I Think Some People Don't Realize You Don't Have To Fully Commit To Aids And Adaptions To Use Them. I'm

a whole bunch of links for a bad day

serotonin

2048

control the weather (flash warning)

spend bill gates’ money

read a book

write without distractions

snickerdoodle mug cakes

recipes for when you’re low on spoons

khan academy

an aggressive reminder

1000 awesome everyday things

make a picrew of a worm on a string

bongo cat

useless websites

emergency compliments

a nice uquiz

more useless websites

sketch comedy

sculpt something

guess google searches

white noise

rain

customizable

coffee shop

thunderstorm + fireplace

rain on a tin roof

rain + traffic

train sounds

a fan

catharsis

scream into the void

cut your screen (trigger warning)

break glass

self-care

inexpensive self-care

small acts of self-care

develop a self-care plan

do nothing for two minutes

cope with:

common sleep problems (+solutions)

nightmares

stress

stress 2

are you stressed or depressed?

homework stress

an eating disorder

things to do instead of harming yourself

trauma

anger

worrying

grief

a breakup

the suicide of a loved one

bullying

is this relationship harmful?

sexual assault

obsessive-compulsive disorder

obsessive-compulsive disorder 2

suicidal thoughts

help

a whole bunch of hotlines

more hotlines

suicide hotlines

talk to someone

active positivity blogs

@positivityreblogs

@positivitie

@recoverystuff

@survivor-positivity

@ocdiscourse

@positivelypastelpink

@positiveautistic

@mental–healthawareness

@slfcare

@traumasurvivors

@softheartedsuggestion

remember:

drink some water

eat something if you haven’t in a while

take a break

sleep if you need to

you’re doing amazing i love you

Write Your Story

I just showed my 11-year-old son how many coffee shop AUs there are on AO3.

Why?

He sat down the other day to write a Minecraft story about three kids who go through a portal in their back yard and end up in the world of Minecraft where they have to battle all the big bosses (I didn’t even realize there WERE big bosses in Minecraft but that’s beside the point). He wrote three chapters with a little input from me – his first beta – and y'all?

He was fucking excited. To be writing a story.

Today he came home from school and seemed a little down, so I asked him about it only to find out that some little asshole at his school told him, “There is already a Minecraft story.”

Me: Okay? So what?

Lucifer: If there’s already a story, no one will read mine.

Immediately, I dragged him in and pulled up my AO3 account. My boys know I write fanfiction, so I showed him my account and how many subscribers I have. Then I showed him how many Teen Wolf stories there are. And then, because it seemed like the perfect analogy, I said, “What if I wrote a story where two characters meet in a coffee shop and fall in love? No werewolves, nothing at all to do with the actual Teen Wolf universe. Just Stiles and Derek meet in a coffeeshop and fall in love.”

He laughed.

I showed him Mornings Aren’t For Everyone. Showed him how many hits it had, how many kudos, how many lovely comments.

Then I said, “So do you think, if anyone else wrote a story about those exact same characters meeting in a coffee shop and falling in love… would anyone read it?”

He laughed and said, “No because you already did.”

So I clicked on the Sterek tag and refined to coffee shop AU. His mind was blown to see that they ALL had thousands of hits and kudos and comments. Then I clicked on JUST the coffee shop AU tag and showed him all the fics across all the fandoms written by countless different people.

I’m going to tell you all now what I told him because it applies to everyone.

Write your story. It doesn’t matter that someone else has written a story about that subject. They didn’t write YOUR story. Only you can do that.

And I want to read your story.

Stop trying to be productive

The Outbursts of Everett True was a comic strip that ran in papers from 1905 to 1927, wherein the aforementioned Everett True regularly beat the everliving shit out of rude people as a warning to anyone else who might consider being rude. Men have not only been taking up too much room on public transport for about as long as public transport has existed, but the people around them have been irritated about it for at least a hundred years. The next time someone tries to claim that manspreading is a false phenomenon, please direct them to this strip so that Everett True can correct their misconceptions with an umbrella upside the head.

Abusers are generally great at something called “manufacturing insecurity”. It means, even if you’ve never been insecure about something, abuser will create an insecurity about it, solely for the purpose of emotionally manipulating you. Meaning, when you’re not doing, saying, or thinking what they want, they have a go at your “insecurity”, triggering your pain, fear, guilt, shame, everything they taught you to feel, as a way to teach you that this pain is what you’re going to get if you fail to obey them.

It’s not exactly hard to manufacture an insecurity (provided you are cruel and vicious), all you have to do is take a social norm and convince a person they aren’t good enough in one or all departments. You convince a person they’re too loud, too fat, too ugly, slow, naive, gullible, stupid, lazy, selfish, sexual, provocative, demanding, and that this is the reason why they will always fail, it’s a reason why they keep getting hurt, it’s a reason why nobody will ever love or care for them. It’s utterly cruel, and an absolute lie. Deviating from the “norm” in any way is not a reason of any of those things, if you’re getting hurt it’s because people are hurting you, if you’re unloved it’s because people around you refuse to show affection and care. These things cannot be the individual’s fault, it’s always the environment setting person up for pain. And abusers already know this. But they make a step to convince a victim it’s all their fault, everything others do to them, their fault. And even worse, that they deserved being hurt.

This kind of nonsense blaming everything on unrelated trait of individual can lead to a person getting terrified they could have somehow caused horrible things just by being themselves, that it’s impossible to even predict what might happen to them just because they’re “this way” or another. It creates an atmosphere of panic and confusion, and they find themselves seeing no way forward but to accept guidance from abuser. Abuser then pretends to know what victim is to do in order to avoid pain and failure - of course, only up to the point when abuser decides to inflict pain on purpose, to control and manipulate.

You’re not stupid if you fall for this kind of trap, it’s designed to work on people who are self-aware, who work on getting themselves better, who are trying their hardest. You don’t even have to lack confidence, abusers will take a confident person and eat their confidence away. And once caught in this situation, it might be hard to believe that someone would stoop that that kind of cruelty and lie to you while knowing perfectly well that you are good, that there’s no reason on earth to criticize your traits, that you have nothing to be ashamed of. That you haven’t deserved any of it.

It's a lot healthier to go for a daily walk than to sign up for a gym membership you won't be using because you hate that kind of exercise. It's a lot healthier to eat a frozen meal than to skip a meal because you were too tired to cook something healthy. It's a lot healthier to take a quick shower than to procrastinate an elaborate routine for days. Don't aim so high that you won't be hitting anything!

Okay I’m currently furious that migraines are often so blindly easy to treat and I had to find this out myself at the age of 26 when I’ve been to a neurologist since I was 11 lol so I’m about to teach you two neat and fast little tricks to deal with pain!

The first is the sternocleidomastoid muscle, or the SCM muscle.

This big red section is responsible for pain around the eye, cheekbone, and jaw, as well as some temple pain. Literally all you have to do is angle your head down a little, angle it away from the side that hurts, and then you can gently pinch and rub that muscle. I find it best to start at the bottom and travel upwards. The relief is so immediate! You can increase pressure as you feel comfortable doing so.

Here is a short and easy video showing this in action

The second is a fast and easy stretch that soothes your vagus nerve, which is the nerve responsible for calming you down. The vagus nerve, for those unfamiliar, is stimulated by deep breathing such as yawning, sighing, singing, or taking a deep breath to calm your anger in a tense situation.

You can stretch this out by sitting up as straight as possible (this does not have to be perfect to work) and interlacing your fingers. Put your hands on the back of your head with your thumbs going down the sides of your neck and, while keeping your face forward, look all the way to one side with just your eyes. Hold that until you feel the urge to breathe deeply or yawn, or until you can tell there’s a change. Then do the same thing on the other side. When you put your arms down, you should clearly be able to turn your head farther in both directions. If the first session doesn’t get rid of your migraine, rest and repeat as many times as necessary. I even get a little fancy with it and roll my eyes up and down along the outer edge sometimes to stretch as much as I can.

If you need a visual here’s a good video on it. I know some of the language they use seems questionable but this is real and simple science and should not be discarded because it’s been adopted by the trendy wellness crowd!

I seriously cannot believe I didn’t hear a word of this from any doctor in my life. Additionally, if you get frequent recurring migraines, you may want to see a dietician. Migraines can be caused by foods containing histamines, lectin, etc. and can also be caused by high blood pressure in specific situations such as exercise, stress, and even sex.

If any of this information helps you I’d love to hear it btw! It’s so so fast and easy to do. Good luck!

On Voting in America

So one of the most profound comments on routine chores that I've ever encountered was, hilariously, the Pickle Rick episode of "Rick & Morty," where (after a lot of shenanigans have already ensued) this therapist absolutely lays Rick out:

"I have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy, the same way I'm bored when I brush my teeth and wipe my ass. Because the thing about repairing, maintaining, and cleaning is: it's not an adventure. There's no way to do it so wrong you might die. It's just work. And the bottom line is some people are okay going to work and some people, well, some people would rather die. Each of us gets to choose."

I think about this at least once a week — usually while I'm doing my laundry or sweeping or some other task that needs doing and won't get me anything more than clean clothing or a dog-hair-free floor. There's no Pulitzer for wiping down your microwave or scrubbing your toilet; no one's awarding you for getting all the dishes out of the sink. At best you have the satisfaction of crossing it off your list.

Voting is very much the same (and I'm talking about the US here, as an American). Sure, you sometimes get a sticker; but nobody's going to cheer for you. There's no adventure here, no potential for anything more than crossing something off of a list. It's a chore, something that needs doing in order to repair, maintain, and yes even clean. So I get why people don't like doing it.

And I've decided I don't give a shit.

Do it anyway. Your country takes astonishingly little from you — taxes, the once-in-a-blue-moon jury duty, and a theoretical draft that hasn't been used in over half a century and likely will never be again — but it asks you (asks! not requires! not demands!) to vote once a year. It's not always easy; especially in conservative states, the impediments to vote can be ridiculous. But it is once a year and unlike in our nation's all-too-recent past, you will not die if you do it.

In fact, the worst outcome from voting these days is that the person or issue that you vote for loses — but you won't know if they lose until after the election. Polls are less accurate now, for a whole host of reasons; you cannot know until after the election who or what will win. This makes your vote more valuable than possibly ever before.

Use that power. Not because it's exciting or even rewarding, but because your vote is what keeps our country's metaphorical teeth from falling out and our metaphorical ass from stinking.

Brush, wipe, vote.

So many people who get periods are like “Ugh it sucks that having a menstrual cycle makes you almost die every month” like no that’s not normal you need to go to the doctor