Month: March 2016

I did, in fact, take nyquil and go to bed last night instead of trying to write… which was good because I swear my brainmeats were being boiled. And then I had a dream about my dad, who passed away almost five years ago. He shows up in my dreams on occasion and makes (very dry) commentary on what’s going on, usually, but last night I was the one who gave him advice. 

He and his band guys were trying to figure out a way to make ends meet by playing music instead of having a day job. They wanted to be rock stars, you know, so this was a legit thing. But the method they felt they had to go about it was to play backup for other people at parties… like, a live karaoke band… and then they would get to play their own songs on occasion. So people would hire them for their big fancy birthday parties and take center stage and sing terribly, while my dad and the rest of the band played. And none of them were happy. 

So he came home late one night from one of these (I guess I was in high school still for the dream), and I asked how it went and he said that he was tired. Bone-weary tired. Like doing the thing he loved was slowly killing him because it was only a shadow of what he really wanted to do… and that he no longer had time to do it because they were so busy catering to other people.

In my infinite wisdom (?!?!) I told him to make sure that he was leaving enough time for the things that he was truly passionate about. And if doing this was eating up all that time, it wasn’t worth it.

The dream ended there, because I guess I was SLEEP TALKING and Aaron was like ??? and I repeated the advice. 

Aaron: Uhh…
Me: am I sleep talking?
Aaron: yeah I think so
Me: well it’s still very good advice.
Aaron: yeah that’s true

…

So anyway. This is not to say that all day jobs are bad. On the contrary, I love mine to pieces and I think that it’s greatly helped me with my craft(s). But you absolutely must make time for those things or you won’t be happy. For my dad, it was music. For me it’s storytelling. It’s so easy to get caught up in the nonsense of every day life, but it’s vastly important to remember that your heart NEEDS you to feed it the things that make life worth living. 

Now that I have eaten, I need an ice cold wash cloth for my forehead and like 1,000 fluffy blankets.  Everything in my head feels like it’s in an oven and I’m all shivery. 

“Why aren’t you in bed yet, Gab?” you might ask.

To which I answer, “IDK because I’m dizzy and that’s making it hard to think coherently and logically. “

Though, I think bed is thataway, so perhaps I should try.

OR I COULD TRy TO FiNIsh MY BOOK IN A fEVER-INDUCED something or other1!!22

Honey Nut Cheerios loses bee mascot on cereal boxes temporarily

Honey Nut Cheerios loses bee mascot on cereal boxes temporarily

ohlookashinystormtrooper:

allthecanadianpolitics:

nohomosuperior:

allthecanadianpolitics:

The world’s bee population is in crisis and Honey Nut Cheerios is coming to the rescue, minus its perky mascot.

The brand’s latest promotion, Bring Back The Bees, characterized as a cause marketing campaign, purports to inform Canadians about the global instability of bees, due to diseases, pesticides, flowerless landscapes and monolithic crop planting, and encourage them to plant 35 million bee-enticing wildflowers this spring.

Cereal lovers will find the brand’s longtime ambassador awol for the next six weeks.

“We took Buzz off the front of the box to bring awareness to fact the bees are disappearing and on the back we have a lot of information to help consumers understand why bees are important and what they can do and then driving them to the website so they can get their free seeds,” said Amanda Hsueh, Associate Marketing Director at General Mills Canada.

Recipients are encouraged to plant the wildflower seeds “anywhere where flowers would help beautify the space and make it a bee-friendly area,” she said.

“They provide not just honey, like in our Honey Nut Cheerios, but a third of our food supply actually depends on their pollination, such as, almonds, apples and even coffee.

“So they’re very important, but the bees are in trouble. We felt like we wanted to do something to help and we wanted to find a way to make sure all Canadians could do something to help.”

Continue Reading.

Thats all well and good but if they actually care about bees they would stop using honey in their product instead of just making a ~green~ marketing campaign

Producing honey does not hurt bees. Bee keepers ensure that bees live long, healthy lives. They always leave bees enough honey to live and maintain their colony. Without bee keepers the world would have much less bees and therefore much less healthy food (that vegans depend on).

You can disagree on the consumption of honey, but please come up with a better excuse than its harmful for bees, because its not.

ugh omg honey shaming is one of my biggest pet peeves

USING HONEY DOES NOT HURT BEES

Using honey ensures that bees are being (well)-kept and encouraged to propagate. You have to be very careful with your bees if you want them to give you quality products. 

Using honey puts more money into the honey industry, allowing beekeepers to keep more bees as well as do more to help, protect, and save bees. 

Conversely, if you stop using honey, not only is honey going to go to waste (bees produce more honey than they need), but people who currently keep bees are going to either turn to a different product (whether because want to make money or because they just can’t afford to keep the bees they love). Their bees are going to end up neglected and/or exterminated, and there will be fewer people contributing to the desperate conservation efforts. 

I get that you want to be nature-friendly but please educate yourself on what that actually means before jumping into every argument you see.

Mebbe I can get some flowers for my balcony… 

chickenmcgucket:

i wish there was a non-shitty way to text your friends and say “hey, i’m feeling Empty rn and desperately need validation/attention.”

yuzujapan:

Limited Edition 20th Anniversary Detective Conan x Karel Capek Teas
Illustrations done by Yamada Utako
Second Release (March 17, 2016)
http://www.karelcapek.co.jp/i/01100807

Ran’s Lemon Pie Tea:
What the flavored tea says, it’s lemon pie made by Ran for Shinichi. Shinichi’s favorite food is lemon pie. Illustration has a London background motif. From the 18th volume of Detective Conan. 

Color Trick Tea: Butterfly Pea
A mysterious color changing tea from the 84th volume of Detective Conan, this was remade for the collaboration. Putting in 70 degree celsius water with the tea makes it blue. Adding a lemon turns the color from blue to pink! This is the store’s original blend of Butterfly Pea, rosemary, peppermint, and lemongrass. They recommend adding in honey and lemon to turn it from a herbal tea to a lemonade! 

Both tins have eight teabags with each bag good for three servings. 

Unfortunately, as I’m writing this, it’s already sold out in 20 minutes as it was released on the site. (Luckily, I managed to get both!) 

Left work around 12, came home, passed out, got up, ordered chinese. It will be here in the next hour. Now I just need to decide if I’m too hot or too cold or if this is a fever or what. 

egg drop soup though, man… that’s gonna be amazing. 

fairypsychic:

dormouse11:

fairypsychic:

Ok so I rly fucking need to clean my house. Do any other People With Depression™ have any tips or ways you motivate urself to clean? Because this feels like the hardest goddamn thing in the world even tho I know it’s not and I’m just continually frustrated with myself and have been for the past two weeks.

HOO BOY DO I HAVE DEPRESSION/EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION CLEANING TIPS

in no particular order (because I have depression and executive dysfunction):

1. If something sensory about cleaning bothers you, eliminate that before you start. For example, I wear gloves to do the dishes. If the sound of the vacuum bothers you, wear headphones and turn up the music. etc.

2. If you can, make a list of everything that needs to be done. Then acknowledge that you probably can’t do it all, and circle all the things that absolutely, no matter what, have to be done. Pick one (ONE! ONLY ONE! START WITH ONE!) of those things and break it down into smaller steps. Then even smaller steps. Seriously, if step one is “stand up” and step two is “walk to closet” and step 3 is “get mop”, that’s fine. It can be that small.

3. Take a break. “But I literally only started five minutes ago!” Don’t care. If you want a break, take a break. “At this point I’ve spent more time on breaks than I’ve spent on cleaning.” Ok, but you’ve spent more than zero time on cleaning, so you’ve accomplished more than you had at the beginning. “If I take a break it won’t get done!” If you burn out it won’t get done either. Take a break.

4. If nothing is working, try what I call bin cleaning/box cleaning. Take a big trash bag and a box. Pick up the first object you see. Step 1: Is it trash? Put it in the trash bag. Step 2: Will you use it in the next 2 days? No? Put it in the box. It’s a problem for Future You. If you’ll use it in the next 2 days, take time to put it away. Rinse and repeat.

5. Did you get distracted and forget what you were doing? Don’t worry about it. Just clean a thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s the thing you were cleaning before. You have to clean lots of things, so just pick a thing and clean it. Eventually you’ll get around to the thing you forgot.

6. If you have to do a thing you really hate, do a thing you like afterwards. I hate doing dishes, but folding laundry soothes me, so that’s a nice one to do afterwards. YMMV. If there are no cleaning things you like that you can do afterwards, see number 3.

7. Make it fun. Play loud music and dance while you’re cleaning. Wear something that makes you feel cute, or if you prefer, something comfy. Light your favorite candle. Whatever.

8. If it’s nice out, open a window. Seriously, it helps.

This is seriously so helpful, thank you.

Dear ADs, I am a working artist who has not ‘broken through’. I am in my mid 30’s and not yet ‘a big deal’. It’s difficult at this point to start new projects because I despair of ever reaching the career goal posts I have set for myself. I intellectually understand that I am not old, but it is hard to see artist after artist in their early 20s being lifted aloft and not judge myself as wanting in comparison. Sincerely- ‘Wasn’t cool when I was young, either’.

dearartdirector:

This is both a really personal, and also a really universal issue. Let me answer you in a bit of stream of consciousness here, bear with me.

1—”Breaking thru” and “Big Deal” are completely arbitrary concepts, depending entirely on your POV. I am friends with artists who were (and still are) heroes to me. They’re so famous, and so goddamn good, that you’d think they could rest on their laurels and finally relax and just go about being great and enjoying it. But it’s not true, because that feeling of never being where you want to be, not having made it yet, never goes away. It doesn’t matter how far you climb, that feeling climbs with you. So get used to it. In a way, you need it. The artists that don’t have that drive never rise above mediocre. It’s that dissatisfaction that keeps you striving. Unfortunately it can also make you miserable. Each of us needs to find a way to balance and walk the tightrope between being dissatisfied enough to keep growing, while letting ourselves be pleased with what we’ve accomplished at the same time. 

Go ahead, listen to some interviews with some artists you admire – they’re all going to talk about having this feeling. 

And remember, no matter where you are on the ladder – you’re only looking up the ladder to your heroes. Remember there’s also people below you on the ladder looking to YOU and wishing they could be where you are.

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2—Don’t fall into the trap of comparing the 100% of your life that you know with the 10% or 25% or even 50% of someone else’s life that you can see. Social media and the internet in general is the worst for this, but it happens in real life too…you’ll see someone’s successes and not see their hardships. We do this naturally as human beings. We don’t put our chronic diseases, our divorces, our depressions, our failures, out there for the world to see nearly as much as we celebrate our wins. You see the artist suddenly getting all the book cover commissions, but you don’t see that they’re stuck in the house 5 out of 7 days with Crohn’s Disease. You see someone get into Spectrum or American Illustration, but you don’t see that they’re going through a period of depression and intense dissatisfaction with their work to the point that they haven’t made anything new in six months. You see the concept artist working on a bunch of big movies, but you don’t see them struggling with overwork injuries. The key here is to just assume, just know, that you’re not seeing the whole story. Don’t compare your lows to another person’s highs.

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3—Goals are both critical to your success, but at the same time, can defeat you before you begin. Instead of setting really big goals that immediately overwhelm you with how far you have to climb to get there, try setting priorities instead. This exercise might help. 

4—The solution is to stop caring about what everyone else is doing, how young or old everyone else is, and especially worrying that you’re too old, too late, not where you want to be yet, haven’t hit an arbitrary goalpost. Just put your head down and make great work. Show it to the right people. Repeat. You’ll get there. Everyone who has gotten there ahead of you got there this way.

—Agent KillFee