Tumgik
#great post but i had 2 check 2nd persons blog and of fucking course you are lol
canaryatlaw · 6 years
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alright, let’s get going with this. Today was fine, not particularly exciting, but it was my last day of classes, potentially for the rest of my life, so that’s something at least. I woke up to my alarm at 11:10, ten minutes earlier than usual because I wanted to do my make up and look nice for my last day. Got ready, walked to the train, and took it down to school. Dumped stuff in the PAD office then went up to class. It was all review, so we went over some topics and example questions, and how to best answer them. I’m not particularly worried about this final because it’s in a class I do actually have interest in and paid more attention to than my other classes, plus it’s open book/notes, and I’m just generally good at answering essay questions on tests, I just get going and I’ll just keep writing and writing. And I did really well on the midterm for this class (it was when the prof was like “I graded it out of 8, most everyone got 6′s, but if you said something really brilliant and mind blowing you might have gotten a 7″ and of course when I opened my envelope the assignment was in there was a big 7 on the top, so that was encouraging) so I’m feeling pretty good about this one. After class I went back to the PAD office and decided to focus on Remedies for a bit since I had my last class for that tonight. It’s not in the bar review books, but I was able to get a pretty solid outline from the PAD outline bank, it was from a class with another professor, but honestly it’s just the basic concepts it’s really not gonna differ that much. It was set up in a format so that I could largely copy and paste from it onto my flashcards, so that helped on time. But yeah, I worked on it from like 2:30 to 5, and I got through 14 pages of the outline (out of 24 total) and 156 flashcards done, so that was good. I grabbed a slice of pizza from the little market place that just moved in next to the school because I wasn’t feeling a salad today, lol. Went to Remedies, it was a pretty good class period, we did finish up on some stuff then went to review. There was a really funny moment when the prof was talking about what the test would consist of and he accidentally said “33 essay questions” instead of 33 multiple choice questions” and we pretty much all died of laughter. I also raised my hand at one point, because I mean, I knew the answer so why not, and I probably haven’t raised my hand in that class in like, 6 weeks (it was hard to pay attention during the LOT season because I’d end up glued to twitter for the hour), and the prof like, flipped out and was so happy I raised my hand lol it was sweet, and he was like “you know, I like you” which is always nice to hear. That’s gonna be my one closed book final, which is fine, I think I can get enough of that info in my brain to be able to regurgitate it onto a final. it’s also nice that my final dates are in the same order of my confidence in classes, so my easiest one is first, then the middle, then the hardest, giving me more time to study for them, so that worked out well. We got out around 7:30 (an hour early) and I was home by 8:30. Decided I’d watch Supergirl, and I don’t think it was too bad really, the Kara/Mon-El stuff was mostly cringey (but what else is new) though at least she got to tell him off at one point, that was immensely satisfying to hear that she does at least know just how much of an asshole he had been. All the J’onn/Myr’nn (they keep changing the location of the hyphen in his name, from like M’yrnn to My’rnn to Myr’nn and its quite annoying) was sad of course, so that was kinda rough to watch. The Sam and Lena stuff I thought was pretty good though, there’s definitely something distinctly Luthor about keeping someone in a secret medical facility until you can find out what’s going on with them, and I mean I’m sure Lena did it with the best of intentions, but it’s something that I can totally see Lex doing too, maybe under different circumstances but still. Seeing Lena push Sam until she broke was hard, as was Sam’s meltdown afterwards, all of which was sooooo reminiscent of season 8 of Smallville with the Davis/Doomsday situation, with Lena now being in the place of Chloe trying to stop this from happening, even though it’s probably out of their control. Listening to Sam call Ruby and have to tell her she can’t visit her was rough though, honestly I’m at the point where Sam and Ruby are the only characters I even care about (I mean, maybe Lena sometimes, mostly because she can give me Tess Mercer vibes and I love Tess oh so much) because they’ve made most of the other characters either just not having a plot or making them super obnoxious. I still love Winn, but he really hasn’t had much to do this season. but yeah, overall not bad, so I’ll take it. After I finished that The Resident had finished recording, so I moved over to that. Man, what an episode. The pacing was very good, intermingling the hospital drama with the patient anecdotes with Dev in the ER. Things are obviously escalating very quickly in terms of going from “this doctor is giving too much chemo to patients” to “this doctor straight up murdered her patient to keep her quiet” quite quickly, but I mean that’s basically what happened so I guess we’ll have to deal with that now, though idk how they’re gonna go forward from here with Nic out of her job and Bell now the CEO. I found the fire storyline slightly amusing because afterwards they were like “what happened?” “the patient caught fire” like that’s something that happens all the time 😂 this show continues to make me extremely nervous about going into surgery for anything ever; when I was in the ER over spring break they were like “oh this surgeon is great, he has a lot of experience and is well regarded” and he walked in and had gray hair and I was like FUCK I’M GOING TO DIE 😂😂 but thankfully I was able to avoid getting cut open so I lived to see another day 😂. After the episode I watched the news for a few while I finished up a few things (mainly finishing scrolling through the tumblrs I check every day) then started getting ready for bed, and now I’m here. DV clinic tomorrow for my last shift for the time being, depending on what I end up doing over the next few months I might be able to pick up some shifts over the summer, but I know I do need to focus on bar prep, with the rule of thumb being 8 hours of studying a day for 6 weeks (literally a full time job) if you want to pass. So we’ll see how that plays out. and yeah, not a bad day. Hopefully tomorrow will be good, and then I’ll probably be in finals study mood for the next few weeks, when my finals start on May 2nd and go to May 9th, then I’ll be graduating on the 13th. It’s so close, but it feels so far away right now because it’s on the other side of 3 massive tests I have to pass to get there. It is so close though, and soon enough it will be here, just gotta get through these last few hurdles. Alright, I’m done talking for the night (on this blog at least, I’ll probably make a post on my personal after this). Goodnight dearies. Love you lots.
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cynicaesura · 7 years
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I guess it’s time to weigh in on this Tara Gilesbie discourse
Never thought I’d see the day when My Immortal theorizing got so big so fast it became legitimate discourse
No but seriously the way we all talk about this fic, the way we lie in wait waiting for someone to come forward and tell us the true story of the infamous legend...this is some goddamn religious shit. Like every now and then some new “evidence” arises and some claim that it’s the 2nd coming of Tara and the rest of us skeptics just keep waiting like the Jews for their messiah.
Now we have this new, seemingly far more concrete piece of evidence handed to us. This fuckin relic of a FictionPress account. For a lot of people this accountholder seems to be the Jesus Christ of My Immortal like who new that this whole thing was really a biblical allegory?
I’ll begin by stating my position on My Immortal’s authorship for the past several years:
I don’t think it was a troll fic. Now I haven’t gotten around to reading @thischarmingmothman’s essay on the subject (I’m not even kidding I’ve had it bookmarked for years) but I just don’t think it was fake. As many have stated, it was written before the age of in-depth internet trolling. This of course, doesn’t really mean anything. There have always been hoaxes. There was even the widely popular Ted the Caver story back in 2001 (if you aren’t familiar, this is a creepy story about a guy who discovers this weird shit whilst caving. The author was actually a caver and he kept a journal of what he would find and decided it would be neat to spook his friends and family on his blog so he wrote this really elaborate story. Great read. Highly recommend.) But I can’t think of anything that has ever come close to matching the amount of effort that would need to be put in to perpetuate the character of Tara Gilesbie. Like this is YEARS of slow upkeep on her relationship with Raven, their other social media accounts, her other less popular fics after she abandoned My Immortal. Hoax stories don’t often expand their universes past the site the author posted on. Maybe I’m just stubborn but I cannot believe that this piece is anything but genuine garbage.
Now about this new evidence. I think that it’s shaky at best. Here’s the timeline:
August 2, 2017: “Tara” posts an update on her formerly-unknown FictionPress account
August 3, 2017: someone under the username Fokenprepz posts a comment on the Tara Gilesbie wiki page. The comment is only a link to the FP account. This account was created that day.
August 3, 2017: That same day another user called Arch Wizard Megumin updated the Tara Gilesbie page with the new information about the FP account updating. They have an apparently very active history on this and other wiki sites. They said they saw the comment from Fokenprepz and decided to check it out.
August 27, 2017: The FP account apparently began gaining some traffic. Enough so for the mod to post another short update about getting messages and clearing up questions about authorship and outside accounts.
August 30, 2017: @marauders4evr makes the post that caused everyone on this site to lose their shit. This is where we all discovered the FP account. Popular user in the fandom discovers news of Tara? Yeah that’s going to gain ground FAST. They have stated that they saw the new link on the My Immortal wiki and got excited that there is potentially activity coming from the real author.
August 31, 2017: The FP account makes a “final update” regarding why they were only now posting on FP and never said anything on FF.net or any of the other known accounts.
There’s a lot of elements to this story. A big red flag is that no one had ever heard about or knew of this FictionPress account before this month. It never posted anything other than the original “I’m Tara and I like to cut my wrists” bio. Not a fic. Not a proper bio. Not a complaint about other accounts being hacked. Nothing. The issue is, of course, that first update. That first goddamn update. Actually, you know what? No it’s not a fuckin problem because the bio doesn’t have a datestamp. The only things we know for sure is that the account was made a month after the FF account and it has a username bearing a striking resemblance to all of Tara’s other apparent accounts.
Here’s the thing about that information. It doesn’t mean shit. You know what FictionPress allows you to do? Change your username/url. Yes, I literally created a fucking account on that website just so I could test it (I’d be interested in seeing screenshots of their home page because mine still shows the old username in the corner even though the profile has the new one.) So anyone who had a FP account in 2006 and has been following this story for any menial amount of time could have thought to themself, “Hey, you know what would be funny? If I logged back into my old FP account and changed the bio and url to fuck with the world.” Shit would take about 3 seconds.
The other big flag about all this to me is that the account claims that they had no other accounts outside their FF and FP accounts. I think this is just a convenient way for this new pariah to get out of having to prove their identity through photos/videos matching the images we’ve seen of Tara and Raven on YouTube, Myspace, etc. I don’t think 2 random teenage girls would read My Immortal in 2006 and decide to spend a few years pretending to be the goth-obsessed writers on other websites.
So who did all this? I don’t know. Probably some random one of us who’s been following this story for a while and decided it would be funny to make everyone lose their shit over it again. I’ll give them this, the 11 year old FictionPress account is a good angle, but it’s just not very credible. I think this person went and edited all that stuff and then made an account on the famous wiki to subtly share the link. The fact that there is no explanation for how Fokenprepz found the FP page is heavily suspicious. A lot of people are blaming the other 2 people who brought this information to light, Arch Wizard Megumin and marauders4evr, but I believe these two when they say they just got their info from that comment.
Now the question still remains: Who is Tara Gilesbie? Did she ever really exist? Does she exist still today? Will we ever know the truth?
Personally, I don’t think we’ll ever know. Not to get dark or anything but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she killed herself in like high school or something. Anyone who’s that stuck in their emo phase doesn’t really survive. There’s a lot of holes to the story. Maybe someday we’ll get conclusive evidence of the fic’s authorship. And maybe, just maybe, we all secretly hope we never do.
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travelsofablonde · 5 years
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Going, Going, Gone!
Hey guys! I'm a little behind on blogging, sorry! The thing is, we are CONSTANTLY going over here. The first day it was walking to the grocery store and the immediate area around the dorms to acclimate ourselves. The 2nd day it was a full day walking tour of the city and important historical locations (the entire city is important as a historical location). The third day it was getting up super early to walk to the train station (20 minute walk), catch the train to Liverpool (no wifi on train and barely any A/C and squished in there), and touring 2-3 museums in Liverpool, (seeing my awesome cousin!) and then getting back in time to grab dinner and buy one of the girls a birthday drink for her 21st (we literally all did this as a group and took over a pub). Then there was today, which will be the main topic of this blog entry!
Today was our 4th day in country. And let me just preface all of this by saying that I am having a BLAST. The food here tastes better (to me), the air is soooo clean and fresh, the rain is relaxing and refreshing, the sights are beyond words. It's so incredibly beautiful here and the people are all so kind and helpful. BUT. Today was kind of a cluster fuck.
So we get up early today and get ready to head to the train station again to catch a train to London. No big deal, perfectly normal, we pretty much do something similar to this EVERY DAY. Well for some reason I couldn't be on time today even though I woke up even earlier than I have every other day of this trip. I manage to make it to the dorm lobby with like 1 minute to spare and just as my professor and the rest of our group is ready to head to the train station together (we can go alone if we know the way but I wasn't quite comfortable with the directions yet so I chose to go w/ the group).
We get to the train station and me and my friend Ray (Rayanna) decide we desperately need breakfast and coffee because my baby granola bar definitely wasn't cutting it (I had a whole box but I ate it already and only had the one left). Well by the time we get our food and coffee our train is already boarded and we have less than 5 minutes to get to our platform and find a seat. So we race up the platform entry stairs, across a bridge, down the secondary platform stairs and on to our train. Here, we are met by the veerrryyy disapproving stare of Dr. Mann, one of our History professors. He's happy we made it but now he has to follow us through the various train cars while we hunt for an available seat! Well every single seat (a table with 2 seats on each side) is either full or someone has placed a full suitcase/luggage set in one of the 2 seats and is unwilling to move it. We FINALLY find a seat in train car D and our professor deposits us with great annoyance as he makes his way back to his car. You'd think that'd be it, no more issues, we've boarded the train all is well! Nope!
So Ray and myself are safely seated with two quiet but, I'm sure, very nice ladies and we're preparing to take notes or read or sleep or whatever for the duration of our 2-3 hour train ride. Well one stop in and both of these ladies are needing to get off of the train which means me and Ray both have to get up to let them out. Realizing that if we get sat with new people at any of the train stops this will get quite annoying we decide to take-up one side of the table and sit side by side. As we begin making this transition the train lurches a bit on the tracks and Ray's coffee spills all over the table AND HER BRIT RAIL TRAIN PASS. Why is this a problem you ask? Well not only is it the pass for our train rides for the entire duration of the trip but you CAN'T. GET. IT. WET. Shit.
So immediately whip off my plaid cover shirt and start trying to dry it and Ray and I can't help but laugh about this annoying sequence of events. And of course, being the smartasses that we are, we decide we should post about it in the class group me and tag Dr. Mann. That brief discussion is as follows:
Ray: "Oh and what happens if you spill coffee on your train pass? Asking for a friend"
Dr. Mann: "As I said yesterday, it's your most valuable piece of paper, keep it dry and secure."
Ray: "It's still legible, just has a vintage tea stain look"
**at this point a ticket master comes by to check our tickets and we show Ray's ticket to him and ask if it's ok-he says it should be since we didn't smudge the dates too bad**
Me: "The train guy said it's still good!"
The rest of the train ride was uneventful thankfully! When we arrive in London things are already hectic. There are people EVERYWHERE and it's loud inside the train station. We make our way inside to a coffee shop so everyone can take a bathroom break and we can get our OYSTER cards which we need to get on the tube in London. (The Tube is the underground rail line). Then we go to the tube station directly next door which is even more crowded and start the long descent down towards the platforms. On the way we have to stop and wait in the worlds longest but fastest line to load money onto our OYSTER cards to pay for our tube ride for the day. This is just annoying and only some of the kiosks took card payments so if we didn't have local currency we had to stand in another line to use the ones for card payments. I had just enough local notes (cash) on me to cover the cost and was done pretty quickly.
When we got down to our tube platform the train was already half loaded so we had to rush on and basically squeeze into two cars like sardines so none of us would be left behind. At first this wasn't really an issue with me, I've ridden the express trains around Austin and squeezing in has never been a problem other than it gets really warm. Well... the trains in Austin are above ground where you can see outside. The tube is all underground. There is no outside. You are literally sandwiched into a metal tube speeding on a tiny track in a dark, dank, hot underground tunnel. I FLIPPED OUT. SILENTLY. Basically I got insanely claustrophobic within like 0.5 seconds of the train moving because I had no air and no space and could see nothing but blackness as we (loudly) hurtled forward! I was able to sit down after the first stop (It took everything I had not to jump off at that stop, the trip be damned) and that helped a little as there was a small air bubble of cold air blowing near my seat. That's about it. I had to keep my eyes closed, grip the hand rail, control my breathing and try not to cry because I felt like I was trapped in a box in the ground. It was the worst part of the trip so far. I stayed super quiet during this entire ordeal because I really didn't want to bring attention to myself or my mini freak out. I didn't want to be THAT person. However, my friend Ray and my Museum Studies professor, Dr. Denton, both noticed me not joining the conversation and squeezing my eyes shut. They both calmly and quietly moved over to me and asked if I was ok, to which I explained that I was but this was too tight and confining a space and I just wasn't enjoying it at all. They both understood and (God Bless Her) Dr. Denton stayed near me and quietly kept me updated of how many more stops we had to go. She did this so that I would know we weren't stuck in a box in the ground and so I'd know we'd be in an open, brightly lit space soon.
Luckily this was a short-ish ride and as soon as our tube stopped I was the first person onto the platform.. honestly at that point I was so relieved to have some kind of space and air to breathe and some actual light that I let the tears fall but only a couple of them before sucking it up and calming down so we could get moving to the museum. Dr. Mann checked on me, I assured him I was good, I just needed space for a second. That was done thank god! Dr. Mann assured me the next train was above ground and much less crowded and I happily boarded it. We arrived at the London Docklands Museum and proceeded into the free Hidden Rivers Exhibit which was very awesome. They had very light blue transparent screens erected on wooden casings which separated the different portions of the overall exhibit and I found the entire thing extremely moving. It started with prehistoric tribes, moved well into the 19th century and the industrial revolution and cholera outbreaks and ended with modern times and future plans for the hidden rivers of London.
After this we roamed the other exhibits in the museum.. all interesting but not quite enough to inspire me for my upcoming Museum paper and not as impressive as yesterdays trip to the Liverpool Museum (I know I haven't written about that.. I probably will later but there's not a lot to tell unless you're into history exhibits and museum logistics). After we all finished walking the museum we met up in the cafe where Dr. Mann asked all of us if we wanted to take a walk to the Tower of London and London Bridge. Well at this point it's almost 3 pm and we all have to walk back to the train station, catch the train back to Chester, and wash clothes and pack to leave for a 7 day trip to Scotland tomorrow! So obviously half the people want to go be tourists and go to the Tower and the Bridge.. (Why! We're literally going there officially on the 29th!) THANKFULLY Dr. Mann heard me protesting about time and laundry and packing and made an executive feudal overlord decision (we call him feudal overlord and Henry VIII) and decided we should all just go back to Chester instead. FINALLY A FREAKING WIN!
We make our way back, the tube ride was a little better this time around as it wasn't as crowded and Ray kept me updated on how many stops we had this time around and I just got through it with minimal panic. We boarded our train to Chester and .... No 4 seaters.. just tiny 2 seaters... WTF. Fine. Me and Ray squeeze into one and get comfy... well... now there's a 20 minute delay... WTF. FINE. Finally we get moving at around 3:20. I slept for most of the train ride, I was EXHAUSTED.. honestly everyone was. It was quite a bit of walking the past 4 days. We arrive in Chester around 5.. and a bunch of us head to the Tesco (grocery store) to get supplies and then split up for dinner. The Tesco was fine except for one of the girls had a payment issue, no big deal and not anything that effected me. Well then we get to the pub for dinner.. i'm expecting pub food (think shepherd's pie) NOPE! It's all fish and chips or American type food. NOT. WHAT. I. WANT. I'm in England.. I want English food. So I give in and order a burger which ended up being good but it was supposed to be 5 pounds and ended up being 8. No idea why. I also asked for a Coke (I could see the glass bottles behind the bar in the fridge) and the bartender said they were out and gave me Pepsi. At this point I'm just too hungry to be upset and eat my food and let it go. Then we begin the trek back to the dorms to gather our clothes and go do laundry. Oh man.. this is where it gets good.
Ray and I are sharing a laundry card and soap and decide to go together to the laundry facility. Now, let me explain laundry real fast. You get laundry cards, that you have to load with money online, and then you scan them into the washer or dryer you're using and it charges you for the type of wash or dry you do. BUT in order to get a good wash and actually get all the soap rinsed off of your clothes and get them any where near dry (because Uni washers and dyers suck) you have to choose the most expensive wash type which is 3 pounds 40 (think $5 in the US). And a dry is 1 pound 40 (think 3 dollars US).
So me and Ray get everything loaded and start the walk to the main campus to go do laundry.. well it's drizzling. At first this isn't a big deal but literally 30 seconds into the walk it's pouring rain and we're both getting soaked and neither one of us brought anything to keep the rain off because well we just weren't thinking. So by the time we get all the way onto campus and into the laundry room we are dripping and just so over the day.. then we try to get the laundry card loaded. Well the website won't work so we have to buy a whole new card for 20 pounds.. and we end up spending 19 pounds between us just washing clothes and Ray's clothes are still COVERED in soap and completely drenched as if they didn't even get a rinse or spin cycle. One of my loads is completely drenched.. just whyyyyy. So we combine our clothes to dry them and drop another 5 pounds on a new card and just hope that the dryer doesn't screw us...
That brings us to now. I'm still sitting here... in the laundry room.. with Ray.. Dr. Denton has joined us and they are engaged in a very interesting discussion about the slavery exhibits we say over the past two days... it's stopped raining and there's not even a cloud in the sky..
I'm hoping that's the end of today's calamities and that tomorrow will be better. It's been the only bad day i've had so far. It hasn't changed my opinion of England or this trip at all, it's just been a bad day. I'm very tired and ready for sleep and I know I'll definitely get plenty on the train tomorrow as it's a 6 hour train ride into Edinburgh!
I promise to do a much more positive post next time! And I couldn't get my photos to load so I'm still working on that If you haven't already, I recommend you follow my Instagram or my Facebook as I'm putting photos there as well!
Well... back to laundry and museum discussions!
-Chey
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massthetics-blog · 7 years
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New Post has been published on MASSthetics
New Post has been published on http://massthetics.net/2016-personal-retrospective/
What I'm Doing To Learn From The Past
WHAT I’M DOING TO LEARN FROM THE PAST
  It’s anniversary week in the iron jungles of MASSthetics.
  Meaning that in two days on February 23rd 2017, MASSthetics will have been gallivanting about the internet for exactly one year. A milestone of which has caused me to pause and reflect on all that’s transpired over the past 12 months.
Because, to tell you the truth, it’s been without question the most transformative year of my life, and that’s something which I believe to be worth recapping with a blog post of it’s own.
Onward.
First of all, I cannot take credit for the inspiration of this post.
The idea to write a retrospective came from the collective blogs of my friend Jason Lengstorf, who casually swiped the thought from his childhood best friend, Nate Green.
What IS a retrospective?
A retrospective is a strategy that allows you to look back at a project, week, month or year, and assess how things went from the following angles.
1. What worked? What did I do right? What am I proud of?
2. What could have gone better? Where could I have improved? What didn’t happen?
3. Riffing off of #2, what am I going to do moving forward to improve? What steps am I going to take?
Three powerful questions, all of which filter into fostering a positive mindset, and plotting a course of action to keep marching forward.
To quote Jason:
“A retrospective creates a plan for learning from the past.”
Which is a damn good thing to get into the habit of doing.
So, let’s go.
My personal retrospective for 2016
All in all, 2016 was an incredible year for me, especially on a personal level. I was able to cross off two massive, long standing goals of mine, take trips to Austin (twice), New York City, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and I spent three months living in Greece. Being able to travel like so is something I’ve always craved, and this was finally the first year that I was able to do so with such freedom.
The writing of this marks the realization of a dream I’ve had since I was a freshly minted 19 year old. # That dream? # To travel. To experience new cultures. To dive into new environments. To taste new foods (of course). All while still earning an income and doing that which brings myself, and others value. # It hasn’t been an easy road getting here. Months of my life were spent working at Starbucks – a job that didn’t mesh with my values or goals in the slightest – and trying to figure out what the hell I was chasing. # I’ve lost friendships and turned down opportunities for new ones. And on the flip side, I've forged incredible new relationships with people dotted around the globe. # The relationship I was in for over 2 years was stretched, pushed, and tested one too many times. Because, to quote one of my favourite writers, Mark Manson: # "Love isn’t always enough." # And that's okay. Because, it was an incredible experience, and I was able to learn a thing or two about a thing or two. # Building MASSthetics has been a labour of love, a mentally exhausting passion project, and the focus of all my goddamn life-force rolled into one. # I’ve reached a point where I’m ready to take the plunge. To see if I can live up to the dream I've pictured so clearly, for so long. # I sold, passed on or parted ways with 90% of my belongings, my flights are booked and I’m en-route to stop number one. New York City. Which, seems like the most fitting city in the world in which to begin this journey. # The coming months are sure to be an adventure. I still have a business to build and take to new heights. I still have Nationals next July to improve for. I still have items to check off the list. # To those who have supported me, helped me grow, and allowed me the opportunity to chase what I’ve dreamt of, I cannot thank you enough. # You know who you are. # I cannot thank any of you enough for the support, encouragement and guidance. # If there's one if there's one thing I'd love for you to take away from this. It's that you you truly are capable of whatever you envision.
A post shared by MASSthetics (@alexmullan13) on Oct 6, 2016 at 11:41am PDT
Removed from the ability to, and joy of travel, here are the three big wins I want to focus on celebrating from 2016.
Big Win #1
After having it on my mind for a long, long time, I finally stopped “waiting for the right time,” and bit the bullet on competing in bodybuilding.
The thought of competing has been one that I’d bandied about for three, almost four years, without ever knuckling down and committing to doing so.
At the tail end of 2015, enough was enough. I stopped waffling, took a deep breath, and laid it in stone that I would compete in 2016.
Big Win #2
Expanding on the big win from above, when I was choosing my shows, I realized that I didn’t just want to compete for the sake of it. Coming from a background of competitive hockey, my fire was fuelled, and I wanted to win.
Thus, I set out with the intention to do a local show, qualify for provincials, compete at provincials, qualify for nationals, then compete at nationals.
A lofty goal considering I’d never stepped on stage before, and had only a vague idea of what I was getting myself into?
Perhaps.
Yet, all went exactly according to plan.
Well, almost. The only deviation from the above was that I passed on nationals last year, in favour of getting a solid off-season under me so that I could be more competitive on that stage. Not to mention the fact that after five and a half months of contest prep I was run into the ground, and the thought of extending that to six and a half months was not one that excited me in the slightest.
I'll have more to say when I've had a chance to catch up on some sleep, gather my thoughts and come back down to reality. But for now, the #bcchampionships we're an incredible experience, and I'm proud to say that I took 3rd in lightweight bodybuilding and 2nd in classic physique. While I may not have placed as well as I would have liked, qualifying for Nationals in both classes was my main goal – mission accomplished. After 5 months of prep, it's time to pump some life into this body and work on bringing more upper body size to Nationals.
A post shared by MASSthetics (@alexmullan13) on Jul 12, 2016 at 6:11pm PDT
Big Win #3
Truthfully, this is my largest cause for celebration from the past year.
I was able to quit a job that wasn’t serving my long term vision, failed to leave me feeling fulfilled, and brought my little joy. Thanks to running on four to five hours of sleep for months on end (while prepping), and having no social life, within months of the birth of MASSthetics, I was able to take the leap, and strike out on my own.
There will be more on this front coming on Thursday, but for context you should know that my dream of running my own business and gaining total control over my life and time has been a goal older than my designs on competing.
I’m not perfect
After reading the above, it would be easy to say that 2016 was a perfect year, nothing went wrong, and that I’m a perfect human being.
This is far from the case.
Despite the successes of above, much was sacrificed on the quest to turn those dreams into a reality.
What follows are parts of my life that I let fall to the side, and a few opportunities for growth moving forward.
Growth Opportunity #1
My relationships.
I should specify by saying intimate and familial relationships.
Thanks to the business mastermind (courtesy of John Romaniello) that I’m a member of, and the fact that I work online, I was able to connect with and foster powerful friendships with amazing people all over the world.
It’s crazy to think that people I see less than a handful of times per year are some of my closest friends, but so it is.
Building MASSthetics, and competing laid claim to the bulk of my time, energy, and attention. As a result, I rarely saw my family for months (despite living in the same town), and the relationship I was in for the bulk of the year became stretched too thin to carry on.
The painful irony of this lies in the fact that I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did without the help and constant support of both my family and then-girlfriend.
Growth Opportunity #2
Not only did I fail at devoting time to spend with those closest to me, but I threw the idea of taking time for myself out the window. Once more, the painful irony in this is that taking time for myself is something that I’ve always deeply valued.
I read fewer books “for fun.”
I watched fewer movies.
I stopped drinking wine.
I turned down a lot of invitations to do fun shit.
About the only thing I held onto was watching a couple episodes of Seinfeld two or three times per week (often when my brain became too fried to do anything else).
Growth Opportunity #3
In spite off all that I did do, I didn’t accomplish as many things as I wanted to.
There’s a sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that this will be a recurring theme from year to year, but it stings nonetheless.
From a personal standpoint, I’ve been wanting to become conversational in Spanish (beyond meals and simple greetings) for years.
Boxing is something I want to try my hand at.
I want to build the habit of reading 2 books per month, consistently.
I want to devote more time to exploring my passion for coffee, and practice cooking new meals.
While I made half-hearted attempts sporadically throughout the year, I lacked the basal level of consistency that’s necessary to ingrain the above as habits.
2016 you’ve been great, and I’m glad I let you finish, but 2017 is going to blow you away
Here’s how I’m going to do just that.
Below are the three core actions steps that I’m going to take moving forward to ensure that no stone is left unturned, and 2017 knocks 2016 out of the park.
Action Step #1
Fuck the phone.
The current landscape of our social interactions is centred around the little computers we all carry around in our back pocket. While I love technology and owe nearly everything that I do to it’s development, it’s incredibly distracting, and detracts from interpersonal interactions and relationships.
My attempt to counteract the side effects in living in a social media and technology driven world, is that when I’m spending time with people (training, going to cafes, walks, movies, out for meals), the phone stays off (or at home).
Action Step #2
I’m bringing back “me time.”
I’m going to dedicate time each day to engage in activities that bring me joy. I’ll start with 30 minutes each day, and see how things progress from there.
It could be something as small as going out for espresso and leaving my phone and laptop behind, or even taking an entire day off to train, go on a mini-road trip, watch a movie, binge on Seinfeld, or read a book.
I suppose you could say that the underlying goal here is to not to spend the entire day working. Because what’s the point of having control over your time if you don’t use it to do the things you love most (such as sipping on espresso)?
Espresso, bubbly, and jamming on #MASSthetics.
A post shared by MASSthetics (@alexmullan13) on May 4, 2016 at 2:28pm PDT
Action Step #3
I want need to travel more.
Despite the many amazing places I was able to visit this year, doing so only made me want to see more.
I’d be lying if I said that one of the largest motivators for building my own business wasn’t to be able travel wherever I want, whenever I want. Truthfully, that’s been a driving factor for me for years.
Freedom and control of my time is something I place an immense amount of value on, and being able to travel on a whim is the ultimate manifestation of making that a reality.
As it stands, I have short trips forthcoming to San Diego, Los Angeles, Mexico, and Edmonton (for nationals). On a longer timeline, similar to spending three months in Greece, I want to move abroad once more (but somewhere sunny this time around, like South America).
Every time I travel somewhere new, I learn more about myself. My perspective shifts, and I see things in a new light.
Travelling also represents an opportunity to create more time for myself, to do things that I enjoy. With so many new sights and experiences dotted around the world, it would be a shame to travel, but remain glued to my laptop.
What exactly am I going to do about it?
Thoughts, ideas, and grand plans are one thing (even when written for the whole internet to see).
But actions trump words, time and time again.
So, here’s what I’m going to do to ensure that I improve the quality of my relationships, spend more time with myself (heh), and travel more.
1. A la Nate Green, I’m going to go Nuclear Mode with my phone and laptop. No distractions, enforced restrictions, and a focus on productivity.
2. Each evening when I fill out a sticky note of what needs doing the following day, I’m going to include one to two things that are solely for me. Whether it’s watching a movie, going for a walk, or pushing the limits of my caffeine tolerance, there will be at least one thing that’s just for me.
3. For once, I’m going to be proactive about the trips I plan on taking (I usually leave booking flights until the 11th hour). Not only will this save me money by not waiting until the last minute to book flights, but having travel plans set months in advance will help guide my year, and ensure that I end up where I want to go.
And so it is.
PS. 4 out of 5 lifters will let their rationalization hamster run wild. Building no muscle, burning no fat. The 5th lifter joined the MASSthetics Clan and put the information within the (free) Hypertrophy Handbook to good use. Problem solved. Click here to become the 5th lifter, and let me know where to send the prestigious Hypertrophy Handbook.
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