the street. Not so much in the station. Generally speaking (and I know this is oversimplification and is worse in a lot of places but), it went like this:

On the street, you were considered as a person/citizen they have sworn to protect who may have made a mistake or done something wrong.

Once you were in the station, you were considered as a criminal. In the station you are the only one on your side.

Stay safe.

TV and film has you thinking that only guilty people ask for a lawyer. This is not true. The law is complex and difficult and confusing and if you’re being questioned by the police you’re not going to be in your best state of mind. A lawyer is your basic civil right and you should exercise that right. Keep silent, ask for a lawyer, take your legal advice.

Guilty people don’t ask for a lawyer, smart people do.

“Guilty people don’t ask for a lawyer, smart people do.”

My uncle was a cop. My uncle is the most down to earth, wouldn’t hurt a fly person in the world. I don’t think he even arrested a single person ever, that wasn’t his job on the force.

His advice? Get a fucking lawyer. Never say a damn word. A cop knows how to twist your words around and make you even doubt yourself. They know damn well how to make you feel guilty by getting a lawyer. YOU need to know that it’s SMART to get a lawyer. Get a lawyer.

Another really important thing to add: you have the right to a lawyer and you have to ASK FOR ONE UNEQUIVOCALLY. Not “I think I need a lawyer” or “maybe I should get a lawyer.” No. Instead say, “I WILL NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS UNTIL I HAVE BEEN PROVIDED WITH A LAWYER.” After that, they MUST cease all questioning until you’ve consulted with your lawyer or else it’s a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Also, you have the right to remain silent but you must actively invoke that right. You can sit there for three hours saying absolutely nothing and they can keep questioning you. It might sound really stupid but if you say, “I am invoking my right to remain silent” then the police cannot keep questioning you unless YOU reinitiate conversation.

As a criminal prosecutor told me once, they don’t catch the smart ones. So whether or not you did anything wrong, know your rights and invoke them and protect yourself. Because as soon as you’ve been detained, the police are not on your side. And they will use your ignorance against you.

tumblrfolk, we are so much more skilled than we think

cracktastic:

vrabia:

prairie-grass:

a-spoon-is-born:

intrikate88:

elodieunderglass:

one thing I want to say today relates to my current job. (As you guys know, I’ve left off working in science labs to work an office job in sci comm. My role is kind of … nebulous and involves a lot of “oh, Elodie can help you with that, she does weird stuff. Train Elodie on that.”)

Because it’s an office job, the mentality is for everyone to present their workflows as incredibly difficult and skilled, requiring a lot of training and experience to do properly. Which is fair enough! These skills are difficult!

“Elodie, today we are going to train you to use… A HIGHLY COMPLICATED AND DIFFICULT WEBSITE INTERFACE. You will need to take a lot of notes and pay careful attention, because it is extremely advanced. ARE YOU READY”

“… This is WordPress.”

“…No it isn’t! it says something different at the top. And it’s very complicated, it’s not something you can just know already.”

“Nah son, don’t worry, it’s WordPress. I mean, God knows I don’t blog much, but I can manage me a bit of WordPress, it’s cool.”

“No. You can’t. Don’t worry, it’s very difficult. Now sit still and be trained on how to upload a photo to WordPress.”

“All right.”

—-

“Elodie, do you think that you can MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA? It is INCREDIBLY HARD and may involve THE HASHTAGS”

“… I think I’ll manage.”

—-

“Elodie, can you put a HYPERLINK in a thing? Think about it before you answer.”

“Is it like a BBCode kind of thing, with the boxy bracket things, or do you want it in HTML, with like angley bracket things?”

“It is a button that you press that says HYPERLINK.”

“I can do this thing for you.”

—-

“Elodie, can you write a punchy summary that will make people want to click on a special link that says “read more” to read all of the text?“

“Probably?”

—-

“Elodie, this is how to use TAGS on CONTENT. TAGS on CONTENT are important because – because of THINGS. Things that are too arcane and mysterious for anyone below the level of Manager to know.”

“Cool, I can tag stuff for you.”

—-

“Elodie, this is obviously a ridiculous question, but can you edit videos?”

“Not very well, and only if you want to make it look like there is sexual tension between characters from different forms of visual media, or perhaps to make a trailer for a fanfiction? Which is not necessarily a good use of my time and I’m not sure why I felt it was so cool to do to begin with…”

“What?”

“Actually, upon further reflection: no. No. Nope. I can’t edit videos. They’re completely beyond me. Not in my wheelhouse. Hate videos. Hate them. No innate skill whatsoever.”

“That’s what we thought”

—-

“Elodie?! You can use PHOTOSHOP?!”

“Yeah, I mean, I usually just use Pixlr. It’s free, it’s online, it’s powerful, you don’t have to download anything…”

“but you are not a GRAPHIC DESIGNER!!”

“Er… no.”

“Next you’ll be telling us you can MAKE AN ANIMATED PICTURE.”

“I mean, I haven’t really done a lot of it since Livejournal, and they weren’t that good anyway, but yeah… I can do you reaction images.”

“THAT IS WITCHCRAFT”

“Yes. Definitely.”

—-

What I’m trying to say is: a lot of people talk a lot of crap about what we Millenials do on the Internet, because there is NO CAPITALISTIC VALUE in the screwing around we do with our friends. “Ughh why are you ALWAYS on the computer?” our parents whined.

“How did you make the text go all slanty like that?” our bosses wonder.

We have decades of experience in Photoshop. We know how to communicate; we can make people across the planet care about our problems. We know how to edit media to make two characters look like they’re having the sexual tensions. We can make people read our posts, follow us, share our content. We run and manage our own websites – and make them pretty. We moderate conversations, enforce commenting policies, manage compromises, lead battles, encourage peace, defend ourselves from attack, inspire others, and foster incredible levels of communication.

We produce our art. We advertise our art. We engage with others through our art. We accept constructive criticism and dismiss destructive trolling of our art. We improve our art. Our art gets better.

We narrate our stories.

All by ourselves. Our pretty blog backgrounds, custom-edited themes, tasteful graphics, punchy content, clever gifs, our snappy putdowns and smart-ass text posts, even our familiarity with fonts and composition – all of these skills we’ve casually accumulated for fun/approval are MINDBLOWING LEVELS OF COMPETENCE IN THE WORKFORCE.

When these skills are sold to you – when they’re packaged and marketed, and when you pay to consume them and have the Elders rate you on them – they are incredibly valuable. They are Media and Communications degrees. They are marketing internships. They are leadership workshops. They are graphics design modules. They are web design courses. They are programming courses. We are good at this shit; we have it nailed down.

You can’t put “fandom” or “blogging” on your CV, but you deserve to. You should get this credit. You should claim this power and authority.

Claim these skills. They are valuable. They are important.

Everything you have ever done is a part of your powerful makings.

I want to second what elodieunderglass has to say here, because it’s so true. You want to buff up your resume or your LinkedIn page? 

-if you know enough html to do <i>this is italic text</i>, then you understand HTML and can pretty much call yourself a Junior Developer

-if you ever wanted to customize your LJ or tumblr and copied someone’s CSS code and then went in and tweaked font color and added your own header image? You understand CSS and again, you can put Junior Developer in your LinkedIn title. 

-if you can use twitter and tumblr and put hashtags and regular tags on stuff, you’re a Social Media Manager. If you can get people to follow you and comment back, you have Demonstrated Social Media Efficacy.

-if you can use Photoshop (or Pixlr!) to make five million pictures of Natalie Dormer really pretty, you are a Photo Editor. 

-if you can migrate some of your Photoshop skills to InDesign, you are a Production Editor with demonstrable skills in Layout For Print Publications

-if you want to look even more impressive and pick up an easy job that mostly involves googling bits of code to copy and fuck around with, go play on CodeAcademy and get yourself qualified in not just HTML and CSS, but also JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and others. Again, this makes you a Software/Applications Developer.

The only reason you’re given the impression that these are jobs for really smart brogrammers with masters degrees in computer science is because scary jargon keeps people out. Look stuff up, and you’ll find out you already know a ton of this material. I promise you, you’re more qualified for tech/developer jobs than a lot of the people actually working at firms that focus on those kind of jobs. 

^

Often in my job people ask me if I can do something, and if I respond with, ‘No, but I’m sure I could find out how,’ they look at me like my head just rotated 360 degrees. One thing about being on the internet in this age is that you have experienced how you can just google something and you’ll probably find a youtube tutorial.

Don’t know how to use the Puppetwarp in Photoshop? *20 minutes later and some cursing included* Okay, now I do.

Don’t know how to knit? *ten minutes later* totes pro.

A lot of people bag our generation but there’s so much to be said for the sheer amount of information we’re used to absorbing and parsing. Don’t underestimate that, either!

OK entry-level kids, listen. ‘I don’t know how to do this but just give me 20 minutes’ is probably the most important, career-advancing thing you can say at your workplace because not only does it show that you’re adaptable and proactive and any number of dumb buzzwords that happen to be popular in The Industry these days. BUT If you build up on it over time, it will also pretty much make you indispensable, which is so important in an unstable job market. 

Consider this: unless you get a job with a super-successful startup where your boss is like 25, chances are you’re going to land in company where the higher-ups are in their 40s-50s, thus belonging to that particular generation that habitually puts down millenials for having No Experience of Real Life. Except in a workplace environment this means they expect that they have to train you on every single little thing, aka waste time and resources on you, aka see you as a soooort of useful nuisance who’s there to do the little menial jobs no one else wants to do. This is where the last to come first to go thing comes from really.

What your crusty 50+ y/o bosses don’t realize is that ‘being on the computer’ all day, you inherently develop a thing called rapid skill acquisition. Yeah, it sounds fancy (so fancy you can put it in your CV) but most of the time, as the previous comments point out, it just involves Google and YT tutorials. You’ll be surprised how many highbrow professionals don’t actually do this, b/c they reached the top and feel like they have a secure position and basically fall so behind on things that a 20 y/o intern can out-skill them, or quickly learn to out-skill them any day of the week. Most likely they’re not aware of this. And no, it’s not as out there as it sounds. Consider you’re talking to people who think you need training to use WordPress. Imagine what telling them you can use a blogging platform to create an easy to update professional looking website for fucking free will do to them. Imagine telling them you can make gorgeous graphics from scratch, update the company logo or design some rad business cards. THERE IS SO MUCH YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DO THAT THEY DON’T KNOW CAN BE DONE. 

A couple of years ago I interned for a research centre where I did this all the time. Three weeks in they called me to sign an employment contract that tripled my pay and I got to go everywhere with them and meet important people in my field, it was great. My 23 y/o brother, who doesn’t have a single solitary hour of formal training in PR/marketing or IT in his degree, interned as marketing assistant for a small IT company and was so quick to catch on that they hired him after the internship and by the end of the year he’d already helped increase their turnover. Eight months, unpaid internship included, and he made them more money! That kid is never going to get fired!

Also learn some programming/web design. Seriously. I see these self-taught 16 y/o kids making gorgeous Tumblr themes from scratch and I’m like. You are al fucking wizards. Not even out of highschool yet and you’re pretty much set up for a job that potentially pays in the 6 digits. 

You are smart and you are creative and you are amazing! You need to be brave and confident and capitalize on that because you’ve got what it takes and more. Fuck the jargon, you’ve got the skills.

All of this. Also, don’t be afraid of job requirements that say “must have a BA in Mass Media and 10+ experience in the Youtubez” or some stupid shit like that. Most companies are making it up as they go when it comes to anything digital. They have no idea what it takes to be a social media manager or a web developer, so they copy-pasted the requirements from someone else. Apply anyway. Quantify your skills & experience using their words and then show them what you can do. Right now, especially in the media industry, all the big-wigs at the top are sending corporate mandates to HIRE PEOPLE LIKE YOU because they are so afraid of the ~digital future~ making them insignificant. Claim your space. You likely have more practical experience than half the people working in the field.

likeniobe:

likeniobe:

just my unsolicited advice but possibly the worst conversation ender out there is “I’ll stop bothering you now” and you should never use it for any reason in any context ever 

alternatives if you are in fact very clearly keeping a person from work that they are doing during a conversation in real life

  • I’ll let you get back to work now
  • I’ll get back to you at a better time

alternatives if you just say this out of habit as a nicety either irl or in text

  • I have things I need to do but I’ll talk to you later
  • basically any “I have a reason to be ending this conversation” + “I enjoyed talking to you or would love to continue talking later”

I realized the original post sounds kind of accusatory but understand that I had to learn the hard way that acting as though you’re annoying to talk to is a self-fulfilling prophecy and it’s a very good habit to break. also keep in mind that in no case when texting are you keeping a person from doing anything, if they don’t want to talk to you they don’t have to and are free to stop replying at any time – if they’re engaging with you it’s most likely because they want to

halfys:

kinomatika:

HEY menstruating people/period havers

Heres a tip

If/when you soak thru ur tampons or ur pads or whatever you use, keep a roll/packet of unscented baby wipes next to your toilet or in whatever bag u carry ur stuff in and use em after u wipe. I know this is a “gross” topic but we all know it can get pretty gnarly down there when you soak through.

Baby wipes r incredibly helpful and good for cleaning up when you can’t shower or bathe the stuff away and you can get them for $1 a pack at dollar stores or family value or whatever. It’s a lot better than just using dry toilet paper and hoping for the best.

Baby wipes are a godsend during your period. This is a great tip for those who haven’t tried it.

jenroses:

negressive:

in a relationship with healthy communication, arguments should end with understanding on both ends

you have to keep the goal in mind

do you want to win? or do you want to understand that person and resolve the issue? (ask yourself once, then ask again)

the ego loves to win an argument, but relationships are not about feeding your ego

healthy relationships dilute the ego

if you find yourself arguing to win in your relationship, consider what you value more: the love you share with that person, or protecting your ego

This is 100% accurate. Hubby and I don’t fight often, but when we do we know the following:
1. We’re on each other’s sides
2. We’re trying to reach understanding
3. We’re trying to find a solution that will work for both of us
4. We won’t always get what we want
5. Getting what we want is less important than making it work. 
6. Usually the one who cares the most wins. That is not always the same person. (For example: I have stronger feelings on things like breastfeeding and circumcision. He has stronger feelings about which conventions we go to. I tend to defer to him on areas of law (his professional expertise) and he mostly defers to me on parenting (my professional expertise))
7. We both have vetos. We don’t use them often. I don’t whistle around him, he keeps the kids away when I’m trying to fix a computer. 
8. If someone is getting upset, it’s probably not about the surface issue we appear to be fighting about, and we need to stop, regroup, and figure our own shit out and then talk about it. 

We don’t, as a matter of policy:
Namecall
Try to score points
Keep arguing when someone says they need a break from arguing
Have the same argument over and over again without resolution

We work very hard to:
Avoid putting each other in the middle of other people’s problems with one of us. (For example, if one of my parents has a problem with something they’re doing, I will NOT carry that to him. They can talk to him themselves, or it’s not that much of a problem.)
Be the bad guy for each other. (i.e. he always has the option to say, “My wife needs me at home” when he wants out of a social obligation. I have the option to say, “I need to talk to my husband about that” when I don’t want to commit to a major expenditure, even though it’s incredibly rare that I would tell him I needed him too much for him to go do a fun thing, and I can authorize purchases without talking to him, but sometimes this avoids a whole fuckton of sales pressure. My kids get to make me the bad guy, too, when they want to avoid peer pressure.) 
Be each other’s safe space
Make sure we’re taking care of ourselves. “I need to put my oxygen mask on” is a code for “I feel like I’m drowning and I need a little bit of time to regroup where I”m not being asked to do anything for anyone else, give me that time and I’ll be more useful.”

TL:DR?
Our marriage vows included not only “Love, honor and cherish”, but the more concrete “Support, respect and defend.” 

Honestly, if you do the later, the former is easy.

deathtodickens:

al-the-grammar-geek:

pervocracy:

hashtagdion:

Just to expand on this post about calling 911 and asking for a pizza to secretly ask for help:

The post is based on a Super Bowl commercial, which itself was based on a Reddit post that’s never been verified as true. 

There is no actual pizza code with toppings and shit that dispatchers are trained in. If you come across someone who has heard of the commercial, they might understand. If you come across someone who’s never heard of it, they might think it’s a prank call and hang up on you.

A piece of actual advice to help you in this situation is to dial 911, then hang up without speaking, then turn the phone off. 911 will attempt to call you back, and when they’re unable to reach you, they’ll dispatch a unit to your location under the assumption that you need help and your call was interrupted. This will work 100% of the time, whereas the pizza trick will only work if the dispatcher has heard of the commercial/urban legend.

Also, the toppings thing was a complete and total fabrication and whoever wrote that should be ashamed of themselves, tbh.

It’s possible that the toppings thing was something that a clever dispatcher thought of on the spot, but it’s certainly not some standard code.

Write-up at Snopes.com. Status: Legend, not fact

@deathtodickens this is your professional field, correct?

Yes, I am a 911 dispatcher and this is not great advice at all. It will not work 100% of the time. It probably won’t even work 10% of the time.

(1) Every agency handles 911 hang up calls from cellular phones differently and because we receive thousands of them every month, we do not always respond to them. My agency, for instance, does not respond to 911 hang up calls from cellular phones with no disturbances heard. We call back twice and if there is no answer, we leave a message and we put in advised calls. WE DO NOT RESPOND. We are not a large agency and I can almost guarantee you that larger cities probably have a similar policy.

(2) Even if we hear a disturbance, there is no guarantee that we know where you are. Never believe that your GPS information is readily available to dispatchers – this isn’t CSI – it’s not that easy. Sometimes all we get is a very generic location (usually more than a 1000 meter radius of the cell phone tower your phone pinged off of). We can ping phones but that doesn’t always work ESPECIALLY IF YOUR PHONE IS TURNED OFF. Some cell phone companies do not provide historical location data. Many will not give us information if there is no obvious sign of an emergency. At most, they might have your subscriber information and hopefully you keeps yours up-to-date.

(3) If you’ve called 911 before or had police respond to your residence before, there’s a chance we can look in our own CAD systems and find your location based on prior calls. But, like I said, we won’t do that if there’s no obvious signs of an emergency. Also, A LOT of domestic violence victims have non-working phones with no actual cell service attached that still have the ability to dial 911. In those cases, we don’t get an actual phone number on our screens. We only receive a generic 911-area code that can’t be called back or traced and 80% of the time, they don’t have good location data.

(4) Any time you call 911 – START WITH YOUR LOCATION/ADDRESS and LISTEN to the dispatcher. If you want us to come to you and FIND you, we need to know where you are. Agencies are more likely to respond to you if you call 911 and say your address and hang up than if you say absolutely nothing at all, hang up, and turn off your phone. I cannot even stress to you how appalled I am at this advice.

PLEASE do not do that.

(5) We trust our guts more than we trust your voiceless 911 hang up call. We talk to domestic violence victims every day, some days every hour. We know when something is wrong. If someone calls in on 911 and starts insistently ordering a pizza (yes, it has happened), rambling on as if speaking to a friend, or barely talking at all, we’re not just going to hang up on you. We’re going to start asking yes or no questions because we answer thousands of 911 calls and we know when something sounds suspicious. We know when something sounds very wrong. We know when you’re in a tight spot and you can’t say more than what you’re giving us.

(6) I obviously cannot speak for every center and every dispatcher. There are bad batches everywhere. I know because I’m the one who has to write them up when they fail to do their jobs or see the urgency/importance of the jobs that they are doing. So will this always work? No. Nothing about calling 911 will always work. It will never be 100%. Law enforcement agencies are underfunded, our equipment/tech is miles below subpar to what you see on TV. Cellular phone companies don’t make it any easier for us and guess what – that little section of your phone bill that says “911 tax”? That money doesn’t come to us.

So no, it’s not always going to work but I can guarantee you that what I’ve written here will work better than calling 911, hanging up without saying anything, and turning off your phone. 

There is no universal 911 policy.

Every agency is different.

For the love of God please do not tell victims of abuse to call in voiceless 911 hang ups. If you can stay on the phone, stay on the phone. If you can leave an open line, leave the phone on and put it somewhere close. If you have a home VOIP phone, keep your address updated if you move. If you have a cell phone, keep your subscriber information current.

And the absolute safest way to call 911 and pretty much guarantee that we’ll know where you are and respond, is by calling from an old-fashioned landline or payphone.

nestofstraightlines:

okcupidescapades:

okcupidescapades:

i feel like the most important piece of wisdom i can impart on teenagers is that no one–no one–knows what the fuck they’re doing

my brother is 26 years old, makes $200k a year, and just bought a house with his fiance. he’s the success story you hear about but never actually meet in person, but it all happened by accident. he wanted to go to college for clarinet performance, but he got rejected from all the top schools. so he decided to major in physics instead, and then went on to get a doctorate to put off being an adult for a few more years. but then he ended up dropping out halfway through the program and accepting a job with google as a software engineer. so to reiterate: my brother majored in something he was not interested in, and then he got a job that had nothing to do with his degree. 

he isn’t successful because he had some master plan he followed, he just stumbled around blindly until something worked out. and that’s what we’re all doing–i majored in political science and now i do customer service for a company that makes industrial-sized gas detection monitors. the marketing director at my company has a degree in biology, and my mom has an MBA and works at a middle school.  no one knows what they’re doing, we’re all just trying different things until something works out.

so if you don’t have a plan, that’s fine. most of us don’t. and even those of us who do, don’t usually end up doing the thing they thought they would. it’s okay to relax and let life carry you wherever it’s gonna carry you. because even though a lot of us don’t end up doing the thing we wanted, most of us end up happy anyway.

I’ve been thinking about this post since I made it a few hours ago, and I realized that I literally don’t know anyone who’s doing what they thought they’d be doing at this point in their life.
I know a girl that has a degree in neuroscience and works in a restaurant (and makes quite a bit more money than I do, might I add), and a guy who wanted to be a parole officer but is now a security guard. I know people who wanted to be lawyers but ended up not having the grades for law school. I have a friend who’s 24 and just finished her bachelor’s, and two friends who decided to go to grad school because the idea of joining the adult world terrified them.

When I was seventeen, I was 100% sure that I was going to get a job as a bureaucrat and save the world. When I was a 21-year-old recent college grad, I found out that it’s impossible to get a government job unless you know someone. So I gave up and found something else. I know my teenage self would be disappointed if she could see where I’m at, but you know what? I don’t care. Because teenage me was an idiot. She didn’t know anything about the world or how it worked, and she couldn’t have possibly predicted the curveballs that life would throw at her. And because I don’t know a single person who’s doing the thing they wanted to do when they were teenagers.

I know a thousand people who aren’t where they thought they’d be, and zero people who are following the path they set out for themselves. All of us are confused and all of us are scared, and it’s okay if you are too.

I’m doing a job I love for a good wage, I love my flat and my friends
and London. I spent most of my twenties what felt like going nowhere, not even sure how
to make a start. It’s only in retrospect things I realise I had made a start and done lots of stuff, it just felt like nothing because I couldn’t see where it was going at the time. I
realise now everything I did before this has led to this. In turn, what
I’m doing now is a step towards a future path I don’t know about yet,
but wil understand looking back.

My friend started out studying Creative Writing but dropped out. She went on to studying nursing and became a midwife. She kept on wriitng, and eventually went on a prestigeous writing course in Bath. she’s just had her first book published (it’s Waterstone’s Children’s Book of the Month!). I’d call her a success story, she’s certainly happy and enjoying her life, but she (like all of us) spent her early twenties making what seemed like odd choices and false starts.

What froze me was the idea that I had to choose, had to make the right decision, and I realise now, it doesn’t matter. All you have to do is do stuff. And commit to the stuff. And then when it’s not working for you any more, move on. Not everything will be a vocation, a lot of the stuff you’ll do will be to make rent, but that doesn’t remotely mean it won’t be useful to you down the line. Life offers endless possibililities but you have to be out doing SOMETHING to encounter them.

Your twenties are scary though. If you’ve been to university, you might have found it tough, but post-graduate life is a whole different kind of tough. You at least know what you’re meant to be doing at university. When you graduate you’re expected to suddenly be self-motivating, aged 22-24 (usually) and with zero experience so far in life of setting an independant agenda. It’s super common to be depressed and daunted.

So don’t take it as failure. You’re far too freshly minted an adult to gauge anything yet.

(I’m saying this from the perspective of 33. I’d hope someone ten years ahead of me would have similarly comforting things to say to my age, because uncertainty and fear don’t go away with ‘growing up’ and ‘success’ but I don’t know yet!)

Trans resources (( please signal boost ))

alkanive:

General resources:

Trans related terminology:

Understanding your gender identity:

Pronouns:

Intersex:

Nonbinary resources:

Two Spirit:

Other Cultural Based Genders:

Transfeminine resources:

Transmasculine resources:

Coming out:

Trans mental health:

Trans advice/resource/discussion blogs and sites:

Well… thats about it! Of course there’s a whole bunch of useful resources which I just couldn’t include in this post because it was getting too long. 

Even if you yourself aren’t trans and wouldn’t find this content useful, please reblog because it may be of great help to some of your followers.

And if you ever have any trans-related questions or need some advice or support, feel free to message me at my main blog here or at my personal/transition blog here.

Hello Mr gaiman. How old were you when you started writing stories ? I’m 14 and I try and try but they are all awful. I always give up in the middle and I can never finish what I wanted to write.

neil-gaiman:

I know. I found a pile of papers of mine from my teen years and into my early twenties recently, and there were so many stories begun, so many first pages of novels never written. I’d start them, and then I’d give up because they weren’t as brilliant as Ursula K Le Guin, or Roger Zelazny, or Samuel R Delany, and anyway I wasn’t actually sure what happened next.

I was around 22 when I started finishing things. They weren’t actually very good, and they all sounded like other people, but the finishing was the important bit. I kept going. A dozen stories and a book, and then I sold one (it wasn’t very good, and I had to cut it from 8,000 words to 4,000 to sell it, but I sold it). I probably wrote another half-dozen stories over the next year, and sold three. But now they were starting to sound like me. 

Think of it this way: if you wanted to become a juggler, or a painter, you wouldn’t start jugggling, drop something and give up because you couldn’t juggle broken bottles like Penn Jillette, or start a few paintings then give up because the thing in your head was better than what your hands were getting onto the paper. You carry on. You learn. You drop things. You learn about form and shape and shade and colour and how to draw hands without the fingers looking like noodles. You finish things, learn from what you got right and what you got wrong, and then you do the next thing.

And one day you realise you got good. It takes as long as it takes. So keep writing. And all you need to do right now is try to finish things.