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Staying in on the weekends and reading cheesy romance novels, baking too much goodies for one person let alone three to eat. Going to Five Guys for dates with friends. Making mandatory but flexible movie nights with siblings.

My “coming of age” movie may look like a waste of time to others. But for me it’s safe and full of love and laughter.

This is for the people who didn’t party in their teens and twenties. For the people who didn’t have that “coming of age” movie experience with shenanigans and revelations. This is for the people who mostly keep to themselves. Who maybe prefer things to be quieter and gentler. This is for the people who don’t feel like they belong in a culture that values loud parties and flashing lights. I see you. And you are valid.

Interested in Writing But Can't Seem to Write

Anonymous asked: I've been interested in writing since I was a child. Used to be a bookworm. Whole chapter books in one night, completely addicted as a form of escapism. My first real dream job was to be an author - I decided this at around 11 maybe. No matter how many phases I've had, I always return to wanting to be an author. I am 22 now. I have not written a single thing. I vaguely remember writing like, maybe 3 things at most. Incomplete works that I just had fun with. And this was before I even turned 14. But in all those years of "loving writing and books" and "wanting to be an author" I did straight up nothing. Didn't even contribute to fanfics for the fandoms I was deeply obsessed with (I do remember trying once but wasn't into it). At some point reading was out of my life too.

I'm going to start here, because of these conflicting statements:

-- "I have not written a single thing." -- "I vaguely remember writing like, maybe 3 things at most."

See the issue? ;) If you've written "maybe 3 things" you have written something. They may have been incomplete, and you may not even remember what you were, but that doesn't mean you should discount them. You have written. That experience is still in there somewhere.

One of my biggest pet peeves as a longtime writer is hearing newer writers refer to themselves as "aspiring writers." If you write, you're a writer. Period. It doesn't matter if you journal, write poetry, write fan-fiction, or wrote a middle-school round robin with friends where you all married your favorite K-Pop stars. You write. You're a writer. And, honestly, even if you're not actively writing right now, if you want to write--if you think about writing, are constantly jotting down story ideas and character names, and are eagerly gathering inspiration from all around you... guess what? You're still a writer.

Now I'm trying to take my interest in writing more seriously, but I just can't sit down and write. I'm good at storing notes and ideas and daydreaming what my stories are about, but nothing is ever produced. If I think about it I immediately lose interest - even if I am in fact still interested in writing and publishing? I'm very confused by my behaviour and I wonder if it's normal.

What you're experiencing isn't unusual. In fact, most writers experience it from time to time, though usually it happens at points further into the writing journey and not right at the start. But I still wouldn't call that "abnormal." It happens.

There are a hundred-million reasons why it happens, and the only way to figure out why it's happening for you right now is to do some soul-searching. At your age, I think a prime suspect would be that you're in the jumping off point for your adult life. This can be a tumultuous time for a variety of reasons, and your focus and energy may be naturally geared toward the things that help you explore and settle into this new phase of life. Even beyond that, if you have have a demanding job (including being a parent or caregiver), are going to school or studying for job-related tests/classes, or have a lot going on right now (multiple projects, lots of travel, lots of appointments and social commitments, etc.)--your focus and energy is probably running thin as it is, so finding a way to funnel what's left into writing is going to take some finesse. And that's if this is even the right time for it, which I'll get to later on.

Writing Stress = Writing Avoidance

One of the most mind-blowing things I've learned about writing is that writing avoidance often comes down to writing feeling stressful for whatever reason. If you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself to write, write a certain amount, meet goals or deadlines, that translates to stress. It makes writing stressful, and the problem with that is evolution has wired our brains to avoid things that are stressful. At its most basic level, stress is a response to danger--you hear a lion roar in the distance, it causes you stress, you turn and run in the opposite direction. Stress triggers the "fight or flight response," a defense mechanism that protects us from the impending danger. With writing, "fight" shows up as self-criticism. "Flight" shows up as avoidance.

So, if you find that you want to write but are avoiding it, it's worth considering if you're avoiding it because it feels stressful to you. If so, there are things you can do to de-stress writing. For one thing, let go of the notion that you have to write any particular thing or amount in order to be a writer. Set yourself a bare minimum writing goal to reach every day... like writing for 10 minutes. That can be any writing--journaling, writing prompts, working on a story, fleshing out story ideas, fluffy fan-fiction, poetry, writing down a favorite memory, doing a book or movie review, anything. Try to do it every day, but don't beat yourself up if you sit down and aren't able to write anything, don't write a lot, or never sit down at all. Just try, every day, do your best. Also, try setting up a writing routine that you do every day when you sit down for that little writing session. Try to pick the same or similar time each day, do a little meditation or stretch beforehand, put on some soft music or light a candle, get your favorite drink or small snack. If you do this almost every day, what you'll start to find is that the writing happens more and more easily. Eventually you'll be spend more and more time doing it.

Why can I say I'm interested in writing when I don't write at all?

I'm interested in traveling to England but I haven't yet and have no current plans to. Does that mean I'm not allowed to say I'm interested in traveling to England?

Being interested in something doesn't mean you have to do that thing right now or you can't say you're interested in it.

And even if you can't write right now for whatever reason, there are still plenty of writerly things you CAN do. Following writing blogs and vlogs is a good start. You can listen to writing podcasts and read writing craft books. You can keep a notebook full of plot and character ideas, setting inspiration, favorite quotes, interesting words, and overheard bits of dialogue. You can watch TV shows and movies (and read books, which includes listening to audiiobooks!) You don't even have to do these things all the time or everyday. Just periodically, when you can. It all goes into your creative well and will be there to draw from when you are able to write.

One final word...

You do not have to be in a hurry to be a writer or to be a published writer. The average age of first-time publication is mid-30s. I was mid-40s. Jane Austen was 35. Toni Morrison was 40. J.R.R. Tolkien was 45. Richard Adams was 52. Annie Proulx was 57. Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65. National Book Award winner Harriet Doerr was 74. Poet Sarah Yerkes started writing poetry at 97 and was published at 101.

So, be interested in writing. Own that interest. Figure out if and how writing fits into your life right now. If it doesn't, do the other things. Fill your creative well so it will be ready when writing does fit into your life. ♥

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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Ooh. Please please make more self-inserts. Not only is it fun you have no idea how much it can help you be kind to yourself. Have the hero of the franchise fall in love with you for what you think are your annoying quirks. Have the wisest man in that fictional world, tell others that your are the kindest and the smartest person he has ever met. Have the evil guy fall for you and revoke his evil ways cuz youre just that hot. Allow yourself to be loved by the fictional characters you look up to and in time you may also begin see how wonderful you really are.

I don't know which artist needs to hear this, but if you don't like your lineart...if you find that the lineart stage does not add any value to your artwork...then you do not need to do lineart. your artwork is still complete if you go straight from sketch to colours. as long as you think it's complete.

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Given that my post about why you are not obligated to blog about Current Events (whatever they are at any given time) is going around again, I'd like to say the same thing from a slightly different angle and state what you ARE obligated to do.

You are still not obligated to blog about ANY specific subject, no matter how serious, no matter how urgent, no matter how grave. You never will be. The impact of social media on real world atrocities has the potential to be great, but it is cumulative. No one is going to die in a ditch somewhere, barely uttering the tragic final words, "if only...if only...tumblr users wormhentaiafficionado and mothmanbutthole...posted about how sad they are...then maybe things would be different..." - nor are policymakers going to change their minds because some tweet has 749,845 cumulative likes and retweets instead of 750,000. Make no mistake, if you have the energy to be sharing these kinds of things, it can be good to do! We live in a society, it's always good to help where you can, even if all you can do is show public support for people who are hurting - but if you can't do that, for any reason, you're not obligated to. Period. End of.

What are you obligated to do?

1. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Social media accounts are not most people's entire lives. Just because someone isn't blogging about whatever tragedy is occurring does not mean they don't care. Sometimes it does mean that, sure, and that sucks - but not only are you not going to change that by yelling at them, sometimes it means they care too much. Sometimes it means they're closer to it than you assumed and need a moment to think about something else, anything else. Sometimes it means it's not safe for them to be blogging about it, be it due to abusive family potentially finding out, being at risk of getting fired and quite possibly dying of poverty sooner rather than later, or even taking very illegal direct action that they do not want to be linked to on record in even the vaguest possible way. Sometimes it means dealing with it is their day job and they're on the internet after a long and exhausting day of trying to make things better. You don't know. You'll never know unless they decide to tell you. No one owes you that explanation. You are obligated to make peace with that fact.

2. Slow the fuck down.

Listen. When bad things happen, from natural disasters, to manmade horrors beyond our comprehension, it's only normal to get scared and desperate to do something, anything about it. That heightened emotional state is very vulnerable, and because of that, there will always be people out there looking to take advantage of the chaos for ulterior motives - and no matter how good your intentions, and in fact no matter how right you are in your values and at the core of your strategy, you will never be immune to garbage-in-garbage-out. Misinformation can be deadly, even in the hands of someone who means well. You need to pause long enough to sort out the garbage. You need to learn to fight the impulse to trust every single post that tells you that your share/comment/etc. is URGENT and WILL mean the difference between life and death for someone, somewhere. Do your fact checks. Scan for dogwhistles before you end up passing around a post that implies [insert group that is marginalized in most of the English-speaking world but has hegemonic power in some other part of the world and is committing some atrocity there] is coming after you next if you stay silent. Vet charity and advice links before you accidentally send scared, desperate, and vulnerable people to a scammer - or worse, hand them over to a honeypot operation or give them a recipe for poisonous "medicine".

Or, to put it another way, you are obligated to make an attempt to stay informed enough to avoid making things materially worse. You are not obligated to doomblog. In fact, doomblogging can be antithetical to your obligation to not make things worse. Choosing neutrality in times of great tragedy and injustice is bad, yes, but you should immediately be wary of anyone who says that simply not blogging about a subject - let alone not sharing a specific post - is inherently "choosing neutrality".

So remember: breathe. Be careful out there. Mourn for the people that whatever atrocity has this or my other post circulating has taken from us or will take from us, and do your best to be kind to the people who are still alive - and remember that kindness includes using social media responsibly.

“Having panic attacks, that is NOT a character flaw.”

Compliment them. That person you think has their shit together and wouldn't need it or want to hear it. They do. They absolutely do. Their shit is dispersed. I promise you. It is a shambles.

I've had someone tell me to my face that they would compliment me, but for the fact that I already know this or that about myself. Huh???? No. Sorry.

No I don't. In my weaker moments I become an ungrateful mud monkey that has never once internalized a compliment

I adore being told you like me or something I've done. It sustains me, and in my weaker moments when I forget that life is good and happy, you might catch me before I fall.

You ever had someone catch you like that? You can do it too. The ones that catch you have been you in that moment before and know they will be again.

Overcoming fear in language learning

You might be the most extroverted person on the planet, but as soon as you start learning and speaking a new language, something in you changes and you feel a bit more shy. You’re nervous you’ll make a mistake in front of a native speaker. What if they laugh at me? you think.

Fear when speaking a new language is very normal when starting out. It’s healthy and OK as it drives us to be conscious of correct grammar and vocabulary usage. I think it’s because we don’t want to be seen as inferior or stupid, and learning a language brings us down to a baby’s level again. It’s important to remember that babies and kids aren’t afraid of making mistakes - the more they mess up the faster they learn!

You’re probably reading this because you’re looking for a practical way to get over the fear of making mistakes. Me telling you it’s OK to make mistakes is not going to help. Here are 3 ways you can feel less shy when speaking a new language:

1. ANALYZE THE SITUATION & GO EASY ON YOURSELF

What helps is to identify WHY you’re afraid of speaking a language. It could be because you’re too shy (same tbh) or because you don’t know enough vocabulary. It’s great advice to tell someone to start speaking a language from day one, but for some people, a combination of shyness and lack of vocabulary makes this nearly impossible. Remember to be kind to yourself - if you don’t feel ready, take some more time.

If you use the wrong particle, grammar structure or word, what’s the worst that can happen? People will either correct you, ignore the mistake because they understood you anyway, or, in the least likely scenario, be a bit confused and ask you to repeat - which is a good opportunity to learn from the error. If people laugh at you, that’s a reflection of them as a person, not you.

2. PREPARE IN ADVANCE: VOCAB & PHRASES FOR SPECIFIC CONTEXTS

When I was working as a design intern at a Japanese company, I was VERY scared that I wouldn’t understand anything during meetings and presentations. It’s impossible to know what words to expect, but luckily I had an idea of what we would be talking about. It helped me a lot to look up words I suspected I might hear during the internship. I built vocabulary lists and example sentences of design-related vocabulary. In this way, I taught myself. You can’t find a textbook for every topic under the sun, so taking matters into your own hands and creating your own language learning materials boosts your confidence and helps you improve faster since you’re learning something that has direct value to your life.

You may even want to write out a full conversation the way you imagine it going. I do this for job interviews in foreign languages a lot. I have taken many job interviews in Japanese and Korean, and to ease my nerves, I like to write out what I expect my interviewer to ask me, and how I’ll answer accordingly. It’s an effective way to learn new vocabulary too.

You might be interested in: Tips & Tricks for Vocabulary Acquisition

In the case of online interviews, I pasted some vocabulary cards on my wall and laptop screen for quick reference. Obviously you can’t do that when you’re talking to someone in the flesh - but people will certainly understand if you pause for a while to try and look for the right word. If you cannot remember or don’t know a word, you can always talk around the word and describe it in another way. If you don’t know the word for “cake” for example, but you know the words “sweet” and “food”, you can say “sweet food” and they might say “cake?” in return.

3. PRACTICE IN A SAFE ENVIRONMENT

Just like practicing a speech for a presentation, you can practice using new words and phrases in a safe environment until you’re ready to use it with a native speaker. This could be talking to yourself, a pet, a chatting partner online, or a tutor. My favorite method is talking to people on voice apps. When I can’t see someone’s face and they can’t see mine, I feel less ashamed of making mistakes.

For practicing Mandarin, Japanese and Korean, I use an app called Goodnight. It’s not really for language exchange per se, but it’s a great way to be connected to people around the world via a phone call. Since it’s just a voice chat, you don’t even need to know what the person looks like, and you can practice talking to them in your target language. The worst that can happen is one of two things: 1. They’re a creep 2. They hang up. No biggie, right? In the former case, just cancel the call and move on. If they hang up on you - no worries - you can just dial to connect to the next person. It’s a very effective way to improve your pronunciation too since you’ll be hearing your target language so much! Other apps you can look into are Saito San, Kakao Talk and Wakie (click those links to see me practice Japanese and Korean on apps!) You can try Omegle too but it’s full of creepy people.

Lastly, remember not to take language learning too seriously. Your goal is to communicate with others, right? It’s counter-effective to worry about using the right words and grammar each time you try to say something. Rather be natural and throw in a bunch of words hoping it makes sense, instead of staying quiet and missing the point of communication. Your listener will more often than not help you in the right direction. Originally posted on my website Language YouTube Instagram

Never be defined by your past …

💯🙏

Hate Sin | Moment | 2819 Church

POWERFUL! HALLELUJAH! Very powerful. I pray that this reaches those that it should.

it doesn't matter if your writing is "bad." it's good because it's yours, and you wrote it. and for that, you're doing a good job

a gentle reminder that you’re still young and there’s still plenty of time to figure things out, become who u want to be and create a comfortable life for yourself

you're still a writer, even if:

you don't write every day

your books aren't published

you haven't finished your first draft

your stories don't get a lot of interaction

you keep creating new stories instead of finishing them

you aren't as good or skilled at writing as other people might be

you struggle to come up with new ideas

you abandon stories when you get bored of them

you don't want your books to be published

you take long breaks between writing sessions

you only write for fun

you doubt your ability as a writer

you don't create original stories and write fanfiction

you don't know all there is to writing techniques and writing rules

Writing is about writing. It's not a competition of who can reach what first. You still hold value as a writer, regardless of what your progress or process looks like. You set your own goals, and it's okay to only do this for fun.

writers and artists will go "this isn't good enough." my brother in christ, you're creating something new out of nothing and expressing yourself creatively. your productivity and unrealistic standards of perfection do not define you or the worth of your art. you're doing great.

Listening to the latest OSPod and your discussion about being ace and wanting to be prioritized, it resonated a lot with me. I also go through those sorts of yearning periods and it was nice to hear that verbalized.

It's a tough feeling! Loneliness is a universal consideration, but for anyone who doesn't want a single life partner it takes on a new, difficult shape. Finding "the one" won't fix it, because you don't want "one", and you also don't want to give all of yourself to just "one." So everything we learn from the social and cultural zeitgeist tells us that this life will make us, forever, a third wheel - deprioritized, unnecessary, nobody's first choice.

I think some of the fear is rooted in a fallacy, though. Broken down, it's basically just "will people like me if I can't offer them something?"

Relationships aren't really transactional. I do things for the people I love because I like it when they're happy, and I can only assume the inverse is also true. But if you're a person for whom the supposed "highest tier of relationship closeness" is inaccessible, if your friends have Most Important People in their lives who aren't you, this insidious feeling can creep in. "Those people are closer because they could offer something you couldn't. They get to be cared about because they have something you lack."

It's not true, obviously. Relationships aren't a linear hierarchy; every relationship is completely unique. Everyone I'm friends with, I'm friends with in a completely different way. I don't have a ranking or tier list defining how close we are, and I can only assume my friends don't either.

And the logic breaks down further the more you look at it. There's this idea that friendships are more fragile and disposable than romantic relationships, leaving people whose only relationships are friendships in a more supposedly unstable position. But romances and life-partnerships break down all the time. Not to go morbid to prove a point, but I've lost several elderly relatives at this point, and the one whose passing was mourned the most, the longest, and the most impactfully was the maiden aunt who never married, never had any kids, but was still so deeply loved by her nieces and nephews and their spouses and children. I've seen it proved that marriage, kids and grandkids doesn't save someone from isolation, and that a single life doesn't doom them to isolation either. None of us are automatically destined for loneliness.

A fear of abandonment is a powerful thing, and while my perspective on it is intrinsically tied to my ace identity, it's definitely not just us feeling it. For a social species like us, there's really nothing more unifying than a fear of being alone.

....Thank you OP

you deserve a more tender tomorrow.

As a writer, allow yourself the headspace to be imperfect and you’ll realize how liberating that can be if you’re feeling pressured to get things *just right* all the time.

Each story is there to teach you something. At some point, by going over it again and again and again, you’re simply treading water. You’re not learning anything new. You’re not allowing yourself to advance to the next story that has something else to teach you - something that is vital to your growth and abilities as a writer.

So put THE END on your project and move on. 

“But…but….it’s not perfect yet!”

That’s okay. That’s the point of moving on to the next project. You can get a better view of the mistakes you’ve made in the past by learning new perspectives and skills in the future.

Consider this your permission slip to release a project you’ve been fiddling with for ages. Let it go. Stamp it with a big red DONE.

Then you’re free to explore your next adventure with a new project!