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#and some are more of a result to their lifelong trajectory from start to end like c.asgil

playing-with-research · 2 years

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Immature vs Mature Fandoms

I met with one of my Fans and Fan Communities students yesterday to talk about her research project on Taylor Swift and Swifties. The student is interested in what leads Swifities to remain or leave the fandom given all the changes in Swift's discography, as well as more recently her political activism.

One thing we discussed is how a fandom can grow and change over time just like people do. I've been thinking about the developmental trajectory of a fandom as related to identity formation, so here are some ideas to that end.

Fandoms can start like children, where we become emotionally attached to something we love. Then, over time, as we learn that others are fans of the same thing, we may develop the affirmational and/or transformational aspects of our fandom as we negotiate how others are emotionally attached to the same thing. It's almost like when children have siblings, and there's the process of working out how to share the love of parents. Well, fans who engage with other fans need to work out how sharing the fandom will impact them -- and perhaps attachment anxieties play a role here...

Additionally, as fandom becomes more integrated into one's identity and sense of self -- especially in relationship to other fans, non-fans, and anti-fans -- then the fans may act out and jockey to curry their love's and fan community's attention and favors. Perhaps those most insecure about their relationship with the fandom may be more likely to act out in such adolescent frustration, anxiety, and rebellion.

If not handled well, this adolescence can result in long-term issues with the fandom -- the idea of "falling in with the wrong crowd" as it were that begets the worst types of online trolls and other forms of anonymous harassers.

If not handled well, when that fandom is confronted with information that challenges it -- say, oh, that Joss Whedon is an asshole -- then a fandom stuck in an immature adolescence could become extremely defensive and toxic, preferring to only be around other fans experiencing the same pain and not learning how to renegotiate their relationship with the fandom.

A mature fandom emerges through such renegotiation in recognition of the pain the fandom may be causing oneself and others. A mature fandom accepts differences of interpretation and opinion, new additions to that which they love, and conflicts of belief and cognitive dissonance rationally.

A mature fandom can lead to a lifelong fandom. An immature fandom may sputter and die faster, hurting people from its toxicity.

#fandom #fandom problems #fans #fan communities #fractured fandom #identity #fandom culture #fan studies #popular culture studies

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traumatized-motherfuckers · 3 years

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Stress-based sickness, psychosomatic disorders, and the F word. Fibromyalgia.

Read up or listen up @t-mfrs.com (podcast available wherever you stream.)

Waking up, like I didn’t sleep for weeks. Falling asleep after five minutes on my feet. A pounding head. That sense of dread. Sticky sharp pains through in my shoulders and neck. Brain short on energy, missing a few cards from the deck. Waves of nausea and stomach cramps. Chills and sweats, depending on the body amps. Swollen lymph nodes. Muscle weakness poorly bodes. Insatiable hunger but nothing sounds edible - shit, now desire to throw up is incredible. Eyes shriveling, dry, back into my skull. The aches in my legs, pulsing and dull. Foggy thoughts. Racing heart. When will this end, why did this start?

Did I finally catch the ‘rona? Or am I just past my limit for being stressed out again? Well, I just moved, so this time I know that the answer is very likely… stressed.

So who wants to talk about getting sick? Yeah, among this group, the answer might be surprising. A lot of us do.

Why? Not because we love bitching and complaining when we feel less than ideal - spoilers, that’s every day, there’s really nothing left to say about the raging shit storms inside of us after a few years of it. We’re tired of hearing about it, too… just like we’re tired of living it, feeling it, and fearing it.

No, for us, it’s because it feels like there’s always a surprising ailment right around the corner when we least expect it. One that seemingly has no logical basis or reasonable solution. One that no one else understands. One that feels like it’s born of mental illness, somehow, while being very physically present. One that we don’t even bother bringing to doctors anymore, because no one needs to be shamed and shoved out the door again by their flippant disinterest in anything we say after the words, “Yes, I have anxiety.”

Yep. If you haven’t tried to mingle mental health with western medicine before, let me give you a quick disclaimer: unless you’re missing an arm, don’t bother. In my experience, the only thing you’ll get is an eye roll, possibly a prescription bandaid that somehow makes you feel worse, and a bored recommendation to see a psychiatrist - even if you already do.

All of this, of course, has the effect of only making you feel more upset. First, mentally, as you ruminate over the disrespect of essentially being called a liar just because the doctor doesn’t have enough training. Then, physically, as your increased stress and systemic arousal pushes your body into a new level of overdrive.

Oh, was it a mindfuck just to make the doctor appointment, get yourself there, and deal with the social anxiety of a waiting room for 30-120 minutes? I bet it felt great for someone to then invalidate your health concerns, recommend you calm down, and send you out the door without even looking you in the eye. Feeling more upset, now on a highly emotional basis? Enjoy the shame, hypertension, and lost sleep, as if you needed any more of that.

Today, I want to talk about the stress-central area of my health that hasn’t been completely figured out… and the label that I - embarrassingly - just recently learned is highly applicable to my physical condition.

But also, the outrage that I feel over said label, because, well, it explains nothing. In fact, if anything, it probably does all of us a huge disservice after we’re granted this diagnosis by pushing us into the express lane for being written off. It also separates two issues that are poorly explained, rather than combining them into one full picture that might actually yield answers. Oh, and should I mention that I think this is a larger problem of gender bias in the healthcare system? Yeah, why the fuck not. Might as well air all my grievances as a nice lead-in to another upcoming episode; is mental illness diagnosis skewed by gender?

I don’t want to let my pounding head and aching shoulders deter me too much, so let’s just get started.

History of ailments

I’ve talked about this before, but to briefly cover how fucked up this body is… let’s take a trip back to 2013 when my system failed me out of the blue. And by “out of the blue,” I mean that I had chronically overworked myself running on anxiety, obligation, and starvation for 2 years, leading to physiological revolt.

So, looking back, “duh.”

But at the time? This was all-new. It was crisis-inducing and beyond comprehension that I went from a perfectly healthy, physically resilient, surprisingly strong and low maintenance specimen to a chronically pained, systemically ill, digestively impaired, and constantly exhausted sack of wallowing self-hated.

After a lifetime of zero health concerns, I found myself bedridden and obsessed with every weird thing my body was doing to me. Which, as you’ve probably guessed, came hand in hand with the new weird things my brain was doing to me.

You’ve probably heard the “What IS CPTSD?” episode by now, so I’m guessing you’re not a stranger to the details about the common emergence of complex trauma symptoms. Yes, that’s based on a lot of research, but it’s also a throwback to my own experience. I was a long time depression and anxiety lurker, first time complex trauma contributor around age 23, when my brain was suddenly uprooted by a series of new social and therapy-based traumas.

My depression became debilitating negative self-regard and stronger suicidal ideation. Suddenly, my social anxiety became agoraphobia. My new health issues became topics of obsessive and intrusive thoughts… you know, when I wasn’t ruminating about my role in every trauma, my worthlessness as a human, and my recently-unsettled childhood memories. My early twenties were a great time.

And with all the mental strain, came the unresolvable insomnia. Which fed right into the health problems. Which circled back to spark more mental duress. Health anxiety is not a fun way to live.

So, to call my illnesses psychosomatic is completely appropriate. But, also, completely insulting when a western medicine practitioner utters the phrase as if it was a turd slowly coming out the wrong end. And that’s exactly what happened every time I tried to seek help.

To be clear - back in the day I had some very easily detectable physical problems. I understand that doctors have a difficult job when it comes to interpreting the immeasurable inner experiences that their patients detail, but that wasn’t entirely the case here. When your body stops digesting food, well, there’s some evidence to prove that it’s a fact. When a 96oz medical grade laxative used for colonoscopy prep results in zero percent colon cleanse… uh… somebody isn’t doing their duty (pun intended). And boy, did my digestive system just decide that it was DONE doing its only job.

Everything I ate seemed to spark unpleasant physical responses, but moving materials through my guts and extracting nutrients wasn’t one of them. After months of garbage disposal failure, I was basically a walking sewer mixed with a compost pile. I found myself chronically starving, exhausted, puffy, distended, intestinally inflamed, and generally sickly. Your body doesn’t fare so well when it has no sustenance, it turns out.

At the same time, or maybe slightly predating my digestive protests, I started getting ill in weird ways. Things I had never experienced before started popping up, like chronic respiratory tract infections, sinus infections, and gum infections. I was having what seemed like allergic responses to something in my inner or outer environment. I was often covered in hives or my face and stomach were inflating like balloons for no apparent reason. I had near-constant pain in my continually-locked shoulders and neck. My actual skin, itself, hurt, as if I was being stretched to the brink of bursting. My lifelong migraines transformed into something new - disorienting tension migraines that came with horrifying loss-of-vision auras and feverish shakes.

Generally speaking, I was so tired all the time that I could barely get out of bed for more than a few moments before retreating back to my safe place to feel like garbage. My limbs felt like someone had tied weights to them and extracted several major muscle groups. I struggled even showering or washing my face, because both required holding my arms up higher than I was capable of enacting. I was so deliriously tired that I couldn’t see straight, think, or complete basic tasks.

On top of giving up my impressive life trajectory in the aftermath of the physical breakdown - because I was too fucking exhausted to consider the next steps I needed to take for grad school - this is also where I’ve previously mentioned my drive-aphobia coming into play. When you can’t count on your own faculties, you definitely don’t want to be behind the wheel. And suddenly, life gets very restricted.

I gave up my… anything life trajectory at that point. I went from a wildly social and focused student with a fantastic sense of humor about life and stronghold of self-determination to… Hiding indoors. Keeping isolated. Obsessing over my health. Googling the most embarrassing things late at night. Having no answers. Feeling like a crazy person. Hating myself. Fearing that this was the end. Assuming that my future was over. Guilting myself for fucking up my past. Replaying my tragic story of a rapid flight and a crash, after everything I had fought so hard to accomplish. Giving up.

This is riiiiight about where I pull most of my inspiration for talking about living in perpetual “trauma states” from. Being consistently triggered, out of control, and terrified. Having no answers and no one to even ask. Watching mental illness take over my world without the slightest clue of what was happening. And, oh, the perpetual torment of unpredictable physical breakdowns.

Everyday a new surprise. Every moment the opportunity for a shocking change in vitality. Every night a battle of my brain versus my chronic pains versus sleep.

And so it persisted, throughout 2013 and into several later years… despite the fact that I actually came up with an answer for myself that vastly improved a good part of the sickness struggle... but definitely didn’t fix it all.

Finding AN answer

I’m sure I’ve already mentioned this, too… but eventually I found some respite in my health struggles through no help from modern medicine. In fact, I helped myself thanks to familial clues when I decided to exclusion-diet my way into an answer. My grandpa had celiac’s disease long before it was trendy and I decided gluten was a logical place to start. And what do you know? That helped about 60% of my ailments.

So began years of obsessing over figuring out the gluten free life. Which, contrary to popular opinion, fucking sucks. I get that it became a trendy idea at exactly the wrong point in my life, but goddamnit, I hate the question, "Are you ACTUALLY gluten free, or is it by choice?" It is not a dietary walk in the park when essentially every item is contaminated with some form or another of secret sauce and your body is going to flip out at the slightest dusting.

I remember being so distraught over having these drastic dietary considerations to figure out on my own that I would spontaneously break down into tears in all sorts of places - the fridge, the grocery store, restaurants, social contexts when people kindly asked, “how about you choose where to eat this time.” I can’t choose! I can’t eat anything! I would privately bawl to myself. What a fun time that was.

But that was not nearly the end of it.

It turned out, yes, entirely cutting the glutens helped immensely. I also realized that sugar was not my friend. In fact, processed anything was not going to have a great outcome. But then… there was this other weird pattern that I started noticing in my life… sometimes I was pretty healthy and (relatively speaking) happy with the way things were going off-wheat. But sometimes I was just as sickly and digestively screwed when I definitely hadn’t consumed anything questionable. As if other tried and true components of my diet randomly became gluten analogs that upset me just as much.

Plus, there were some ailments that just never seemed to go away. The insomnia was a persistent problem that stretched back to being about 5 years old, but got more severe with time. The aches and pains in my neck and shoulders only worsened, no matter how many tennis balls I rolled on, yoga classes I attended, or muscle relaxers I popped. The exhaustion came and went with connections to my mental health and diet, but not directly related to bready food items. The brain fog didn’t clear up when I had a strictly regimented diet. The tension migraines never fully returned from where they came.

I was still finding myself bedridden and ready to give up on the whole idea of living on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes it was every two weeks, sometimes once a month, sometimes a few months apart. But I never knew why, how long it would last, or how to control the system-wide failures.

And if you want to know how western medicine helped me with any of these continued challenges… it didn’t. I tried to get answers for years before I finally gave up. Every doctor turned me away. Every specialist was critically uninterested. Even the Mayo Clinic neglected to listen to what I said or utilize applicable resources, after I was so sure they could solve the medical mystery of my life.

So. I stopped trying at a certain point. I resolved myself to being health anxious and perpetually confused by myself. I realized that I would never know what any day was going to bring, because my discomforts and continued sicknesses seemed to come and go with the tides.

Eventually, after years of this bullshit, it got a bit better. I buckled down with - you guessed it - strict routines designed to circumvent some of the challenges.

I realized that my diet needed to be incredibly tight, and by that, I mean “boring.” Beyond gluten, I cut out basically everything sugary, carby, and processed. I noticed that without a certain variety of physical exercise on a regimented basis, everything started slipping. I prioritized finding ways to get to sleep at night, even if it meant being rigid and assessed as “dramatic” by less slumber-impaired humans. I gave up any activities that caused neck and shoulder strain, and tried to be better about things like stretching. I also noticed that dealing with my emotions was a gateway to pain and discomfort relief, which was an uphill battle all it’s own. And, you know, eventually I learned about this Complex Trauma thing that explained a HUGE part of early to mid twenties, including a majority of the physical ailments.

But, although I began to live like an above-averagely healthy human again… I’ve still always had a few mysteries about my health.

Sure, over the course of many years I’ve figured out how to live with a semi-predictable body after long periods of never knowing what tomorrow would bring. But, unfortunately, there are still times when my system throws me a curveball. During those unanticipated spans of health failure, I’m left ruminating on a question or three that haven’t ever been answered consistently.

One of the most common inquiries is coming at you next.

Stress or sick?

So, even after all my life changes and careful modifications. All my sacrifices and seemingly over-the-top regimes. I’ve still had an ongoing health obsession that pops up from time to time when my shit starts to go downhill.

The incrementally-observed question that runs through my head on repeat… “Wait, am I communicably sick, or am I just fucking stressed out again?”

I realized a while back - maybe in my mid-late twenties - that holy hell, I sure felt like I was coming down with the flu more often than it was logical. The thing was, my symptoms only ever progressed to the point of feeling like I was still actively fighting off the sickness as it took hold. I would get the temperature dysregulation, the headache, the muscle pain, the foggy feeling, and oh boy, the exhaustion - that generally serve as your first signs of contagious trouble.

I would be too deliriously tired to get up and do anything. If I made myself go to work, it felt like wading through a dream. Half present, half falling asleep at my desk. My body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Even my head was too heavy for my neck to manage the task.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get incredibly weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

And I would respond in kind. I would retreat to bed, Nyquil and vitamin C showering over me on frequent intervals, gearing up for the systemic war of a lifetime. I would drift in and out of sleep for a day or two, fending off the weird muscle aches and sweat sessions that come with an emerging fever. Interestingly, many of my old food reactivities would rear up during this period. I would get my neti pot and vomit-bags ready for action.

And then… nothing else would happen. Assuming I chilled out and retreated to a state of forfeit when I actually treated myself with kindness and care, everything would work out. After 1-5 days of being back in my bedridden state, determined that significant contagious sickness was headed my way, it would seem to just disappear overnight. Or, clear up by about 70% overnight, to be more realistic.

It took several rounds of this pattern - I couldn’t tell you how many - before I finally realized… heyyo, my body shuts the fuck down when I’m stressed out. Every time I experienced one of these sudden falls from health, it followed (or ran in tandem with) a period of significant stress, anxiety, and/or depression. And if I let myself relax for a week, it would all be okay. If I tried to push through it because ObLiGaTiOnS, I was signing myself up for a prolonged and far more serious health failure. It happened too many times; I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Like I had postulated earlier in my adulthood - my health seemed to be drastically affected by my mental state. Particularly, my interpretations of stress, obligations, and fears.

And I can tell you, my health anxiety quieted down for a while in the aftermath of the acceptance. Call it immersion therapy. When you’ve experienced the same event over and over again, but A never leads to B, and C-alming your shit makes condition A disappear back into the ethers... well, eventually you take it for what it is and just stop panicking so much. I think I got tired of preoccupying myself with the whole dumpster fire at some point and preferred to extinguish the flames by letting them run their course.

This is where I’ve lived for the past many years now. Realizing that if I push myself too hard mentally or physically, or if I let too many stress signals infiltrate my brain… I’m about to get fucked up. My health will slip quickly. I will be reactive to essentially every food on this planet. My body will be puffy, inflamed, and painful. Not to mention, so goddamn tired all the time. But that’s it. It won’t last forever. I’m not going to die. Telling myself the opposite makes it all last a lot longer. Don’t pile stress about your stress-induced sickness onto your existing stress, and you'll be better soon.

And yet, when it’s happening, I also never know for a fact that my stress-based illness is definitely what’s going on. The result is getting trapped in a “will I or won’t I” obsessive spiral of anticipating the worst while reassuring myself that it might be nothing at all. There’s a lot of internal and external conversation about it, as people want to know if you’re sick and you want to be able to warn them that you feel like death… but also have to throw in the caveat, “Iunno, you have to realize that this happens to me all the time and it’s usually nothing, though.”

Of course, this creates the opportunity for my brain to 1) tell me I’m probably fine, quit complaining, pussy, and 2) compare myself to everyone else on the planet, who doesn’t crumble when their brain interprets times are hard. Because, of course, I have to make myself feel mentally ridiculous for feeling physically horrible. Other people are always happy to help in this regard, too. "You sure get sick a lot. I thought you had the flu last month. Wow, it always seems like something is wrong with you." Mhm, I feel the same on all accounts.

And, Fuckers, that’s why I stopped talking about it or looking for answers a long time ago. Instead, I've just relied on the most logical answer and quit worrying. I’ve done enough research on my own, not to mention all my Animal Science schooling, to know how stress responses work. They’re significant. They have the potential to disrupt your entire body through hormonal dysregulation. And they work differently - as far as we can tell - depending on the organism.

So that’s what I’ve leaned on. Acknowledgement that stress really screws with me. It zaps my energy. It fogs up my brain. It makes me overstimulated. It causes weird pains and immune system responses. It churns up my digestive problems. It also makes me feel like I’m starving but nauseous all at once. Over long periods of time, it can lead to infections. It, obviously, ruins my sleep, which reaaaaally doesn’t help with any of it.

That’s that. Pretty complicated but simple. Try not to stress yourself out and god help you, if you do. Chill for a few days and you’ll be alright, probably. No one knows why it happens. Doctors don’t care. Just watch out for yourself, because no one else deals with this shit.

Unless… they totally do.

So, that’s fibromyalgia

I guess this is where I tell you something that a lot of folks have probably already figured out. Sorry if you’ve been yelling at me through your headphones this whole time - chill, I’m getting to it.

There definitely is a term for everything I’ve described. There are millions of other people who experience it. And, yeah, doctors often still don’t believe it’s real… but the numbers and anecdotal evidence don’t lie.

Ever heard of fibromyalgia?

Of course you have. But have you ever really looked into what it meant? Because… I hadn’t.

Annnnd then a listener and I were chatting on Instagram a few weeks ago. And she mentioned... everything I just mentioned. And her diagnosis had been? Fibromyalgia.

Via DM, your fellow Fucker started telling me about being tired all the time, mysterious aches and pains that worsen with stress, IBS symptoms, improper temperature regulation, and over-exertion that leads to required days of recovery. My jaw hit the floor.

You know I hopped online and started doing more research of my own. And all of the information was confirmed and expanded upon in a way that drove my mandible straight into the basement.

Hey, you know how fibromyalgia is synonymous with “widespread pain?” Oh shit, if you dig into it, there is a lot more to learn. Here’s a (maybe, complete?) list of the currently known associated symptoms. Keep in mind, I couldn’t find a single comprehensive resource for this information. This list is compiled of information from the the peer-reviewed article I'm going to read from later, the American College of Rheumatology, the CDC, Healthline, and Medical News Today. And if it sounds like a bit of a "catch all" pile, I think you're right.

Pain and stiffness all over the body

Fatigue and tiredness

Depression and anxiety

Sleep problems

Problems with thinking, memory, and concentration, known as “fibro-fog”

Headaches, including migraines

Tingling or numbness in hands and feet

Pain in the face or jaw

Digestive problems, such as abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome

Tenderness to touch or pressure affecting muscles, sometimes joints or even the skin

Irritable or overactive bladder

Pelvic pain

Trouble focusing or paying attention

Pain or a dull ache in the lower belly

Dry eyes

Sleeping for long periods of time without feeling rested (nonrestorative sleep)

Acid reflux

Restless leg syndrome

Sensitivity to cold or heat

Problems with vision

Nausea

Weight gain

Dizziness

Cold or flu-like symptoms

Skin problems

Chest symptoms

Breathing problems

Insulin resistance

Wait, wait, wait. THAT’S what fibro is? Because, I’m sorry, I have literally never heard any of that detail before… and although it gets so ambiguous that I suspect these ailments are all the conditions that just haven't been explained before by medical science... this list just described my life. All the way down to the tiniest detail of dry eyes, as I now recall chronically dumping drops into mine for those same years in my 20s. What. The. Shit.

Prior to this research, my symptomatic knowledge of fibro was essentially - pain, of the unexplained and incurable variety. No one ever once has mentioned anything else about the condition to me, or allll the ways that it correlated with my years of health trauma. Not my peers, not my doctors, and not even my amazing, well-informed therapist.

So, maybe I’m really late to the game here, but long story short, my mind was blown when I heard that there’s actually a term for this experience which I had forfeited to processing as a “unique way that my body individually destroys me” for all these years. I thought I was just uniquely uncomfortable all the time and stopped burdening others with my experiences.

Maybe that’s why I never had anyone clue me in to the diagnosis - I honestly stopped talking about the cyclical sickness a while back, after recognizing that people didn’t respond favorably to the narrative, “I just get too stressed out to function.” Shutting my mouth and writing off my experiences may have halted my potential for hearing a realistic account of living with fibromyalgia. Oh, how the trauma shame shenanigans never stop royally fucking you.

Of course, based on my own recent education, now I’m wondering if fibromyalgia applies to far more of us in the trauma community. Because if I hadn’t found reliable information on it in all my trauma and inflammatory illness research over the years… how many other people are in the same boat?

And this brings me to my next point. I really hate the term fibromyalgia.

Why I hate the term

There’s actually another explanation for why I never heard about everything that fibromyalgia describes. Uh, you’re going to hate me for this, but I didn’t think it was a “real” diagnosis.

Yep. I’m telling you with moderate guilt that for the longest time, I appraised fibro in the same way that western medicine considers all psychosomatic illnesses - not valid. And I’m unhappy with myself, too. Believe me, I feel like my least favorite kind of person... a hypocrite. But this also points to the systemic issue that undermines so many of our attempts to get help, and that makes me far more unhappy.

You see, a number of years ago, as a budding counselor with a few years of experience, my therapist friend mentioned something about fibro. Specifically, that it was a common label granted to more seriously mentally affected patients… and it wasn’t believed to be a real thing. I wish I could remember more detail on the context, but the basis of the story is, someone that I trusted - someone with many trauma patients - told me that in her experience, no one took fibromyalgia seriously. People with intense mental illnesses regularly presented with unfounded complaints of pain, and this is the term they were assigned as a result.

There was no proof of their physical discomfort. The patients tended to have myriad mental and physical health issues. They tended to be more difficult clients. Professionals had doubts about how serious the complaints were. No evidence, no respect. It was just about that simple.

To give more weight to the story, here’s one quick excerpt that is actually validating to read, from an article titled, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview.

“People with FM often reported dismissive attitudes from others, such as disbelief, stigmatization, lack of acceptance by their relatives, friends, coworkers, and the healthcare system, that consider them as ‘lazy’ or ‘attention seeking’ people, with their symptoms ‘all in their head’. Such dismissiveness can have a substantial negative impact on patients, who are already distressed, and also on the degree of their pain.”

So… similar to the asshole social associates described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

So… similar to the assholes described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

It took the real life account of someone with the diagnosis to show me all the ways that my previous perception was completely incorrect. I suddenly realized how reductive and insulting the false information had been. Annnd all the ways that I could have really helped myself and a few others a lot sooner if I had just investigated the term on my own, rather than lazily falling back on someone else’s casually-expressed opinion.

So, I’m saying… fuck me. 100%. That makes me really upset with myself. But it makes me even more frustrated with the medical field.

And this is why I hate the term fibromyalgia.

It doesn’t actually explain a fucking thing… and it doesn’t seem like anyone is actually trying to.

At this point, there is no known cause for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

At this point, there is no known cause or organic mechanism for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

Millions of humans have detailed the same experiences, but science hasn’t yet come up with a way to explain them, so let’s go ahead and give them a new diagnosis that boils down to “Not sure what’s going on, but they say it’s unpleasant and it sounds a little something like widespread pain. Cool, let’s call it a day. Nah, we don’t need to educate the medical community or the public - we don’t need a single list of all the known comorbidities - because we don’t get it, ourselves. Let’s make sure we put that disclaimer right in the definition, so everyone knows it’s a controversial topic."

And implicit in saying that doctors and scientists don’t understand the term, comes a negative connotation of assumed delusion or attention-seeking complaints.

Essentially, what I’m bitching about is the tendency of researchers and practitioners to shuttle things they can’t directly measure to the back of the relevancy line. Despite all of the anecdotal evidence from fibro sufferers that corroborate the same causes, symptoms, and outcomes… we can’t see what they’re talking about and we don’t have an easy explanation, so we put this in the “fake news” stack of information - AKA psychosomatic illness.

Now, it’s also worth mentioning that fibromyalgia is deeply intertwined with trauma. Something like 2/3rds of fibro patients also have confirmed PTSD symptoms, if not higher. Exact numbers depend on which study you trust. Just know, it is a prevalent, accepted, correlation between trauma and the development of fibromyalgia. And of course, no one has determined the causative or affective relationship between the two at this point in time.

Hell, we all know that a lot of mental and physical health professionals don’t even want to acknowledge trauma at this point - or, do so with a smirk and an eyebrow raise, at best. So tethering the two poorly-comprehended disorders together? Oh boy, it’s a sure-fire way to ensure that no one listens to a word you say after honestly answering their background information questions. Might as well throw down your wallet and walk yourself right out of the office at that point.

The medical field’s lack of trauma education is a big problem. Making “psychosomatic” a dirty word isn’t helping millions of folks out there. Being invalidated by the people who could possibly help you is another mental health crisis waiting to happen. And all of this is infuriating to me, following my own experiences and thinking about other people’s.

Should we take this one outrage step further? Sure.

You know that a vast majority of fibromyalgia sufferers are… women. Sorry, about to get a tad feminist. Is anyone here surprised that primarily female voices tend to be written off by medical professionals? Ha, ha, ha. No, probably not.

For all of human history, the ladies have been getting the shit end of the stick when it comes to medical care. We all know that women were given amazing explanations for their ailments, such as having “hysterics” or "the vapors" not so long ago.

Furthermore, there is research showing that doctors do not take women’s accounts of pain severity seriously, in particular. Even fellow female doctors and nurses are given different treatment by staff when they go to the ER, versus male counterparts. And if you’re a minority or socioeconomically challenged woman? The data says you might as well take two aspirin and see what happens the next morning, because the medical attention research is even worse for those demographics. Huge surprise.

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups one way or another… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

Yeah, we haven’t.

We’ve been given a term - complete with a wink and a nudge - that no one wants to meaningfully research or prioritize understanding. We’ve received a new phrase that doctors will “generously grant us” when we’re drowning in unexplained symptoms and pain. We’re then labeled with a word that essentially amounts to “disregard and humor” for all our future appointments. On top of it all, we’re carrying the burden of traumatic histories, which immediately qualify us for misunderstood diagnoses that more or less equate “ghosts in their blood” - because, hell, we can’t quantify mental illness, either.

The whole ordeal makes me really upset. The fact that I was inadvertently pulled into this biased disbelief makes me more upset. It also serves as quite a demonstration of how powerful or deleterious knowledge can be after it worms its way into your head involuntarily and becomes your only “go-to” piece of data, true or false.

One seemingly-trustworthy person mentioning a negative opinion of fibromyalgia one time in my past somehow infiltrated my thoughts to the extent that I didn’t have a second thought for 5 years? And we're talking about a goddamn trauma researcher - with, what I consider - an otherwise open and connection-happy mind?

The power of assumed authority and truth in opinion is significant. If I can be swayed in this way, how could less mental health informed medical professionals stand a chance in responding differently? That’s frightening and clarifying… though immensely upsetting.

So, since biomedicine hasn’t bothered to find any great information for us, despite the rapidly increasing rate of fibromyalgia diagnoses in the past two decades - how can we make sense of the information to actually help ourselves?

Let’s talk about that next.

What we can conclude

So it kindof blows finding out that you probably qualify for a new medical term… only to find out that we don’t actually know anything about said term. I say this, because if you’re waiting for me to pop off with some sweet research on fibromyalgia… uh… I haven’t found it yet. But not for lack of trying. So far every article I’ve seen has been pretty basic and uninspired.

Does fibromyalgia correspond with trauma? It does. Does stress mediate and moderate fibromyalgia, PTSD symptoms, GI problems, and depression? It does. Does it take a long time and numerous appointments to receive medical help for fibromyalgia complaints? It does. Does the comorbidity of post-traumatic symptoms make fibro more uncomfortable and challenging to overcome? What do you know - it fucking does.

(Wow. So enlightening. Having two debilitating disorders is less fun than having one. Who’s funding these research studies, anyways?)

The first thing I can conclude is, there’s not that much to conclude. This is to say, no one - that I’ve seen, so far - has revealed anything super shocking or thought-provoking about fibromyalgia.

Really, the most interesting things I learned from my reading are that

1) insulin resistance is another associated disorder, which explains even more of my baffling life

2) sex hormones are leached from your system under stress, which, refer to point number one... explains another huge chunk of my existence, and

3) the recommendations for treating fibro long term are the same recommendations I’ve given for getting your trauma life re-ordered.

You know how I always push for people to find out what’s manageable on their own through trial and error, rather than approaching trauma recovery with preventable fires burning in every area? Hey - someone agrees.

Namely, it's recommended that in order to manage fibromyalgia you establish routines including strictly nutrition-based eating habits, non-threatening forms of consistent exercising, prioritizing tons of sleep, and controlling your environment as much as possible for stressful stimuli. Doctors can also supplement your rehab with antidepressants, because, again, fibromyalgia is related to the same underlying hormonal imbalances as depression - but the larger health issues are managed best by changing your behaviors. Just like I’ve said.

I suppose this is no surprise, since this entire time I’ve unknowingly been talking, in large part, about how I’ve controlled my own fibromyalgia symptoms. I just thought it was mandatory trauma pains I was dampening. But the word is out! There's a separate phrase for it. The doctors and I agree; stop treating yourself like a turd, and maybe you’ll stop feeling like one. Whatdoyouknow. Sometimes there are reasons for the things I notice experientially, even if they aren’t originally informed by medical lingo.

Secondly, looking at what we can conclude at this point about fibro… Well, it justifies my previous hypothesis that stress is the root of my body’s evil. There’s not much to definitively say about fibromyalgia at this point, but we know for a fact that it is agitated and potentially caused by stress.

This perfectly aligns with my observations that a terrible work week mixed with a personally challenging month on top of a physically exhausting cleaning marathon will lead to a systemic breakdown every time. And, conversely, those times when life has actually been pretty chill correspond to periods of bodily health and limited upset - the times when I wonder “was I ever really sick at all?” and start to health gaslight my damn self.

Realizing the link between stress and sickness, of course, also begins to explain the correlation to trauma, and particularly, complex trauma.

Now, let me start by saying that there’s some debate over the downstream effects of PTSD - some researchers swear that it decreases system arousal in the face of later stress, others have collected data reflecting that a nervous system hyper-sensitization takes place. From my own trauma involvement, I’ve seen and heard more cases of the latter; we’re quick to upset and easily pushed into stressed territory. I don’t know many, if any, trauma folks who are non-responsive to disturbing life events... but that sounds more like a deep, dangerous, clinical depression symptom to me.

Personally, once I’ve been chronically stressed for a few weeks or months, then I notice the loss of stress response take over. My limbic system gives up, the HPA axis stops responding, and therefore nothing can rattle me. Perhaps you’ve also had the experience of laughing when your car breaks down, because it’s already been 3 months of disaster around every turn and there’s nothing else you can do for yourself. So, sure, people can reach a point where they legitimately don’t respond to the chaos anymore, but I’m not so sure that’s a consistent norm. I think it’s more likely that you turn off your stress reactions if you’ve been adequately prepped to dissociate for the sake of sanity or your chemical balance is so wack that your danger center has powered down.

I can tell you without a doubt that before the point when my stress threshold has been raised sky-high thanks to repeat exposures and wiring disconnections... I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for basically every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses.

I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses

This nervous system sensitization, as they call it, explains a lot of trauma symptoms. I’ve regularly discussed the hypersensitivity problem it creates, when your brain doesn’t adequately filter out or assess neutral stimuli because it considers basically everything to be a threat. This can also contribute to the ADD and ADHD diagnoses that we receive, when our heads are too busy trying to sort all that data streaming in to direct our thoughts in a steady way. Or, the ways that we’re uniquely thrown immediately into panic mode when we sense a risk. Plus, we’ve probably all had the experience of tiny, secret triggers sneakily upsetting our bodies when the stimulation wasn’t even significant enough to pass through our cognitive recognition centers. These are all caused by the same systemic over-sensitization problem.

In general: yes, we trauma folk are sensitive to our environments - inner and outer. We are easily pushed down survival pathways to fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. We rapidly catastrophize ambiguous information, which can convince our brains and bodies that the worst has already happened. We’re hyperaware and easily overstimulated, often agitated, and regularly on edge.

I maintain, in the face of controversial evidence, that we get stressed out easily. And our bodies react dramatically.

I feel like I should also state that this is especially true, as most of us have read, when we have unresolved emotional strain floating around in our meat jackets. We can be overstimulated and aroused (in a bad way) from the inside, out. Since the majority of us are not skilled in emotional recognition or resolution, we’re often walking around with a lifetime of hard feelings stored in our guts. And there’s been roughly zero doubt in my head about emotional and environmental stress contributing to dissociation, contributing to a vagal nerve shutdown as a big part of the digestive failure that characterizes fibromyalgia, IBS, Crohns, and so many autoimmune disorders.

On top of the unresolved emotional root of stress, this pings another episode that I've previously released. The one about being overly restrictive in your diet and exercise for the sake of appearance perfectionism. If you physically exert yourself too strongly through caloric deprivation or extreme work outs, you can easily stress your body into a survival response. It can't tell the difference between starvation for bikini season and starvation for lack of food. Running your ass off for your upcoming wedding or running your ass off for your upcoming bear attack. Your danger sensing center is sensitive and it overreacts, much like myself.

Now, considering that all these examples of central nervous system sensitization and physiological survival states that go hand in hand with Complex Trauma and Fibromyalgia, so many weird health mysteries are potentially resolved. But, not exactly the pain component. Or, is it.

Again, the authors out of Italy and Brazil who penned, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview, have a potential way to think about that. They state:

“Even if the causes and pathophysiology of FM are not completely known, widespread chronic pain could be explained by a vulnerability due to a perturbation in the central processing of sensory information, named ‘central sensitivity’ or ‘central sensitization’, that amplifies the response of the central nervous system to a peripheral input. Hence, people with FM and/or other central sensitivity syndromes have a lower threshold for interpreting sensory information as noxious. Several factors, such as genetic predisposition, deficiencies in neurotransmitter levels, biochemical changes in the body, endocrine dysfunction, mood states, anxiety, sociocultural environment, psychological trauma and past experiences in general, expectancy beliefs, and catastrophization have been proposed as explanatory mechanisms of patients’ subjective experience of central sensitivity. Current research indicates that abnormal sensory and pain processing is a key factor in the pathophysiology of FM. There is robust evidence that abnormalities in central pain processing, rather than damage or inflammation of peripheral structures, play an important role in the development and maintenance of chronic pain in patients with FM.”

Interesting, huh? I still think inflammatory responses are a big part of the 1000 piece stress puzzle, but I don’t disagree with the idea that our finely-tuned danger detection systems amplify pain and discomfort signals to deafening levels. Putting all the system data together, you can deduce a fairly complete picture of how strain, physical degradation, and pain are all related.

Finally, I have confirmation that being overly stimulated causes everything from my energy drain to my dietary responses, migraines, and autoimmune attacks... all the way down to my temperature sensitivity, random presentation of allergic reactions, and even that occasional sharp pain in my jaw… not to mention all my life-altering functional problems, like being unable to sleep at night, existing with debilitating pain, and living while feeling sedated?

All of my strange health complaints from the past decade have aligned with this new label. And that label corresponds perfectly with my inkling that running on cortisol and overzealous guardsmen have been the major source of my health anxiety sauce. Welp, it’s been validating research for all of my educated guesses, to say the least.

Long story short, there’s not a ton of helpful information about the reasons for developing fibromyalgia or what makes it get worse. But there’s one thing we do know for a fact; stress is the enemy. At least I think it’s comforting to conclude that stress is the root of many of our C-PTSD complaints, as well as depression, anxiety, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, and now… a whole list of common maladies, labeled fibromyalgia.

Whether or not it’s really understood, at least there is a connection between everything. At least there’s something that ties ALL the random, disjointed pieces of torture together. I’m guessing that for many of us, fibromyalgia is similar to complex trauma, again, in that regard.

And, lastly, I can conclude that… I have more questions

More questions than answers

Here’s one last excerpt from the aforementioned article, which is the only one I found that’s worth hearing from.

They state: “FM is labelled, often with a negative connotation, as a ‘functional somatic syndrome’, part of a ‘somatization disorder’, ‘fashionable diagnosis’, ‘idiopathic pain disorder’, ‘non-disease’, ‘psychosomatic syndrome’, dismissing the true suffering of the patients. In the absence of a univocal identified biological cause, subjective reports of symptoms by the patients are often viewed derogatorily and discredited as ‘psychogenic.’”

Like I said, there isn’t a lot of helpful information out there if you’re looking to learn more about this controversial condition. Unfortunately, it has been categorized as a “functional somatic disorder” which essentially means that we don’t have an explanation for the organic basis of the disorder.

Uh, I don’t know what could be more organic than the endogenous hormones in our own bodies creating downstream health effects, but hey, I’m not a biologist anymore, what do I know?

The fact remains - there’s a lot more to understand about the assorted mechanisms that lead from trauma into depression, generalized stress disorder, and physical manifestations of a biochemical system that’s running off-balance. And this is where I have the biggest questions.

First, I have to get this out of the way. I’m wondering about the known gender split in fibro. The numbers are horrendously skewed towards women as the primary sufferers, and that’s not helping the medical legitimacy case. So, what are the chances that men just don’t have fibromyalgia at the same rate as women? Either they don’t get stressed to the same magnitude or their bodies respond completely differently? It’s possible. OR. Is it something else?

It seems to me like this follows another similar mystery - what are the chances that men just don’t suffer from Complex Trauma at the same rate as women? Pretty poor? Probably more of a diagnostic or seeking-help issue? Yeah, I think so, too. Yet, if you look strictly at the numbers, it sure seems like there are more women hearing about C-PTSD than men.

This analogous labeling issue between the genders makes me think of a few explanations…

1) Men don’t seek help for their physical ailments the way that women do, either because they’re less in tune with their bodies or because they’re shamed for not being tough enough if they complain. Just like C-PTSD.

2) Men don’t hear about fibromyalgia, because it is an engendered diagnosis reserved for dramatic women at this point. Just like C-PTSD. They receive other partial diagnoses, like IBS, that are less controversial. This leads me into a whole spiraling rant about several genital-dependent psychological diagnoses that I feel similarly about, but one of them is…

3) Men don’t receive the same level of fibromyalgia labels as women because men don’t often receive Complex-PTSD labels, which would serve as a hint to their doctors, since trauma is a well-known predisposing factor…

This brings me to the next set of questions.

It’s unpopular opinion time, but, frankly, I don’t know that any of these trauma and fibro issues are really that separate.

It seems to me like we’re talking a lot about one particular problem that splinters off into a thousand different outcomes, depending on the circumstances, the biology, and the human in question. Not separate conditions.

First comes the trauma, then comes the presentation of downstream physical and mental symptoms. Presentation, magnitude, and personal recognition of these symptoms varies, just like severity of Complex Trauma does. But under both conditions, our experiences are often so similar - the hard part is that we struggle to describe them and often lean on abstract language which can be used in such diverse ways. We focus on different problems, depending on our own life impacts.

So, maybe we notice and report internal events differently, but it’s hard for me to believe that the two disorders aren’t more than corresponding diagnoses - and are, in fact, one and the same.

I could be very wrong, but I’d sure like to find out.

So, to the small percentage of fibromyalgia sufferers who don’t have trauma… you sure? To the depressed and anxious folks who can’t seem to get a grip on their physical health, but never saw their life as traumatic… want to take another look? To all the traumatized folks with Raynauds, food allergies, hypertension, ADD, aches, and migraines… have you really looked into the full definition of fibromyalgia?

ARE these conditions of trauma and fibromyalgia different? Or is this another complication in identifying unseeable symptoms in a population of folks who never learned to name their mental and physical experiences? Is this an artifact from a group who tends to underestimate and under-report their own experiences in light of unhealthy others’ core beliefs? How prevalent is fibromyalgia, really? Especially in the context of Trauma?

Is it possible that everything boils down to one underlying event - trauma - that produces a whole host of other biological adaptations down the line? Did we create a separate term for it, simply based on a lack of standardization?

Or is this an exclusionary problem?

Have all the various ways we’ve learned to categorize and describe our experiences actually separated one full disorder into two half-disorders; one that encompasses the brain and another that covers the body? Is it our societal misunderstanding of the connection between our perceptions and our meaty husks, forcing us to separate the issues of mental and physical health that would be better understood together, as one?

I’m not sure! But I’m definitely thinking a lot about it.

Partially, from personal bias. I always considered my physical issues to be part of my trauma life, not separate from it - and that explanation made perfect sense to me. Where do these disorders really split? Maybe it’s possible to have Complex PTSD without the physical symptoms, but that's really not what I hear from people. The most of us have at least some periods of physical ailments, even if they're not persistent. To me, it seems like a distinction that should be made within the trauma diagnosis - with or without physical wellness degradation - rather than piling a separate, largely-ineffective diagnosis on the vast majority of us who have some variety of said bodily ailments.

I feel like the real issue isn’t “what is fibromyalgia?” The actual problem is a lack of biological understanding in the Psychology field. And a mirrored failure to understand Psychology in the medical field. Then, throw in a reluctance to study the conglomerate of bio-physiology and mental health issues in the scientific research literature because both experiences are difficult to measure or confirm and the studies would be less elegant.

If more psychologists actually learned system biology and more medical practitioners actually studied abnormal psychology, maybe we wouldn’t have disparate diagnoses that each come with a half-recognition. Maybe we could have one term that encompassed the full experience of trauma. Maybe these professionals could confirm all the details that we don’t understand by working with a more comprehensive approach to how humans work as a whole, rather than organ by organ. Just a fucking thought.

Because, I can tell you, if my therapist friend had the same biological education that I did at the time, I guarantee that she wouldn’t have told me fibromyalgia was a “pseudo diagnosis.” If she had knowledge of the connection between stress hormones and bodily breakdown, plus the trauma physiology that determines our sensitivity to stress - there’s no way she would have been so flippant or insensitive with her words. But under the influence of her counseling peers, the diagnosis became a fallacy.

I think this highlights the danger of the problem at hand. It only took one industry-determined void of knowledge to pass along an unfair opinion that skewed at least my perception for years down the line. And, think about it, how many times has one innocently-baseless comment in the psychology or medical fields probably created a lifetime of bias in an up-and-coming professional?

Maybe this is why we have the self-perpetuating negative connotation of psychosomatic illness in our society that seems to crawl its way towards improvement, while every other disorder makes significant strides. A lack of personal understanding of the biology-psychology connection is easily turned into a respected opinion, and readily transmitted to unknowing people who are eager to learn from their wise mentors. And so, the next generation inherits the same set of half-baked progress-stunting ideas. Over and over and over.

Depressing! And enlightening.

And that’s roughly where I stand today, after days of fibromyalgia research and very few satisfactory answers. Depressed and enlightened.

More or less, asking myself more questions about the legitimacy of our entire mental and physical healthcare system and all the lines we draw in the sand. Confident that trauma leads to increased stress leads to increased brain and body trauma. Somewhat happy to know that I’m actually not the only one who consistently apologizes for feeling like shit and questions if it’s “valid” or not because it seems connected to my brain. But also, pretty pissed off that we’ve been given a word that comes with no explanations and a hellofalot of medical field judgement, as if we needed more of that.

Oh, one more factoid to throw into the end of this conversation. There’s a link between low socioeconomic status and fibromyalgia.

Hey, the same link exists between socioeconomic status and complex trauma. Hey, it’s another predisposing factor for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms’ emergence. Hey, big surprise, if you have a stable and predictable physical and financial environment, you’re less likely to develop the terror-based conditions brought on by earlier trauma.

If you have financial resources, you’re also less likely to be chronically stressed by the demands of life. You’re probably also more likely to receive respectable medical care. Therefore, meaning that you’re both less likely to have enough perturbation to develop over-sensitive nervous system responses and less likely to be dismissed by doctors with a label they don’t believe exists. Plus, probably more likely to have access to mental health care that could prevent the onset of Complex Trauma presentation, and likely fibromyalgia, altogether.

Oh, look, logic explains so many things. Or, fuckit, let’s just choose to believe that poor people are lazy and always want to complain about something, whether it’s in their heads or their bodies. Whatever the rich white men say.

Big issues to think about.

Like I state way too often on this show, it’s the small things in this trauma life that bring you comfort. And monumental societal failures that make you scream. (Okay, I just added that last part today.)

Wrap it

Okay, let me get out of here before I question more beliefs that are way out of my paygrade. Sorry, medical and psychological practitioners. I know that I’m just a critical observer who, like that kid everyone hates in class, perpetually asks too many questions.

At the bottom of all my complaints, I just wish that we could come up with a way to characterize these disorders that actually helped people understand what was happening. If you know how your body is reacting to what stimuli and how the symptoms are all related, that's a lot more powerful than throwing assorted barely-defined titles at them.

If we can't definitively say that fibromyalgia and trauma symptoms are one and the same, fine. Let there be a distinction. But I think it would be preferable to call fibro something more telling and true to the accepted cause. Call it semantics, but something like Stress Affective Syndrome would be more useful than the made-up word of fibromyalgia. Please, anyone feel free to come up with a better phrase, because I just made "Stress Affective Syndrome" up so I could say "I've got SAS." It already fits the bill.

I guess I’m just up in arms that I’ve tried to find answers for my brain and body health all these years, and turned up completely empty handed until random connections have eventually given me the information I’ve needed after a decade of effort. Maybe if I had my complex trauma diagnosis before I had my health complaints, someone would have mentioned fibromyalgia. Maybe, they would have knowingly smirked and sent me to a psychiatrist. Hard to say.

Even if I had gotten that information about fibro, would it have helped separate from the C-PTSD diagnosis? Honestly, probably not. I would have just been harder on myself for suddenly being too weak in the face of stress. And after reading that medical professionals doubt the validity of fibromyalgia, in the first place? Well that would have been a whole other source of disbelief, anger, and negative self-regard. Maybe a whole new crisis, once my inner critic got a chance to hammer away at my head.

I suppose that figuring out the patterns of my strange bodily conditions actually needed to happen organically for this Fucker, because any semi-questioned diagnosis would have just been more fuel for my trauma fire at that point when I so thoroughly despised myself. Confirming to myself, for a fact, that stress fucks me up may have been a prerequisite for accepting that I might be “one of those fibro people.” You know, the ones who lie about their symptoms. Ha.

And, again, this says a lot about the potential damage that poorly-described labels can do to people… just as much as it says about my own reluctance to be considered a weak-minded over-reactor by outsiders.

All of this being said, I’m so grateful for finally finding out exactly what all fibromyalgia actually entails. It took too long, but honestly, the information came at the perfect time. Two days after I got it, I was stress-sick. Ahhh, it's fibro time. How’s that for irony?

As always, I do think there is some empowerment in the basic root understanding that you aren’t the only one who’s dealt with any of this. The mysterious illnesses, the pain, or the lack of care from modern medicine aren’t individual experiences. Hey, you might even be relieved to know that someone else on this planet routinely asks herself, “Do I have cancer for real this time, or am I just overworked again?”

After years of nobody I spoke to having a tale that even mildly resembled my autoimmune breakdown, finding anybody who related to my issues was extremely relieving. Not only was it a common experience, but it meant that I hadn’t somehow brought the discomfort on myself - through mental illness, physical shenanigans, or plain old weakness - the ways that I feared.

Furthermore, it proved that I hadn’t imagined it all. Because believe it or not, you’re surprisingly willing to throw yourself under the bus after all the pain has passed. I’ve spent the past decade telling people, “I think I have the glutens, as I call it... but I don’t really know though, it’s never been explained, sometimes other things bother me, and sometimes it’s really not a big deal, I don't know what it is” as an almost-apology. A disclaimer that I, too, doubt my own memories and conclusions because they weren’t properly validated by who I considered authority figures.

Hearing that other people had digestive disorders and autoimmune disasters in the wake of Complex Trauma, via the book The Body Keeps The Score, shocked me into self-acceptance of my prior experiences. Hearing that all of it can be encapsulated by this term fibromyalgia a few days ago - well, shit. This is a more mainstream occurrence than I ever previously thought.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma feel more applicable than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma are more enlightening than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

Now I know. When I feel a physical breakdown coming on, with the suspected cause being stress… I don’t have to apologize for it. I don’t need to tell people that I just can’t handle the pressure with unfettered shame for my own biochemistry. I can rest assured that what I’m going through is common - far more common than we know - and completely valid. Even if there are people ready to tell you that it's not.

But, to be honest, I still probably won’t tell anyone that it’s called fibromyalgia. I’m not proud to say, I wouldn’t want them to think I’m just being dramatic.

UGH.

#cptsd #healcptsd #actually CPTSD #just cptsd things #traumabrain #Complex Trauma #trauma recovery #complextrauma #complexptsd

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themockingcrows · 5 years

Text

Familiar Ch. 4: Birthday

This chapter is available on my AO3! John/Dave This chapter is SFW

As years pass by, surely it becomes easier to cohabitate with a former crow familiar. Right? Right?

It was the morning of John’s sixteenth birthday, and the house was quiet save for the subtle thumps and clicks from the kitchen as Dadbert whipped up stacks of waffles for himself and the boys to celebrate. Some were confetti, sprinkles making warped colorful patterns, some were chocolate chip, and another stack was pumpkin and cinnamon. Different syrups were warmed and prepared in their containers, forks and plates ready to go. The only thing missing was the birthday boy, but if experience said anything it wouldn’t take long for him to rise and shine. Especially considering the extra help he had in the waking up section.

John’s room has been altered to make room for the new roommate, a set of bunk beds dominating a far wall with John down below. As they’d grown, Dave eventually stopped cuddling up nightly to John in favor of nesting on the top bunk some nights, expanding into his own space as he learned and adjusted more to appreciate space and privacy when it came to his best friend. The first to wake and half the time the last to sleep was always Dave, and today was no different.

In fact, he’d been waiting for some time for the perfect time to strike, waking near dawn and counting down time on the clock on the desk till it was a decent time to act. Six. Seven. Eight thirty. That had to be good enough time. Slowly he crept down the rungs of the ladder, wings flaring for balance on the way down before he climbed onto John’s bunk and straddled his hips. John remained deeply asleep on his back, arms flailed in different directions, lips parted so he could breathe deeply.

Sleeping in was a thing of the past thanks to Dave, but a guy could sleep every day as if he’d get that magical extra hour in the end all the same. Just in case, he’d be ready to snooze with the best of them.

Leaning down, Dave pecked John’s lips once, twice, three times waiting for him to wake up. He nuzzled his cheek and softly cawed, tugged the collar of his pajamas with his teeth since he lacked a beak, looking for signs of life. When he finally showed some signs of waking, Dave leaned back and cawed loudly, wings splaying, then dove back in to start tickling John’s sides with skating fingers.

“Happy birthday!”

Yelping, John woke all the way almost automatically and arched his back, squirming to get away from the onslaught as he laughed. Damn him for teaching Dave what tickling was, he’d literally never unlearned it and now it was a long lasting entry in his personal catalogue of tactics for attention.

“I’m up! I’m up I’m up! Holy shit, stop ahahaha I’m awake!” he cried, swatting at the birdbrain who was perched on top of him with open hands. When the tickling didn’t stop John grew rougher, grunting and grasping Dave beneath the armpits to try wrenching him to the side. The tussle for dominance grew in intensity till there were wings and caws and laughing cries ringing out, which finally prompted the door to open, James in his apron with his own plate of waffles piled high.

“Ah, I was wondering when he’d wake you up. Birthday waffle buffet is all set up, boys! Funfetti, chocolate chip and pumpkin. There’s also bacon and sausage on the side. Take as much as you want, there’s plenty.”

Caught mid-fight Dave and John blinked and stared at each other in their tangled position before deciding that, yes, there WAS something more important at play here.

“Waffles!” Dave cawed excitedly.

“Happy birthday, John,” James said with a smile. “Let me know what you want your dinner to be, I’ll get the ingredients later on and whip it up special.”

“Happy birthday! Happy birthday!” Dave crowed a few times more as he sat back on his heels with a playful smirk, letting John finally catch his breath as he sat upright. They made quite the sight, matching pajamas with needed alterations in place for Dave’s wings, hair wild and cheeks flushed.

“Sixteen years old now,” chuckled James. “Quite the young gentleman now. Or are you too cool to be anything but a hip teenager.”

“Daaaaaaaad.”

Still smiling, James winked at him and swept back out of the room to go enjoy his food while it was still hot. John glanced to Dave, then sighed and shuffled out of bed to get dressed, tugging his shirt off.

“You could’ve let me sleep in you know.”

“Where would be the fun in that?” Dave asked.

“It’s not fun, it’s. Come on, can’t I sleep in even on my birthday??”

“Naps,” Dave offered as a solution, definitely to be helpful and not because naps were prime cuddling times for him to indulge in.

"Yeah, I guess naps,” he sighed again, tugging on a clean shirt and a comfortable set of pants before leaving the space open for Dave. The blonde changed shirts with a bit of rustling before pulling on a set of sweatpants instead, feeling no sense of urgency to be well dressed for the day. All it would be was photographs probably, and he didn’t care how he looked in pictures so long as he could look at them later. Maybe this would be the year James finally trusted him with the special camera so he could take pictures of his own.

Just because the last attempt had wound up with the lens being broken due to a butterfingers move on his part shouldn’t mean a lifelong ban. James wasn’t that kind of man, not that Dave could tell. He just needed a bit more time and practice and he’d wind up taking pictures good enough to wind up in the photo album too!

Or maybe he’d get to have his own photo album full of things. ...Maybe he should ask about that later on after he’d eaten his fill of waffles.

John and Dave went downstairs to the kitchen together to fix their plates, each stacking higher than they could probably finish before taking a seat near James. The kitchen was immaculate as ever from his cleaning as he cooked, and though the counters were crowded with plates and syrups and the sides things were spotless and lemony fresh underneath. He was a man who appreciated cleanliness of his home as much as he appreciated a good shave. This had led to some issues in the last few years, especially with Dave having a human form now, but he was always up for a challenge.

“I know you’re cranky about birthday cakes still-”

“Dad, please, tell me you didn’t do a cake,” John immediately said, horror crossing his face as he poured far too much syrup onto his plate.

“I didn’t do a cake,” James said, watching Dave’s face fall. Darn it, he liked when James made big cakes. He always got to help lick the spoon or the bowl, and there was always crumbs to peck. ...Pick up. Not peck up anymore, pick up. The trimmings were always moist and delicious. “I made a pie instead.”

Though John looked relaxed at first, he soon looked suspicious and cut a slice of waffle to jam into his mouth as he observed his father with narrowed eyes. “...What kind of pie.”

“Lemon cream,” James said calmly, continuing to grin at John’s suspicion.

Dave, confused, looked between the two of them while he happily ate. Something was going down, though he wasn’t sure what. Pies were always exciting! Would they eat it? Would they throw it? Hard to say, it depended on the mood and some unseen cue that Dave still wasn’t able to decipher, but at least it always resulted in some kind of tasty dessert even if it was whatever could be salvaged off John’s face and the pie tin before he scrambled upstairs to wash off.

James never wound up covered in pie somehow. John’s aim was great, but with magic involved it always altered the trajectory. He trusted that someday John would deflect properly. Who knew, maybe he’d wind up covered in pie someday as well and join the family on another level that he hadn’t before.

The two stared at each other for a moment longer before Dave interrupted.

“John, syrup?”

“John, can I please have the syrup,” Jame corrected with a smile.

Dave frowned a bit, annoyed that he slipped back into basic habits. Darn it.

“John can I please have syrup?” he asked instead, holding his plate up in offer.

Distracted finally from the attempts at discerning his father’s potential plans with the pie, John blinked a few times before picking the syrup up and drizzling it over Dave’s plate. “Say when.”

“John, you know he never says when,” James chuckled.

“Oh, right. Yeah. Here, that should be enough to get everything,” John said before setting the container down. “Do you think we could have lasagna tonight for dinner, Dad?”

“I don’t see why not. It’ll take a little doing, but there’s nothing quite like a homemade lasagna on a nice day like this.”

The other unasked question was eating John alive. Questions, really. When would he finally get to practice with the car and get his license? Was he getting a birthday gift this year, or was he just getting money now that he was older? Would it be a surprise? Was it something he’d wanted for a long time? Would it be socks??

There was no way it was hidden in the house somewhere, because Dave would have come across it by now during his daily scouting attempts inside and out of the house, exploring corners and crevices he hadn’t been able to when he was thumbless. John never tended to bother him when he was doing these things aside from checking up on him now and then. Dave never left without one of his toys in his pocket, so there was no cue for a meltdown, but he seemed content in tiny entrapped spaces. Once he’d even been found in the dryer, though he barely fit at the time, curled up as if inside a tire ready to take off down a hill, grinning with pleasure at his own antics.

“Son, you’re getting older now,” James said. “An adult in your own right finally, and I’m so proud of the progress you’ve made over the years.”

John stopped eating again, attentive, squirming in his seat.

“And I think it’s about time I take you into town for some driving lessons, so you’re ready to use the car.”

“WOO!”

Dave, caught up in the excitement, lifted his hands the same way John was, fistpumping the air to share the thrill.

“How would you like to take a spin later on? I know you already remember the basics from me teaching you outside, but if we find a nice empty parking lot we can get even more practice in. Learners permit will be easy to get afterwards, then it’s just a lot of practice till you get your license and I won’t need to be in the car at all.”

“Dave, did you hear that? Just a while longer and we can do a road trip somewhere!”

“Er. ...No, son. Dave has to stay here.”

John’s face fell, though he stayed in place with his arms wrapped around Dave, simultaneously being wrapped in the same way by the bird. “Wait, what? I thought you said he could leave eventually with us..”

“Eventually, yes. Once we figure out a good way of hiding his wings that isn’t just a simple cloaking charm,” James said. “He’d still be knocking things over left and right that way, and be showing a lump in other cases. We need something stronger, strong enough to pass detection by those keeping an eye out for things like him, before he leaves the house.”

“Road trip! Road trip!” Dave cawed raucously. John stroked his hair, looking guilty.

“Yeah. Road trip.”

This was on him again, the ball once more in his court. If he wanted to be able to take Dave anywhere, he needed to find even more ways to change him. As if making him a humanoid hadn’t been enough of a blast in the face. He swallowed hard at the idea, suddenly a little less hungry than the mountain of breakfast in front of him from earlier suggested. It was his responsibility as Dave’s friend and his pseudo-owner to care for him and all his needs, and those needs would include being able to venture off the property as they got older. Even if it wasn’t on his own, John wanted to give him a bit of the freedom he himself would be tasting soon.

It was only fair.

“Now now, perk up. We’ve plenty of time for that. For now, enjoy your birthday and we’ll take a drive later on.”

“What about-”

“...Dave can come with us,” James decided quietly. “We’ll find somewhere out of the way, and we can see about keeping his wings folded under a coat. I’m grateful they’re not bigger than they are. It’s not perfect, but it would at least let him tag along for this one time before we figure things out. So he’ll know where you’ve gone in the future.”

That was a decent enough trade for the time being, John supposed. Dave was always a lot calmer knowing where John was at, so if he was off the property then knowing roughly where he was would probably help. Who knew, maybe the conversations Dave seemed to have with the crows outside could prove useful. Maybe the murder that seemed to shadow over the nearby town was keeping tabs on John and James both, letting Dave know what was happening where he couldn’t see, letting him know things were okay. That his humans were safe.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

John knew it was coming. He knew like he knew his own name, and there was no escape from it. The pie had been in the kitchen earlier in a metal tin instead of the glass one his dad liked to cook with best, settled on the counter after spending time in the fridge, keeping his father company as he readied pasta for the layers of lasagna in the baking dish. Then, it had been gone. James claimed he didn’t know what John was talking about, that he’d just put it back into the fridge to cool a while longer on second thought, but John knew better.

He knew so much better.

He’d snuck a peek around while getting a glass of milk he didn’t feel like drinking, and there had been no pie to be seen. A subtle spell from outside of the room didn’t give him extra sight to see where a cloaking was happening. It wasn’t in the laundry room or the living room, or even the car. The only places really left were the lounge and his dad’s room.. But the latter was definitely off limits.

Especially with Dave following hot on his heels, not wanting to leave the birthday boy alone too long. Or alone at all, if the last bit of the crows entire lifetime had been any indication. Where John went, Dave was set to follow him without question or invitation.

“Dave, you’ve got to let me know if Dad’s following us at any time,” he said urgently under his breath. “Try to focus. I know you’ve got the whole bird thing, but you’ve been around magic almost your entire life, you’ve got to have some kind of sense as my familiar.”

“No Dad magic. Got it,” he said simply, confirming what he’d heard. It’d have to do.

Slipping around the edge of the hallway, John slowly headed towards his father’s room, keeping an ear on the kitchen for the steady clinks and soft thunks of his cooking preparations, and quietly opened the door. His dad’s room was simple, boring in some ways, but fascinating when you looked close enough. Beneath the boring exterior were vestiges of his magic and different tools he employed while doing it. Places he’d explored, people he’d met, even memorabilia of the time he got perma-banned from Cirque de Soleil for causing a scene with magic when someone startled him with a pre-planned stage fall and he’d tried to help them while failing to cast a proper coverage spell to block the view. All they’d seen was a crazed man jumping the stage with what observers claimed was his hands on fire briefly, trying to grap at one of the aerial stunt divers.

Truly, there was so much history in this room.

“John, it’s you,” Dave said at a normal volume till John hissed and covered his mouth with a palm.

“Shhhh! I- ..Oh, you’re right, these are my baby pictures,” John realized as he looked at some of the framed images. One shot with his mother made his smile grow and soften, even now not over the empty feeling he got when he thought about what she must have been like, memory not able to go clearly as far back as she’d existed in his life. Another shot was him with Dave after he’d recovered, the crow covered in flour and John himself looking pleased as punch in the mess in the kitchen, a mixing bowl of what he was pretty sure was pancake batter on the ground where he could reach it. “Hey, this one’s you.”

“I know,” Dave said with a grin. “I was happy.”

“You were?”

“Yeah,” Dave promised. “I’m always happy when you’re there. Even when I’m mad I’m happy.”

John smiled a bit. ”Aw. That’s actually pretty swee-” He heard a creak behind them and his heart stopped, watching the door open with wide eyes. His father stood behind it with a pie in hand, the same pleasant grin on his face, and determination in his eye.

“John, you know I don’t normally like you boys poking around my room when I’m not in here,” he chuckled. “But I wanted to let you know! It’s time for dessert.”

“We haven’t eaten dinner yet,” John interjected, knowing his fate already.

“Oh, no son, I think you’re plenty ready for dessert before dinner,” James said as he lifted the pie. “Happy birthday, John!”

The pie flew with magic guided force, John raised his hands to try deflecting, but before the creamy concoction could splatter him head on.. Dave jumped in the way with both wings spread, taking the dessert full force to the face, splatters of it dispersing around his sides to catch John’s edges all the same.

Everyone froze and blinked, watching Dave closely. That.. hadn’t happened before. Usually there was cawing or excitement, but Dave had never taken the dessert for John before. They weren’t sure how he’d react, if at all.

“Uh. ...D. ...Dave?” John finally asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry there son, I was aiming for John since he was expecting it,” James tried to say, as if this were somehow his fault and not from Dave leaping in front of the attack.

Dave, still quiet, finally reached up to pull the pie tin off his face and rub his eyes clear of cream and lemon curd. He licked his lips, face a mask of sweet goo and fluffy cream, and crooned. “This is really good, Dad.”

James exhaled a breath before laughing, stepping around them all to go find the camera, wanting to capture the moment. John still looked startled, but with Dave continuing to croon as he savored the fact he was getting to essentially eat the majority of an entire pie by himself, he supposed there wasn’t much to worry about.

“Why’d you do that?” he had to ask.

Dave blinked at him, licking his fingers clean. “Because you said to keep an eye out for magic and I didn’t know he was there. Then it was pie time,” he shrugged.

“You… you didn’t have to do that,” John chuckled. “I mean, you know it wouldn’t have hurt me, right?”

“It hurt my carpeting more than it hurt either of you boys,” James said, making sure there was film and that the lens was uncovered before coming closer to frame up the picture. “Now then. Say cheese, you two!”

“Cheese!” Dave said, grinning beneath his mask as John leaned over to steal a taste.

“Huh. Y’know, Dad, this was kind of a waste, it’s REALLY tasty.”

“Good thing I’ve got another one hidden in the dishwasher then,” he said with a proud smile. “We can enjoy some slices with dinner once Dave’s all cleaned up and we’ve had our driving practice.”

Once Dave was all cleaned up, huh? Cream was all over his wings, in his hair, probably in his ears. It’d take him a while to get clean. It’d take them both a while to get clean, he mentally corrected, as Dave reached a messy hand over to glom some of the pie onto John’s face. The camera clicked a few more times as they dissolved into flailing with shared pie goo, James laughing all the while.

“Now, now, that’s enough, you’re grinding it into the floor haha. Both of you, go get tidied up. The Lasagna is ready for the oven now, I’ll pop it in just before we leave and it’ll be plenty ready not long after we get back. Sound good?”

“Yes Dad,” Dave said, releasing the sides of John’s purse lipped face once he’d firmly wiped the pie off on both sides and the front of his shirt. Then, wings folding as if being coated in lemon curd was the natural state of things, Dave sauntered off to the bathroom to shower with John sighing as he followed, glasses removed and squinted eyes trailing the black and blonde cloud in front of him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Dave, hold still, it’s not going to hurt you!” John complained. “It’s like when you have a blanket on.”

“Blankets aren’t tight!” he cawed, clicking his teeth in warning for a bite before John reached up and popped the chewy into his mouth for him to angrily gnaw at instead of taking the potential injury to his hands or arms himself.

“It’s a jacket, you big baby!”

“Too tight! Let me use mine!” he growled around the toy in his mouth, close to spitting it back out to let it dangle around his neck so he could bite John after all.

“John, just get him one of mine so he can have everything covered. We can’t have your wings out, remember Dave? Your jacket won’t work,” James reminded him gently from the kitchen as he applied a final last minute layer of cheese and seasonings to the top of the lasagna and covered it with tin foil while the oven preheated.

The struggling slowly stopped as John stopped trying to shove the jacket into place and Dave folded his wings, disgruntled but willing to try alternatives. Especially if they were James’ alternatives and didn’t involve jamming his wings into small spaces. The replacement option was satisfactory, a long white trench coat whose weight weighed down on Dave’s folded wings to smooth the lump on his back considerably. It was comfortable enough, he supposed, and the added flappability of the overly long sleeves was appealing. Dave cawed softly in approval and let John securely tie the belt around his waist.

Soon enough they all bundled into the car, John eagerly in the passenger seat and Dave buzzing in the backseat with his face pressed into the glass of the window. They drove away from their well loved house and down the bumpy dirt and gravel road to the paved road, then to the highway. Dave’s eyes were massive as he watched the other cars come close and pass them one after another, coming and going in so many colors. There was one brief moment of James needing to remember the child locks for the back seat to prevent Dave rolling the window down any further than he already had, wanting to feel the wind on his face and through his hair as if he were flying again, but otherwise the trip was simple.

“I remember here,” Dave said as they pulled into an empty parking lot of a defunct mall. “And there too,” he added, gesturing to a McDonalds down the road. “Good food.”

“I’m glad we took you in, your diet no doubt added to your original longevity,” James chuckled as he parked the car and turned off the ignition. “Now stay put for me. John? Come on over, son. Let’s try some starts and stops, and some parking. I’ll get in the passenger seat instead.”

Eager as ever, John darted around to the front of the car, clumsily sliding over half the hood before slipping down onto the bumper and nearly crashing to the ground before saving himself and making it into the driver’s seat to buckle up. Dave, once again, was bouncing and cawing raucously behind them as James took his seat and did the buckle as well.

“Right. So. Turn it on,” John murmured, running through steps in his head. “Then… brake, shift to drive.. And gas.”

The vehicle smoothly went into motion with only a few initial anxious wobbles, the brief realization that he was piloting a thousand pound death machine with his father and his best friend inside of it catching up with John, before smoothing out and gradually picking up speed at James’ coaxing. The turn was a bit sharp at the end, making everyone tense up and hold their breaths, but subsequent attempts were more in control. By the end, John was even managing basic parking, backing up, and some parallel parking thanks to his dad and Dave both standing out marking the ends of where he was aiming.

All in all, a successful day.

Dave grinned and untied his coat near the end, flinging it open to stretch his wings out before the ride home, only to be nearly tackled by James tucking it back into place.

“Ah ah ah, I’m sorry Dave but no. Not here. Not right now. I know it’s not the best, but try to hold on till we get home..”

“Dad, can’t you just cloak him till we get back? He’ll just be in the back of the car,” John said from the driver’s seat as he parked and shut off the car to get out. Dave went wide eyed and nodded.

“Please? Itches.”

James sighed.. and nodded, raising a hand as he let the coat fall to apply a quick cloaking spell. As if melting away, Dave’s wings disappeared from view, leaving only the cut open back of his shirt. It was strange seeing Dave that way, John decided. No wings on his back, Dave looked naked in some way, vulnerable with his red eyes and wild hair, skinny frame and slightly stooped posture. Nothing was tethering him to the world anymore when he just looked like an out of place human instead of an out of place angel.

“Hurry into the car though. You never know who’s watching,” James urged, handing Dave the trenchcoat before making a shoo gesture with both hands. “We’ve got lasagna waiting on us at home.”

Dave remained outside of the car for another minute, just enjoying the wind in his hair and through his unseen feathers, savoring being somewhere familiar before he finally got into the vehicle as well and buckled up. He felt like someone was watching him and looked around, but let the feeling fall. Nobody was out there but the three of them, and besides: there were more important things afoot.

“Lasagna!” he cawed, appetite more than awake by this time.

“Yep. Lasagna,” John said from up front. All in all? A great birthday. He hoped the future ones could be as peaceful.

#johndave #john egbert #dave strider #homestuck #my fic

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kootenaygoon · 4 years

Photo

So,

Niles was on crutches, watering his garden.

It was late Tuesday afternoon, and we’d just put the Wednesday edition of the Star to bed. Despite the fact it was mid-October, the weather was still summery, with a light wind rustling its way up the valley. The Slocan River had a magical sheen in the distance as my RAV broke out of the trees. Brutus was running laps of the yard with a dog I didn’t recognize, too busy to bark at my arrival, so I followed the driveway around to the barn unmolested and parked beside a mud-spattered, half-deconstructed Jeep. Niles had invited me over to discuss his latest manuscript submission, which was over 100,000 words long. It sat hefty and dog-eared on my passenger seat, riddled with highlighter and scribbled notes, alongside a six-pack of Blue Buck. I wasn’t looking forward to this feedback session, because I wasn’t sure if he was mature enough to hear what I had to say.

“We’ve got the house to ourselves tonight, Goon. I’ve got the second season of Fargo queued up, plus I’ve acquired some fabulous Afghani Kush that will blow your hair back,” Niles said, his crutches squelching in the mud as he clopped over to my side door.

I lifted up his manuscript, which was called The Fox and the Fawn. “Did you forget about this?”

Since my arrival in Nelson I’d been keeping a small roster of three to five students, helping them develop everything from a fictional account of the Rwandan genocide to a fantasy novel about an autistic teen adventuring through an alternate dimension. The trouble was, I was starting to feel like an imposter. My repeated attempts at finishing Whatever you’re on, I want some hadn’t resulted in the fame and glory I was imagining, and now I was wondering if I’d been kidding myself this whole time. Yeah, I had my Master’s, but so what? Could I really be a writer? And if not, was I really worthy of being a teacher? Who was I kidding?

“I figured you would’ve burned that thing the moment you realized what a gargantuan turd it is,” Niles said, his blond hair hanging limply around his dishevelled face. He wasn’t looking healthy.

I climbed out and shut the door. “I read some of it to my new roommate Mika, actually. We had a little reading in my living room.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yeah, she wanted to hear the sex scene.”

Niles roared with delight. That’s what he was always looking for, an audience to the lewd reality of his existence. As far as he was concerned, he was the best kind of criminal — the kind that never gets caught. The Fox and the Fawn was a fangirl tribute to himself, to his gangster exploits as a Slocan Valley weed king. With legalization finally here, he felt it was time to tell his story. The manuscript was Bukowski mixed with Kerouac, demented and perverse and shockingly violent. At one point he even casually admits to date rape, including a scene where his girlfriend rages at him for taking advantage of her while he was drunk.

“I didn’t know you had a new roommate,” he said. “What happened to Brendan?”

“Nothing. I just found a new place, levelled up. Teamed up with this girl Mika who works at my pot dispensary. She’s got a pet rabbit.”

“You’re still getting your shit from there? Why aren’t you coming to me?”

Niles was wearing a brown bathrobe. He opened his front door, told me not to worry about my shoes, then handed me the crutches while he hopped on one foot up the carpeted staircase. He grunted and sighed with each step, muttering swear words under his breath. I’d never seen him like this. When we reached the top I gave him his crutches and the beer, and he motioned for me to take a seat in the living room. As I passed by the familiar John Cooper paintings, I noticed that he’d hung the self-portrait I’d given him as a present a month earlier. I’d painted it with Natalya.

“You hung my painting upside down?”

He laughed, opening the fridge. “Yeah, I dunno why I did that. Just seemed to me like it looks better that way. I get a kick out of it.”

I shook my head. For the past month I’d been painting furiously, and it felt like a swirling green portal had opened up inside my brain. My writing may have stalled, but this was a way to channel my creativity into something other than journalism. I was getting sick of the Star, getting sick of taking the same pictures of the same fundraiser events, getting sick of the constraints. My relationship with Ed and Kai was strained too, as they were tired of my entitled laziness. Maybe they knew I was stoned every day, slumping into the office uninspired and half-assing my stories. I felt like the universe was wasting me, but painting had become a soothing therapy, something I did exclusively for myself. I was giving myself permission to be sloppy and flamboyant and outrageous, slathering my canvases with dribbling glitter and chaotic streaks of inspiration. This painting I’d given Niles was my first.

As he banged around in the kitchen, I walked over to the living room window and looked out at the Slocan Valley. The trees were the colour of flames, red and orange and electric yellow, and they matched the darkening sky. Lately I’d been feeling a subtle dread, like the magic was slowly draining from my surroundings. Winter is coming. I hated being single, hated being a chronic stoner, and hated how much of my life I spent stressing out about money. In university I’d become so convinced that I had life sorted out, that I was on a consistently upwards trajectory, that it was only a matter of time before I would be rewarded with creative success and lifelong fulfillment. Now I wasn’t so sure. It was easy to blame Paisley and all the drama she’d brought to my life, but she’d been gone for over a year now. At some point I would have to address my own shit without using her as a scapegoat.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this, man.”

Niles scuffed back into the living room holding our beers. “This?”

“The Kootenays. The Star. I got into a bit of a scrap with Kai and Ed today, in the newsroom,” I said. “Over our coverage of Me Too.”

He laughed, sinking into his recliner. “You’re too radical for them?”

I shook my head, crossed to the couch. “I’ve just been seeing all these posts, right? Women sharing their trauma, men self-flagellating, but the discourse isn’t actually going anywhere. It’s not actually accomplishing anything. But I wanted to do something tangible, so I interviewed the superintendent and a bunch of principals about how they’re responding to it. Just to get it official, on the record, how they plan to change things.”

He snorted. “I’m sure they loved that.”

“So I hand in this 1200-word behemoth of a story, with all these different angles and perspectives, and they told me it didn’t have any teeth. They said it’s just a bunch of talking heads. I tried to argue, you know, that it’s important to be holding these people accountable and that their words are powerful, but they weren’t hearing it. They said if I’m going to write a story about sexual assault then I need a real sexual assault.”

He frowned, shrugged. “So what’re you going to do?”

I felt myself getting worked up. For the past few days I’d been endlessly scrolling through Twitter and Facebook, feeding on the outrage and vitriol. It was bringing everything up, Trent and Galloway and my strange obsession with crucifixion. The topic of sexual violence was like an intricate bomb I was trying to defuse with nothing but a screwdriver. As far as I was concerned, the conversation had to move beyond the rage to solutions. Men had to own their complicity, with more than just empty words, and propose tangible solutions. I was determined to prove Kai and Ed wrong, to show that my journalism had real teeth.

“Well, I’ve already started writing a column about it. About my personal feelings on the subject. And I’m going to illustrate it with a picture of my face with the words ‘Part of the Problem’ scrawled across my forehead.”

Niles laughed. “That should piss off the right people.”

“Not only that, I’ve found two girls who are willing to go on record about their assaults. One who was a student at Elephant Mountain Secondary, and the other from Selkirk College. If I do this right, this could be the most powerful story I’ve written since coming to the Star. Like, I think it could be a really big deal.”

“Well, Goon,” he said. “I think your saviour complex is alive and kicking.”

Eventually we pivoted to discussing his manuscript, and I flipped through it on the coffee table as I took him through my notes. All of his female characters came off as interchangeable, he had a tendency to summarize scenes rather than depict them, and by the end of the narrative he came off as completely unlikeable. Being self-deprecating is one thing, but it was like he was going out of his way to shock the reader with his shitty behaviour. It felt like he was daring his audience to hate him. At times it reminded me of the memoir A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden, by Stephen Reid, so I recommended he check it out for inspiration. I felt Reid struck a fine balance between owning his mistakes and aspiring to be a better human being.

“That’s the bank robber?”

“Yeah, they made a movie about him. Point Break.”

“That surfer movie with Keanu Reeves?”

“I think they fictionalized it a bit. The point is, there’s a guy who has actually grappled with his own soul. That takes balls.”

He nodded. “A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden. I like that.”

Once we were finished with notes, Niles padded off into his bedroom and returned with an elaborate dragon-themed bong. As we smoked together I thought of the caterpillar from the animated version of Alice in Wonderland, asking in his condescending tone “Who are you?” That was the sort of question that was getting harder to answer all the time. Thinking about rape culture all day had me hating myself to the point where I felt physically sick, but at other times I was convinced of my own prophethood, my special destiny to save the world somehow. If I could tackle this Me Too story from exactly the right angle I knew it could have a legit impact. Everyone was encouraging women to speak while men listen, but I had been listening. And now I had something to say. I leaned back in the couch and examined the light fixture in the ceiling, composing my column in my head.

“Here,” Niles said. “You want another hit?”

The Kootenay Goon

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janetoryim · 7 years

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Part i.

In my last summer of undergrad, I spent a little over a month living a lifestyle encompassed by an intimate, inflamed love for my God and His heart that can’t compare to anything else I could ever desire in this life.

I had the privilege of being sent on an international mission trip to East Asia for five weeks! In short, my experience was challenging. [Disclaimer: I’ll talk more about these points in the following blog posts to come! I’ve dedicated the remainder of this post to my thought process in applying, what it was like leading up to EASM 17, as well as a broad overview of our schedule. TBH it’s kinda just details and non-personal stuff–wrote this mainly for my own memory. Feel free to read it though!]

Immersion in a country of such a foreign culture and language and way of life posed extremely huge frustrations and challenges for me. Yet I simultaneously saw how the Gospel goes beyond cultural differences and how God loves all people. My month in EA affirmed Revelations 7:9–that all people need God and that he truly loves all nations, tribes, tongues, peoples.

I learned more about how God created me uniquely and has gifted me. I saw how He is the one who places specific people in front of me in His timing to be the fragrant aroma of Jesus Christ. I experienced how this was only possible through surrender.

And in a place like EA, where being a missionary is essentially illegal, I felt the freedom that comes through knowing Jesus as a stark contrast to the restrictions that the government placed on my abilities to communicate with others and talk about spiritual things openly. This caused my own personal times with God so much sweeter and intentional as I became dependent on prayer and the Bible.

Above all, I hit wall after wall, becoming frustrated with how unfruitful my work seemed. I was forced to and continue to be challenged to have greater faith that true “successful” evangelism is simply obeying in love and the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results up to God.

I went with Epic Movement–the campus ministry that consumed my undergraduate experience with sweet sweet memories, training in evangelism, lifelong friendships, unbearable frustrations, leadership development, interpersonal conflict, a great awareness of my ethnic identity, and much, much more.

At the tail end of college, complaints and frustrations about this ministry filled most of my conversations, and serving as “president” left me feeling jaded from unmet expectations, exhausted from the weekly commitments and inefficient communication, excited to graduate and leave, and hopeful that the new generation of leaders could fulfill all of the hopes and dreams I had envisioned for our movement. In the midst of this negativity, I reflect on the immense growth I’ve experienced through my time serving and leading in Epic.

UT Epic Movement Core Team 2016-2017

As a wide-eyed freshmen who couldn’t articulate the Gospel (what I like to call the “foundations” of my faith), I joined Epic because of the evangelism-centered vision statement. I became so excited about the weekly evangelism trainings and opportunities to grow in this area, and it all came to fruition in the summer after my freshman year, when I got to spend my summer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa on Hawaii Summer Project 2014 (HSP14) with Epic Movement. My time during HSP14 continues to impact me today in really huge ways–I still share the Gospel the same way I did three years ago. I keep up with some of the same amazing, wonderful, and powerful friends I made that summer. My love for poke and acai bowls, beautiful beaches and furikake has only but increased, and much, much more. But that year, I didn’t expect to go to Hawaii. Long story short, my parents didn’t let me apply for an overseas mission trip because of my young age and the fact that I would have to study abroad later on to graduate. Yet from my freshman year, I somehow knew that God wanted me to go to East Asia, but I never thought it would actually happen.

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// how it all came to be //

Last summer, I spent six weeks in beautiful Oaxaca, Mexico on a study abroad program about global health, which drastically changed the trajectory of my future (you can read my weekly summaries and this crazy life change further down on this blog). Checking this graduation requirement off of my list, I casually asked my parents if I could go to East Asia this summer for missions, not expecting anything. They said, “Yes!” without hesitation, and I became shocked as I compared to the reluctant response they had given me back in my freshman year. So from then on, I knew in the back of my mind that it would happen. Honestly, I didn’t pray about it very seriously, and I had no real compelling reasons as to why I desired to go to EA specifically, and especially with Epic, but I applied, had an in-person interview with my future discipler Christine in New York City while on a grad school visit, and became accepted early on this year.

[ P R E – D E P A R T U R E ]

My last semester of undergrad was hellish, to say the least. From my 12 hr/week internship at Susan G. Komen Austin to my new part time retail job at J. Crew Mercantile, discipling four incredible women to serving as the “president” of Epic, all while taking finishing up my graduation requirements and visiting graduate schools in the Northeast–my last semester could be described as anything but “chill”. By God’s grace, I survived, and I finally graduated! Yet through it all, I got to meet up weekly with my friends Nick and Alan from UT to pray together, motivate one another, and keep each other accountable in our ministry partner development. Even though I had this accountability, I really didn’t start asking people to partner with me on this journey until after graduation, about one month before I had to leave for EA.

Admittedly, this was bad stewardship of my time, but God is still so faithful wow.

18 days before leaving, I had raised 20% of the $5,100 I needed. Over the next two weeks, I sent about 170 letters, made lots of cool prayer update graphics, and spent way too much in my email inbox. By the time I arrived at briefing two weeks later, I was overfunded at 110%, having raised around $500 more than I needed. On top of that, I got to reconnect with old friends and gather some intense prayer requests from my ministry partners to pray over during my time in EA. All of this affirmed that God wanted me to go this summer!! This all sounds awesome, but to be honest, I felt as though I simply went through the motions–I faked excitement, and I had huge doubts that my time in EA would change my world. I had a sliver of hope that it would, but my attitude going in seemed hesitant.

[ B R I E F I N G ]

Thus that’s how I entered briefing. We arrived at Vanguard University next to Newport Beach in beautiful southern California on July 20th with the other two Epic Movement summer international teams, heading to Japan and Southeast Asia. I felt comfortable and happy to be with some of my friends from UT one last time, but overall I experienced immense relief to be fully funded, especially because I had only raised 50% last time.

During that time, we had trainings on cultural norms/conflict resolution/etc., speakers gave talks to encourage and challenge us, and we were reminded to remain intentional in prioritizing our own faith.

I met my whole team, and from the start, it felt as if we had known each other for our entire lives. We shared deeply with one another from the start, and I was super excited to have had the opportunity to room with Noel, another graduated senior who was going to East Asia! I saw some good friends from Hawaii three years ago & said goodbye to some of my friends for possibly the last time before moving to New Haven, including my roommate from college ]: twas quite bittersweet.

Students from Epic Movements UT Austin and Texas A&M at briefing before we head out!

Some truths that I meditated on during this time from the talks given:

Loving the Lord begins with knowing that the Lord loves you.

Forgiveness isn’t earned; it’s a grace thing.

The goal isn’t to be conflict-free; the goal is to handle it well when it occurs.

There’s freedom that others’ salvation isn’t dependent upon you.

I can’t. God can. Let Him.

We were commissioned with prayer the last night of briefing, and the next day, we headed out to LAX! At this point, I felt nervous and ill-equipped, battling doubts that God wouldn’t use me powerfully the coming month.

At LAX right before boarding to EA!

[ A R R I V I N G ]

We hopped off of the plane after a 14.5 hour flight to EA and were warmly greeted by intense humidity and high temperatures (pun intended). We followed some dude who spoke no English, carried our luggage up some stairs, and got into a bus that took us two hours away to our university dormitory for foreign students. From that point onwards, everything moved so fast. We all got our own rooms and our own bathrooms! This sounds nice, but honestly compared to my dorms back at UT, I felt a bit apprehensive about sleeping on that bed (featured below). I had heard that our dorms were the nicest on campus, but walking into my room which smelled heavily of cigarette smoke, had strange writing and footprints on the wall, and was covered in dust, I was far from impressed. Being a clean freak, I became really stressed out, but told myself to make the most of the situation because I was privileged to have my own space, especially with my own A/C unit and wifi.

We settled in a bit, and were greeted by a few of the people who served as year-long missionaries (“STINTers”). Three of them I had spent the summer with in Hawaii back in my freshman year! We enjoyed a dinner of KFC, an expensive delicacy in EA.

[ S C H E D U L E ]

The remainder of that week, we had our school orientation, met up with the STINTers, who gave us campus tours, paid for our meals in the cafeteria, took us grocery shopping, etc….and we got our bikes. (I’ll talk about this later LOL) We also went on some prayer walks and started meeting students by playing volleyball and just sitting with people randomly during mealtimes.

The rest of our month there, we followed a rough basic schedule:

9AM // Meet with the rest of the team to bike to the staff apartments for Sunday church times, trainings, gender separated processing groups, prayer meetings, Sunday church times, Bible study on Nehemiah

11:30AM // Bike back to campus from apartments for lunch, typically on campus in the canteens

12PM-1:30PM // Lunch [meet w/students, discipleship with staff, intentional meals with other teammates]

1:30PM-5PM // Language classes on Tues, Wed, Thurs, or meet up with friends that we had met

5:30PM-7PM // Dinner [meet w/students, intentional meals w/other teammates]

7PM-10PM // Family business meetings and trainings, Date Night with Jesus (intentional time with the Lord), Family Time, Free Night, hang out with friends

Occasional free days and traveling to nearby cities on weekends

Friday afternoons, we had culture classes for the first two weeks, then we had English club the second half of our time there, in which we would invite the friends we had made so that they could practice English, and so that we could meet others and hopefully build upon those relationships.

E A S M 1 7 [i] Part i. In my last summer of undergrad, I spent a little over a month living a lifestyle encompassed by an intimate, inflamed love for my God and His heart that can't compare to anything else I could ever desire in this life.

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artificialgrass · 4 years

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Assistant Camp Program Director

Ready to take ownership of your leadership development? See yourself on a trajectory of professional growth in an educational setting? Ready to have a career-defining summer?Assistant Camp Directors are leaders, partnering with Camp Directors to bring camp to life. These visionary role models serve as staff culture ambassadors, operational can-doers, educational champions, and all-around indispensable members of the camp leadership team. Assistant Camp Directors support the smooth operation of a single camp site – supervising staff, planning programs, delighting parents, and so much more. Learn more about this role and working at Galileo in our jobs video gallery .We value having divergent thinkers who bring various experiences and viewpoints to the table at Galileo. We strongly encourage members of underrepresented groups to apply.ABOUT GALILEOGalileo’s mission is to develop innovators who envision and create a better world. We know it’s bold. We also know that we can’t achieve it without asking staff to be role models of an innovator’s mindset-visionary, courageous, collaborative, determined and reflective. It’s not always easy. Camp staffers work hard. Very hard. You can expect days in which there’s a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. But part of what makes our culture great is that no one is too proud to complete any task that needs doing. Our camp staffers bring camp magic to life-for campers, and for themselves.This isn’t your average summer recreation gig. Galileans are expected to take ownership of their own performance and make this place better every day. People with a can-do attitude thrive here and those with a victim mentality don’t. We manage to keep this level of performance expectation high in a relaxed environment; we take our work, not ourselves, seriously.Being a Galilean means jumping into action to bring camp magic to life. Depending on the day, that could mean creating a gorgeous sign that highlights the Galileo Innovation Approach, donning a tutu for a skit, or playing a board game with two campers to build connection. Galileans know what it means to be a vital part of a team. Galileans want to grow. Galileans like to have fun at work. Galileans love sharing in-and helping to create-joyful experiences. After all, we run summer camps. You get the point.WHAT YOU’LL GETPurposeful work in a playful, supportive environment. Plus, you’ll join a lifelong community that stands for innovation, credibility, and expertise. We’re a certified B Corporation that is ranked #1 on the Best Places to Work in the Bay Area, were named one of Forbes’ Best Small Companies and a Top 100 Impact Company, and are authentically committed to inclusion and equity company-wide-which includes joyfully upholding a robust financial assistance program.Position Description SHARED VALUES AND EXPECTATIONS- Serve as an ambassador of Galileo, demonstrating our mission and values in a positive and professional manner and acting as a role model of the Galileo Innovator’s Mindset- Commit to building a safe, child-focused community- Demonstrate professionalism and accountability- Take initiative to analyze and solve problems- Treat others with courtesy and respect- Respond to camper, family member and colleague needs- Strengthen our relationship with host site by upholding facility policies and embracing host site employees as partners- Maintain a high standard of ethics, integrity and confidentialityESSENTIAL DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES- With Camp Director, oversee daily operations of camp, creating a high energy, organized, professional experience for campers and staff- Assist Camp Director in overall support and management of camp staff- Lead and manage up to 20 staff members, ensuring quality group leadership, high energy and overall professional performance- Provide excellent customer service to camp families to ensure a professional, positive, and memorable experience- Contribute to and participate in daily opening and closing ceremonies, all-camp activities, and snack & lunch supervision and programming- Maintain safe environments for all campersADDITIONAL DUTIES- Set, work toward and achieve measurable professional development goals- If needed, manage Extended Care program, including staffing assignments and activity planning (generally at camps that do not have an Extended Care Coordinator)- Support camper check-in and check-out processes- Assist in classrooms, providing support and coverage as neededWORK HOURS AND DATESThe camp environment is demanding, requiring consistent dedication and work ethic from each staff member. Depending on the time of summer or the specific week or day, the needs of camp and resulting staff hours may vary. We seek and make offers to staff who we believe are capable of thriving in this environment, both professionally and personally.GENERAL CAMP STAFF HOURS INFORMATION:- Staff may work anytime between 7:30am and 6pm, Monday through Friday. Number of hours and start/finish time will vary by site, position and day- Staff meetings: During regular work hours before or after the start of programming- Before setup days begin, complete between 2-12 hours of online training- Training and setup days: Participate in two mandatory training and setup days in the days before camp starts- Camp cleanup: Participate in cleaning and packing up camp for an additional 1-5 hours in your last week of camp, typically some additional hours at the end of the day. On the last day of camp all staff stay on site until cleanup is complete, which could be up to 6pm at the earliestPOSITION-SPECIFIC HOURS INFORMATION :The camp day runs, on average, 8 hours for Assistant Camp Directors, totaling to 40-hour work weeks. Hours are typically 9:30am-6pm. Assistant Camp Directors will work with the Camp Director on prep prior to training and set-up days; this time may total up to 24 hours of prep time, no more than 8 hours in a day.SUPERVISION GIVEN/RECEIVEDGeneral supervision, ongoing observation and evaluation is provided by your Camp Director.PHYSICAL DEMANDSThe physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable people with disabilities to perform the essential functions.- Some lifting and carrying up to 60 lbs.- Typing, writing, reading- Seeing, hearing and speaking, both nearby and at a distance- Use hand and fingers to help with classroom supplies and operate equipment- Frequent sitting- Sstanding, walking, kneeling

from Naperville Employment https://ift.tt/38AvQe3 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Naperville Employment

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racheltgibsau · 5 years

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How We Train PPC Experts

I work with a team full of lifelong learners. It is a requirement to work at Hanapin. Gotta have that thirst for knowledge. Something happens, though, when you have a diverse team with varying depths of PPC knowledge: one-size-fits-all training doesn’t work. One-size-fits-most doesn’t work. This is a problem I ran into when I sat down with my colleague to construct our training program for 2019.

How do you deliver group training that engages every team member at every stage in their careers? How do you do it without outsourcing everything?

In this post, I’ll walk you through Hanapin’s newest approach to training our team through all stages of development. I’ll introduce you to three Hanapin Heroes and work through how we will approach training for each of them.

Training an Agency of Experts

As an agency, we want our people to have depth of knowledge, creative solutions, and industry-leading expertise. Unless someone is going to pay us to educate and train ourselves day in and day out, having the knowledge alone doesn’t pay the bills. We actually have to put it to good use. Which is why we ask our team to set aside about 6 hours a month for training.

Back in the day, we could spend a whole day together, teaching each other, challenging ourselves to learn something new and share that information with our team, and creating a slew of best practices for our agency. But we were small and new and the industry was starting to grow up a bit and us with it. So it was easy to be inclusive with our material.

Fast forward to today. As you will see by my very generalized examples of a team’s breadth of capabilities, putting a team of 50 in a room together and throwing information around hoping different bits stick to different groups of people is chaotic and fruitless. We needed to allow our teammates to grow in ways that suited their goals. So let’s meet a few members of the team.

Katie Conversion: New To The Industry

Katie is a Production Associate. Katie was hired 4 months ago. Previously in B2B sales, she changed her career trajectory and headed into the world of PPC. She knows her way around a spreadsheet well enough. Bids, budgets, quality score, programmatic, conversion rate optimization? Katie is just now getting comfortable with PPC jargon.

Katie’s training should be:

Technical skill heavy

Process oriented

Broad views

Building a toolkit of Common Practices

Trent Traffic

Trent is an account manager. He has been with the agency for 2 years with 3+ years prior PPC experience. He really wants to start focusing on Amazon and improve his shopping campaign skills. He hates lectures and prefers collaboration.

Trent’s Training should be:

Advanced strategy tactics

Workshop-based/hands-on

Deep-dive into single topic

Daphne Display

Daphne is an Associate Director. She is new to the role, but has been in the PPC industry for 6 years. She oversees 2 XL Enterprise Accounts and advises on a slew of B2B, B2C, Ecomm, and Lead Gen clients. She has an organic growth goal she needs to hit. She wants to grow her accounts and her team. She craves innovation.

Daphne’s training should be:

Filled with the latest industry trends

Advanced marketing strategy

Ways to develop herself and her team

In the past, we have had a full day of training devoted to 1 topic. Here’s what an agenda looked like:

Happy training day, team! Today we are taking a deep dive into Facebook.

Getting started with campaign options

Lookalikes: how do you use them?

Brand safety

Creating a social strategy for B2B

Here’s how each member of the team might absorb that information:

Katie: I need to know all of this. This is all new information. This is great. But I don’t work on any accounts that use this yet. I guess I’ll just put this in my back pocket for later.

Trent: *Yawn* Old news. I’ve been running FB campaigns forever. Speaking of Facebook, I think I’ll take a look at my best friend’s honeymoon photos. (No one I work with would ever be this disengaged, right team?)

Daphne: Oh good. I’m glad we are covering this. My team needs to know this. Are they paying attention? I have to get that email out to that really important client asap. But I should be paying attention. Are they going to tell me something new? No? This is what I already know. No worries. I’ll put out some starter questions and boost discussion.

I took a course on training and something that stuck with me was this: if at least 1 person learned something and was engaged and got something from the class, then you have done your job. Yeah, true, I guess. But I think leading training for the whole team means the whole team should walk away with something.

Solution: Individualized Group Training

Paradoxes. We love them here at Hanapin. Individual Group Training? It makes no sense! And truthfully, it doesn’t. But it is the best way I can describe it. Lumping multi-experienced individuals into one training wasn’t working. So we thought long and hard about three things:

Agency Growth Goals

Career development

Engagement

And here is the new structure for our day of training.

Integrated marketing

We all come from different backgrounds. Just because you studied marketing 6 years ago at university doesn’t mean you know PPC. And just because you know PPC through working in the industry for 3 years doesn’t mean you have a foundational knowledge of marketing. Integrated marketing is taking a branch of marketing strategy and understanding how it works in tandem with a PPC strategy. No one PPCs in a black hole. Even though our clients come to us because they need an expert in PPC doesn’t mean that they are solely relying on PPC to drive revenue.

We will spend a portion of our day hearing from field experts: marketing professors, our own marketing team, CRO experts, SEO teams.

Our Take

Are you still using the phrase “Best Practice” to describe optimizations? If you are, that is fine. It may work for you. But in the past year or so, at an agency our size, it is a bit taboo to say “best practice”. We have clients of all shapes and sizes and “best practice” becomes increasingly problematic. Even if we have two clients who are in the same vertical, they may have different budgets and different goals. So even though we don’t really have a “best practice” for specific initiatives, we still need to have a plan.

Our Take is designed for small groups. Something is shifting in the industry. What is our stance? How do we measure success? The idea behind Our Take is to build an understanding of the topic, source solutions from the team, and create processes to implement in our accounts.

For instance, with the increase of AI and the subsequent increase of available ad types, conventional ad testing is dead. But this all crept up on us. We didn’t wake up one day and have to redo everything we normally do with ads. It was slow and we adapted. But we forgot to develop tools and processes to help us manage the results and glean actionable insights.

An Our Take session might talk about the future of ads, explore AI, and challenge the team to develop a tool to assist in ad testing, build a report template for clients, and create case studies on multi-ad type testing.

Experience Tracks

Here is where the individualized training comes into play. For the afternoon session of training, the group will be split into 3. How do you know what group you belong in? It is a little bit based on tenure and a little bit more based on experiences (note the ‘s’ at the end). Where are you in your career? What can you learn that will make the most impact for you and your clients/department/agency?

The Strategy Track might feature “how-to’s” to assist with technical capability development. For example: how to build a custom bid template for multi-brand accounts.

The Growth Track is more focused on big picture. This track could include leadership development sessions but also include training on market expansion.

And finally, the Innovation Track is devoted to moving the agency forward in capabilities, efficiencies, and growth. These sessions would be small group SWOT breakouts, individual projects, or leadership-dictated hot-button issues.

Share the Wealth (of Knowledge)

The cool thing about working in an agency full of experts is that we are our own best resource. While there might be a need for us to bring in industry experts to lead us in training, for the most part we have the skills we need to train each other. We have the responsibility to each other to share what we know. Albert Einstein believed the only source of knowledge was experience. Guess what? We have buckets of experience.

Technically Speaking

Beyond the strategy and the innovation and the philosophy, teammates like Katie still need some technical skill training. With a lot of things PPC, it is trial by fire. You can listen to the philosophy of a strategy till the cows come home but it isn’t going to sink in until you actually get into a platform and build something from scratch.

We still want to equip our team with a baseline knowledge of platforms and tools. Which is why we will be devoting 1.5 hours a month to technical skill training. Each month will offer 4 topics. You get to choose which class to take to sharpen your skills.

PPC 4 Life

I don’t think we will ever reach a point in our industry where we will be like “Welp, that’s it! We know everything!” So I encourage you to keep your skills honed, your brains open, and ask for on-going training. And if all else fails, just keep coming back to PPC Hero for the latest.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 https://www.ppchero.com/training-ppc-experts/

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archiebwoollard · 5 years

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How We Train PPC Experts

How do you deliver group training that engages every team member at every stage in their careers? How do you do it without outsourcing everything?

Training an Agency of Experts

Katie Conversion: New To The Industry

Katie’s training should be:

Technical skill heavy

Process oriented

Broad views

Building a toolkit of Common Practices

Trent Traffic

Trent’s Training should be:

Advanced strategy tactics

Workshop-based/hands-on

Deep-dive into single topic

Daphne Display

Daphne’s training should be:

Filled with the latest industry trends

Advanced marketing strategy

Ways to develop herself and her team

In the past, we have had a full day of training devoted to 1 topic. Here’s what an agenda looked like:

Happy training day, team! Today we are taking a deep dive into Facebook.

Getting started with campaign options

Lookalikes: how do you use them?

Brand safety

Creating a social strategy for B2B

Here’s how each member of the team might absorb that information:

Katie: I need to know all of this. This is all new information. This is great. But I don’t work on any accounts that use this yet. I guess I’ll just put this in my back pocket for later.

Solution: Individualized Group Training

Agency Growth Goals

Career development

Engagement

And here is the new structure for our day of training.

Integrated marketing

We will spend a portion of our day hearing from field experts: marketing professors, our own marketing team, CRO experts, SEO teams.

Our Take

Experience Tracks

The Strategy Track might feature “how-to’s” to assist with technical capability development. For example: how to build a custom bid template for multi-brand accounts.

The Growth Track is more focused on big picture. This track could include leadership development sessions but also include training on market expansion.

Share the Wealth (of Knowledge)

Technically Speaking

PPC 4 Life

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 https://www.ppchero.com/training-ppc-experts/

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hsews · 6 years

Link

In August 2015, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha was having a glass of wine in her kitchen with two friends, when one friend, a water expert, asked if she was aware of what was happening to the water in Flint, Mich.

Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician in Flint, knew that the city had changed its water source the previous year. Instead of channeling water from the Great Lakes, residents were now drinking water from the nearby Flint River. She had been aware of some problems with bacteria after the switch, but she thought everything had been cleared up.

Her friend warned otherwise: “She said, ‘Mona, the water isn’t being treated properly. It’s missing something called corrosion control. … Without that corrosion control, there is going to be lead,’ ” Hanna-Attisha remembers.

The possibility that the city’s drinking water had been tainted by lead raised alarms in Hanna-Attisha; exposure to lead can result in long-term cognitive and behavioral problems, especially in children.

As Hanna-Attisha began reviewing her patients’ medical record, she noticed that the percentage of children with elevated lead levels had increased after the water switch. But when she shared her data at a hospital press conference, government officials tried to discredit her.

“The state said that I was an unfortunate researcher, that I was causing near-hysteria, that I was splicing and dicing numbers,” Hanna-Attisha says. “It’s very difficult when you are presenting science and facts and numbers to have the state say that you are wrong.”

But Hanna-Attisha refused to give up. Instead, she spearheaded efforts to publicize and address the water crisis in Flint. She writes about her experiences in the book What the Eyes Don’t See.

“This is a story of resistance, of activism, of citizen action, of waking up and opening your eyes and making a difference in our community,” she says. “I wrote this book to share the terrible lessons that happened in Flint, but more importantly, I wrote this book to share the incredible work that we did, hand in hand with our community, to make our community care about our children.”

Interview Highlights

On how the Flint water crisis began

Flint was in a near-bankruptcy state, really suffering from crisis for years, if not decades before this water crisis. In Michigan, if you’re in financial dire straits, the state can come in and really usurp democracy. So in 2011 Flint became under the control of state-appointed financial emergency management, and that emergency manager’s job was austerity. It was ostensibly save money no matter what the cost.

They decided that the water that we had been getting for half a century from the Great Lakes — fresh pretreated Lake Huron water that we had been buying from Detroit — was too expensive. We would start drawing water from the local Flint River until a new pipeline to the Great Lakes was to be built. So the move to the Flint River was to be a temporary move. …

The greatest irony is that the treatment chemical, the corrosion control, would only have cost $80 to $100 a day. That’s all it would’ve cost to properly treat this water.

Mona Hanna-Attisha

This was all done to save money, to cut costs, with no, no regard for public health or children’s health. The folks who grew up in Flint know the history of the Flint River. We are a legacy industrial community. The Flint River has actually caught on fire twice in the past. The corrosion or the impact of the water crisis was not the Flint River’s fault. The Flint River probably would have been OK, not ideal, if it was treated properly. The greatest irony is that the treatment chemical, the corrosion control, would only have cost $80 to $100 a day. That’s all it would’ve cost to properly treat this water. Yet that was never put in this water. The pump to install that treatment was actually never installed, so there never even was an intent to treat this water properly.

On how lead is a “silent pediatric epidemic”

The consequences of lead exposure is something we don’t readily see. It impacts, at a population level, cognition, so actually drops the IQ of a population of children, shifting that IQ curve to the left where you have more children who need special education services, less gifted kids. It impacts behavior — increasing the likelihood of things like attention deficit disorder. It has been linked to impulsivity. It has been linked to violence and even to criminality. So lead exposure has these lifelong cognitive and behavioral consequences that you do not see right away.

On her approach to treating children exposed to lead

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha spearheaded efforts to publicize and address the water crisis in Flint, Mich. (AP)

Our response in Flint has been very proactive and preventative, because we cannot ethically wait to see the consequences of lead poisoning, of lead exposure, so we have put into place multiple, multiple interventions that we know that will promote children’s brain development and limit the impact of this crisis. We can’t take away lead — I wish I could I prescribe a magic pill or an antidote to take away lead poisoning; there is no such thing. But we can do a lot to limit children’s exposure to mitigate the impact of this crisis.

On whether the people of Flint can safely bathe in the water

A lot of people had concerns, especially early on, with bathing and showering. We had bacteria in the water, then we had a lot of chlorine in the water, which irritated people’s skin and eyes. People had rashes and hair loss and they’d take a bath and up to the water line their kids would break out in rashes. We didn’t really know why people had these rashes. Lead per se does not cause skin issues. The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] actually came in and did a huge rash investigation and what they noted was that yeah, people had more skin issues, but we don’t know why. There was a lot of stuff in this water that could have irritated people’s skin. So that is a case-by-case basis, deciding if you can bathe, if you can shower. For some people, it’s fine; for some people it still causes irritation.

On the quality of Flint’s water today

Flint is still in a state of public health emergency. The people of Flint are still recommended to drink filtered water or bottled water. Our water quality has dramatically improved since the onset of this crisis; however, Flint is embarking on something that no other city is doing: We are replacing our damaged lead pipes. We were on this corrosive untreated water for 18 months and that ate up our infrastructure. So those pipes are being replaced and that takes time. We’ve replaced about 6,000 of those damaged lead pipes, but there’s about 9,000 of those pipes that still need to be replaced. Until then, if the people have not had their pipes replaced, they need to be [drinking] filtered or bottled water. …

[Flint is] one of the poorest cities in the country. Until recently the state was paying for bottled water, and that ended a few weeks ago, so now it’s being supported by churches and nonprofits like the United Way.

On how the Flint water crisis exacerbates the “toxic stress” the city’s residents already face

Growing up in poverty is a toxic stress. Being exposed to violence, lack of nutrition, unsafe places to play — all of these are toxic stresses. And now recently, with the incredible science of brain development, we’ve learned that all this repetitive stress and trauma for children impacts their entire life course trajectory in a very graded and predictable way.

The more of these adversities you have — especially really early in life during this period of critical brain development, this prenatal or preschool period — the more of these toxicities you have, be it lead exposure or be it poverty or family separation, the more likely that you are going to grow up to be unhealthy and have more chronic diseases.

In the original study on [adverse childhood experiences], it actually showed an impact on morality. If you had six or more of these ACEs, these adverse childhood experiences, your mortality dropped 20 years. Your life expectancy dropped 20 years. Our kids in Flint already had a decreased life expectancy. Their life expectancy in the Flint ZIP code is 15 years less than the life expectancy of an adjacent ZIP code. So we were a community that was already rattled with these toxic stresses.

Sam Briger and Mooj Zadie produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Scott Hensley adapted it for the Web.

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The post Pediatrician Who Exposed Flint Water Crisis Shares Her ‘Story Of Resistance’ appeared first on HS NEWS.

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niaalisa · 6 years

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Faculty Spotlight – Nicole Silverman

It is the winding roads in life that are usually the most interesting. The same can be said when it comes to an individual’s professional journey and career path. Nicole Silverman demonstrates this truth as well as anyone.

Ms. Silverman’s educational and professional journey has stretched from high school, college, and law school in the Sacramento area to the museums of Vienna, Austria, and back. It has taken unexpected turns, strengthened her beliefs, and broadened her perspectives.

In addition, it has shaped her outlook on teaching when she began her role as professor in the Paralegal program at MTI College.

“We learn so much from the things we experience. A big part of where I am today is the result of an experience I chose to pursue in my final year of law school that completely changed my perspective and led me down a new path within the field of law. So that’s something I always emphasize to my students, to never close themselves off to new opportunities, to go after the kind of experiences that can impact their outlook and career goals.”

Ms. Silverman grew up in Sacramento and always stayed local, completing what she describes as the area’s “trifecta” in terms of her education—high school, junior college at Sacramento City College, and undergraduate study at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis).

At UC Davis, she chose to follow one of her passions, history. Specifically, she majored in Early Modern American and European History, and as part of her undergraduate experience traveled abroad to explore some of the history of World War II in Vienna.

Ms. Silverman’s initial plan was to put her degree in history to use by teaching—either at the K-12 level or pursuing advanced study in the field and teaching at the university level. However, while she felt that teaching was something of a natural calling, the more she thought about it, the harder it became to deny the powerful interest she had in another academic discipline—Law.

“I’ve always been interested in law; I like the idea of service and helping people who are going through something very tough and need a voice. So, I decided that a career in law was right for me, but coming out of UC Davis, I wasn’t totally sure what my best next step would be. I thought about applying directly to law school, but then decided that going the route of a paralegal first would give me a really solid foundation.”

Having grown up in Sacramento, Ms. Silverman was aware of MTI College, and knew that the school was held in high regard. She looked around at other respected paralegal programs in the area, but in the end, none of the others could match a key distinction of the Paralegal program at MTI College—the fact that it is approved by the America Bar Association (ABA).

“In the legal world, that’s huge. None of the other programs I looked at, which were definitely good programs, had that ABA approval. MTI did.”

Since she had already earned her bachelor’s degree at UC Davis, Silverman was able to complete the Paralegal program in just one year. From there, she was accepted at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. During her time in law school, Silverman balanced a heavy workload as a full-time paralegal/law clerk during the day and a law student at night.

It was in her final year of law school when Silverman made a choice that would change the trajectory of her legal career. She decided to take part in McGeorge’s Prisoner Civil Rights Mediation Clinic (Prisoner Mediation Clinic), where she assisted federal judges in the Eastern District of California with co-mediating Section 1983 prisoner grievances. In the Prisoner Mediation Clinic, she conducted interviews with prisoners in the prison or via telephone, drafted confidential pre-mediation bench memorandums for the judges, and assisted in mediating settlement conferences between prisoners, the California Office of the Attorney General, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“It was pretty eye-opening to see just how huge the power imbalance was when it came to prisoners’ legal needs being met. Their cases would take much, much longer to work their way through the system.”

It was an impactful experience, and one that led Silverman to pursue work in the public defender’s office so that she could do her part to ensure that everyone, no matter their circumstance in life, would have a legal advocate.

Through it all, Ms. Silverman never lost touch with her interest in teaching. After earning her Juris Doctorate (J.D.), she decided to reach out to her old acquaintance, Linda Gardenhire, the department chair of Paralegal Studies at MTI College.

Ms. Silverman started to engage with students at MTI by taking part in panel discussions and speaking opportunities at the school. She is now in her second year teaching online torts, and substitute teaches on campus in a variety of legal courses.

The positive experience Ms. Silverman had as a student at MTI, has carried over to her role as professor in the Paralegal program.

“Unless you are from the Sacramento area, it is hard to know just how respected the Paralegal program is. I have worked with a lot of law firms, and the majority of paralegals you see there are from MTI. The overall quality of the program is something that I’m really proud to be a part of.”

Nevertheless, teaching at MTI holds a special place for Ms. Silverman, because every day is an opportunity to empower students to achieve their goals.

“It’s really fulfilling to see just how passionate the students are. They are motivated to learn the law, they are inquisitive, they ask a lot of questions, and they want to further themselves. You have to respect that. And it’s great being able to share my story with them as a source of motivation.”

“These subjects can be pretty difficult. So when I see them succeed in class and that they genuinely understand the material in a way that’s going to contribute to their success down the road, it’s just a really good feeling.”

When she is not teaching, clerking, or working as a independent contractor for multiple law firms, Ms. Silverman devotes her time to her son, and can usually be found at a local park cheering him on during his soccer games. She is looking into piano lessons and Spanish classes as other ways for them to spend quality time together.

Ever the lifelong learner, Ms. Silverman is also considering pursuing a master’s degree in social work as a way to help survivors of sexual exploitation, an issue she has learned about through her work in the public defender’s office.

The post Faculty Spotlight – Nicole Silverman appeared first on MTI College.

from MTI College https://www.mticollege.edu/faculty-spotlight-nicole-silverman/ from MTI College https://mticolleges.tumblr.com/post/168234016198

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mticolleges · 6 years

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Faculty Spotlight – Nicole Silverman

In addition, it has shaped her outlook on teaching when she began her role as professor in the Paralegal program at MTI College.

“In the legal world, that’s huge. None of the other programs I looked at, which were definitely good programs, had that ABA approval. MTI did.”

The positive experience Ms. Silverman had as a student at MTI, has carried over to her role as professor in the Paralegal program.

Nevertheless, teaching at MTI holds a special place for Ms. Silverman, because every day is an opportunity to empower students to achieve their goals.

The post Faculty Spotlight – Nicole Silverman appeared first on MTI College.

from MTI College https://www.mticollege.edu/faculty-spotlight-nicole-silverman/

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perlalucy · 6 years

Text

Faculty Spotlight Nicole Silverman

In addition, it has shaped her outlook on teaching when she began her role as professor in the Paralegal program at MTI College.

“In the legal world, that’s huge. None of the other programs I looked at, which were definitely good programs, had that ABA approval. MTI did.”

The positive experience Ms. Silverman had as a student at MTI, has carried over to her role as professor in the Paralegal program.

Nevertheless, teaching at MTI holds a special place for Ms. Silverman, because every day is an opportunity to empower students to achieve their goals.

The post Faculty Spotlight – Nicole Silverman appeared first on MTI College.

from https://www.mticollege.edu/faculty-spotlight-nicole-silverman/

from MTI College - Blog http://mticolleges.weebly.com/blog/faculty-spotlight-nicole-silverman

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macyjoy3 · 6 years

Text

Faculty Spotlight – Nicole Silverman

In addition, it has shaped her outlook on teaching when she began her role as professor in the Paralegal program at MTI College.

“In the legal world, that’s huge. None of the other programs I looked at, which were definitely good programs, had that ABA approval. MTI did.”

The positive experience Ms. Silverman had as a student at MTI, has carried over to her role as professor in the Paralegal program.

Nevertheless, teaching at MTI holds a special place for Ms. Silverman, because every day is an opportunity to empower students to achieve their goals.

The post Faculty Spotlight – Nicole Silverman appeared first on MTI College.

from https://www.mticollege.edu/faculty-spotlight-nicole-silverman/ from MTI College http://mticolleges.blogspot.com/2017/12/faculty-spotlight-nicole-silverman.html

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musicheritageuk · 7 years

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Celebrating International Duran Duran Appreciation Day with the world’s biggest collector

To celebrate international Duran Duran Appreciation Day this August 10th (yes, this is actually a thing), we met up with Andy Golub, the world’s largest collector of Duran Duran memorabilia to ask him a few questions.

For those with good memories, we previously covered the release of Andy’s book, ‘The Music Between Us’.

Thanks Andy, or should we say Durandy? Firstly, how and when did the love affair with Duran Duran start?!

The seeds were planted with my introduction to ‘The Reflex’. Simon’s distinctive, soaring vocals played deliciously against Nick’s sweeping synth melodies, and I quickly committed myself to memorising every intriguing lyric. The combination of charismatic photo sessions, a captivating video for 'The Reflex’, and the rest of the Ragged Tiger album cemented my interest. From the stylish marketing to the mountains of memorabilia, Duran Duran promised much more than catchy pop songs… there was a carefully-constructed, utterly seductive visual identity that ignited my imagination and left me yearning for more; each glossy poster displayed Duran’s individual and collective personality through fashion, makeup, and self-expression, bigger than life on my bedroom walls. Every new song I absorbed made me want to hear more, to immerse myself in the band’s catalogue, and to lose myself in the music. After nearly four decades, not much has changed...

So how and when did the collecting start?

I have always been a visually-minded person, naturally drawn to bold, compelling images and colorful designs. While Duran Duran’s songs continued to spark my devotion, I needed something tangible to complete the experience. I wanted to learn about the men behind the music, to have something in my hands that went beyond the records… Posters were my gateway drug. Rolled one-sheets, staple-bound fold-outs, and even magazine centerfolds all seemed to present the band in the manner I was seeking: large, colorful, and always around me in my room, keeping the songs and emotions alive long after my Walkman had been put away for the day.

My mother will testify to my lifelong struggles with moderation, never more evident than in my collecting efforts. How can I settle for just five or six posters when… there are others out there? So my appetite for completion took root, and the hunting began. Posters and pin-ups led to calendars, photographs, and official fan club materials, each item filling in a piece of Duran Duran history. Before long, I was curating a collection that numbered in the hundreds. I developed a focus, choosing paper ephemera over records, and learned how to properly care for these fragile treasures. After years passed and my inventory grew exponentially, I began to realize there was more in my custody than just pop memorabilia – this was evolving into a comprehensive, tactile examination of one artist’s career.

Did you ever feel that maybe your collecting was getting out of hand?

My heart has always been involved in my work, so I suppose any moments of “Holy moley, what have I created??” end up transforming into “Wow, I’m proud of what I have accomplished!” In recent years, as I’ve opened up the archive to visiting fans, my perspective has evolved even further; the touching reactions I’ve seen in my fellow Duranies has made me realise it’s not just the band’s history that’s being preserved – but history that belongs to the fans as well.

So turning to your collection now, what are the challenges you’ve faced?

There’s definitely a reason why most fans seem content to live in the moment, enjoying the band’s music, and waiting (im)patiently for the next tour - it’s a lot easier and cheaper than curating a collection with archival standards. The challenges that come with my archive are significant:

Firstly, space: in a 10’ x 20’ area, every square inch of real estate is crucial. Towering racks of flat poster boxes command a good amount of room, big rolls of linen-mounted Subway posters threaten to exceed their confines, and over 15,000 pages of articles reside in a sea of volumes… organizational creativity has become essential, especially when Duran Duran’s career shows no signs of slowing! So if there’s anyone out there who knows a good deal on a small airplane hangar…. I could be interested.

Secondly, temperature: even though the facility is designed to maintain a specific temperature range, I often pop in to check on conditions; a fan, and a heater, are available to keep things comfortable if necessary, and there are steps in play to remove excess moisture from the air. I never forget that paper is organic, and therefore can react to environmental extremes, or absorb elements such as excessive humidity.

Finally, the expense! While I have always viewed the collection as an invaluable investment, the costs of archival curation are certainly felt. Acid-free bags, boxes, tissue, mylar sleeves - these are the weapons in my arsenal, designed to defend against the ravages of time. Paper can yellow and grow brittle, colors fade in direct sunlight, bindings can loosen under stress… with each passing year, and every new milestone in the band’s story, my commitment to the archive deepens. I enjoy feeling that I’m part of something bigger than myself.

How have fans and the band reacted to your collection?

It’s never been enough to simply build a collection. The real joy comes from sharing it with others. I remember how everything changed with my first exhibition in February 2001, held over a weekend at the local Art/Not Terminal gallery. Duran Duran: A Retrospective took over all three floors, a first for the gallery; over 100 people showed up on opening night, arriving as curious adults and quickly transforming into delighted, wistful teenagers. That evening, my family learned this passion was much more than a bedroom wallpapered with posters, and I discovered how my efforts affected others in beautiful ways.

My second exhibit, Some New Romantics, took place in 2007, primarily showcasing framed prints from Paul Edmond, Duran’s first photographer. The intimate space at the Caffeine Café became a time machine, decorated with stunning photos of the band in the earliest stages of their career. I filled out the walls with smaller posters from later years, educating attendees on where the band has been and where they were at the time – heralding the release of the Red Carpet Massacre album. I will never tire of the smiles and enthusiastic stories that emerge in an organized Duran Duran celebration… it reminds me why I do what I do.

You've also released some books? Can you tell us a bit about them...

Both of my books felt like natural extensions of the archive and the direction it’s taken. Beautiful Colors: The Posters of Duran Duran evolved into an ambitious, hefty examination of the band’s trajectory through the lens of official posters – promoting record releases, special events, and concerts around the world. I am always envisioning ways in which the archive can be shared with fans who can’t make the trip over, and my book proved to be a wonderful first step.

If Beautiful Colors was my love letter to the band, then The Music Between Us is a love letter to the fans. I wanted any follow-up to focus in closer, examining the impact Duran Duran makes on their loyal audiences. Live shows are the biggest, most dramatic context through which Duranies can gather, network, share experiences, rejoice in their collective passion, and truly enjoy a sense of belonging. This is a profound phenomenon that has certainly affected me over the years, and linking concert advertisements with fans’ memories seemed like a perfect concept for my second book. As I procured tender recollections from my fellow Duranies, The Music Between Us: Concert Ads of Duran Duran took on a very personal feel; reading others’ memories prompted me to revisit my own, and I felt more connected than ever to what some fans described as their “tribe.” I reveled in the poignant, inspiring, and even humorous experiences entrusted to me, each quote revealing a remarkable common thread that spans the planet.

I loved imagining that the second book could give Duran Duran a rare glimpse into how their shows really affect fans, since the band usually only hear the overwhelming roar in front of them!

But the end result has been incredibly gratifying, heartwarming, and more meaningful than I ever expected. On one level, Duran Duran deemed Beautiful Colors “magnificent” and have shown consistent support for both books through social media – always a view to a thrill (a single Tweet from the band has the power to send a Duranie’s day into the stratosphere, as countless fellow fans can attest). Then there are the fans’ reactions, proclaiming both books as “must-haves” and “collector’s items,” sharing spectacular smiling selfies with books in hand, and expressing emphatic endorsement of my endeavors. It’s immensely validating to have others believing in my work, encouraging my vision, and even trusting me with their own stories. Sometimes I even see fans contacting me to donate something special to the archive, just because they know it will be cared for properly. If I ever needed a sign that my efforts matter, I get one nearly every day.

Most pictures courtesy of the Durandy archive, apart from top image taken from Wikipedia and reproduced under creative commons. Please see the Durandy archive for more items from the collection. Duran Duran are currently completing their 2017 World Tour.

#durandy #duran duran

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movietvtechgeeks · 7 years

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Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/man-whos-stayed-rafael-nadal-good-bad/

The man who's stayed with Rafael Nadal through good and bad

Rafael Nadal has his eye on winning his tenth Roland Garros title, and he wasted little time moving another round closer Friday after defeating Georgian Nikoloz Basilashvili 6-0, 6-1, 6-0. "I think I played great," said Nadal. "I think at the beginning of the match, I thought my opponent was not playing bad, but I was able to produce winners, to play with no mistakes, to play very long. I hit with a very high intensity on all the shots. It was a great match for me. I won, with that score, against a player who had already beaten [Gilles] Simon and [Viktor] Troicki. I played very well." This places him in the fourth round, and as Rafa closes in the finals, it's with mixed emotions as his longtime coach and uncle will be ending his time instructing from just outside the court. [pdf-embedder url="https://movietvtechgeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/french-open-round-3-mens-singles.pdf" title="french open round 3 mens singles"] The history of tennis is cluttered with family-run coaching experiments — some successful, some disastrous — and mostly has involved parents overseeing their children, from Gloria Connors to Richard Williams to Judy Murray. Few coaching partnerships have been as effective and enduring as the uncle-nephew tandem of Toni and Rafael Nadal. An instructor both in tennis and life to Rafael from the age of 3, Toni’s lifelong stewardship has helped build one of the most prolific tennis careers ever. It includes four Davis Cup titles, two Olympic gold medals, the No. 1 ranking and 14 Grand Slam titles, including an unprecedented nine at the French Open. Equally rare is the coaching-student relationship that lasts the entire arc of a player’s competitive trajectory, from prodigy to long-established champion. “Toni is the most important person in my tennis career without a doubt,” Rafael Nadal, who advanced to Sunday’s fourth round of the French Open as the No. 4 seed, said Wednesday. In February, Toni Nadal announced that he would step aside as Rafael’s primary coach at the end of the year to concentrate on nurturing talent at the newly opened Rafa Nadal Academy in the family’s native island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean. Carlos Moya, the former No. 1 and fellow Mallorcan, already had been added to Rafael’s team in December, along with established part-time coach Francisco Roig. The impending transition adds particular resonance to their 13th journey to Paris, where they have left an indelible imprint on the only Grand Slam played on clay. “Maybe if he pays the ticket, I go” again, Toni joked this past week. If his principal coaching role will change, few expect the 57-year-old with the calm mien and folksy charm to fade into the shadows. Toni quickly emphasized that if his nephew calls, he would, of course, make the trip. There was pride and poignancy, however, when he explained that Rafael, who turned 31 on Saturday, doesn’t need his presence to succeed. Toni’s influence spans a lifetime. An uncle more than a coach Toni Nadal shrewdly convinced his nephew to play with his left hand when he abandoned a double-handed forehand as a child, though Rafael still eats and writes with his right hand. He preached the ethic of hard work and constant improvement. He never let Rafael forget he was a person first and a tennis player second. “I say hundred of times,” Rafael said, “but he’s my uncle more than my coach.” With Toni, lessons on and off the court always carried a larger message. Speaking to a small group of reporters this past week, Toni recounted the time Rafael won his first junior Spanish championship. He was 11. Toni’s next move? It wasn’t praise. It was perspective. He phoned the Spanish Tennis Federation and asked them to mail him a list of the previous 25 champions of that same tournament (there was no Internet at that time, he reminded the group). When it arrived, he sat his nephew down to peruse the list of names. A few stuck out — an Albert Costa here, a Sergi Bruguera there — but most were unknowns. “This,” Toni told him, “is the possibility you have.” Thus, Toni passed on, in plain terms, a tutorial on the dangers of complacency. “It is difficult to improve when you are completely satisfied,” Toni said. In the tightknit Nadal clan, Toni always has operated within a system of honesty, tough love and mutual respect. Not that he and Rafael don’t go at it at times. “They are going to survive a bad match, a bad run, a bad fight, a disagreement of opinion,” said Tennis Channel commentator Justin Gimelstob, who has twice visited Rafael’s childhood stomping grounds on Mallorca. He added that, over 27 years, Toni’s wealth of knowledge — a kind of “ownership” — of Rafael’s game is one few coaches ever achieve. Unlike many filial coaching ventures, their relationship has thrived because they are a step removed from the more typical arrangement, Gimelstob added. “It’s family, but it doesn’t come with the same emotional dynamics as a parent,” he said. Toni insists it is talent that has made Rafael the most successful man in history on clay. Earlier this spring, he surpassed Guillermo Vilas’s record of 49 clay titles. Rafael now has 52. But the exacting Toni clarified his definition. “What is talent?” he said. “Talent is the capacity of work.” Talent has paid off. Following two seasons in which Rafael struggled with confidence and injuries, Toni and Rafael sat down at the Mallorca Academy, which opened in October, to strategize a comeback. Toni told Rafael he had to improve his serve, shore up his competitive attitude and most of all restore the punch to his lethal forehand, which allows him to dictate points and pummel opponents into submission. At times the past few seasons, his whipsaw forehand missed its mark, often at crucial moments. This year, he is unleashing it with deadly precision. The one constant A resilient return on hard courts this year, including a runner-up finish to Roger Federer at the Australian Open, set him up for his favored clay, on which he already has won three titles this spring. Rafael upped his record to 20-1 on the surface this year by crushing Nikoloz Basilashvili of Georgia, 6-0, 6-1, 6-0, in 90 minutes Friday. He advanced to the French Open’s fourth round, where he will face fellow Spaniard and No. 17 seed Roberto Bautista Agut. He hasn’t dropped a set in Paris, and Friday’s victory pushed his five-set record on clay to an astounding 98-2. “The forehand is so much better,” Toni said. So is his ability to pull out matches when he’s struggling with his form. Moya, the 1998 French Open winner, cited Rafael’s five-set defeat of rising star Alexander Zverev of Germany in the third round of the Australian Open as a “turning point” this season. “One of the best things he’s been doing this year is to compete,” Moya said. Toni played down the idea that ending a chapter that started when Nadal won his first French Open as a leaping, fist-pumping teenager in 2005 was anything special. Still, winning a 10th title — “La Decima” — would be an important milestone after a three-year Grand Slam drought. Rafael’s most recent major win was here in 2014. “It’s a little different because the last two years Rafael hasn’t won a Grand Slam,” he said. Whatever the result in Paris, neither expects major alternations to their relationship. Watching Moya ease into his new role has helped Toni let go of some responsibility. But change is change. Andy Murray, whose mother, Judy, coached him as a youngster, said he expected Toni to stay involved in Rafael’s career, even if he will be less present on the road. “I’m sure there will be a small period of adjustment for Rafa, as well, because he’s used to looking up into his box and seeing Toni there,” said Murray, the world’s top-ranked player. “He’s been the one constant in his career.” The Spanish star isn’t about to allow nostalgia to create any blind spots with another championship on the line. “I cannot be thinking if Toni is leaving or not leaving,” Rafael said. Toni is not fretting over his decision. He said he would be just as content watching the sun come up over the sea in Mallorca and teaching the next generation of talent at the family’s academy as he would be wandering the streets of Paris or seeing Rafael, in his signature gesture, sink his teeth into another Coupe des Mousquetaires trophy at Roland Garros in another week. “When I am in Paris I am very, very happy,” Toni said, recalling a recent meandering stroll from Montmartre to Notre-Dame Cathedral to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district. “But at home I am very happy, too.” “I try to be happy everywhere,” he added. “Here or there.” A perfect ending to 2017? Toni smiled widely. His answer — simple, direct, ambitious — befit the man. “To win Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open,” he laughed.

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