You're not a failed artist.

After over almost two decades on the internet, entering various art communities and establishing my online presence, I've noticed something.

The persistent idea that you've "failed" as an artist if you get a "real job" will not go away.

This, for the longest time, permeated my electronic meat slab and nestled in deeply MUCH to my detriment . For years I fought with myself over this idea. Self-flagellating and noisy, negative thoughts were almost suffocating because I was unable to Do Art As A Job consistently and efficiently enough to maintain a living off of it. Between navigating life for almost 30 years not knowing I was autistic (and all that entails) and trying to turn something I love into something I could make a living off of, it was a vicious and repetitive cycle of trying something new, getting burned out, entering a depressive state, climbing out of it, rinse and repeat. This is clearly unsustainable, especially now that I am more independent in my adult life; bills aren't going to wait for me to get out of my depressive funks. Even having jobs and still making art on the side today, this idea is still nestled in there, nagging me sometimes.

Would I like to make a living off of my art? Of course! Would it be even better if I was supported from making stuff from my own IP's? You fucking bet. But I know how I operate, I know I can't personally do that (yet? maybe?). Now, I realize not everyone can just go get a job, and I don't want this to come off as a rally cry to Just Go Out and Work (I know many creative people are disabled or have other reasons they cannot work), but I do want to stress that its okay if art needs to remain more of a hobby than a job. It is okay if you cannot sustain yourself solely as a living artist. Over the years, I've burned myself out so god damn hard and have watched others work themselves to (near) death or can barely scrape by because of this incessant feeling that we need to be doing art 100% of the time to have "made it". It is hurting us both physically and emotionally to keep this shit up.

Going forward, we have to do better. There is no shame in having an income that is not dependent on the things you make. I think that it can help alleviate a lot of stress and fatigue that can become associated with creating (and thus, making it hard to do something you love). We need to learn to be kinder to ourselves and unlearn comparing our experiences to what we see from other creative peers on social media. Its hard, finding work sucks ass, and no job will be perfect, but if it can help you survive a little easier and rekindle your relationship for creating the things you love to make, it'll make a world of difference.

You are not a failed artist. You're doing what you can so you can keep doing what you love.

I want to hear your thoughts on fandom and the recent influx of the term content creation!

Well, anon, you are in luck! (Or not, depending on your definition of luck. 😉) I just so happen to have many Thoughts & Opinions™ about this. I will get wordy, this will get lengthy, and I will be social and put most of my thoughts under a readmore cut.

I personally try to avoid the terms ‘content’ and ‘content creation’ when talking about fandom works and a fandom’s creative pursuits nowadays. Occasionally, sure, it happens that it slips out anyway – it’s a term we’re all really used to using! – but I want to be as mindful about its use as possible. This is a personal decision on my account and I won’t get uppity about other people’s use of these terms, though.

But, Killy, you might say... why would you avoid using these terms? For me, here’s why:

Content is not synonymous with art;

Content creation indicates something different than art creation;

Fandom should not be subject to consumerism;

Fandom is about connection.

If all a fandom puts out is classified as content, that fandom is going to die.

Yeah. I know. Melodramatic much? I’m on my fainting couch here, folks. 😂 But let’s dig in, shall we?

You know, maybe it’s just the archivist in me that balks at the term ‘content’. Content is a data entry field in the archival system we use at my real-life job: literally speaking, this data entry field is where we put a brief summary of the document attached to that specific archival file. It contains information that tells you the key takeaways of what the document is about, but it will not contain the full text of the document itself. Content is one of the points of access for our archival search: I know what I’m looking for, so I put a few keywords into our search and it pulls up the relevant file. But what do I need, really need, in my line of work? It’s the document itself, not the data entry field. The document tells me the whole story that I need to be able to truly do my job well. The content-field is a cliffnotes edition of that story.

It’s the same way with the art we create in fandom. I’m gonna take myself as an example here, because I create a fair bit! (Shocking, I know. Local Tumblr cryptid sighting, more at 11. 😎) I spend hours writing fic. I spend hours sorting through screencaps before screeching at Photoshop for a lengthy amount of time. I spend days pouring over quotes, books, documents, photographs, tutorials, and other things that will help me create something cool. I apply color theory, art framing/perspective, narrative focus, and many other theories and techniques to my writing and my giffing. If I were to put my finished work or any of my WIPs in that same archive system, it would be the document within the archival file. The tags I use on my posts? Those are markers similar to the content-field. They tell you who my gifset depicts and from which show it is. They tell you which OC of mine my fic is about. My work contains these things I tagged.

But my creative work is not content itself.

Content is marketable, easy access, blurb-y stuff. Content is something you absorb within one minute flat. Content is the highlight reel. It’s what fills a page, something you’ll scroll past in a heartbeat, something that barely stands out in a long long long list of stuff. Content is what you consume on a lazy Sunday afternoon without ever being forced to read lengthy pieces, take in the details of what you see, pause mid-scroll to ponder the meaning of life, whatever else have you. Create content and you create a flash in the pan, a quick laugh maybe, before it fizzles back out again. Create content and it’s here today and gone tomorrow without anyone mourning its absence for too long.

Art should last longer than that, don’t you think? 😉

So when I see people put a fic request in an askbox and it’s phrased like “Speirs x spy!reader fluff” and that very same request makes its way into about ten more askboxes before the fandom starts comparing asks? I might be inclined to classify us all as slot machines. Put an ask in and out rolls a fic. Who cares which slot machine it came from? As long as you’ve got your painstakingly crafted fics that you consume the same way you do actual content, right? We, its writers, are just lucky if we get a pat of acknowledgement on our little slot machine head for our troubles, aren’t we?

When I see an overly detailed summary of what sounds like a full-fledged fic in an askbox and the demand is “write this for me”, I recoil from the screen and go “child, who the hell birthed you, were you raised in a barn?” out loud. If you can tell a story in the space of an askbox, consider asking for help to let that story – a story you own, a story that is more yours that it could ever be mine – grow into what it has the potential to be.

When I see fics and gifsets and other creations get likes but not reblogs, I mutter something about the state of fandom economy these days. We exist in a little fandom bubble. Our bubble can’t expand or blow from place to place without a little help from our friends. And you’re my friends, right? I know the follow-button says follow, guys, believe me, I’m not that far gone, but for me ‘follow’ means ‘friend’. 💚 You’re my buddy now. Suck it up. We’ll share a can of peaches. 🍑

When I see fics and other creations get reblogged without tags or comments attached, I die a little on the inside. I feel like a little Victorian orphan child going “please, reblogger, a little penny of thought for its creator, if it pleases?”. I feel like commentless and/or tagless reblogging is giving me nothing, nothing at all, about who you are.

And I want to get to know you! I want to know who’s in my notes. I want to know who’s scrambling through my MotA gifsets like a fat little raccoon inhaling its third helping of a box of jelly-filled donuts. I want to know who is adopting which character and why. I want to know that it’s your birthday, or that you had a bad day and needed a pick-me-up, or that you are locked in an Ikea at three in the morning reading my blog by the bright lights of countless Solhetta bulbs. I want to know that you love my OC Darlene but that you ain’t sure what the hell my OC Lottie’s got to do with anything. I want to know what tickles you – a turn of phrase I used, a color in a gifset, a little detail I captured that made me go !!!!!! on the inside while I was creating too – and I want to know what moves you.

What reaches into the soil of your being and nourishes you enough to blossom into whichever lovely self you can grow to be? What is precious to you? What comforts you in the dark nights of your soul, when all light feels like it’s faded out? What do you love, truly love? What feeling and thought and idea and love love LOVE do you consume – truly consume, head to tail, no takebacks – and what are you consumed by in turn?

Let me connect with you. Let me know the little internet scraps of you that tell me you’re a DeMarco girlie, or that you’re here for Hoosier only, or that you’re as feral and batty about Speirs as I am, or that you actually really can’t stand the one dude everyone else raves about. Let me know that you like angsty quotes on gifsets – feel free to yell at me for making you schedule an impromptu therapy session – or let me know you saw what I did in my fic there and you’ll be demanding compensation from me while you lie down and wail about it. Let me know you’re very into those lovely blues on a gifset (I know, SO good, right??) or that you are side-eyeing me because that close-up of your fave turned you into a little puddle.

Let me know what moves you, because I created these things with love. I created them because they moved me, too. I created them because I have a story to tell, somehow. I created them because the whole world is a string of stories and I want to pass the heart of them on to you. I created them not because I want to jump on a hypetrain that races past all the episodes and all the alternate universes and all the stories without stopping, but because I want to soak up the sun and point at something and tell you “look, isn’t this beautiful?”. I created them not because I am looking for a quick fix or a distraction or an escape, but because I want to give you something that nourishes you as it has nourished me.

That’s so much more than that quick flash in the pan, yeah? That’s so much more than what content could ever hope to be. That’s something that lasts beyond the clicks and gives you an ever-expanding horizon that leaves you wondering just what in the world is next.

Let me repeat point five: if all a fandom puts out is classified as content, that fandom is going to die. Because content doesn’t sustain you. Connection does. And connection? That happens with meaningful interaction. That happens when you stop getting followers and start getting friends. That happens when you treat all forms of art as something unique that can be precious to someone, rather than something to like today and forget about tomorrow.

Can I do a lil mic drop? Yeah. I think I’m gonna. Just this once. 🎤

Do you know of any good paying jobs for writers? You've mentioned getting a certification for editing while in college (?) and I was wondering how you did that

unfortunately I'm still looking! I'm currently doing a bit of freelance with BlueCat Screenwriting Competition, where I'm reading and reviewing people's scripts, and getting paid $25 per feature script review. This isn't that much, but it's mainly to build my resume; I currently work in retail as my main job, although I'm hoping to quit as soon as I can find something that pays better. The writing world is all about connections; it's super competitive, and many of my peers whom I graduated with are in the same boat as me for now. As of now, I'm mainly doing freelance and applying for internships and jobs in publishing, but also anywhere that might need editing, proofreading, or communications work, which many companies do, not just publishing houses; you may find yourself looking outside just publishing in order to land a writing job. However, if you are looking into publishing, PublishersMarketplace.com and Bookjobs.com are both sites that regularly list job opportunities. In addition to browsing those frequently, I'm also on Linkedin trying to network with my former professors and classmates. I've gotten to the point where I'm finally getting interviews after applying for jobs for months, so fingers crossed!

As for my certificate, I earned it along with my Bachelor's in Creative Writing in college; if you're currently in college, I'd recommend asking your advisor if that certificate is offered. It's a bit like a minor, but with a few less qualifications (I would have taken a minor if it was offered, but my university only had the certificate). Nonetheless, it was quite rigorous and required a number of classes that the Creative Writing degree didn't, including graphic design, advanced English grammar, some linguistics courses, and a course on the editing industry. I also was able to work on the staff of the university literary magazine for credit for the certificate; if you're able to do this, I highly recommend it. Lit magazines look good on your resume if you're going into publishing, and while they're very intensive, you'll learn and apply a variety of skills- editing and proofreading, communicating with student authors, organizing tasks and coordinating events, graphic design work, and learning to manage your time within strict deadlines. It's basically intended as a preview of professional editing, so if that's what you want to do, I'd recommend looking into it. Good luck!

One more tip- if you're in writing classes, or in any other humanities field, make friends! Yes, the industry is competitive, but don't think of your classmates as competition; they may be the people who will help you get a leg up in the future. Workshop together, collaborate, critique each other's works, and keep in touch! I still try to communicate with people who were in my classes; we can let each other know which opportunities we've found, keep each other updated on our creative projects and career paths, and encourage each other's writing. :)

Context: 2013

Ngl, I had to go through the photos in my archives to figure out what even happened in 2013. SO, we'll cover the bits that stand out.

Thesis

Leading up to my graduation, I did a senior BFA thesis for my major. For this I decided to write the first chunk of Kriamiss's story in the Khra-nicles, which was an interesting experience both from seeing how someone besides me and Deer received that narrative and from approaching my genuine interests less as "dumb thing I do" and more as "thing I am doing seriously."

I completed the thesis successfully, but the experience sadly didn't lead to me writing the whole novel.

Graduation, Working Full-time, & Recovering from Art School

Prior to graduation, I needed to figure out what I was going to do about work. Because of the Boston lease cycle, I needed to know if I was staying in my then-current apartment with Deer, Coyote, and Tiger or not. Essentially, this choice boiled down to:

Move back in with my parents while I try to get a job in "my field"--whether that field is publishing or game dev.

Continue living with my current roommates in Boston and accept Any Job That Will Pay The Rent in order to be able to do that.

I chose the second because the real difference between 1 and 2 was whether or not I would have the space to be independent, have concrete privacy, and generally not feel observed in a judgmental fashion. (This is not to say my parents are overly harsh or anything, but it's the inherent nature of being with one's parents to regress to who you were as a kid.) This was completely the correct choice for me, and you can see it in photos following my graduation: my happiness and amount of life lived increases significantly.

To put it another way: Life Got Better as soon as I was free from a system that I hated and was able to self-determine.

That isn't to say I was magically no longer depressed--I was still massively depressed--but it is to say that the depression was existing within a bevy of relationships, experiences, and joy whereas before it had been the casing around a pile of obligations and resentments.

I graduated from my college, magna cum laude I think, in May of 2013, following the removal of my wisdom teeth, and accepted a full-time position with the company that ran my school's print & copy center and mailroom. They ran those services for many of the colleges in Boston, so my new gig with them was to look after the mailroom at another college.

This mailroom was in a basement, and I ran it almost entirely by myself. During some parts of the year, there would be a student worker with me, but usually it was just me and the spiders that liked to drop out of the ceiling. While that made working in the mailroom extraordinarily boring, it all-in-all worked for me; there weren't that many people stopping by, especially in the summer, and after spending four years dragging stories out of my soul, not being asked to do anything but exist and sort mail was a relief.

I spent a lot of my time in the mailroom decompressing from art school and slowly--a little tiny bit at a time, almost cautiously--returning to the things I'd liked about making stuff to begin with.

This seems to be an almost universal experience with art school, at least among the sample space of my friends. Pretty much every single one of us who went to some kind of arts university walked away with an intense amount of baggage about Making Things--typically centered around ideas of what is the right or wrong way to make things--that we had to dismantle before we could get back to making anything, much less stuff that aligned with what we wanted to make. For some of us that meant diving into other crafts/mediums than those we'd been educated in, and for others of us it meant simply not making at all and consuming voraciously instead.

For me personally, it tended to be small bursts of creativity that would then pitter out sadly, with a lot of photos--but decreasingly art-oriented photos--filling the time between.

One added peculiarity of the mailroom job was that I weirdly kept meeting people through the mailroom. One was someone I'd gone to high school with, who delivered some of the mail and greeted me with, "...I know you" to which I said, "You do?" and looked up to realize that he was one of the three Art Kids in my class--me, him, and another girl from my friend group. This encounter didn't kick off a friendship or anything, but it was a neat moment.

The other notable one--and I don't remember exactly when this happened--was a student at the school who made small talk when stopping by to pick things up. After a bit, he asked me on a date, and I agreed from a "Well, let's see what happens" place. We went on a few dates but lacked chemistry and decided to pursue that angle no further. However, Deer and I did succeed in adding him to our wider friend group. I also got a meaningful lesson and confidence boost out of being able to try seeing something without having to commit to them either exclusively or long-term. It made saying "No"--something I still struggled with--a little bit more feasible.

Gender?

I don't remember thinking about this in an intentional way, but it's clear to me from photos that I started stripping away elements of femininity in my personal presentation one little bit at a time. In particular, I was slowly shedding things that Required Effort to sustain.

A lot of the haircuts I see from this point forward are chin-length at longest or involve some kind of half-shave or undercut. I, in fact, specifically remember getting my first half-shave/undercut was a Big Moment in that I knew my family would hate it and felt I was doing something transgressive by prioritizing what I liked and wanted over what would make sure I was left alone.

I was, for a chunk of time, still doing makeup, but I slowly decreased the amount until I was only doing eyeliner and mascara, without anything else. While I was still wearing skirts and suchlike, a lot of the photos I have aren't of me dressed and looking nice but in the lounge clothes I wore around the house but feeling like I looked good in them.

I was also putting on weight, which for me is a sign of increasing happiness and reducing depression. Depression tends to make me not eat, so when I'm consistently losing weight, it's a sign that my mental health has tanked. (This isn't an intentional thing; I just stop having an appetite and lose the will to make food.)

Fun & Games

The social environment of my apartment was, frankly, rad, and while our unit was rundown in many ways, our location within the city was fantastic. We had a lot of excellent times, and we started some key traditions like the annual Krampus Party in December.

I had a habit of falling asleep in my squeaky pink armchair while playing Skyrim, and I'd wake up horizontal across the seat of the chair and its footstool with my horse on some building's roof.

Deer and Coyote and I would often get takeout while Tiger was out, and Tiger would come home to find the three of us passed out on top of each other on the couch with a spread of takeout containers spread over the coffee table. When we woke up, we'd get right back to eating.

There was a lot of eating in general, honestly. We made and shared good food and poured a lot of of our "disposable" income into the same, whether that was high-quality ingredients, special takeout, cakes from the nice bakery on the corner, or hitting up local restaurants. One of the parties in 2013 was, I think, a "Game of Thrones" themed party where we made lavish dishes.

In this way, we became something of a social hub for the wider friend group, and we were increasingly known for our warmth and welcome.

7 Most Important Artificial Intelligence Trends of 20

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an umbrella term for a group of technologies that make machines intelligent. In the past decade, we've seen AI come to life in everything from self-driving cars to chatbots that can talk like humans. Today, artificial intelligence is helping us do everything from playing video games and watching movies to getting jobs done faster than ever before. As it continues its expansion as one of the most important fields of study today, we'll see more innovations like these emerge from this growing field. The race to build intelligent machines is still in full swing. And you'd be forgiven for not knowing what trends are happening in this space. But if you're looking for insights into the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning, then reading this article is for you.

According to a Mordor Intelligence Report for Application Development and Maintenance Services, the market for artificial intelligence, which was estimated to be worth USD 58.15 billion in 2021, is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 31.45% from 2022 to 2027 to reach USD 271.48 billion. You don't have to be a genius to see that artificial intelligence (AI) trends are evolving almost daily. I know this because I'm constantly reading about new AI trends, their potential, and how organizations are using them to improve their processes and make life easier for their customers. Here are seven trends you should keep an eye out for as AI evolves over the next few years:

The AI Market Is Exploding

The main drivers for this growth are new technologies, including edge computing and 5G networks; these two factors will create demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI). New technology has also allowed businesses and individuals alike to harness the power of machine learning without having any coding knowledge or experience required before being able to use it effectively on their own devices such as computers or smartphones which makes them convenient tools for everyone who wants access but doesn't want spend time learning how exactly how each application works within its ecosystem which means more people using them more often than ever before!

AI Roles Are Booming

AI is a big part of the job market, and it will be for years to come. It’s not just about replacing human beings with machines—it’s about making humans more efficient and effective by using technology to do things that humans used to do. This may mean that we have fewer jobs than we think; instead of being replaced by robots or computers, some tasks could be automated entirely. For example, there are already many companies using AI-powered devices like voice assistants like Siri or Alexa so they can speak directly with customers instead of having them call into an agent who then has them fill out paperwork on their behalf (and yes, this means fewer jobs).

So what does this mean for us? Well first off: don't panic! It's not necessarily bad news because creative industries such as filmmaking still need people who know how things work together for things like special effects shots/scenes etc., but if anything...

The Shift From White Collars To Blue Collars

As more and more jobs are automated, it's important to keep in mind that there will be a shift from white-collar roles to blue-collar roles. Blue-collar jobs require physical labor and human interaction, while white-collar jobs tend to be more intellectual or technical. With AI taking on many of these tasks, we can expect automation to become more prevalent throughout society—and as a result, many blue-collar workers will see their roles changing as well. It's important for them not only to maintain their skills but also to learn new ones so they're prepared when their occupation becomes obsolete through AI advancement.

5G Will Revolutionize AI

5G is set to be an important part of the future, and it will change how we use AI. As more devices come online with 5G connectivity, this will make it easier for people who work with artificial intelligence (AI) to get access to relevant information in real-time. This means that they can provide better service at faster speeds than ever before! Plus, since there's no lag time because everything moves so fast now—and because fewer things are holding up progress—it'll be easy for businesses across industries like healthcare and manufacturing as well as retail stores nationwide to innovate quickly without sacrificing quality or safety standards like we've seen happen over recent years due largely due lack availability resources needed necessary resources required needed required resource requirements

Greater Humanity Through AI

AI will help people with disabilities.

One of the most compelling uses of AI is in healthcare and medical care, but it's also important to note that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities and those living in remote areas. For example:

In some cases, AI could be used by doctors     or nurses who are unable to understand patients' needs because they don't     speak English or another language fluently enough to communicate     effectively with those who need assistance;

In other cases, an advanced algorithm     could be used by nonmedical professionals who do not have access     themselves but want help interpreting medical records or checking symptoms     against common illnesses;

And finally (and perhaps most   importantly), artificial intelligence systems could aid individuals     without access who would otherwise struggle with things like     transportation—say someone living far away from an urban center where   public transportation isn't available every day but still wants some     formality when dealing with hospital staff about their health issues."

What A Person About Design And Hosting

If you want to make a big splash in the fashion design industry, then choosing the right school is where to start. Fashion design may 't be everybody's choice of career, but for people who have talent in this field, there a wide range of opportunities available. It makes your site accessible. You are quiet apprehensive in using different designs with the fear hat their sites won't be accessible one some sort of design is used. Once Panzer Dragoon Remake CK keys Free plug-in a Flash in running then a lot of the users will likely to be able to visit you. This plug-in is used by comparatively a choice is about users all over. But if you want other backyard gardeners usually wonder no associated with your site to visit you, your design should be made inside a there isn't animation to dam other buyers. Firms with affordable web development services provide further providers without charging you a further amount. The business could wind up being providing repair off the spot to fix bugs and other errors which come up relying through the kind of website. These after-sale services that come with out will cost you. The target would be to construct relationship with purchasers and win extra initiatives in cases of future expansion. Panzer Dragoon Remake CK keys Free , you received a trip from some client anf the requests a person to design an internet business for his company. Your phone, he briefly informs you what his company approximately and asks about the prices, afterwards you fixed an arrangement with him for discussion. You will probably get excited in it and actually starts to get more data of the company by checking them on Google, and thinks about some prelim ideas for your website. As well stage, your research process has recently started. I discovered that design was becoming a vast part of my day, thinking concerning what new some tips i needed to learn, what new products I could learn to design and generally, what creative projects I get stuck into. My occupation could easily was a school teacher of course anyone who's been in teaching, you already know that that it is a lot of hard work that needs 100% willpower. If your hearts not in it, then don't undertake it as your not doing anyone any favours, especially your attendees. After returning to work and due to my new perspective, my eyes started open noting a few things that gave me a clearer idea of what teaching was about nowadays in secondary education for the teacher. Many budding web designers are as expected self-taught. In case you are reading this and never ever had a proper design lesson in your life, imply mean the to abandon your want becoming a web-based designer. Academic qualifications have to a degree (excuse the pun) taken a back seat to be replaced by hands on skills. Panzer Dragoon Remake PC Game is now a diverse industry provides a number of specific jobs you can work with. From creative director to artworker, there a job that's suited to you. In order to other designers; expand education and run on developing your creativity. Do not forget often you will asked perform within a team, so hone your communication skills as all right. Probably the factor that's most in order to many of individuals - just how much will it cost to attend the their school? It's nice if movie a situation where cost doesn't matter, but for lots of of us, we might want to be practical. If the tuition fees are high, you might find you must be spend far to much time working in a part-time job and so leave yourself short of this time for your schoolwork. Make sure your design is appropriate, too. You must use a font, layout, and color scheme that are right for company that's being advertised, and graphic elements of design that don't forecast place. A good logo design is one that doesn't just look good, but is right for that use you'll be putting it to, after all.

How to choose the best designers for modern villas in Hyderabad

Luxury villas in Hyderabad are the new weekend getaways for this generation. So having the most aesthetic setting to relax in is very important. I would suggest starting your search online. Look for famous and reliable interior designing companies near the place you reside in. As someone who’s just getting into the field, I’d advise finding a reliable company rather than hiring individuals because of the accountability factor. You need to find a reliable company with lots of experience and positive customer reviews so that you know that the company you’re working for is open to incorporating all your ideas into decorating your dream house. Luxury villas in Hyderabad

Look for honest reviews on platforms like Just Dial or Quora; where people have shared their own experiences of working with the designers. Find their online rating and presence to gain a basic idea about the designers and company and if they are a good match for you or not. Read testimonials and find out about the designers and their working styles.

It is better to work with a team of designers rather than hiring one single person as a team of designers will be able to come up with many more creative ideas for you to select from. A team with good chemistry with each other will complement each other’s ideas to design your dream house. If you have multiple people working on the same project, you don’t have to worry about deadlines or a creative block.

Look at their past designs and check if they match your aesthetic or not. Every designer has their working style and it is important that you find one who matches yours the best so that you work well together. Look through as many portfolios of the company as possible to gain an insight into their working style.

Professional Experience is a very important factor to consider but there are times when inexperienced designers have a lot of new decoration ideas in villas rather than the already existing ones, so don’t hesitate to work with an inexperienced designer who has positive reviews just because of their lack in experience.

Designers who keep you updated with the new variations and changes in your designs should be preferred as they are keeping you updated with the changes in case you want to go a different way. Don’t settle for a designer who’s reluctant to share their blueprint and ideas with you.

Meet the designer and find out if your thoughts are on the same track. Your designer and your thoughts need to match if you want the best result possible. There will be many changes as the project develops and you should know how your designer handles the problems and solves them effectively.

Fix your budget and find designers who fit within your budget. You need to have a fixed budget so that you don’t lose yourself in expenses and regret your decision later on.

Visit the material gallery to check the quality of the products which are being used to build your house. Ask about the products and the pros and cons of using different materials.

It is the job of the designers to fit everything within your budget so don’t settle for low-quality projects just because of the cost as it’ll be a disadvantage for you in the long run.

In the end, I would say choose the designer who makes it easy for you to share your ideas as it is your dream house that they’re building and you deserve nothing but the best

🎶#ArtIsAWeapon

June is #BlackMusicMonth

Info reposted from #musicjournalist/ @blackmusichistorylibrary creator @jenziaburgos www.blackmusiclibrary.com

"𝙄𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙙𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙤𝙛 #𝘽𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙛𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙘, 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙙𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙛𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙘.⁣⁣⁣

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File this under ⤵⁣⁣⁣

How we can honor Blackness and confront racism in our everyday hobbies, interests, and creative pursuits.⁣

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Something my work as a music journalist has taught me is to always ask questions about the music I’m consuming, rather than being an idle listener. Those questions can look like these and more:⁣

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⇁ What’s the story behind this music?⁣

⇁ What’s the artist’s identity? How does that inform their music?⁣

⇁ What might this music mean to its intended audience?⁣

⇁ What does it mean to me? If it means something else, why’s that?⁣

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These questions almost always unravel conversations about race (and class, gender, sexuality, religion, and nation). I know many might avoid asking these questions for fear of “complicating” their experience with music. Instead you might focus on things like instrumentation, craft, production, danceability, etc. But as someone who loves music as their Literal Job, I’m here to share why that alone is not enough. ⁣

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This hands-off approach completely fails to acknowledge the WORK that Black artists put into an industry we all consume on the daily—one that still fails to credit, support, and protect them fairly to this day. It’s where we get appropriative, revisionist, and racist ways of dealing with music. Your willful ignorance is exactly what music corporations want. They *want* to be able to easily categorize (a.k.a. segregate) Black artists into monolithic genres—i.e. “urban.” They don’t want you to know that American music is Black music, period.⁣

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Please also consider this as applicable to any art or entertainment we consume—be it film, dance, fashion, or beauty. If you admire and/or work within any of these fields and haven’t learned about the Black people who built these industries, I urge you to begin now."

Kierra’s response

What's the most challenging aspect of running your own business?

One aspect I found challenging was the marketing of running my business, I work in my home salon so it was difficult to promote myself and make people aware of my business and where I was based. The financial aspect is another area I found challenging because it was a completely different area of business I wasn't used to and had to wrap my head around.

What's your favourite part of running. your own business?

I really enjoy being my own boss and having the flexibility if needed to change my schedules and work around other aspect's of my life. Being in control of when and how much I work has definitely been one of the biggest perks. I also love getting to meet new people and knowing that no two days are the same.

Where do you find nail inspiration?

I use social media apps like Instagram and Pinterest mainly, taking certain aspects of other nail designs I've seen and making it my own. I also take inspiration from things around me like wallpaper prints, graphic design or anything creative that I can be inspired by.

How do you calculate your prices?

I did quite a lot of market research of other salon's and self employed nail technicians in my area, so l had a vague idea of making sure I wasn't over charging or undercharging whilst still remaining competitive. I also consider how long it would take for specific sets or designs and charge accordingly.

What's one of your favourite sets you've done and why?

My favourite sets have to be anything involving intricate nail art, at the moment it's definitely any designs involving butterflies or flowers because they're so versatile and you can take so much inspiration from them.

What have you found is the best way to

promote your business? For me personally, it has either been social media through instagram or Facebook, or word of mouth from current existing clients giving referrals and recommending me to friends and family.

As a small business have you had any unfortunate run in's with difficult clients?

I have been quite lucky up until now to not have had any unlucky run in's and hopefully won't be experiencing any in the future.

knew before you started this journey?

That there was a lot more intricate aspects involved in running a business than just learning and trying to master the skill and marketing yourself. There's so many more financial aspects to the business and having to be very business orientated as your own boss even whilst being in a creative field of work.

Do you feel as though there is sometimes a stigma when you tell people you're a nailtech?

Yes in a way, when I meet new people and tell them I'm a self employed nail technician I feel as though I'm not taken seriously for being a business owner because it's 'only doing nails'. I don't think people realise that's it's at exactly the same level as being self employed in any other profession, the only thing that differs is the profession or skill itself.

How did you know this was the right path for you?

I have always been a creative person ever since I was little, so I knew I was always going to be doing something to do with drawing, art, painting or anything within the art industry. So, being able to be self employed and being in a profession that's creative and getting to express myself through art in endless ways is one of the many positives of my job.

🐞 🎀 𝒲𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒞𝒶𝓇𝑒𝑒𝓇 𝐵𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝒮𝓊𝒾𝓉𝓈 𝒴♡𝓊? 🎀 🐞

𝙿𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚎 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚘𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚙𝚒𝚕𝚎. 𝙵𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚞𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚑𝚘𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚢𝚘𝚞. 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝙿𝙰𝙲 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚋𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚋𝚎𝚜𝚝 𝚜𝚞𝚒𝚝𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚛𝚐𝚢, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚙𝚊𝚝𝚑. 𝙸𝚏 𝚊 𝚙𝚒𝚕𝚎 𝚍𝚘𝚎𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚎, 𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚎 𝚐𝚘 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚏𝚘𝚌𝚞𝚜 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚜, 𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚐𝚞𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚒𝚕𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞.

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦. 𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯'𝘵. 𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘥𝘰 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘨𝘦. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶, 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘣𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦. 𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶.

🍰 🎀 𝘗𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘖𝘯𝘦 🎀 🍰

𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘪𝘭𝘦, 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘯, 𝘛𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘳𝘹, 𝘛𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘥 𝘔𝘢𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘑𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘬.

I get the feeling that this pile may be geared towards people who want to work in the medical field or the judicial system. This pile would make great leaders, storytellers, outdoor workers, caretaker for people with disabilities, acupuncturists, forensic reseachers, pharmacists, government workers, or political leaders. This pile may be the pile to work with children, or be stay at home parents. I get the sense that some of you need to bring more joy into your lives. Some of you may be holding onto the past, lacking forward planning, growth, and adventure. Some of you may be doubting yourselves and your abilities, perhaps being unhappy with your decisions. This may leave you feeling as if you are pinned down, unable to move or go forward. Some of you may be afraid to deal with the hurt you are feeling, afraid that removing the swords will cause more pain, but how can you close and heal the wound if what made it is still there? I have the feeling that some of you are meant to be severing ties with some people in your life, not everyone is meant to follow us throughout our journey, it is ok to let go. Some of you may be feeling bitter towards failures, you may be afraid to take the next step out of fear of failing once more. And some of you may be focused more on being upset at the world around you rather than fixing what needs to be fixed. A lot of you may be feeling exhausted, unable to move forward, as if the universe has beaten the will out of you. I get the feeling that so many of you are feeling as if you are trapped, confined, that things are too uncertain. A lot of you are trapping yourselves with self limiting beliefs, I need for this pile to let go, let go of all that do not serve you. You have so many good things coming to you, it is not worth giving up, it is not worth missing it because you are limiting yourself and living within the past. You have to move forward and grasp what is yours. Your guides are pleading with you to find the strength and heal, find the motivation you need and take the next steps forward. Do not let your blessings pass you. You will have success, you will achieve your goals, you will be accomplished, there will be completions and fulfilments, there will be a sense of belonging as well. Your guides want to give you the messages and tools that you need to achieve this success, all you need to do is reach out to grab it. You are meant to be here, you belong here, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Some of you will be needing to travel for this career path while others will be traveling for this career path. This pile is needing to do a lot of self evaluation, some are needing to have another awakening, and others are needing to make a decision. Some of you are needing to do something entirely new, while others need to practice composure. As a recap, this pile is geared towards the medical and judicial fields.

🍰 🎀 𝘗𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘛𝘸𝘰 🎀 🍰

𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦, 𝘛𝘸𝘰 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴, 𝘛𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘶𝘱𝘴, 𝘛𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘴, 𝘛𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘶𝘱𝘴, 𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘍𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘬.

I get the sense that the people in this pile would enjoy being in an industry involving planning and negotiations, perhaps the beauty industry, traveling, social working, wedding planning, retail trade, owning a business, being a manager, and perhaps being a police officer. I'm seeing management being repeated here. This may be a pile of business owners, potential models, makeup artists, or retailers and fashion designers. I get the sense that the people in this pile may be stuck between two choices, Some of you guys see the grass is greener on the other side, while others are experiencing wanderlust. I'm getting the sense that some of you will be suddenly leaving your current place of employment, or the current area you are living in. I have a feeling that this will be of personal accord rather than force. I'm getting the sense that there are a lot of people here feeling restless, wanting to do something but not being able to. I get the sense that some of you are being called overseas. I have a feeling that in your career, some of you will be reuniting with past friends. There will be an abundance of celebrations in this pile, a lot of socializing, a lot of gatherings as well. Please be careful of over indulgence. I get the sense that some of you will be meeting your forever partner through career, I'm seeing a lot of weddings and engagement parties. I get the sense that this pile will be rather successful, you guys won't have to worry about finances. I'm seeing that some of you will be receiving a large inheritance, some people here will be marrying into money,and others will be receiving an unexpected financial windfall. This pile is going to be receiving a lot of happiness and a lot of good times. I am seeing a lot of pregnancies in this pile, if that is not what you want please wrap it up! I get the sense that this pile will definitely be spending a lot of time with their loved ones. I'm getting the sense of creative ventures here, some people may take up sculpting. There is a lot of abundance and happy memories here. I'm getting the message that this pile is being warned against over competitiveness, be wary of any pent up energy, tempers, egos, potential conflicts. Take the time to step back and see the situations from other perspectives. I think this pile is being warned against having too much of an inflated sense of self, to be careful of how you view yourself and others in less fortunate circumstances. With the Chariot at the bottom of the deck, I get the feeling that the people in this deck knows exactly what they must do, I think there are some people who are still stalling, and some people who aren't relinquishing control to spirit. Take this as a sign and confirmation that you are on the right path, it is time to do the thing. Go ahead and do the thing.

🍰 🎀 𝘗𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 🎀 🍰

𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘰𝘯, 𝘒𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴, 𝘒𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴, 𝘚𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘪𝘹 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘶𝘱𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘬.

This pile feels like the artistic pile. This pile might like to do night work, competitive work, jobs with a lot of activities, jobs that require high security, public speaking, investing, historians, or working with children. I get the feeling that this pile feels as though their dreams are only an illusion, as if the things you aspire are only imagination. Some of you may be afraid to take the next step, spirit may have made your path too vague, leaving you unsure and insecure about the security of your journey. Some of you may be facing some misconceptions about your journey, perhaps a misunderstanding of signs leading to deception of the self. Some of you may be making hasty decisions, you are needing to slow down and really think through the choices you make. Many of you may be seeking adventure, some of you are going to be traveling or moving soon, while other may be needing to travel or move in a career. A lot of you are needing to take a risk, be a brave, free spirited person. A lot of you are needing to be more confident, to have more excitement to life. I feel like most of you guys need to step up and accept the challenge. There are going to be some big opportunities coming, I need the people reading this pile to seize the moment and grab it. You are needing to mind your impulsivity, really think about your next course of action, use your intellect to the best of it's abilities. Many of you are going to have to rebel against others, go against the flow, be focused on your goals. There may be some people in this pile that are experiencing manipulation. A lot of you are needing to reevaluate the connections you have, not everyone is meant to be on the same path as you throughout your life, it's ok to let go. Some of you may be caught up in risky behaviours, I would suggest not to. There may be some cheating and lies going on around some people, some scheming, enemies spying, a lot of evil eyes prying. I would suggest that this pile do some protection spells, perhaps get some evil eye pendants 🧿 Many of you are needing to be resourceful and really protect yourself. The wheel is in your favor, many of you need to continue moving forward, others are needing to start moving. Allow fate to do what it needs to and relinquish control onto spirit. Some of you are needing to address the past, past connections, or questionable childhood experiences. Once you release the past and all that do not serve you, things will begin to move rather quickly.

🍰 🎀 𝘗𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘳 🎀 🍰

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘪𝘭𝘦, 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘭𝘦. 𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘴, 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳, 𝘒𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘳𝘹, 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘰𝘰𝘭, 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘶𝘱𝘴, 𝘗𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘶𝘱𝘴, 𝘛𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘶𝘱𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘪𝘹 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘳𝘹 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘶𝘱𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘬.

I get the feeling that this is the most picked pile, we have 12 cards here, a lot of careers but also a lot of confusion. This pile may work as psychologist, endocrinologists, psychics, librarians, designers, florists, gardners, hostesses, music or film industry workers, entertainment industry workers, travelers, drivers, business owners, work with technology or electricity, social media workers, ceo's, doctors, singers, poets, artists, beauty industry, creative workers, scientists, and there are some people who are jacks of all trades. For this pile, there are so many things hidden, a lot of you guys aren't meant to know your full path as it may affect the outcome of said path. I see a lot of stability coming to this pile, a lot of wish fulfilment. I see that there may be some people slowly losing hope but please know spirit has a plan for you, you are being divinely guided, please do not worry. A lot of you may be stalling your own abundance, some of you are being rather arrogant, hyper, overly confident. Some of you are living within jealousy, my heart is feeling rather heavy, as if there is a hole here, some of you really need to work on your heart chakra. There is a lot of extremely hasty decisions being made, a lot of people here are lacking self discipline, lacking enthusiasm and ambition. There may be a lot of fearful energy within some of you. I get the feeling that many of you are needing to release all of this to spirit, the heart chakra and crown chakra are in desperate need of repair for this pile. Many of you are needing to abandon old ideals, I feel that some of you may be experiencing anxiety from the idea of jumping right in. You are needing to trust that spirit will carry you over to the end of the road safely. Many of you will be meeting your future partners through career, there will be a lot of courting, sending messages, passing notes, and it seems like this will be a new person. There will be a lot of celebrations here, a lot of new friends being made, many of you will be finding your soul tribe and family. I get the sense that these blessings are being blocked because some of you are refusing to move, refusing to address the problems at hand, some of you are refusing to heal as well. Many of you really need to stand your ground, many of you are being held back by trying to match the expectations of others. A lot of you need to rock the boat to release the negative energy around you. A lot of you are going to be facing major decisions here, many of you may be afraid to make a choice. I would suggest thinking through everything, pay attention to want your heart wants and follow it. Do not worry about the outcome, right now many of you need to just do.

How I Became an Archaeologist

If you had told me when I was 15 that I would spend my life as an archaeologist, I probably would have been pretty surprised. I didn’t grow up knowing a great deal about archaeology or even being fascinated by arrowheads. At that time, I might well have asked what an archaeologist really is and what one actually does. I did get to visit the Parthenon and other ruins while on a trip with my aunt when I was sixteen. Even then, I don’t remember having more than a casual interest in what could be learned from these places. I was more interested in the living people and the new food dishes I encountered on that trip, which was my first trip outside the United States.

From talking to other archaeologists, I’ve learned that there are a lot of paths to deciding archaeology is going to be your life’s work. In my case, what led me to archaeology was anthropology, and specifically an elective course I took in the Fall of my senior year in high school that was taught by a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts. Until then I had not been a serious student, although I did well enough in school. Perhaps I was slightly bored by most of my courses, but anthropology was anything but boring! It looked at people elsewhere in the world and over great periods of time. Many of these people lived different lives than my friends and I did, and they sometimes thought very differently about what was important in life than people here in the United States. I was fascinated, and, honestly, I particularly liked the fact that the conventions of American society, which to my teenage self were sometimes a little confining, weren’t after all the only sensible way to approach life. That year, as I chose a college to attend, I specifically looked for anthropology programs. I chose Beloit College in Wisconsin, which to this day has an excellent anthropology program.

Initially, I thought that I was most interested in cultural anthropology, but like most anthropology departments in the United States, Beloit required its anthropology majors to take courses in biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology as well as cultural anthropology. These are what are known as the four fields of American anthropology and together, they give us a more complete picture of humans in both the past and the present. Most people focus their careers in one subfield or another, though we recognize the importance of each one for understanding humans, and in most cases in North America our degrees are in anthropology not one of the subfields. In college, I found all these courses more fascinating than anything I had studied before, and I actually became a good student as I explored anthropology. I was learning so much neat stuff! I also did volunteer work in the Logan Museum at Beloit, which was founded at the end of the nineteenth century and holds some pretty amazing ethnographic and archaeological collections. It was there I first became interested in artifacts and learned to clean and care for them. After a college internship in cultural anthropology convinced me that cultural anthropology was not the most interesting part of anthropology after all, I began to focus on archaeology. I was most intrigued by my courses in Mesoamerican archaeology and North American archaeology, which before college had been completely unknown to me.

When I graduated from college, I still wasn’t sure what I would do with my life. I worked for about two years both in social work and as a tax auditor for the IRS, but decided in 1974 to try graduate school in archaeology because I still found what archaeology had taught me about past people compelling. I lived in Chicago, so I enrolled in the Ph.D. program in North American archaeology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

My graduate self in the late 1970s. Photo credit: Phillip Neusius

The biggest shock of graduate school was my professors’ almost immediate insistence that I pick what research I wanted to do. They pushed me to develop an expertise or skill within North American archaeology through my research. It sounds obvious to me now, but I think many beginning graduate students are like I was, lovers of the discipline’s knowledge, but a bit daunted by becoming an independent researcher. Developing an area of focus and specialty skills is part of becoming a professional archaeologist. One reason for this is because contemporary archaeological undertakings rely on teams of researchers, each contributing special skills and knowledge to accomplish the many aspects of excavation, analysis, and interpretation. If you envision archaeology as the solitary pursuit of an elusive artifact or site, you don’t have the picture quite right. Think instead of archaeological fieldwork involving groups of scientists working together to discover and carefully record many different bits of evidence about what the world used to be like and what people did in it. Also think about the many hours these scientists and others will spend not only in the field, but in the laboratory after an excavation is completed cleaning finds, describing artifacts, and analyzing data in order to make meaningful interpretations.

For someone like myself, who loved all aspects of anthropology, not to mention archaeology, and who had only gradually settled on North America as my geographic focus, picking a focus on entering graduate school was a hard task. There was so much that would be interesting to study! However, I did remember especially enjoying a research paper I had done in college on the relatively new interdisciplinary field of zooarchaeology, so under pressure, I told my professors I wanted to pursue this subfield in graduate school. Amazingly, this turned out to be a good choice of specialization for me. I found that I really love to work with collections of animal bone. For me, opening a bag of bone refuse from a site still is exciting. Bone identification work is a little like doing a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces. It is challenging, and it takes concentration and careful observation to piece together what you can. There is so much to figure out about any single piece of bone! What animal is it? How healthy was the animal? What part of the animal’s body is it? Has it been burned or cut? How was the bone buried and changed after the humans were done with it? Then you have to record this information so it can be combined with other observations on the assemblage of bone you are looking at. After identification, making sense of what a collection of the bones means and correlating these kinds of data with other information from a site and region requires careful analysis, but also insight and creativity. To me it is endlessly fascinating.

Besides finding that I liked the work, choosing zooarchaeology was also serendipitous since my professors were looking for a student to work with them on this aspect of a big project they were undertaking in west-central Illinois centered on the Koster site, which was first inhabited more than 9000 years ago and then reinhabited by people right up into modern times. Most importantly the poorly known Archaic Period levels were numerous, well-preserved, and distinct from each other so we could add a lot of new information through our work. For my dissertation I was able to look at the animal remains from levels of this site dated between approximately 8500 and 6000 years ago, which represent how people used animals at that time.

Koster site strata. All those dark layers are from Archaic period camps at the site. Photo credit: Del Bastian, Center for American Archaeology.

Graduate school was intense, but I continued to be fascinated by archaeology’s ability to tell the story of people lost to standard Western history. In those days I was excited to be part of this science that could do so much more than describe and take care of cool artifacts. It was a heady thing to learn that I could contribute to what was known about people who lived thousands of years ago. In later years, I’ve had to think more critically than I did then about what a privilege it is for an archaeologist to learn about the history and lives of other ethnicities. Today’s archaeologists recognize their responsibility to present information about past people for both scholarly and public use in ways that are sensitive to what is considered sacred and private by the descendants of those people. I think this is an important change in perspective, but in the 1970s most archaeologists just wanted to show that people’s stories from the past could be told using the techniques of archaeology. I certainly was happy, if a little naively so, to have found a way to contribute to telling the human story.

If I consider entering graduate school as the start of my professional career as an archaeologist, I have been pursuing this career for more than 45 years! Over the years I have done zooarchaeological and archaeological work in the American Midwest, Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast working on telling the story of people who lived as long as 9000 years ago and as recently as the Sixteenth century. I’ve worked at several universities, in a small museum, and on small and large archaeological projects in the field of Cultural Resource Management (CRM) doing archaeological survey, site excavation, and zooarchaeological identification and analysis. I’ve written scholarly papers and articles as well as a textbook on North American archaeology. However, beginning in the late 1980s, I spent more than 31 years doing research and teaching anthropology and archaeology here in Pennsylvania at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In this job I taught both undergraduates and graduate students, but, as is typical of university professors, I also spent time doing fieldwork and analysis as part of my research while at IUP. Fortunately, because archaeology is a team undertaking, I’ve been able to involve many students in my research. Working with students in research as they discover what fascinates them has been a highlight of being an archaeologist for me. I’ve now retired from teaching but not archaeology. I’m still working with both physical and digital archaeological collections both through CMNH and elsewhere and writing about archaeology. Who knows what this career still will bring me!

Drawing a profile at the Johnston site with one of my students in 2008. Photo credit: Erica Ausel, IUP Archaeology.

Tracking down a bone identification with one of my students in the Zooarchaeology Lab at IUP. Photo credit: Beverly Chiarulli.

If you are reading this blog because you are thinking about archaeology as either a career or a hobby, I hope you realize that mine is just one story among the many that could be told. Because there are so many aspects of archaeology, people come into it from all sorts of backgrounds and because of all sorts of interests. I think that it is important to remember though that it really is about understanding people and telling their stories through the artifacts and other evidence we find. This is what interested me in archaeology in the first place. Discovering the details of the human story is a giant undertaking. There is no shortage of research problems or work to do, but solving the puzzles presented by sites and collections is both challenging and fun. I’m certainly glad I decided to become an archaeologist and zooarchaeologist so many years ago!

Sarah W. Neusius is a Research Associate in the Section of Anthropology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Definitions of Bolded Terms

anthropology -the study of humans including the physical, cultural and social aspects in the past and present.

cultural anthropology - the study of the cultural aspects of humans especially recent and contemporary social, technological, and ideological behavior observed among living people.

biological anthropology – the study of the biological or physical aspects of humans, including human biological evolution and past and present biological diversity.

linguistic anthropology - the study of the structure , history, and diversity of human languages as well as of the relationship between language and other aspects of culture.

archaeology - the study of past human behavior and culture through the analysis of material remains.

ethnographic – relating to the scientific description of people and cultures especially customs and beliefs.

Mesoamerican archaeology - the archaeology of the area from central Mexico southward through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica.

North American archaeology - the archaeology of the area from central Mexico northward throughout the United States and Canada.

zooarchaeology – a subarea of archaeology involves the identification of animal remains from archaeological sites and investigates the ecology and cultural uses of the animals represented.

assemblage - a collection of artifacts from the same archaeological context.

Archaic Period - a time period from approximately 10,000 BP to 3000 BP that is recognized in most of North America.

Cultural Resource Management (CRM) – an applied form of archaeology undertaken in response to laws that require archaeological investigations.

archaeological survey – the systematic process archaeologists use to locate, identify, and record archaeological site distribution on the landscape.

Pursuing Your Purpose Over Grabbing the Bag

The Necessity of Motivation in Pursuit of Wealth 

Being a witch with ADHD can be contradictory at times. And now is one of them. I am confident that wealth follows and it does not lead. I am comfortable not leading my life in pursuit of wealth. However, I am still a human existing on this planet, a planet where wealth not only leads, but having some form of income is a necessity for survival. For most, a steady income is a necessity for creating a comfortable, safe, and healthy environment to prosper in this decaying world. 

I am in a position where I have less wealth than I ever have before, but I have also achieved more dreams than I ever have before. I am living in a place I have dreamed about since I was young. I am living among the mountains and the great glory of this Earth’s nature and all it has to offer. I am living with and building a family of humans and animals that love me greatly and our soulmates of mine. I am living as a witch who believes in my value and abilities. 

These things drive my passion, my hope, and my willingness to do more than simply survive. My willingness to always push to be thriving. What doesn’t drive this will to live fully is paid work, perceived achievement/success, and valuing profit. 

It is very difficult for me to “show up” as my full self or with 100% energy when I am not intrinsically motivated by the values I consider most important. These are things I typically do and express in spades. Especially, in critical situations and oftentimes to a fault or to the great annoyance of others. 

However, I’ve learned the hard way in my adult years that when I try to pursue things that don’t fulfill my soul purpose or innermost values, I not only fail, but I suffer greatly, relapse, and regress. 

ADHDilemma 

As I referenced in my introductory post, I was a high-achiever growing up. This is also a result of being an AFAB person and an empath with severe ADHD. I knew all the rules, I studied hard, I hyper-focused, I hyper-felt, I had way too many varied interests that were always changing, I wanted to win, to be loved as I was, and I took rejection and torment to heart. This allowed me to rise up as a star student, star sibling, star employee. I masked the qualities and behaviors that I was ashamed of or the ones that led to torment, rejection, or guilt. 

You see,  I could read other people and knew when I was upsetting them or when they were intentionally upsetting me. This made it easy to designate different emotions, behaviors, reactions, and conflicts into different buckets in my head. There were buckets that were safe to dump out in public, within a specific system, or with certain people, and others that were not. I became a masked person instead of myself.

What societal rules mixed with my persona and neuro-status didn’t allow me to do was love myself, and therefore, it prevented me from being a star-friend, or at least being friends with those who had my best interest at heart. More than that, the lack of love I had for myself regressed my ability to be a caretaker for myself, to be spiritually aligned, and ultimately to be happy. I let so many people victimize me throughout my life because of this and therefore have accumulated my own traumas along the way.

I have now learned so much about myself, unlearned so many unhealthy habits and behaviors, worked through a lot of trauma, embraced so many emotions and qualities about myself. This makes it heartbreakingly difficult for me to face what I call “the old me”. I really do not align with this person anymore, and I don’t really feel them in me at the deepest levels, but at the surface they are fully present. 

Old Habits Die Slowly and Painfully

This “old me” knew how to present on LinkedIn, in the professional world, knew how to do what I needed to do to get the job, to fit in, to lead the group, to follow the leader. Whatever was needed of me, I did it. 

I am now in a really tough financial position. I don’t have enough money to pay my bills, get medicine, go to therapy, take my pets to the vet*, get groceries, get more soil for my plants, etc. I know that I need to make money, and I know that the thing stopping me has been restraining myself from pursuing higher-income gigs. I have been fearful that I won’t “make it” in this new field that I am pursuing and that I left my corporate job to pursue. This has been stopping me from taking the leap into freelance writing gigs, into seeking out magazines or sites to submit stories too, to recording my first podcast episode, to finish setting up my profiles for freelance sites that are connected to my LinkedIn or require examples of my work. 

*Both my pets had full vet exams in April, I have simply not been able to afford a visit to a new vet for either pet since we moved. They are healthy.

Instead of going for these things that may make me more money AND fulfill the want and need I have to try to write and create content for things I am passionate about, I am settling for much less. Getting low $/hour to do low-brain-capacity work. A big part of this is feeling like I won’t be represented as I am now and for what I want to be doing, but rather for the “old me” because of the work I’ve done in the past for tech companies or consultants. The buyers of the work I want to do won’t have any specifically-relevant work to review. And the buyers of the work I used to do don’t want someone like me and I don’t want to write for those types of topics anyway. 

So why am I stopping myself from presenting in my full form online? Why am I not believing in myself to do the things I went to school for, live and breathe and consciously learn about with my time? 

Because I was always told that to succeed in business or in any field or industry, you need experience, presentation, professionalism, etc. And these things have always been defined through a straight, white, and male-driven lens. This means no tattoos, no colored hair, no piercings, no political issues or talk (even though what I want to discuss isn’t political to me, even if it’s politicized by the public). Why, no matter how much I oppose and despise those who set these “precedents and standards” do I still give in to them?

Because old habits die slowly, painfully, and only with a lot of work and resilience is it even possible. 

Shadow Work Makes a Great Assassin!

The only one qualified to kill off these old, and frankly unwelcome, habits is with an old friend - Shadow Work. Suffice it to say, I think all of this means that Shadow Work is calling my name. It’s time to have a real focus on this as I also work to pursue my creative and professional dreams. 

Shadow work allows us all to go inside and break down these old habits, old traumas, old blocks that come back our way to try and break down our soul. Consulting, tending to, and loving your shadow self can allow one to break free of these things, or even better, allow them to work for you and propel you on your journey to achieve your soul’s purpose.

To get started, I am working with this very poignant Full Moon that takes place tomorrow at its highest illumination. I have some shadow-work journal prompts, a Full Moon spell, and a ritual planned. 

I guess sometimes, being an ADHD witch has it’s upsides too. Witchcraft is a tool that really helps me live a meaningful life despite the struggles that come with my ADHD. I am who I am, and embracing the intersections of these two identifying pieces of me allows me to pursue my soul’s purpose.

- Aquirius (July 2021)

Interaction guidelines- The Rules RPs are currently open, please read the rules before interacting

The Rules

- Please Read the rules before interacting

-This is an Ask and RP blog. Rps will be taken under consideration, on a case by case basis

- Absolutely No one under 18, preferably 21+. I’m not planning to censor anything on this blog. If you are not of age, do not follow or interact. You will be reported and blocked

- Patience is a virtue. The Mun works an incredibly difficult and stressful job, that, because it pays the bills, takes priority. This blog is a platform for fun and interaction but can’t take precedence over the real world. Sometimes I’m super busy and it could be awhile before I respond to a post, or an RP. If you aren’t capable of patience don’t interact.

- Please be respectful. The level of respect you show this blog and others is important to the Mun. if you aren’t capable of acting in a mature fashion, you will be blocked. BE NICE…

- Absolutely no popup RPs in ask, without having discussed or plotted a story with the Mun.

- If you would like to RP please dm me with a story idea.

- This is not a tcest site. I’m sorry I don’t know how to write tcest, and don’t have a desire to do so. I feel that I would not be a decent or supportive rp partner if I’m not able to give it my best, and thus do not wish to mistreat or neglect those in the community who enjoy this type of RP

- No randomly appearing in the lair without being invited. Donnie has gone above and beyond to give them safety in their sanctuary. If you weren’t invited, you are not welcome in their home, as is the case with any stranger.

On to the boys!

- The boys are 2014/2016 Bayverse turtles but are mature adult men. Human age wise they are around 50, but maturity and body wise, somewhere in their 30’s respectively. They do not age the same as humans due to the properties of mutagen and their turtle mutant base type

- This is an AU set several decades into the future- please read the prologue to help understand a little more about the world they live in

- They live in a skyrise, penthouse. With state of the art- Donnie certified level protections put into place. Nothing gets in or out, without his knowing. He does not take the safety of himself or his brothers lightly

- The Boys do not belong to anybody and will not belong to anybody. They are free to interact with whomever they would like, in any way that has been discussed and planned between the two muns.

- They don’t know your muse, nor have had any previous interactions with your muse, and thus are not in love with your muse, or have an established relationship with your muse.

- If you want their love and attention you will have to earn it, just like you would in any other type of interaction

- Absolutely no god-modding. Example: its your 3rd time to respond and you’re attempting to have Leo princess carry your character to bed. This is not a natural flow to the story, and not going to happen.

- The boys may like certain features, or admire certain characteristics, however they are open to all body types, shapes and beings, so long as they feel a connection.

A quick explanation as to what the boys do with their free time in a world that knows they exist.

Leo: “We each found our interests and talents opened up a several viable options that had lead us each to a “unique” position.” Leo led as he gathered his thoughts. “Keep in mind after we managed to stop Krang and those who worked closely with him, the world was vulnerable. As far as my brothers and I were concerned, we had fought too hard and for too long for someone to simply slip into the power vacuum we had created and to continue to harsh reality Krang had created for Earth’s inhabitants. Due to this we each chose to do what we knew how to do and could most easily adapt as challenges presented themselves.”

He paused for a moment as he thought about the hardships, they had each faced and managed to overcome as they slowly helped right the world and returned her to standing on her own. A shimmering blue jewel among the galaxy and other worlds that had become familiar with the planet and its amenities.

“During our years in the resistance we managed to acquire wealth and assets. We were able to accumulate quite the little nest egg using those. Along with our acquired influence it opened many a door which in the old world would have remained not only closed but permanently locked to us.”

“I became a strategic investor. Buying the remnants of properties, businesses and services and either helping them to return to what they once were or repurposing to better suit the needs of this new era and turn a profit. It proved to be very profitable and allowed for me to continue to churn out profits which allowed for me to seek other properties and businesses to invest in or connect the right individuals with each other in away that led to my ability to offer the initial capital for a small percentage of the quarterly earnings. It helped people to create jobs and led to a lot of normalcy for those who desperately needed.

One hand washes the other, and this in its essence has lead to my own sector of the Tartaruga brothers incorporated. I have a multi-billion dollar operation on Earth and several branches operating throughout the universe currently.”

Donnie: “As Leo has said,” Donnie commented calmy, “our time resisting and fighting lead us each to our own talents. I spent a lot of time wearing many hats, which included, chemists, doctor, surgeon, agronomist, engineer, electrician, etc. to put it simply I spent a lot of time learning how to save lives, human and otherwise, and the best way to stretch our available resources in a way which led to people surviving. I also had to learn how to create medications which were so commonplace that many died without having them available. Most antibiotics don’t have a very long shelf life and when those ran out initially, we were in constant jeopardy of losing lives to the simplest of bacterial infections. My knowledge, and subsequent research lead to significant improvements and branching into many other factors, and shall we say break throughs.

Needless to say, the value of others wants, lead to my ability to fund the needs of the many. In my sector, I have several leadings areas including pharmacy, medical research, agrarian development, as well as generalized research and development in multiple fields from domestic to military. For obvious reasons, more detailed information is strictly classified.”

Raph: Raph chuckled as Donnie glossed over his closely guarded research. He was willing to kill to protect his research and continue to control the aspects that allowed him to fund the bulk of his interests and common welfare of those he blanketed with his programs. “They ain’t lying. After the world came back from going to shit, it took awhile to get it back up and going. Additionally, there were a lot of people, generally those not from this world that were way too determined to make sure we failed. This led to a lot of infighting and groups struggling for control. That tends to lead to a lot of shady business if you know what I mean, and it wasn’t like we had any type of social services such as police, fire fighting, or anything else. I initially took charge in areas like these.

I took a lot of care to train groups so that they worked together and were prepared to handle whatever problems came. It took a lot of time to cultivate proper training programs and help prepare people on how to help a traumatized world get back to functioning in a healthy way. I still help do this on planets and areas that are in recovery.”

“That being said however, my primary interest and “job” if you want to call it that, is training mixed martial artist prize fighters for the world federation galaxy league. Simply put we aren’t the only species that likes to watch trained athletes test their skills against one another within their respective brackets, or on specially contracted prized fights. I used to fight for the league and earned a lot of titles and prestige. I won most fights and was often the favorite to win after a while. I’m semi-retired and only occasionally enter the ring now days. However, I take and train promising talents for the league and other groups. I have also trained personal bodyguards for a variety of individuals.  Different specialties come with different specifics and contracts as well as costs. It takes a specific might set for each, and a lot of time to drill into a thick skull.”

Mikey: Mikey laughed at the turtle in red, “Oh yeah, and you were the king of thick skulled back when we were young, and dumb.” He barely dodged the throw pillow that was chucked at his head.  “Let’s see for me personally,” Mikey flashed a big grin, “I happen to be a master of many trades. During our days in the resistance, I learned a lot of different tricks to help make the food rations we had on hand not only palatable but nutritionally sound while feeding a literal army of people! So when it was possible I spent a large amount of time learning how to take fancy old world recipes and revamped them with food sources that were still available or recreated them with off world goodies. I also still paint, and love to collaborate with others to create amazing new concepts!”

His face darkened for a moment as he thought back to the early days of the resistance. “There were so many people who in the blink of an eye had lost everything, and unfortunately it was insanely common to find kids who had either been separated from their families or were the only survivor. In a lot of instances they were traumatized and it took a lot of creative thinking to coax them out of their shells and help to reteach them on how to live. This happened fairly frequently with adults as well. Because of this and what seemed like a never ending shortage of textiles, I had to learn and create new ways to make things and often times help find things that brought the sparkle back to peoples eyes. Because of this however, I have a multimedia conglomerate that allows me to work in a wide area of creative outlets. The fashion world is a flippant mistress, but there are a lot of ways in which one can compete and stand out. It’s led to a lot of lucrative contracts with those who are “starving” for the next amazing piece of creatively, or at least that’s what they tell me. The great thing about taking high end contracts and commissions is that a lot like my brothers, the revenue lets me continue to reach out to others. I fund a program that includes shelters called “Uncle Mikey’s” for those who are missing, exploited, or just need help. I also teach cooking, and practical skills for those who need them, and they are streamed to community centers such as local libraries, after school programs, and the like, to try and continue to help those who never received a chance to learn to do things due to the world kind of going through an apocalypse level event.

Suspected Birth Charts: A Series {Narcos’ Javier Peña}

Being a witch, I thought it only fitting that I take a stab at each of my favorite Pedro Pascal characters and their individual birth charts. For all of my astrology lovers out there, I hope you enjoy!

Javier Peña’s Birth Chart

Sun: Capricorn ☀️

Sun in Capricorn has an intense drive for achievement that never lets up. They strive for a personal standard of excellence, even if the rest of the world settles for mediocrity. Javier is notorious for being very focused on work and getting the job done—no matter the cost. His personal life usually takes a back seat. He is very disciplined and is not what one would consider a dreamer, but rather, a doer. He exudes a sense of being in charge. He is highly ambitious, self-reliant, resourceful, and self-motivated.  Men with the Sun in Capricorn are reserved and unapproachable. They usually tend to be everything opposite of romantic and are not what would be typically considered as passionate.

Moon: Scorpio 🌙

Those with a moon in Scorpio often try to act calm, cool and collected, but despite appearing as though they are in control, there is usually a brooding intensity below the surface. They experience intense feelings, which they often fear to express. Javier is a lover underneath it all. But he does not like appearing vulnerable, so he chooses to squelch any notion of emotion. Moon in Scorpio is a bit of a conundrum—repressing their feelings makes them too powerful to contain. Javier has a tendency to be relatively secretive and is generally wary of getting too close, especially having been burned by love.

Rising: Aries 💫

Aries Rising typically come off as brave, opinionated, and independent. They generally have a very strong and commanding presence and may even be considered intimidating. Those with an Aries Ascendant are considered the fierce warriors of the zodiac. This fits Javier to a T. Being the first sign, Aries leads the calvary. Javier, like so many other Aries Risings, is intensely competitive and views the world as a series of competitions. Asking for forgiveness rather than permission is the Aries Rising way, and Javier’s proclivity towards doing what he wants without qualm fits this bill. This placement also drives Javier to be somewhat restless and he absolutely hates to be tied down or told what to do.

Mercury: Aquarius 📂

In the birth chart, Mercury represents the way you recognize patterns, absorb and process information, and exchange ideas and information with others. Mercury dictates your communication style and your thought process. Javier’s Aquarius Mercury placement makes him rather unconventional in self-expression. He enjoys breaking the rules. Though Aquarians are not necessarily loud or flamboyant people, they often have a quiet way of stirring things up. They delight in exposing what they deem biases in others’ way of thinking. Javier’s Mercury in Aquarius makes him very quick to contradict others, and to offer a different perspective. He is quick and alert, with very strong powers of observation, usually taking the win in most debates. Aquarius is an air sign, which is detached and intellectual by nature, usually given to forcing their ideas on others. Cue an intellectual superiority complex that can often intimidate others.

Venus: Virgo ❤️

Venus is the planet which rules the style in which we love. Javier’s Venus is in Virgo, which means he expresses his affection in a very pragmatic way. Often shy and reserved in the ways of love, and perhaps rather aloof, they can be uncomfortable with gushing displays of affection. They are never ones to fall prey to romantic illusions but are nevertheless extremely fussy about what they’re looking for in friends and lovers, with only very few people being likely to meet their lofty standards. Javier’s Venus sign also provides him with highly developed discriminating faculties, making him an exceptionally good and mercilessly accurate, judge of character. The Venus Virgo in love is attentive, on time and mannerly but still shows a sense of moderation. This placement causes Javier to be somewhat resistant to really involved romantic entanglements. He needs space, to find some sense of being “clear” and able to make the best choices.

Mars: Scorpio 🔥

Mars represents our will, drive, sexual energy, and how we assert ourselves. It is the raw energy that helps you get out of bed every morning, fuels your ambition, and gives you a sense of direction. Javier’s Mars placement is in Scorpio, which means he is at his best when he is challenging himself to achieve the impossible. Scorpio Mars people truly are a force of nature and arguably have the strongest sexual stamina in the entire zodiac, making Javier a very intense lover who is sexually regenerative and powerful. Javier sees the world in black and white, which means he finds balance through the release of energy, often through sexual expression. He is very strong willed and has no issue letting everyone know what he wants in the moment. If someone makes him angry, instead of blowing up right away, he goes into a slow burn. It is usually pretty easy to know when someone with Scorpio Mars placement is upset, as they are prone to making sarcastic and biting remarks.

Jupiter: Scorpio 🍀

Astrologically, Jupiter is the planet of luck, fortune, success, and generosity. A kind and abundant force for good in the universe. Your Jupiter sign tells you where things come naturally to you in life and where you’ll have an easy time achieving your ambitions. Javier’s Jupiter being in Scorpio, he has a magnetic, powerful presence that attracts success and opportunity. With a desire to know everything, this makes him the excellent detective that he is. He has a natural shrewdness that also makes him good with money. Jupiter Scorpios are naturally watchful and can sometimes close themselves off to new ideas and people. The is a defense against feeling vulnerable or lost. Other times, they take risks that end in disaster or overreaction.

Saturn: Scorpio 💪

Saturn is all about maturity, responsibility, discipline, and stewardship and, in essence, how we limit or restrict ourselves. Javier’s Saturn in Scorpio makes him feel shaky when control is slipping through his fingers. But with Saturn in Scorpio, a strong will meets a fierce focus. The result is persistence, endurance and sometimes ruthlessness, in the pursuit of goals. Javier can often be fixed and unyielding when he wants something, bordering on obsessive and destructive behaviors. He has a gift of being able to sense the very structure of things, usually leading him to the essence of a problem at work, solving mysteries and transforming what’s dead or decaying.

Uranus: Cancer 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Uranus is the astrological symbol of progress, science, and disruption of the status quo. While Saturn is the planet of limitations, Uranus is the planet that seeks to push past them. This planet is generally representative to a generation as a whole, rather than just the individual. Javier’s Uranus is in Cancer, which means that home and family come with radically different values and can look very different from society’s idealized traditions for people born with Uranus in Cancer. Many from this generation experience a family structure that feels out of sync with what society assumes is the norm. Uranus is the planet of new paradigms. For this generation, family has less to do with bonds made by blood and more to do with a sense of belonging. Cancer Uranus natives often feel trapped by conventional ideas of family and their lifestyle choices reflect the need for convenience and freedom from overbearing authority figures.

Neptune: Scorpio 🔮

A bridge to all things mysterious, Neptune Signs slowly guide each generation to its destiny. Your Neptune sign’s influence reaches further than the ordinary senses, so there may be aspects of extrasensory perception at work. Illusion, fantasy, and dreams are the playing field here, and the spirit is the primary force. Javier’s Neptune in Scorpio lends him to extreme intelligence, introspection, and incisiveness. He is excellent at observing the world around him and commenting on it. In other words, not much gets past him. He tells it like he sees it, highly focused and very cynical. As with most men with Scorpio Neptune placements, he tends to have an especially grim view of the world around him.  

Pluto: Leo 🧿

In the birth chart, Pluto shows the area of life where you’ll personally face the intense powers of creation and destruction. The Ego holds to its defenses, but Pluto tries to urge you to let go, and surrender to become a new person. Pluto being another generational planet, Javier’s Pluto placement is in Leo. Individuals born during this time are learning how to actualize themselves, to find and identify the creative principle within them, to be self-expressive. They feel as though they have a special destiny to fulfill and need to be recognized and treated as special and unique. This generation is generally marked by the intense will, dramatic self-expression, power and pride symbolized by Pluto in Leo.

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Hii Jessie, how are you? Hope you are doing fine <3

So I wanted to ask you something, how did you discover what you wanted to do? And since you like fashion and music etc, have you ever, at some point considered, working with it?

I’m in my early 20s and so far I still don’t know what I want to do, and I feel like I’m wasting my time because while all of my friends are already in college or working with something they like, they already “found themselves” in a sense and I feel really lost. I would love to work in a more creativity environment kind of, within the fashion or music industry but at the same time I’d like to work with something more… I want to say meaningful? Like something almost like you do you know? That helps other people. I don’t know if I’m making any sense haha.

Anyway I hope this isn’t intrusive, but I found really interesting that ask you answered about what you work with.

Hi! Yeah, I’m doing well. I’m still stuck in lockdown but I should just be grateful that I have the privilege of working from home and that my friends and family are all safe and healthy. Hope you are doing good as well x

This might be a long one but:

I did have a period where I considered going into music journalism or something along the lines of that. Basically, my first part-time job (that I kept for the rest of my high school years) was at a record store and you know, it’s a dream for every music lover to be around music that often and to that capacity. They ended up letting me write the weekly newsletter (like reviews, announcements, mini interviews with local bands that came through for small gigs, etc.), which kinda got me thinking that maybe that’s what I wanted to pursue in the long run. After that I started finding odd internship at smaller magazines and even newspapers but I quickly realised that it wasn’t for me (for multitude of reasons). I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for a while after that, but then I started volunteering for the Red Cross during my last year of high school and spent a lot of time helping out with the prison program (which basically entailed supervising younger kids during the family visits on the weekend). That was when it clicked to me that I really wanted to do something relating to reform and ended up looking into legal studies and criminology for uni. I know my current job is in research but my uni work experience was actually with the Child Protection services. I ended up in research because I was lucky enough to have been offered opportunities, but I don’t necessarily believe that you need to do the exact thing that you were working towards at the beginning of your education. My advice to you is to look into volunteering or interning in as many areas of interests as you possibly could. Sometimes you can envision yourself ‘fitting’ into a certain career but from my experience, once you get there and spend a few weeks in that environment, it’s a completely different story. By integrating and getting hands-on experience in different fields, it’s going to give you a sample-size to work with and you’re going to be able to sit down and go ‘ok, this part of the job was good/rewarding but not so much this bit’ or ‘I didn’t enjoy that at all and it’s not going to work in the long-run.’ That way you’ll be dwindling down on which career path suits you best and if you ever decide to go in that direction then you’d most likely have already met people along the way that can help guide you or provide helpful advice on how to get there.

Also dnw, your message isn’t intrusive at all and what you’re saying makes a lot of sense to me! I think ‘discovering yourself’ is supposed to be for your 20s but imo, most of us don’t really know what we want to do and feel lost at times. I assure you that you’re not alone and just because you haven’t decided on a set path it doesn’t mean that you’re “falling behind” your peers in any way. Honestly, A LOT of people go to school for one thing and don’t even end up working in that area afterwards. Your friends are the few of the lucky ones, because half my friendship group are doing something completely different to what they wanted to do 3-4 years ago lol.

[Lee Soo Hyuk — 35 — he/him] Introducing MOON SUBIN. Word on the street is they are a PRESS SECRETARY FOR THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY affiliated with the DEMOCRATIC PARTY. Though they are RESERVED and INTIMIDATING, they can also be DEPENDABLE and HARDWORKING. In the chaos of New York City, they’re sure to fit right in.

Biography. Ask. Wanted Connections. 

I. WRITER’S INTRODUCTION

First of all, I want to introduce myself. You all can call me Jackie, and I am a twenty-one year old graduate student residing within the Eastern Standard Timezone (EST). I have been roleplaying for about 10 years now, however, I took a hiatus from writing on Tumblr due to migrating to other platforms that are more mobile friendly in terms of writing. Now that I have a greater availability, as well as not fond of the newfound style of roleplay on platforms such as Twitter or MeWe, I have returned in hopes to better develop characters and build better connections with other writers. Aside from writing, I enjoy spending quality time with my cat, going out to explore newfound areas, thrifting, reading, and watching random reality television shows. I look forward to getting to know everyone! Feel free to message me for plotting, headcanoning, or for a casual conversation. 

II. BASICS

NAME: MOON SUBIN

AGE: THIRTY-FIVE 

DATE OF BIRTH: 1986 MAY 31

GENDER: CISMALE

PRONOUNS: HE / HIM

SEXUALITY: PANSEXUAL 

HOMETOWN: IOWA CITY, IOWA

AFFILIATION: THE GOVERNMENT

JOB POSITION: DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S PRESS SECRETARY 

EDUCATION: BA IN JOURNALISM FROM NYU

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: SINGLE

CHILDREN: NONE

POSITIVE TRAITS: ELOQUENT, INDEPENDENT, INTELLIGENT, RESPONSIBLE, MATURE, REASONABLE

NEGATIVE TRAITS: RESERVED, BLUNT, INTIMIDATING, DEMANDING, SARCASTIC

FACECLAIM: LEE SOO HYUK 

III. POINTS ABOUT THE MUSE

Moon Subin was born into a rather average household in Heukseok-dong, Seoul, South Korea. His mother, a down-to-earth woman with a contagious smile, worked alongside her mother as a food vendor in one of the city’s largest market. The two were acutely known for their blood sausages as well as jangeo-gui (grilled eel). In fact, this is how the young woman met the young businessman. Running from a class with only a few cash in hand, he stopped at mother’s spot, asking for anything he could get with the amount of money available. She laughed at his lack of time management, and he only stated that he’ll make time to see her better next time. The following day, he returned and sat to chat with the woman. 

Subin was unplanned. The two were not yet wedded when discovering that the woman fell pregnant. However, never did the young couple refer to the baby as a mistake. Rather, they saw Subin’s life as a blessing to better plan for their fast approaching future. During the time in which the woman was pregnant, the man was offered an opportunity to continue his university studies abroad. Sent to Iowa City, Iowa, the young couple packed their belongings and settled within the United States. It’s in this city where Subin would be born, granting him American citizenship despite his parents yet to become naturalized citizens. 

Falling in love with the environment, the mother and father went through various means in order to further extend their stay within the country. From a student visa to a work visa, the father was granted more time to better prepare for the examination of becoming U.S. citizens. While his father began to work in a local company specializing in medical prosthetics, his mother worked at a local Chinese restaurant where she befriended Chinese immigrants who helped her with assimilating into the culture. 

Subin grew up in an environment where he witnessed the benefits of hard work. His parents worked many hours in order to provide for him as well as to their community. He found this to be admirable, and this encouraged the young boy to succeed in his academics so that he could provide for his parents in the future. 

He became interested in the field of communications due to constantly acting as the translator for his parents when making doctor appointments or trying to pitch the best deal at a cars dealership. Words were fascinating, and he especially thought this was the case after reading a number of novels written by authors such as H.G. Wells and Amy Tan. His interest in communications got him involved with the morning news at his middle school and high school. During his four years at high school, he also participated in Model UN and the Debate team. These involvements were the result of his great achievements in social studies courses, and his teachers encouraged him to get involved with these extracurricular activities. 

Due to awards achieved in high school, he was granted a scholarship to attend New York University in New York City. Although his parents did not want him to leave their home, they eventually came to terms that this would be good for his future successes. Thus, he went to attend NYU for a Bachelors in Journalism with a minor in Politics. Thanks to amazing professors and establishing connections through networking events, the young man was able to maintain a number of internships---such as volunteering for the current Governor’s former campaign in the creative team for marketing. He later volunteered alongside CNN professionals, and he gained an internship experience with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as Press Office Intern. By the time he graduated from university, he’s already met a number of influential, powerful people of the big city. 

 Upon graduation, he was able to get a job at the Manhattan District Attorney Office as Press Officer due to his wonderful performance during his internship with the office. He held this position for two years before being promoted as Deputy Press Secretary for the office. However, in less than 2 years, he was able to maintain the Press Secretary position due to the former Press Secretary’s leave to another office. In another year, he was granted the position of Deputy Director of Communications for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Subin held this position up until he was given the opportunity to work as the city’s District Attorney’s main Press Secretary. 

During his years working for the city and learning about the mishaps behind the scenes, Subin has been able to learn a lot about the dirty truth. He is aware that some of the crimes dealt with in the office are a result to the existing gangs within the city. Although his DA remains slightly oblivious to the people surrounding them, Subin maintains awareness due to the connections he’s established during interviews as well as conferences. They threaten Subin to keep quiet. They ask Subin to twist the truth. He does what keeps him safe, but he holds the knowledge close to his heart. The quiet man knows a lot----perhaps more than what the gangs wish for him to know, and this can be dangerous. One never knows what he can do with all of this knowledge. He could expose them to the public whenever he dares to do so. If he really wanted to, of course.

But, for now, he keeps quiet. He does his job and remains cordial with those he establishes some sorts of connection with. If someone he cares about, though, ever gets hurt, he’s not sure what he’ll do. No one knows.  

IV. WANTED CONNECTIONS

Any and all possible connections within the Government. I would love to further develop and establish connections within the affiliation in order to better understand Subin’s position in the government as well as with Law Enforcement, for he works within the District Attorney Office; therefore, he has connections with lawyers as well as officers. This can be good or bad, I am open to all possibilities. 

For those in Media, Subin is responsible for addressing those in Media in order to report information given by the DA. Those in media could have interviewed Subin, have gone to a number of his press hearings, as well as questioned his intentions or morales within this position. Anyone who does not trust him is very much wanted. A person who trusts him a lot is also wanted. 

To those in any gang, people who has paid him or threatened him to withhold information from the public is very much wanted. Give me some angst in regard to perhaps threatening his family. Perhaps people question how Subin can offerd such a luxurious home or car, and this could be due to payments accepted from those within these organizations. I am open to anything.

I am also interested in a secret relationship that should not be a relationship, however, the two continue to pursue one another in sexual and romantic rendezvous. Subin is not entirely the most relationship-orientated person, however, due to a lot of stress within his career, some fun would be favorable.