Emotional Labor: What It Is and How To Do It

via Celine Loup

The fact that much of the population must be labeled “mentally ill” to explain why so many individuals are not mentally or emotionally equipped to handle the gruelling mindset & method of action capitalism necessitates just goes to show how horrifically unnatural a system it is. It’s not us. It’s never been us

my father said to me once that one of the things he deeply regretted was not putting music on for his father while he was fading away. he told me that grandpa would just sit in his old armchair in the quiet, and not until after he’d passed did my dad think of how he could have played of his favorite classical music tapes for him so grandpa could listen to something while he still could. i was very young when this happened and not much older when my dad told me this, but it always stuck with me as something important.

my mother died at home in a hospice cot, slowly shutting down over the course of about a week. when she had stopped responding, i remembered what dad told me about wishing he’d played music for grandpa, and i put the radio on her favorite country music station and kept it on for her until she died.

daddy died in hospital. no cassette players, no decent radios. the day after he was brought in, i thought again of what he told me, and i bought a little portable bluetooth speaker. even though he never woke up, was never aware, i played music for him too.

there’s no real significance to sharing this, not really. my motivation is selfish, again: i just want to hope that someone might think of this when their loved one is stuck in silence somehow, and maybe they’ll play music for them, and they won’t have to regret not doing so. i want to hope it helps someone. and i want to hope that someone will remember my dad with me, even in just a “story i read on the internet” way.

Stories are like pancakes

Look, your writing doesn’t say anything about you.

I mean, it comes from you. But whether you write something good or something bad, it doesn’t mean anything. A story isn’t a sign. It doesn’t prove your talent or lack thereof.

A story is something you make, not something you are.

To return to a metaphor I used once: think about making pancakes. Sometimes you turn out an A+ pancake, and sometimes you burn the shit out of one. You make another one, they all go in the pile, and there’s always someone who enjoys the burnt ones. You would never take a single pancake and say it alone represents your pancake-making talent forever, or that it reveals how smart, interesting, or lovable you are. We can’t judge your soul by a pancake. It’s made of batter.

And someone always eats the burnt ones. 

Yo how is it that these porn bots are not blurred or even censored … but everyone else is🤔

How to tell if you are emotionally abusive

I feel we talk about signs of abuse from the victims standpoint but not from the abusers standpoint. In order to stop emotional abuse and recognize when we engage in unhealthy behaviors I made this list.

Do you react to important people in your life by ignoring them completely and not acknowledging their presence? Especially if they do something you don’t like?

Do you feel that your partner/friends/family members are the cause of your bad moods or frustration?

Does your partner/etc “do things the wrong way”?

Do criticize your partner/etc for being unreliable or a bad person?

Do you feel you have to constantly overlook your partners flaws in order to be around them?

Are you frequently accused of being “moody” or “hard to please”?

Do your partners complain that “nothing they do is good enough?

Do your partners appear to avoid you when you are angry or upset rather then comfort you?

Do you negatively comment on their intelligence or appearence? Either in private or in front of others.

Do you blame them when someone goes wrong?

Do you ever use phrases like “I could just hit you right now” or “I”m so mad I could punch something”?

Do you ever punch walls/throw things in front of your partner/etc?

Do you leave during fights and not inform of where you are going and when you will be back?

Do you behave the same alone with your partner that you do if you were in front of your friends or in public?

Have you frequently accused your partner of being too sensitive?

How often is your partner praised and complimented by yourself?

Do you think your partner spends too much time with friends and family?

Do you feel your partners friends and family are trying to drive you apart?

Do you actively comfort your partner when they are upset or angry even if you don’t really understand why they feel the way they do?

If your partner brings up a behavior that bothers them do you respond by discussing how to change it or do you respond defensively?

Do you have difficulty apologizing?

All of these things are abuse tactics. Obviously even the healthiest of us will do these sometimes but if any one becomes a regular habit that’s when the problem starts.

Found this reddit post. This kinda makes me feel better. And it’s something I think about sometimes because I always feel like regardless of how hard I work on something I don’t get anywhere.

“A long-term study of children raised by lesbians found that these children were less likely to suffer from physical and sexual abuse than were their peers who were raised by heterosexuals. This is thought to be due to the absence of adult heterosexual men in the households (Gartrell, Bos, & Goldberg, 2010). Girls raised by lesbians tend to have higher self-esteem, show more maturity and tolerance than their peers, and are older when they have their first heterosexual contact (Gartrell et al., 2005, 2010). Children raised by same-sex parents seem to be less constrained by traditional gender roles; boys are less aggressive, and girls are more inclined to consider nontraditional careers, such as doctor, lawyer, or engineer (Gartrell et al., 2005; Stacey & Biblarz, 2001). Over the course of more than 20 years, scientists studied the psychological adjustment of 78 teenagers who were raised by lesbian mothers. Compared to age-matched counterparts raised by heterosexual parents, these adolescents were rated higher in social, academic, and total competence, and lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggression, and externalizing problem behavior (Gartrell & Bos, 2010). There are fewer studies of children raised by two men, but gay fathers are more likely than straight fathers to put their children before their career, to make big changes in their lives to accommodate a child, and to strengthen bonds with their extended families after becoming fathers (Bergman, Rubio, Green, & Padrone, 2010).” ~ Martha Rosenthal, Human Sexuality: From Cells to Society, p.247.

To everyone looking for a download link, I’ve heard your prayers and extracted the source mp3 for you → https://a.tumblr.com/tumblr_ocw2dfi7nV1qgz7buo1.mp3

To me, the really intimidating part of Solas’ theme song is that the game introduces it so slowly - first you only hear these thrumming, oppressive war drums (and you didn’t know why - why are there drums? Why??). When you fight the Saarebas, strings come in to lead the drums. 

Only when you start fighting the last boss of the game, do you finally hear Solas’ real, complete theme song. Something like a metaphor for hunting down the pieces to the mystery behind the character himself.

I put the three versions of the song together to make a version where one builds up into the next, the way it does in the game. 6-minute panic attack.

Yes, Virginia, Tumblr is important for all those other reasons and also...

There is a particular take on the destruction of Tumblr that I keep waiting for someone to write, but no one has yet. Which means I apparently need to do it myself.

The take is, essentially, that not only should adults have access to adult content – in itself, valid and true – but also it is important to cultivate SOME social spaces where the overtly/explicitly sexual overlap with the non-sexual. (Not all spaces; I still think it should be illegal to have sex on the sidewalk. But SOME spaces that enable the sexual and the non-sexual to exist side-by-side)

Part of what I think leads to the dehumanization of sex (and subsequently allows the stigma and shame to cling so heavily to it) is the complete bifurcation of life into SEX and EVERYTHING ELSE and never the twain shall meet. When we – at every turn – put all aspects of human life into one sphere, and sex into another, we dehumanize it. We remove the full subjectivity of people from it, which is a problem. 

I think we need to actively cultivate spaces LIKE before-time!Tumblr where we can be people, and talk about what happened at work today, and the funny thing our dog did, and how our parents make us crazy during the holidays, and how dare they do X thing on Supernatural, and here’s a great version of that distracted boyfriend meme, and ALSO be able to talk about being horny on main, as the saying goes, and find the right porn clip to fap to. Or post nude selfies. Or hunt down that sweet, sweet NSFW Symbrock fanart. 

Having spaces where the explicitly sexual and the non-sexual overlap is important to humanizing sex and, subsequently, de-stigmatizing it (which, it should go without saying, is particularly salient for marginalized people who often suffer way more heavily from sexual stigma) 

To those who have swept or have blown the leaves from the walk, have rinsed the dishes or dusted their screens, Hestia looks on you from beneath her veil. She smiles, then wraps a shawl made of sunlit October air around you.

To those who remain in bed, who are on the edge of crying, who have turned on the tv to drown out the world, Hestia sits on the edge of your bed, patting circles on your back. I know, my love, she says, I know, I know. It can be so hard. My sweet, it’s time to get up. I need you, she says. Let’s make this home a sanctuary. Light a candle. Make your hands to care about this place. Let out the work of love.

Here’s a cool trick to see if a man actually respects you: try disagreeing with him

becoming vegan because factory farming is unethical is like deciding that since walmart and amazon mistreat their employees you are now going to get everything you need out of dumpsters

for wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning   — Vincent van Gogh

If you would report an undocumented immigrant to ICE you would have reported me to the Nazis and I don’t fucking trust you