littlethingwithfeathers
Just a little thing with feathers...
Hi. I'm Birdie and I'm a former theatre professional who is occasionally about a billion other things including but not limited to a musician, a painter, a writer, a dancer, a damn good cook, and a traveler. I'm unabashedly queer, unapologetically artistic, and I wish words were physical so I could crunch them in my teeth. This is a blog an absolute mishmash of things interesting to me... fandom stuff, art, music, interesting political, medical, and science posts, cute animals, homesteading and crafting stuff, and queer discourse. I am not very good at tagging, so follow with caution especially if you're worried about NSFW or medical stuff. Due the influx of bots making it harder to figure out if new followers are actual people or bots, if you want to follow me, send me a message or reblog a few of my things. Especially if your blog is blank. Otherwise I'm blocking you outright. I don't bite, I promise. If you're interested in fanfiction for Hannibal, AoS, MCU, and Newsroom, find me under the handle Hesterbyrde on AO3. If you're interested in classical music, my music blog is @mygrandmotherspiano. If you're into Hannibal, I'm over at @drowningortolan.
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I've always had chronic fatigue. I remember being twelve, and an adult mentioned how I couldn't possibly know how tired they felt because adulthood brought levels of exhaustion I couldn't imagine. I thought about that for days in fear, because I couldn't remember the last time I didn't feel tired.
Eventually I came to terms with the fact that I was just tired, and I couldn't do as many things as everyone else. People called me lazy, and I knew that wasn't true, but there's only so many times you can say "I'm tired" before people think it's an excuse. I don't blame them. When a teenager does 20 hours of extracurriculars every week and only says "I'm too tired" when you ask them to do the dishes, it's natural to think it's an excuse. At some point, I started to think the same thing.
It didn't matter that I could barely sit up. It was probably all in my head, and if I really wanted to, I could do it.
When I learned the name for it, chronic fatigue, I thought wow, people that have that must be miserable, because I am always tired and I cannot imagine what it would feel like if it were worse.
Spoiler alert, if you've been tired for a decade, it's probably chronic fatigue.
Once I figured that out though, I thought of my energy as the same as everyone else's, just smaller in quantity. And that might be true for some people, but I've figured out recently that it absolutely isn't true for me.
I used to be like wow I have so much energy today I can do this whole list for sure! And then I'd do the dishes and have to lay down for 2 hours. Then I'd think I must gave misjudged that, I didn't have as much energy as I thought.
But the thing is - I did have enough energy for more tasks, I just didn't go about them properly.
With chronic fatigue, your maximum energy is obviously much smaller than the average person's. Doing the dishes for you might use up the same percentage of energy that it takes to do all the daily chores for someone else.
If someone without chronic fatigue was to do all the daily chores, they would take breaks. Because otherwise, they're sprinting a marathon for no reason and it would take way more energy than necessary. We have to do the same.
Put the cups in the dishwasher, take a break. Put the bowls in, take a break. So on and so forth. This may mean taking breaks every 2-5 minutes but afterwards, you get to not feel like you've run a marathon while carrying 4 people on your back.
Today, I had a moderate amount of energy. Under my old system of go till you drop, I probably could have done most of the dishes and wiped off the counter and then been dead to the world for the rest of the day.
Under the new system, I scooped litter boxes, cleaned out the fridge, took the trash out, cleaned the stove, and wiped off the counter and did all the dishes. And after all that, I still had it in me to make a simple dinner, unload the dishwasher, and tidy the kitchen.
It was complete and utter insanity. Just because I sat down whenever I felt myself getting more tired than I already was.
All this to say, take fucking breaks. It's time to unlearn the ceaseless productivity bullshit that capitalism has shoved down our throats. Its actively counterproductive. Just sit down. Drink some water. Rest your body when it needs to rest.
There will still be days where there is nothing to do but rest, and days where half a load of dishes is absolutely the most I can do. But this method has really helped me minimize those, which is so incredibly relieving.
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You ever think about how unified humanity is by just everyday experiences? Tudor peasants had hangnails, nobles in the Qin dynasty had favorite foods, workers in the 1700s liked seeing flowers growing in pavement cracks, a cook in medieval Iran teared up cutting onions, a mom in 1300 told her son not to get grass stains on his clothes, some girl in the past loved staying up late to see the sun rise.
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what joke are you really tryin to tell when you make fun of appalachia and the greater south?
even when you "just" mock our accents (you and i both know what you're really implying when you take on the drawl), the punchline of your joke there is poverty.
those who prefer a more overt route over backhanded implication: when you laugh at our education, or lack thereof, the punchline of your joke is still poverty. systemically underfunded schools packed with underprivileged children who aren't getting the same standards of education as the rest of the country is a real knee slapper boy i tell you what
when you mock our dental health and start quipping about toothless hillbillies, you're still laughin at poverty. appalachia is disproportionately uninsured compared to the rest of the nation. fellas most of us can't afford the privilege of regular, preventative dental visits and checkups, let alone the cost of huge procedures when things finally get dire. beyond that, our poverty is generational. from the get go we inherit bad teeth from family who couldn't afford that shit neither.
in the same vein, when you make fatphobic comments about said disproportionately-uninsured region--one with few jobs available to begin with, let alone work that pays enough to afford wholesome, unprocessed foods that don't rot yer teeth for supper--the butt of your joke is,, u guessed it,, ✨ poverty ✨
but to me the real kicker is the cousin fucker jokes. how can you not see that when you snark about inbreeding, when you piss yourself over that infamous billboard and oh, how could anyone possibly need to be told that?!, your punchline is not only poverty and a lack of education enough to develop critical thinking skills and the ability to build safe support networks, but you're also usually guffawing at incestuous rape and vulnerable children on top of it. peak comedy.
really though, how is any of that funny?
what happens to everyone's class consciousness the moment we start talkin about the hollers n the deep south?
why does health insurance, quality education, and food security for all suddenly go from issues worth fighting for to punishments, and ones we deserve to be humiliated for on top of it?
i know im just a dumb ol hillbilly n all, but i reckon i just don't get what we're supposed to be laughin at here
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Washing dishes by Deborah DeWit, 1956-
Website
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Artist's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rudhacharya/
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Installation of Robert Indiana's 12-foot sculpture 'Love' (1966). The O being lowered into place at Fifth Avenue and 60th St., NYC, 11-29-1971. Photo: Don Hogan Charles / The New York Times
The O in the "LOVE" sculpture being lowered into place. It was cold and the skies leadenly forshadowed rain, but "LOVE" arrived monumentally in New York yesterday in time to gladden the city's face for Christmas. "LOVE," a five-ton sculpture by Robert Indiana, the pop artist, will be on display for the next six weeks at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street, at the entrance to Central Park, where it will be highly visible to midtown strollers and shoppers. [11-29-1971]
Photo: Don Hogan Charles / The New York Times
Installation of Indiana’s 12 foot LOVE (Cor-Ten steel) (1966-1970) at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street, New York, November 1971. Photo: Eliot Elisofon. The University of Texas | src Robert Indiana
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I feel like that whole scandal should be brought back to the public eye if only to give context to the Donald Trump hush money trial. Go listen to what some of the Congresspeople said about Bill Clinton and then go find those same congresspeople talking about Donald Trump. It makes me want to claw my eyes out.

i'm sorry but this is the only submission to this trend that i'll consider giving any thought to
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Living in the moment is learning how to live between the big moments. It is learning how to make the most of the in-betweens and having the audacity to make those moments just as exciting.
~Morgan Harper Nichols, All Along You Were Blooming: Thoughts for Boundless (Zondervan, January 21, 2020) (via Make Believe Boutique)
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"Immature people crave and demand moral certainty: This is bad, this is good. Kids and adolescents struggle to find a sure moral foothold in this bewildering world; they long to feel they’re on the winning side, or at least a member of the team. To them, heroic fantasy may offer a vision of moral clarity. Unfortunately, the pretended Battle Between (unquestioned) Good and (unexamined) Evil obscures instead of clarifying, serving as a mere excuse for violence — as brainless, useless, and base as aggressive war in the real world."
Ursula K Le Guin at it again, being right as always
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“Don’t be afraid to take a close, honest look. No matter how many walls you have run into or how many holes you have fallen into, get up and allow yourself to start anew. Again and again. Each time with more dignity, greater and freer. Do not fight it. It is your fate to wake up, again and again, in an ever deeper and encompassing way. Leave the past behind you.”
— from ‘Soul on Fire’ by Veit Lindau
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