The merit of your writing.

So, you’ve read something that has resonated with you. It’s everything you’ve wanted in terms of characters, prose, plot and pace. It’s the best you’ve read in years. You reread your favourite lines. You have to take a break just to absorb every meticulously crafted line. You are in awe of how something so small can seem to take up so much space.

And in a perfect world, it would inspire you to go out and create. To work on that story that is languishing in your save files, to pick up that WIP you abandoned, to make you want to write something different and new and better. 

Instead, it makes you feel inferior. The words are too good. You could never write like that. The characters are too perfect. You don’t have that insight. The story is too captivating. Your ideas are boring, cliche, plain. The insight is remarkable. You can barely string a thought together coherently. 

Why even bother, you think.

Don’t fall into that trap. I have been there so many times. I have abandoned writing for years because of “why even bother”. I have let it destroy my confidence, only to patch it back up in a cheap imitation of what it once was, just to let it invade my thoughts again. I have questioned every thing I’ve written, every choice, every line, because why even bother if someone is so much better. 

YOUR WRITING HAS MERIT. What you don’t realize is that it’s not in terms of better, but different. Different style, different story, different interpretation, different mind.

Someone out there will love the way you describe the night sky in poetry. Someone out there will love the way you describe the look on someone’s face when their heart breaks. Someone out there will love your idea, that strange one that seems impossible or already done, because it’s new and exciting or they love endless amounts of that same story. Someone out there will love your interpretation of that character, whether more gentle or bitter or broken or healed. Someone out there will love the words you write, the grandiose use of adverbs (my guilt) or the minimal scattering of dialogue. Someone out there will love your abundance or lack of something you saw in that story you so loved, the one that rendered you speechless and snuffed out your fire. 

Someone out there will love your words. And you need to share them. 

Speaking as a writer, no one sets out to create something to discourage others. No one wants to dominate their corner and be the only one there. No one wants to be alone in their craft. If they do, they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Speaking as a writer, I would never want you to read my writing and think, why bother. 

I want you to think, why bother waiting?

Your story matters. Your writing matters. It’s beautiful and defined and gorgeous and a work in progress and growing and already there and insightful and mysterious: it all has merit. 

Never stop. Never stop writing and practicing and doing and creating and learning and loving the words you weave.

You may think someone has done it more beautifully or better or too many times or never because who wants to read it? 

They maybe have done all those things, but they lack one thing: they haven’t done it like you have.

Oh!

Thank you all, i needed further explanation - And i do find it might help me!

No offense but the internet gives you the most wrong and fucked up idea of helping people because people get mad if you don't care about disasters happening in 72 countries, meanwhile the people in real life that are doing the most good picked one VERY SPECIFIC thing to care about and care about it REALLY HARD

Walks up to a guy working on restoring a native tree species to his downtown "why aren't you posting about grasses in Turkmenistan!"

The internet has taken a whole generation of bright, motivated, passionate young people who care and have big hearts and turned them into paralyzed, shattered wrecks too crushed by the weight of the world's pain to hand a pair of socks to a person in need

There is too much to fix. Our brains, our hearts, our finite and precious lives are truly not capable of taking it all in. That feeling of being overwhelmed, heartsick, and exhausted is because we are simply not designed to know about all of the brokenness everywhere.

Evolution is just not fast enough to keep up with the information technologies of post- Neolithic civilization, never mind 24/7 news cycles and Instagram reels. It is okay, it is necessary, to look away.

Pick one broken thing, one place, one change at a time. Give fixing that thing your heart. Stay informed, sure — but broadly. Know enough to make a good decision if you are electing or delegating someone to work on another broken thing. But your energy and attention are finite.

Ask yourself, who benefits from your being constantly outraged, depressed, immobilized by anxiety? Cui bono? Then do yourself and your society a huge favor and thwart the fuck out of those people. Pick something. Anything. But we all need to pick a pile and start shoveling, or this shit ain’t going anywhere.

your energy and attention are finite.

this this this! I volunteer at two places. i wish i could do more but i'm just not physically able to. i wish i could help do something about so much injustice and pain in the world but all i can do is concentrate on one small part of it and make it as better as i can.

start small. use a gardening trowel if you can't use a shovel. every little bit helps.

I’ll add my advice, as an environmentalist and community organizer from GenX:

Activism is a marathon, not a sprint.

Pick the thing you’re passionate about, or the thing where you feel you can make the biggest difference, and connect with people doing that work.

Pace yourself so you don’t burn out. You can only run on passion and fumes for so long.

Using your social media to signal-boost other activists, participating in letter-writing/phoning actions to hold politicians accountable, and showing up to protests are good ways to support other causes in solidarity, if you have the spoons.

A skilled artisan is a joy to witness

Yo every single step of this is SO FUCKING HARD 

THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO FUCK IT UP

I JUST

The clay does whatever he tells it to do.

Really puts into perspective that verse about God being the potter and us being the clay.

my goodness that was incredible

Oh the loop was prefect too.

Ya I was impressed by that too.

"Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they're 15" this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit

To wit:

I want to share some wisdom from my high school art teacher.

In my AP Art class, there was a girl who was just starting to experiment with mixed media. At this point she was still playing around, trying to decide what direction she wanted to go with her portfolio. So one critique day, she brought in an abstract canvas with some rhinestone highlights and painted and real peacock feathers. She loved sparkles and peacock feathers so she thought she’d try introducing them a *little*. And after everyone had given some input, the teacher gave her his advice, VERY roughly paraphrased here:

“So here’s the thing… I do not like this style. These are just elements that do not speak to me personally, but I see that you like them, and you’re doing interesting things with them.

“My biggest critique is, I only merely *dislike* this piece. I want you to make me HATE it. Go crazy with the things that you like. Don’t hold back trying to make it palatable to people like me. Because I am NEVER going to like it. And if the audience does not like it, it should drive them crazy seeing how much YOU love it.”

Her portfolio was chock full of neon colors and glitter and rhinestones and splashes of peacock feathers and it was a delight. Our teacher despised every piece lol, but she got great marks and I think even won some awards. And more importantly, she was happy and proud of the results. Because she didn’t limit herself by trying to appeal to people who were never going to enjoy what she enjoyed.

Takeaway here: be as cringe as you want. Don’t limit yourself based on other ppl’s tastes. They’re not you, and you are incredible 💕

needle/pin sharpener.

no really, squeeze it. Does it feel like it’s got sand in it? is’s sharpening sand. Stab the tip of your needle into it back and forth and it’ll help put a sharp edge back on a pin or needle that’s been blunted by use, or has a little bit of rust on it. It can’t fix anything worse then a little of either, and won’t work on something REALLY blunted, but its a lifesaver.

also it is a pepper

It's not a pepper and it's not for sharpening!!

It may seem like it should be a pepper, since that would go better with the flavour of a tomato (and the mass produced modern ones are admittedly more pepper shaped), but it is and has always been a strawberry. Here are some antique emery strawberries, which are much more strawberry shaped, and some of them have seeds.

(source)

(source)

(Home Needlework Magazine, 1899)

And it's for cleaning needles, not sharpening them. I can't imagine how jamming a blunt needle point around in a bunch of loose grit could possibly sharpen it in any significant way, and all the historical sources I've seen only talk about cleaning.

-Woman's Institute Reference Library, 1916.

-The Improvement of Educational Administration in Massachusetts, 1916.

-Boys' and Girls' Clothing Club, 1915.

-The Unitarian Register, 1908.

-Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, 1910.

This patent from 1873 mentions an emery slab for sharpening pins, which is quite different from a cushion, and which sounds like it actually would work for sharpening.

Then later down the page it also says

So. Strawberry for cleaning. Not pepper for sharpening.

Gentle reminder - modern sewing tools are made from treated or plated metal, or stainless steel. In terms of human civilisation, this is a wild advance of technology. Needles are some of our oldest tools; rust was formerly ubiquitous, and attacked every form of everyday metal. A rusty needle tears fabric, or worse, stains it. The luxury and technology of rustproof needles and pins - forgotten in a few generations of human memory - and yet it is remembered in the strawberry. Memory is stored in the strawberry!

There is a specific and terrifying difference between “never were” monsters and “are not anymore” monsters

“The thing that was not a deer” implies a creature which mimics a deer but imperfectly and the details which are wrong are what makes it terrifying

“The thing that was not a deer anymore” on the other hand implies a thing that USED to be a deer before it was somehow mutated, possessed, parasitically controlled or reanimated improperly and what makes THAT terrifying is the details that are still right and recognizable poking out of all the wrong and horrible malformations.

hey I totally fucked up and forgot the 3rd type, which is “Is Not Anymore And Maybe Never Was” monsters “The thing which was no longer a deer and maybe never was” implies a creature that, at first glance, completely appears to be a deer, but over time degrades very slowly until you realize (probably too late) that it is not a deer anymore, and had you seen it in this state first, you wouldn’t have recognized it as a deer at all, and there’s a decent chance that it was never actually a deer to begin with but only a very good mimic, and what makes this one scary is the slow change from everything being right to everything being wrong, happening slowly enough that you don’t even notice it until its too late, as well as the fact that something now so clearly not a deer could have fooled you to begin with.

No idea if this commentary adds anything or not but since monsters are generally couched in terms of danger and threat, and therefore fear, in my mind these posts broke themselves down kinda like this:

The “was not a deer” monster speaks to fear born of deception, dangers that approach under the guise of familiarity, with varying levels of success to infiltrate the familiar before lashing out

The “not a deer anymore” monster speaks to fear born of coercion. Whatever it is was once familiar and perhaps even comforting but through the action of another agent the familiar has become grotesque and dangerous.

The “…and maybe never was a deer” monster speaks to fear born of self-doubt. Most people spend most of the time in a sense of vague assurance that they’re doing the right thing, or at least a right thing, in the situation they find themselves in. This fear lies in the danger of *thinking* you understood, only to be eviscerated by the cruelty of “no…you were never correct, and this is your consequence.”

Yes this. Good analysis. 

Actually, in light of this I’d like to propose yet one more type of monster to this list. The monster is a deer. But you realize you were very, very wrong about what deer are like.

The deer itself has not changed, you were just wrong about deer from the very start.

This was horrifying to read while high and now I have an unhealthy fear of deer in general so thanks for that.

@songsintheattic

Does Guillermo Del Toro even know what he's going to do to this fucking website when this movie drops. Does he know what he's going to be responsible for...

extremely extremely tiring to be around people who just vehemently hate themselves. nobody benefits from you acting like this. cruelty to the self is still cruelty. if i was at an art gallery admiring a piece by van gogh or in a library reading a beautiful poem and you walked up to me and went Ewww thats so bad... you think its good? youre wrong its really bad :/ you would be a certified piece of fucking shit it is not different just bc its your creation instead of someone else's. if a stranger walked up to me and started ranting about how they thought my friend was annoying and ugly i would punch them in the gut. it is not different just because you are saying this about yourself. nobody wants to hear it

fucking say something true and beautiful for once im sick of it. you know

paraphrasing my tags from another reblog chain here but this does not come from a place of ignorance. i am intimately familiar with self hatred and the mindset that leads people to talk like this and the REASON i stopped acting like a jackass and spouting this shit 24/7 is because i realized that it was not just about me. it was hurting other people. and i made the concious decision to stop doing that and to begin the proccess of training myself out of those thought patterns and out of saying that stuff. im not telling you to Just Stop but i am saying you CAN. you are not a slave to your mental illness you have agency over your life and your behaviors - your mental illness may make it more difficult to do certain things but that doesnt mean you dont have a responsibility to TRY if it's hurting other people.

One of the things that drives me away from a relationship most is if I give the other. person a compliment and they reject it. 

“You’re so handsome.” “No I’m not.” 

I see it and feel it the exact same way as if I said “What a beautiful sunset” and someone said “No it’s not, it’s ugly.” I was in a place of joy and you just injected something very unpleasant and life-denying into that space and that hurts.

I am here appreciating the world. You, as a human being, are part of that world. You’re a natural phenomenon and people have a right to find you beautiful and good and worthy. That is an expression of THEIR joy and enjoyment of the world. They are not incorrect. 

They are expressing their aliveness and ability to perceive, they are right in the heart of what makes it worthwhile and joyful to be alive, and you should not come to that special place within someone you love and tell them it’s wrong to feel the way they feel.

I totally get that it may sound fake and ridiculous to you when someone compliments you, and it’s ok to acknowledge that. “I know you mean it when you say it, but my brain won’t let me believe it right now. But thank you. I will keep trying.” 

But ultimately, the goal is to get to a place where you can just say “thank you.” 

I have said this so many times, but if you have a hard time accepting compliments, I have a hack that helped me. I still sometimes struggle (mostly if someone is being nice about my looks) but this helps so much: if you cannot make yourself say thank you to a compliment, instead of rejecting it, find a way to comment on it. If someone says "I love this art you made," try saying something about the process: "I tried something new with the pose!" Or "I learned so much working on this one!" If they say something like "you're so smart" and you can't say thank you, try something like "I really enjoy these kinds of puzzles" or "I've been working on thinking critically about stuff like this" or "I am really interested in this topic!"

99 times out of 100 this is going to pass as a thank you, and it's easier to say, and as a bonus, it's a kind of yes-and that can help the conversation going. Next time someone says you look pretty and you can't say thank you, be enthusiastic about the new thing you're doing with your hair. Next time someone loves your cooking, be excited about having found such a cool recipe or having had an opportunity to modify it in a cool way.

You can do it. You'll start saying thank you, and you'll learn to see what other people see that make them say nice things about you, by training yourself to think about it.

op turned off rbs so here's my rb

i'm so glad i'm not a teen anymore i'm sorry for teens that you guys still have to do that. whole heartedly prefer the ways my 20s suck to the ways my teen years sucked

The way your thirties will suck will be even better than the ways your twenties suck! I'm excited for you!

This was posted on a ‘second hand finds’ Facebook page…

…only to be followed by this amazing message.

The roller coaster ride started.

With a happy ending…

…and a sweet poem to finish.

Hi I was today years old when I realized some people truly don’t have to think about every single thing they do. They don’t have to have an imaginary set of rules (I’m not allowed to put on my bra until I’ve brushed my teeth) to function.

THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN SOME PEOPLE AREN'T DRIVING ALL THEIR TASKS AND FUNCTIONS ON MANUAL

WHAT IN THE EXECUTIVE FUNCTION KIND OF BULLSHIT

“Kissed my best friend to see what would happen”

(via)