.

Jungle Park [12]

Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13

➜ Words: 5.9k

➜ Genres: Fluff, Light Humour (?), Slice of Life, Workplace Romance!AU

➜ Summary: The equation is simple. Hoseok needs to hire someone. You need a job. Except like any actual equation, it’s not fucking simple at all! Not when you have to add the fact that he was forced to hire someone he doesn’t want in his office, he has little respect for your job in general, and oh yeah...once upon a time you might have—*CENSORED*.

Sometimes it feels like you’re walking backwards.   There are things you left behind, precious things that you let go of because you needed to. Like childhood toys or putting a layer of glue on your hand to peel it off when it dried or thinking getting a perm from your dad’s barber was a good idea (it wasn’t). Granted, these things aren’t exactly precious to you, but they’ve become fond memories — yet you let go of them for your own well being.   And lately, it feels like you’re regressing.   You swear you’re supposed to be an adult by now who has their life put together. Your old friends have all gotten married, produced a town of pudgy babies, well-established into their careers and comfortable in their lives. And you’re standing on the curb of the road, stranded.   Except, when a familiar car pulls up, you’re not regressing anymore….you’re hurled back into the past.   “Y/N?”   He rolls down his car window, calling out to you and your feet stop along the sidewalk. Your eyes nearly fall out of their sockets and you whip your head over with furrowed brows. “Hoseok?”   “What are you doing?” He grins in amusement despite your exasperation and surprise.   “I was walking back to my apartment.” Your feet are throbbing in your heels and you feel your blouse stick to your sweaty skin. “What are you doing?”   “I was going to pick you up and I saw you.” He leans over the console, barely opening the passenger door with the edge of his fingertips and then he motions. “Get in.”   “I called Jimin and told him I was going to be late,” you ramble as you slide yourself into the seat, shutting the door and securing the seat belt over your torso. “How did you…?”   “Jimin called me and told me to come pick you up.”   Oh. So it was all of Jimin’s doing.   You’ve always believed your legs could take you anywhere that you wanted to go. You backed out of situations, moved ahead, left things behind. Hoseok was afraid of things like spiders and mosquitoes and roller coasters and heights; you were afraid of something much more different.   And it’s now that you realize, you could never run away from him.   Between the two of you…...you were the true coward.   “I can’t believe the subway shut down during rush hour.” You’re spewing out the words in a frenzy, trying to explain your situation to avoid him getting upset. “Apparently, something happened at the station and the station before mine and there are major delays. I couldn’t even grab a taxi or—”   “I know,” is all he says. And he speaks in the most gentle way, even glancing at you with a soft smile as if trying to tell you that he’s not bothered or annoyed in the least bit. “I was stuck in traffic for a long time. Thankfully I have hawk eyes and noticed you. Saved you from having to walk back. What were you planning if I didn’t come get you?”   “I honestly don’t know.”   Hoseok grips the steering wheel loosely and slides his hands down as he makes a right turn. “Well, I’m not letting any of my employees take a sick day when they don’t have to.” His eyes slightly crinkle with the sweet smile, smooth timbre completely nonchalant. “We’ll get to work on time.”   “Wasn’t this inconvenient for you? My apartment is in the opposite direction from yours, right?”   “I don’t mind.” The lawyer shrugs and you feel at ease enough to lean back in the seat, glancing out at the windows and morning traffic that flows by.   “I wonder why Jimin didn’t call Seulgi...or Jungkook. They live closer to me,” you mutter, talking to yourself more than to the driver beside you. “Actually, now that I think about it, I should’ve called Jungkook and asked to carpool with him. Maybe I’ll talk to him about it and he can drive me back in case there are still problems.”   “I can actually drive you,” Hoseok suddenly pipes up loudly and nearly scares you to death. When he feels your burning stare on the side of his face, he clears his throat and explains himself, “back home I mean.”   You blink twice. “Are you sure?”   “Yeah, I’m actually heading to my parent’s house after work for dinner. It’s my mom’s birthday.”   “Oh. Tell her I said happy birthday.”   “Sure.” He laughs and then steals yet another glimpse of your profile before turning back to the road. “I’ll tell her one of my HR employees wished her a happy birthday. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”   “I’m not just an HR employee,” you sing-song while quirking your head to your shoulder.   “You’re right. My apologies.” The apples of his cheeks ache from his grin. “You’re the HR department head.”   “That’s right.” You nod firmly. “I run the entire department.”   “But you have no one working under you to manage and there’s only thirteen people in the office.”   “Then maybe you should change that,” you quip and he stops momentarily at a red light. “How about hiring a human resource advisor or assistant?”   “No thanks,” he giggles out and he feigns a serious expression that exudes more mischief than anything. “I already have my hands full with one HR member. I don’t need two. Plus, it’s a waste of resources.”   You’re infected by his theatrics and you spill a dramatic gasp from your lungs. “Are you implying that I’m a waste of resources?”   He ignores you. “And I can already imagine two of you ganging up on me.”   “We would never gang up on you.” You bat your lashes even when he’s paying attention to the road in front of him. “Me and this hypothetical HR advisor.”   “You’d get me to throw more parties.”   “Which does great for office morale!”   “And you’d want to redecorate the entire office.”   “Which makes it better for clients too,” you counter without missing a single beat, having too much fun bantering back and forth with him. It comes too easily for you.   The corner of his lips are pulling again. “You’d talk me into increasing everyone’s pay until I’d go bankrupt.”   “Sometimes it can be financially responsible to declare bankruptcy!”   Jung Hoseok laughs at your logic, the chirpy noise bubbling from his throat, drowning out the quiet radio in the back. “You’d probably convince more people to leave this firm.”   “I just support people following their passions,” you argue with him, snickering between every other word.   “And you both would also hire a hundred people that we don’t need.”   “Don’t you want to increase the size of your firm?”   “You’re on my mind all the time. If there’s both of you, I wouldn’t be able to work at all.” He doesn’t realize what he’s saying as he looks over his shoulder and merges into the next lane, taking a left turn. Jung Hoseok doesn’t think about the words that fall from his lips, letting his thoughts stream out without a filter.   And you’re left suffering the repercussions, breath held in your body, heart stuttering for a simple moment before you smile. “I can’t help you with that.”   “Sadly no.” He laughs and continues on, still without realizing the weight of his words that were spoken so carelessly. “Never in my life will I hire another HR assistant, representative, advisor, or person in my life.”   “Unless…”   “Unless?”   Your volume drops quietly like you’re treading in dangerous territory. “Unless Jimin tells you to.”   There’s an extended silence and Hoseok pulls into the parking lot of work, looking for his space that’s reserved right in front. “If I find out you went and told him to hire another HR rep, we’re going to run into issues, Miss. Y/N.”   “Is that a threat, Mr. Jung?”   He shifts the gear into park and pulls the keys out of the ignition, finally turning to face you. “If you tried to sue me, I’d win.”   “We’ll see about that.” You giggle one more time before patting his head once patronizingly, deciding to playfully threaten him. “Better treat me nicely or else I’ll go running off to hire another person for HR.” He scoffs, watching you get out of the car. “I do treat you nicely!”   And you’d have to agree with that. These days, Jung Hoseok treats you too kindly that it’s painful.   //   Some people in this world might argue that your job is terribly boring and mundane. On a day to day basis, you don’t have a lot of duties to attend to. Your door is always open to complaints and concerns. You also organize employee health benefits and in your free time, you’re still writing that staff handbook Hoseok assigned to you months ago. It’s true that there’s not a lot to do and you’re not too busy, but you like to argue that your job can be quite exciting.   Especially since you take on secret tasks.   You’re like an undercover agent…...not really, but it’s the idea that counts.   Ever since you’ve come back from the business trip, you’ve made it your new mission for people of the office to see Hoseok for how he truly is. Sure, he’s serious and passionate about his work, but those are good traits. There just isn’t a single bad bone in his body. He’s the least intimidating person on the planet and it just boggles your mind how people are fearful of him and they talk badly about him like it’s natural. He’s the epitome of the sun, the most outgoing and friendly person that you know, bubbly and boisterous and optimistic.   It’s unfair to see him mistreated and misunderstood to this extent.   But when you openly defend him, the others think you’re sucking up to the boss. It also doesn’t help that he always rejects your invitation to have lunch with the others. His head is always buried in work and he has some place to be. He only talks to Jimin and occasionally, Yoongi.   Of course, you couldn’t actually bring this to his attention. Hoseok would tell you that he doesn’t care what the people of the firm think of him as long as they do their job. He would say that they need to take him seriously and he’s showing his professional side for a reason. He would tell you to stop wasting your time.   You’d beg to differ.   But nonetheless, Jung Hoseok is making your job a lot more difficult than it needs to be.   “Why are you glaring at me?”   You turn your head away with a sigh, securing your hand around the strap of your bag. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of reasons. Where should I start?”   “Do they have anything to do with me?” He’s grinning brightly, the elevator empty except for you two and you’re wondering why he can’t show his chatty self to the others.   “All of them have to do with you.”   “Well, if you have a complaint, you should fill out a form and then hand the official document to me,” he teases, much to your dismay.   The workday was over and while you feel like you haven’t made any real progress with your top secret assignment, you know it won’t be easy and will require a lot of effort for many days to come. Changing opinions isn’t simple. Still, shuffling a millimeter forward is still moving.   “Are you sure you’re okay with dropping me off?”   “Yes.” He smiles and when his phone begins ringing, his hand drops into his blazer pocket, picking out the mobile device. “I told you it’s not a big deal,” he mutters while reading the caller ID and accepting the call. “Hello? Oh. What?” There’s a long pause. “What? Why can’t you?”   You both exit the building, making your way to the parking lot and towards his parked vehicle. Hoseok seems visibly distressed and he groans, whining in a high-pitched voice. “I don’t even know where that is and I don’t have the receipt for it either. Text me? Fine, fine. I get it. See you later. Bye.”   He hangs up and sighs as you both slide into your respective seats. “Who was that?” you ask, but trying not to pry since it seemed like a personal issue.   “It was just my sister.” He fiddles with his phone, opening up his texts. “She wants me to pick up my mom’s ice-cream cake.” There’s a ding and your eyes accidentally stray off, reading his screen before you can stop yourself.   “Oh. I know where that is.”   “You do?” His eyes lift, surprised, and you nod.   It’s a bakery that you applied to before going to Jung and Park — though you don't reveal that to him. “It’s on the way to my apartment. I can show you and we can make a stop.”   “Is that alright with you?”   “I don’t mind.” You smile. “It’s the least I can do since you’re driving me home, right?”   “Well, I was going to ask you to help pay for gas,” he quips in a playful tone and puts the keys into the ignition while you laugh, putting on your seat belt. “But I guess this will just have to do.”   You show him the way to the bakery and luckily, none of the workers remember that you came in here months ago to beg for a position. The ten inch ice-cream cake is picked up successfully when Hoseok shows a picture of the receipt that his sister took and you hold it in your lap to make sure it doesn’t become destroyed before it gets to its final destination.   “Thanks for showing me. I’m not that great at following GPS.” Hoseok turns to merge on the highway. “I won’t make you run any more of my errands though. I’ll drop you off.”   “It’s not a problem.” You nod, watching the cars outside. “And thanks.”   But once you make it to the highway, the traffic is absolutely absurd. There are drivers honking and swearing at each other through their windows, shooting the middle finger left and right. The car is barely moving forward, only inch by inch. The entire highway is backed up and what should take two minutes ends up as twenty of just sitting there.   “Goddamn.” Hoseok grips the steering wheel tightly, a sigh ripping from his throat as he leans back into the leather seat. “Rush hour shouldn’t be this bad.”   “Maybe there was an accident up ahead. I think I see police cars.” You dig for your phone, pulling it out and scrolling through the news before searching up your location. “Yeah, there was an accident about an hour ago.”   The lawyer glances at you. “Sorry.”   “No, it’s not really that big of a deal. I don’t mind.” And you really didn’t. There was nothing to do this evening since it was one of your days off from driving the taxi. Regardless even if you were busy, it’s nice to be stuck in traffic with his presence than wallow at home alone by yourself. “I’m just more worried about the cake.”   “The cake?”   “It’s melting.” You point down to your lap and he looks over, peeking through the clear plastic top while another sigh leaves his mouth.   “I don’t know why she thought getting ice-cream would be a good idea.” Hoseok fidgets in his seat and looks out the window. It’s quiet for a long moment and you hesitate, a thought popping into your mind and you swallow hard—   “Do you want to just go to your parent’s house?”   “What?”   “I mean you’re going to have to exit the highway to get to my apartment and get back on to your parent’s, right?” There’s a pause. “That’ll take...two hours at this rate. And I don’t think the ice-cream cake can make it.”   “I’m not just going to drop you off in the middle of the highway, Y/N.” He lolls his head to the side, a single arm extended to hold the steering wheel while his other hand is in his lap. He doesn’t even consider your idea for a second. “That’s ridiculous.”   “It’s okay,” you tell him genuinely. “There aren't any cars moving. I can just get out and walk to the side.”   “And then go where? Where will you go?” The man beside you is becoming increasingly frustrated and he inhales a lungful to contain his composure as he glances at you. “Do you want to just come with me?”   “Come with you?” You only manage to respond after a delayed moment, sirens blaring inside of your mind and telling you that you’re obviously overstepping your boundaries.   “Yeah.” Hoseok nods and the more he thinks about it, the more he thinks it’s a good idea. The car moves up another inch and the other vehicles around fire up their engines after turning it off entirely to save gas. “My parents wouldn’t mind. They love guests. They always say ‘the more, the merrier’. I don’t think my sister would mind either.”   “Isn’t that….weird?” Your brows are raised and your mouth is parted, dumbfounded. “I mean you’re my boss and I’m just an employee.”   “It’s not that weird.” He smiles and shifts to face you. “You’re just meeting your boss’ parents. If anything, it should give you a leg up everyone else, right? Maybe they’ll like you so much, they’ll make me give you another raise.”   You laugh. “I thought cronyism was bad.”   “It’s not cronyism. It’s favouritism,” he corrects and gives a cheeky grin. “And no one else has to know. It’ll be a secret between the both of us.”   “....I don’t know.” You grip the cold box tighter in your hands, hesitating and wondering what the consequences might be.   “Well, I’m not dropping you off the middle of the highway, that’s for sure. I’d rather let the cake melt and be ruined,” he states firmly. After a beat, he softens and as if it helps, he adds, “They’ll be food...and if you like dogs, there’s a family pet dog too. Mickey’s really friendly.”   Your tongue peeks to lick your lips, throat feeling dry and cracked. Your head manages a slight nod that he catches. “Okay….if it’s fine with you…”   “It’s a plan then!” he announces happily, pout turned to smile. In the following ten minutes, the car stays on the lane, passing the exit that would lead you home to safety and you know there’s no going back.   //   The traffic doesn’t ease up until you’ve moved past the accident, a three car rear-end collision. Luckily it seems like all passengers are safe and healthy enough to argue with each other much to the police officers’ annoyance. But the road becomes clear after that, cars moving faster and straight towards your impending doom.   This is one of the many moments where you’re thinking: How the hell did I get here? And you consider making an actual list and see how many times these moments actually occur.   This is a bad idea. A very bad idea.   “You don’t have to be so nervous,” he says while turning down the street into a more suburban area.   “I’m not,” you murmur. The box on your lap is probably dented by your sweaty grip.   “You’re quiet.”   “Because I’m a bit tired, that’s all.”   “You don’t have to lie to me, you know. You don’t have to pretend either.” He pulls up on the street and shifts the gear into park, another car already occupying the driveway. Hoseok cranes his head to look at you properly. “Just come in and if you want to leave after a minute, I can drive you back home.”   “That’s….”   “Trust me, my parents are really nice.” He takes off his seat belt and opens the door. “A bit too nice if you ask me.”   The bad thing is that...you know. You know how nice they are.   The man takes the cake from your hands, holding the box and he walks up to the house, ringing the doorbell without hesitation. Immediately, the sound chimes and a dog barks inside. There’s the sound of padding footsteps and shouts. But before you can back away and let your instincts book you down the street, the door swings open.   “About time you came.” His sister, Sowon, is radiant as usual. Her long hair drapes behind her shoulders and she looks comfortable in her lounge clothes, shorts and a simple tee-shirt. Her eyes stray off to the person beside her brother. Her mouth drops. “Y/N?”   “Wait.” He does a double take on you two. “You know each other?”   “Seok, you came?” A middle-aged woman comes trotting out of the kitchen with a tea towel to wipe her damp hands. She languidly glances at her daughter, her son, before her eyes land on yours.   Her mouth opens and she drops the towel.   Your gaze locks on her for the longest of seconds.   “What’s wrong?” His father emerges from the kitchen as well, frowning at the unusual silence of the house. And when he sees you, he stops in his tracks too.   The entire Jung family is staring at you, like they can’t believe their eyes.   “Um…” You’re the first to break the silence, bowing your head and bending your waist down. “Hello.”   “Come in, come in.” Sowon smiles, widening the door and helping by taking your coat as you slip off your shoes. Hoseok follows, still unable to read the situation of the room and he’s never been more confused in his entire life.   “Wh-what…” Hoseok’s mother begins to cry. She breaks down in the middle of the living room and he freezes in his spot, his sister halts too. The older woman is sobbing into her palms and she takes three strides before engulfing you in the biggest of hugs, arms wrapping around your body. His dad approaches as well and squeezes your shoulder in a welcoming manner.   “How are you?” She pulls away and wipes her face with the back of her wrinkled hand before cradling yours. She gazes at you closely and searches your features, a smile spreading through her cheeks. “I never thought I’d see you again. Oh my god. Am I in heaven right now?”   The Jung family has always had a knack for being overdramatic, and you can’t help but giggle. You can’t remember the last time you received love like this and your heart feels warm. “I’m good...how have you been?”   “Good, good. Better now that you’re here.”   Hoseok’s brain is about to implode and he puts a stop to this madness. “What’s going on?” His frown is deep and he glances at you. “You know my parents?”   His mother’s brows furrow as well and she shakes her head, arms falling to her side. “You don’t remember?”   “We were friends,” you say to him. “I told you before, remember? We were friends like ten years ago. A long, long time ago.” Your feet spin around and you look at his parents in urgency. “I’m working for Hoseok now.”   “You are?”   “Yes, I work in the HR department.”   “Oh.” His dad nods. “I see.”   “Well,” his older sister pipes up. “What’s in the past is in the past, right, mom? We shouldn’t just stand around. Isn’t the cake melting?” She takes the box from Hoseok’s arms and marches past the crowd into the kitchen.   “Right, right.” The endearing middle-aged woman takes you by your hand, smiling once more. She doesn’t care about how you’re here or why, just the fact that you are. No questions are asked and you muse how similar her personality is to her son’s. They’re both warm and kind-hearted, but with a sort of authoritative air to them that’s admirable. “Have you been eating well? You look like you haven’t. Come, there’s food in the kitchen.”   “I’m sorry for not bringing you a present. Had I known…”   “Don’t be ridiculous.” She laughs and waves you off, dismissing the idea. “You being here is enough of a gift for me.”   “I made the noodles,” his dad announces, laughing, and not wanting his wife to take credit. “Want to have a bowl?”   “I’d love to.”   While Hoseok’s personality is similar to his mom’s, his appearance is strikingly akin to his dad’s. Both males have dark hair and are tall and lean. They have smiles identical to one another, the way their eyes crinkle and their lips spread into a slight heart shape. You wonder if this is what the older version of Hoseok would look like, just a few wrinkles here and there from grinning so much.   “Get that out of here.” The woman whips a dish towel at her husband. “Y/N is going to eat my soup first. I bought the ingredients fresh from the store and cooked it this morning.”   “It’s salty,” the older man chimes playfully.   “It isn’t! He’s lying!” She defends and you laugh with his dad.   Meanwhile, Hoseok is still left reeling in the darkness of the foyer. He sets his belongings down and strips off his coat, throwing it on the couch and walking into the house that he doesn’t recognize. It’s too odd and foreign to him, to see you here talking to his parents like you visit more than he does. It feels like he just transported into another dimension, another world.   He pulls his sister aside and she glares. “What?”   “How do you know Y/N?” He asks her with the utmost seriousness, not playing any games as an impassive yet stern expression washes across his features.   “Didn’t she say?” His sister matches his blank expression. “You guys were friends.”   “How close were we that mom and dad knows and likes her so much?”   Sowon shrugs. “Beats me. I don’t know you or your friends.”   “Why don’t I remember anything?” He holds his head in his hands, racking his memories, but coming up with nothing. It’s as if he’s trying to remember things when he was younger than two years old — he just can’t conjure any memory or even make something up.   She sighs. “That…....I don’t know.”   Mickey is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, a very fancy name for such a sheepish and affectionate little thing that walks by with stumpy legs, stumbling as if he were drunk. Still, your heart melts and he smells you before circling around once and putting his paws up to get closer. You squat down, petting and scratching behind his ear, laughing when he tries to lick your face and you have to lean backwards. “I missed you, buddy. You’re such a good boy, aren’t you? I’m glad to see you’re doing well! Who’s the cutest in the world?”   “Y/N.” Hoseok stands at the doorway, serious and interrupting your coos towards the pet. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”   You stand, but Hoseok’s mother turns from the kitchen island and steps in front of you like a personal body shield. “About what? Aren’t office hours over? You’re not her boss anymore. She’s your guest!”   Sowon is sitting at the kitchen table, one leg propped up and casually popping walnuts into her mouth. “He thinks he’s a hot shot lawyer now and can just order people around.”   His dad also chips in to the banter, “Leave the work for work and come relax, Seok. You’re going to burn yourself out.”   “He's already burnt himself out and these ashes are what's left of him,” Sowon feigns grief, but mischief twinkles in her eyes and she’s having too much fun teasing her younger brother and making a fool out of him. Anything that was ever intimidating and domineering about Hoseok gets reduced to nothing when he’s treated like the baby of the family.   “This is serious,” he groans. “Y/N.”   His dad ignores his plea and brings his noodles to the table, separating them into two bowls. “Let her eat.” He gives you a bowl. “Tell me what you think, okay?”   “It’ll only take a second,” the lawyer reasons.   “If you have something to say to Y/N, say it to all of us,” his sister states and it’s just too funny to watch. Everyone’s defending you. You have an entire army at your feet and they don’t let him have a single word. He’s absolutely defeated and the sight is too glorious to witness.   “I agree,” the older man says with a nod and Mickey barks like he agrees too.   “This is private.” Hoseok is becoming increasingly upset. No one is fazed. “Y/N.”   “My house, my rules.” His mother crosses her arms. “Don’t listen to him, Y/N. He can’t make you go anywhere or do anything that you don’t want to. Don’t be scared. I’ll protect you.”   You laugh, feeling overwhelmed with the amount of love that they give you. You can’t help but feel undeserving of it. “Don’t worry, I’m not. Can I go feed Mickey food though? It’s been so long and I think he’s hungry.”   “Okay.” She tells you that it’s in the old place and you go off with Mickey running by your side, like you know exactly where she’s talking about. Hoseok is baffled again, and it doesn’t help when his mother glares at him, his sister is chewing and watching, and his dad takes peeks while slurping the noodles. “If you scare Y/N away or kick her out, don’t call me your mother anymore.”   “That’s a bit dramatic, honey,” his dad chimes in, chewing a cheekful and pointing his utensil at his son. “But she’s right. You won’t have a dad either.”   Sowon laughs chaotically, joining in with the fun. “You never had a sister to begin with. I don’t know you.”   The longest sigh of life leaves him. He doesn’t even say anything to his family, having no energy and no words, merely turning and walking away. He follows the light of the hallway to where you are by the washing machines. The top cupboard is open and the food bowl is full. Mickey is happily eating away while you’re petting him and his body nuzzles against yours.   “You didn’t tell me you knew my parents.”   “I didn’t think they would even remember me.” You shrug, looking up at him past your lashes.   There’s silence before he asks a simple— “How?”   “We were friends and I came over like two times for dinner.”   “That’s it?”   “That’s it,” you answer. “Why?”   “I don’t know. I’m just...shocked.” He moves away from the doorway and squats down with you to meet your eyes. Hoseok pets the brown dog carefully and it still leans more into your touch than his own. “You said we weren’t close.”   “Not really.” You shrug yet again. “We only went on like two dates and you didn’t call back.”   “But you met my parents?” It doesn’t add up inside his mind. Hoseok would never let someone he went on two dates with meet his parents. To him, meeting the parents was a serious step and he would never be so mellow about it.   “That was before we went out on the date,” you explain while watching Mickey eat away. “You invited me and a bunch of our other friends to have dinner at your place. It really isn’t that big of a deal, Hoseok.”   He’s become quieter and you can tell it’s bothering him. “Why didn’t I call you back?” His head lifts, pupils locking with yours as he seemingly tries to understand the foggiest part of his life. “After the second date, I mean.”   “I don’t know. Maybe you thought I was annoying.”   “That can’t be it. You’re not annoying.”   “Well, younger me might have been.” Your shoulders shrug and your eyes divert elsewhere. “The past is the past, right? That’s what you told me.”   “I….guess.” Yet, his frown remains.   “I think you should be more concerned that your parents actually like me and I might be able to convince them into making you give me a raise,” you tease him with a tiny laugh.   It’s pretty sad to be squatting together in a crumbling laundry room with a faint yellow light above your head, both petting a small dog who cares more about eating at the moment. But it’s an intimate moment and you don’t resist the smile that overcomes your visage when he pouts at you.   “Not happening.”   “I don’t know, Seok,” you sing-song, using his family nickname and Jung Hoseok pouts even harder.   //   His entire family dotes on you, favouring you over their actual son. It’s still fun to see Hoseok interact with his parents and sister and be sulking the entire time. They ask about your job, what you’ve been up to and if Hoseok gives you a hard time. You’re fairly vague about what you’ve been doing, telling them that you worked different kinds of jobs before applying to his firm, and because you're so merciful, you tell them Hoseok is a great boss.   Sowon also talks about her job and crazy stories of wedding crashers. The conversations are rather mundane, small talk to recounting anecdotes and catching up with one another. But it’s warm and cozy to gather around the dinner table as a family. They don’t treat you like an outsider or stranger whatsoever.   If anything, you feel like you’re being treated more like a stuffed turkey, eating and eating. You’re perfectly aware of the sadistic streak that runs through the family and it makes you wonder if they’ll just knock you out and spear you. Though you highly doubt they became cannibals since you last saw them.   The candles on the cake get blown out. Hoseok gives his mom slippers for her birthday while Sowon bought an expensive brand name bag. The difference in presents makes everyone turn to Hoseok to glare at him jokingly and the silence makes you laugh until your stomach hurts.   You don’t realize hours have passed since you arrived. And you’re starting to suspect that everyone is trying to find tactics for you to stick around as long as possible. When Hoseok tries to end things, his mother steps on his foot and offers you another plate of food to which you politely refuse. His dad is adamant about showing you the revamped garden and his sister turns on a movie, telling you to stay and watch the entire thing.   There are more desserts brought your way and his mom is ready to fire up the oven and make cookies with you. But when you let out your tenth yawn, Hoseok finally calls quits.   You bid goodbye to the family and his mom hugs you close, nearly suffocating you while she plants three kisses to the top of your head in rapid succession, telling you to come back soon. His dad also gives you a jolly hug, and Sowon smiles, slipping you her phone number in case you need it.   “Thanks for coming, Y/N,” Hoseok says in the car after getting some peace and quiet.   “Thanks for having me,” you reply in a sheepish whisper.   Hoseok drives you back home and you fall asleep with your head pressed against the cool window, lulled by his gentle humming and feeling warm inside and out.

im so happy be back in my apt it makes me feel guilty cuz i like being there for my siblings but

even post heart attack and covid and almost-death my mom is MEAN to me. everything i fcking do is wrong, and if ONLY i listened to her.

im a fucking train wreck, but im trying, and im functional. Idk i’ve learned to be proud of myself

I left at like 5am to “beat traffic” but rly i just needed to leave

My 12 yr old brother said he “didnt really love AoT & isnt invested in s4” but he’s giving Death Note a try so you know what. stfu.

A few hrs after i got back my sister called crying about my mom just being difficult to her. And i have problems w/ my sister but also.... come on. mom jfc. pretend to have an emotional iq for a second. My sister has always had a good relationship w/ my mom up until now. But i guess menopausal moms and their 19 yr old daughters dont get a long.

I have good moments w/ my mom. when she came home we were both got high on trams and weed & my sister was sober but hanging w/ us. My brothers were entertaining themselves and my dad was gone (dad and mom cannot be in the same vicinity of eachother, they legally married, but jfc they even live apart. it is hell when they are together) and it was so fun. i was making jokes (that i kinda regret because it was tmi) about the men i’ve hooked up w/ in the apt next door, and telling her about the “straight dads” down her residential block that are “discrete” on grindr. She thought it was hilarious. My sister allowed me to swipe for her on tindr & talk to guys and let me say - straight men really do suck. there was like 1 that was attractive & seemed to have a good personality & didnt want sex asap. & i think my sister is very pretty so she matched w/ a good amount of people. ANYWAYS straight guys either have 0 idea how to converse and/or just want to fuck right away. I mean those are grindr-gays, but tindr-gays arent looking for that - and if they are it obvious so u just swipe left if not interested in a hookup. I guess there isnt a straight-grindr but there should be. Anyways my mom was telling me stories about shrooming in college and when she hiked the TMB & hitchhiked around europe for 2 yrs, met my dad but forgot about him, and then met him in the US 2 yrs later. It was interesting, and she wasnt judging me & we were actually laughing. Ik its the drugs and that is sad. Ik she is “mentally ill” in some manner too, but i can’t control her lack of self awareness, all i can control is myself. And that is hard when i come from a long line of schizos & bpd & even a probably-APD! some diagnosed, some u just loook at and go “yea they are batshit” i mean... i also come from a family is severly traumatized ppl, either losing everything in ww2 and/or the whole israeli conflict. like jfc i do feel bad. fleeing europe to israel cuz no one else will take u, and then fighting for ur safety & really no other choice, and then finally ur offspring move to america and canada. my paternal grandpa is literally the sole survivor in his family of ww2, i mean he remembers nothing, he was the youngest and shipped off to America to live w/ a branch of the family that came a while earlier cuz they were offered business or something idk.

Im rly on too many stims. And yet. I am posting in my ~diary~. i get to work tomorrow and im actually happy cuz i like the research. although im having like.. nothing. u think grads are paid horribly (they are)?? Undergrads have to be groveling at the feet of ppl to get any kind of paid internship. i mean i had experience before cuz i did unpaid research for 2 semesters in another lab. My hours, when im not impromtu fleeing cuz my mom may die, are more than 40+ a week. i mean i have enough to pay rent and thats about it :/ as long as im not in debt im gucci. i stockpile on-sale dog food and im fine living off beans and rice so were good for a while. I have crypto that is a backup but that is either used for drugs and as an “investment”.

like i cant rly get a traditional 9-5 retail job while working in this lab. while also having full-time classes. i was doing lab work 20 ish hrs a week (unpaid ofc), managing my friends band/booking shows/promotating & getting a fair chunk from that, walking a neighbors dog 3 times a week but honestly that took 20 mins of my day & was almost a free $45 dollars a week cuz a just walked her w/ my own dogs, + full time school and.... pre-covid, i was getting into the groove of college & while not making a bunch - i was comfortable for being a 20yr old scumbag? i mean i was working my ass off for my friend but i enjoyed it and was optimistic as hell. i didnt have to cut myself off fully from the song revenue but honestly that was unusual (to my knowledge) for an indie band at all, but i accepted it ofc until covid. my best friend spiraled and 2 of the bandmates lost their jobs and like. their passive income was tiny so why tf should i take from it? shows & selling merch at said shows (for us) made the most. online merch is eh & i wont take a cut until after covid. Plus they are on hiatus and any local “hype” that was beginning to build is long dead cuz they are probably long dead. not high enough to give a shout out to my 2.5 followers cuz my identity will not be exposed hehehehe. i mean if someone rly wanted to u could figure out thru all my info dumping of my personal life on here but eh, pls dont. this is my fancy lil diary where i spew aboslute nonsense & show off how fast i can type when i type before i finish any type of concise thought in my head

Okay. Time to talk about it.

For reasons.

So, as anyone who actually pays attention to the posts I make knows, I have DID and right now things aren't going so great so I'm just gonna scream into the void about it. Tw: csa cp sa and other not fun stuff.

So. I'm writing a book series, and at some point while I was writing my books, the main characters of the series ended up being introject alters in my whole ass head.

I didn't want that. Or ask for it. It just happened.

The reason I don't want that is because it makes me not want to write anymore because now those people are literally walking around in my head and its not fun. Also they are kids and my brain is not kid friendly. Or me friendly.

I don't know how they formed but I do have an inkling as to why, my theory is 1 and 2

1. The alters already existed but wanted an easy face so they took the ones I already made and rolled with it

2. The alters hadn't been formed yet but due to exterior stresses they DID form and now I've gotta deal with that.

The first theory is the most likely tho.

Anyways, this happened, I am upset by it. I am in a bunch of groups on fb for DID so I post about it (vaguely because I genuinely thought that this was sort of common but apparently it is NOT) the group i posted in had some assholes 8n the administration as well as.members who took it upon themselves to take my rather vague post about introjects and turned it into a huge mess,.claiming that I was faking having DID and that I was just making up imaginary friends. Despite the fact that the post itself alluded in NO WAY that I genuinely wanted this to happen.

I wasn't given an opportunity to explain myself, and the admin kicked me from the group. So I made another post in the sister group EXPLAINING why I was upset and what was going on and I STILL GOT MADE FUN OF, ridiculed, and my experiences invalidated. Even when I told them that I work for 11 hrs and don't have ample time to dawdle on fb groups. The admin offered to let me back into the other group but I decided to leave both of them because it is simply ridiculous that I should be completely ousted for not fitting into their idealized version of what DID is when it is such a subjective experience for everyone with it. Also one person was just a major fucking asshole to me for no good reason and I wanted to get away from them.

It was a waste of my time and added stress I really didn't need, and on top of that, it gave me LITERALLY NO ADVICE OR VALIDATION for what was ACTUALLY stressing me out.

Also, it made me mad and then Jodie fronted and it was just a big pain in the ass for no real reason.

But the thing is, I still have the same problem. Two fucking kids are running around my head in danger of being caught by a persecutor and being harmed and *I* have to figure out how to wrangle them up. Well, turns out ONE OF THEM IS A MAJOR FUCKING ASSHOLE. Which is my fault because I technically wrote him as an asshole and so his personality reflects that. And also he's 14 and 14 year olds are just a big bag of ducks to everyone. But it gets WORSE. Because he DOESN'T KNOW HES IN A SYSTEM.

So I have a 14 year old jackass running around, with no fucking clue whats going on or where he is, being actively pursued by a persecutor who wants to fucking hurt him >:(

Well, I find him, and he is pissed and won't fucking talk to me because HE doesn't want to be here EITHER. No shit Sherlock. It fucking sucks I know. But he WILL talk to my friends, when he fronts which is WHENEVER APPARENTLY. So he talks to my friends and gradually figures out sort of whats going on but THEN the persecutor (I have named him Bastard for now) gets a hold of him.

Now here is where the trigger warning stuff comes in so don't read this if you don't want to be completely skeezed out.

So..our persecutors have a nasty habit of forcing alters into co-con so they can hurt the body and make *them* feel it. Its really hard to combat and trust me, I'm working on that okay?

They do this to trigger flashbacks and panic attacks and the like because idk, that's probably their fucked up way of saying "hey here is something important you need to know" while also being incredibly fucked up and psychologically damaging to whoever happens to be the target.

Well, Bastard does this to my boy, and here is where things really get into the nitty gritty. So please avert your eyes.

A little backstory. On my trauma (or what I know of it so far cause this shit is like a 3d jigsaw puzzle)

From what I KNOW, and what I've been told by other alters, there is a huge chunk of information missing from when I was about 4-12 (cause my earliest kid memory is from like 12) and that is when I think a lot.of the particularly bad stuff happened. Except we have been trying to figure out what it was for quite a while.

We know it has to do with child pornography. Because Acey, who is 5 has memories of that and Destiny, Siren and Syn all have memories that very specifically depict incidences of cp.

Destiny has memories of being r*ped with coke bottles, and being locked in a bathroom that was converted into a dark room (we think that's how The Other One was formed, from the reflection you saw in the mirror) we know this because she kept a detailed journal of when the first persecutor showed up, Fear, and he did that thing i was talking about earlier.

Another thing about Destiny is that when she first started fronting, she was 100% certain she was not Destiny, and was *deadname*. Fear was the one who named her and only ever referred to her as Destiny.

I'm not sure about Syn because they are a cat and only talk in third person with rudimentary English, but they fucking HATE men. And Siren is a fallen angel that very explicitly talks about being too "impure" for God.

And Acey has memories of being drugged and assaulted. (Her name is literally short for Acetaminophen so...)

At this point (around sophomore year) the picture we have is that there was some csa and cp, but no perps.

However, we gained two alters at some point that could have clued us in on stuff.

Eleanor, a little who is about 4-5 years old has memories of being told to play faries with an older person, and to build her own imaginary world. And then Mockingbird. An alter who purposefully mimics other alters and lives in annual hospital.

Thing about mockingbird though, is that she has a phone in her room that is ALWAYS ringing, but whenever she answers it, the voices on the other side are unintelligible. And so is she, when she talks at least. Most of the time. She only sounds like a regular person when she pretends to be a different alter.

BUT the thing is, there had been a bunch of other stuff that hadn't correlated to this, at first we thought it may have been some sort of ritual abuse? Because in like 2017/18 an feral alter (and I mean completely animalistic, growling biting and clawing at stuff) surfaced that only spoke backwards and was also named Satan. They looked like a typical humanoid goat demon ram person thing (?)

SO to figure shit out, we send Anon (short for Anonymous) to look around the mindspace and figure out what the fuck is going on. They find this WALL. Its a huge ass brick wall, at the edge of the garden, and it circles around the entire northern hemisphere of the planet (our mindspace is a planet)

And it has a bunch of paper plastered over it saying "the rules" of the system. But no one can fucking read them. Yay. Also, Esz did some investigating of the wall himself and that's how he got caught by Controller and made feral.

And since they started fronting AFTER Esz came around, we figured oh, something is up here?? Because Esz is also a demon alter.

Well, uh, turns out there was another persecutor (aptly named Controller) in control of Satan and they were targeting Esz this time around, and the two of them integrated. Esz is still around, Satan is basically no more. Well, not really. Because now Esz is also fucking feral. Which was really stressful because having your primary protector and system manager be a fucking screeching demon beast is uh..not fun. We luckily got that under control tho (thank fucking god) but now Esz has these memories of being r*ped which is great because he is the epitome of masculinity (I jest the boy eats fucking vegan chicken with spicy ketchup wtf) but this time we get some sort of insight into Satan's (and probably Esz's) creation cause the memories involve this random ass fat guy (don't recall them mentioning seeing his face) but he was this tail kink or some shit and had a really long tail but plug and made Esz act like a literal animal to get is nasty ass rocks off.

At this point, we aren't 100% sure what's going on. Because we've got these two very conflicting narratives and one of them has what we think are religious undertones while the other has obvious cp.

And now that Esz is (as far as I'm aware) back to normal, he knows more information because to make him feral, Controller had to bring him BEHIND the wall.

So Esz informs us that the wall has a bunch of layers, and there are a shit ton of other alters back there but none of them have faces. AND there are OTHER PERSECUTORS back there, who all work in tandem with eachother in some sort of hierarchy. All led by someone called The Puppeteer.

Thats all the information we have on anything past the wall :/

BUT THEN somewhere down the line, we get another little, and their name is Penut. Which is IMPORTANT because that was the nickname we had as a little kid by our NEIGHBOR Beverly. And Penut has some unpleasant csa memories FROM BEVERLY.

At the time, we just thought "oh great, so we can add that to the stack of BULLSHIT" and didn't think much further on it.

BUT ALSO, this was around the time our sister (bio sister) came into the picture and learned about some of the stuff and she very VERY specifically says that she thinks Beverly had a major role in us developing DID. Again at the time I'm like "well yeah, if Penuts memories are true then she definitely had a role" but none of us are really even venturing further on the topic. Because we are sort of distracted by having TWO persecutors and A FERAL FUCKING PROTECTOR ALTER.

Obviously though, things cool down a whole lot more. Its good, things are great.

Until Oliver pops up.

SO NOW WE ARE BACK AT THE PRESENT MIND YOU.

There is another persecutor, he is really annoying. He is hurting my newest/possibly older but only recently resurfaced alter. And GUESS WHAT HE MAKES HIM SEE.

☆this is legitimately disturbing so please be warned☆

Bastard does his thing and Ols has a very visceral flashback- i know what happened in it because he literally wrote about it because he was convinced it was important, which it IS.

In this flashback, he is obviously me, being r*ped. But this time for some reason, the person doing the r*ping is making him look at him, so he sees this guys face. Which has never EVER happened in a flashback before. Especially to the point where you actually REMEMBER WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE. The guy has green eyes, and a beard, like a scruffy longer one. And while this is happening, at some point, Ols overhears ANOTHER PERSON in the room. A woman. And it's Beverly.

I know it's Beverly because he mentions in his recount that she called him Penut.

And she is working a hand held camera, and there is another one on a stand that is like, hooked up to a television, replaying what is being recorded.

At some point he's made to face the TV, like sitting on beard guys lap or something to watch and Beverly is just casually talking to beard guy, literally telling him to hurry the fuck up because there's gonna be another "session" after this one.

They start talking about what they are going to do next (with me/Ols) and mention the next "client" and then using a tail and making me act like an animal, and then other things like using laxatives, other kinds of drugs and even using other kids. They talk about how the video won't have sound, so none of what they are saying is going to be recorded too. Beverly at one point walks up to him, close to the end I think, and is like really close to his face, and this is when she calls him Penut, and talks about how much money she's going to make (or something like that, Ols is giving me the details as I'm writing)

Then beard guy makes him come and moves him again so he can't see the TV or Beverly and then beard guy finishes his shit and Ols overhears Beverly say that they next person is almost here and he needs to go now.

Then the flashback is over and Bastard says "this is why you are here" or something along those lines, and Ols immediately (well, probably after a little mental breakdown) writes all this shit down and sends it to two of my friends in a message (im so sorry about that guys)

Then I find put about it, have a really bad time, but now I'm in puzzle mode and all the peices are starting to fit together.

So...from what we have of Oliver's flashback, Beverly is a main perp, and was basically pimping us out to folks for cash while taping it and putting it put for other folks to purchase.

Esz and Satan being feral are because the next "session" involved someone with a gross animal kink. And that can ALSO account for Syn, because she is a literal animal. Her mention of drugs can easily coincide with Acey's memories.

And Destiny's coincide with the cp in general as well as probably someone who was sadistic enough to shove fucking glass bottles inside people.

Im not 100% where Eleanor fits in, but it can easily be suggested that she came about when shit first started to get real bad. And Penut, well, I'm pretty certain that she was THE FIRST alter. And probably what gave Beverly the idea in the first place (I'm not sure because most of Penuts memories were when we had sleepovers at Beverlys but it makes a lot of sense if she were the first of us and her compliance gave Beverly the opportunity to take further advantage)

Mockingbird hearing voices through the phone could be conversations that Beverly and other people were having during "sessions"

And the persecutors. Are modeled. After the different clients (and probably Beverly too) that had come and gone.

And the wall probably has a metric fuck ton of other alters back there with other horrific experiences and memories waiting to be slowly leaked out along with this tier list of persecutors modeled after their respective abusers and the puppeteer is probably an introject OF BEVERLY.

WHAT THE FUCK.

Of course, this is all speculation and it can completely change course at the drop of a fucking hat but I have NEVER EVER been so certain in my LIFE that this is what happened. Like..it makes too much sense?!

Still working out during the quarantine. Sometimes I joke about losing weight and trying to look good while being blacklisted since 2007 after filing sexual harassment against The Galt House Hotel and Molly Ellis.

I have been burned, raped, neurally raped, gang stalked, exploited and humiliated and degraded by people I thought I could trust and I cared about but no one means more to me than my own daddy. I lost my dad after moving to Kentucky and becoming blacklisted and I was told in 2018 that he died of a heart attack. I was told carelessly and without compassion and my dad's nephew who my dad helped raise and put into private schools isn't trying to tell me where my dad has been buried. I believe in karma. I am a vicitm of rape, torture, fraud, organized crime and I have 13 years of documentation and proof. The video's that I post about neural rape and directed energy weapons have been sponsored and the people who are on Truthstream Media get paid to talk about universal mind control and nerual rape and brain hacking. I may look as if I am alone but I am not alone. I could not be online today backing up my own story without all the people and and years of work put into exposing satellite terrorism.

I have named people by name, companies and I have posted script that prove our presidents, senators, state representatives, governor's and judges are brutally raping people who were born into programs like "Blue Bird Project" and I meet hundreds and hundreds and now thousands of people when I go into these warehouse locations that work with agencies like Cointel Pro, Infargard, Darpa and Nasa and NSA and I am laid off, fired after enduring months of physical abuse and rape and mobbing. I have proof that organized crime is basically everywhere: Colleges, education programs, clinic's like Norton's and Portland Clinic in Kentucky. CSL plasma clinics use their phlebotomist to rape you and torture you with thick needles. I reported CSL plasma so much I have been deferred. Once I was stuck by a white man named Tommy who told me black people only change the world if they are beaten like Rodney King. I was also tortured by a black man there who told me he works with the feds and he tortured me with the plasma needle which is very thick. Organized crime is now a part of work places and it will and is now like a military base. What happens to people in the military? They kill, stalk, rape women and girls and boys and men including their own. Soilders have to be dehumanized. And it has been said that people will work around 9 out of 10 informates. Let me explain this...I was raped at Yamamoto FB and NHK and people gas lit me and triggered me about rape and mental telepathy and being cooked to a boil sweating at work. So now my kids if I had some don't have to join the army to be dehumanized or raped. Now, you can have standards and say "I am not having sex." And you can still be neurally and mentally raped. And men you work with and women can gas light you about sex with the perpetrator as if you really had physical and consenting sex with him. Or her. I was neurally raped at Yamamoto FB and men told me the perpetrator would ruin my wet dreams. I was told thay I love fucking white men and that I prefer small dicks. I was mocked about mind to mind telepathy. And a man kept asking me if I could feel and see him think sexual thoughts of him. I was told I was under operation Batman (my supervisor Bruce Bradford a marine was called Batman, The Hulk and Bruce Almighty). I was tortured from 12-2018 through 09-2019 until I was fired for making a threat in text. I texted a so called friend and told her that my HR Manager Heidi L. Dean has a son and that karma and life will show her that she has aided rapists and been involved in organized crime way too long. I am not the first woman at Yamamoto FB that was bullied out after being sexually assaulted. I was sexually assaulted by a man who slapped my ass and yelled "you are not a lesbian. You're bisexual." Same man that told me I love white dick as if he knew I was being neurally raped or "day dreaming" of sexual fantasies.

Mind control is universal. Some women and men have no clue about it and the crazy part is...you can be mind controlled to be angry. You can be mind controlled to focus on depression. And you can be mind controlled not knowing it and have sex with the person you are mind controlled of. I have been told my two men who worked for Yamamoto FB that Troy Smith was fired along with Bruce Bradford. And that Bruce had sex with a woman that just started working there and he called her a bitch and they fired him.

Its wild when you are targeted and mobbed and you know that this man made himself an accessory to organized crime. I left the dept. Bruce worked in and he was allowed to hoover me for 45m to 2 hours a day in another dept. before I moved to 2nd shift to get away from him. Its wild to be a target and know men like Troy Smith can gas you like he mind reads and men like Bruce and Darryl Keels...women are sleeping with rapists and I know it and its just wild. The plant manager at Yamamoto named Darryl Keels is still there.

People need to prepare their kid's to be mind strong. Knowledge is power. Your child can become a target for reporting a co worker or for exposing a slum landlord. I was targeted and I dropped the lawsuit against The Galt House hotel.

We are now living in a world were veteran's that killed and raped and stalked and harmed get desk jobs and become supervisors...there is a cop who sodomized a girl who was arrested on camera in jail. And he got a desk job and salary pay. So...when I went into Yamamoto FB and all these other companies involved in organized crime...I walked into a field of men who have raped, trafficked drugs through the company and after they mob me and rape me...they are still there for another person. I am blacklisted. Everyone is targeted, exploited and tracked.

My Mental Health Story

*****WARNING: This post contains self harm and suicide attempts and ideation*****

When I finally accepted my diagnosis of bipolar II, it sounds cheesy, but my whole life made sense. Me as a little girl isolating, being paranoid, getting fixated on things, moods changing quick, the self harm. The self harm... first it was digging my long fingernails into the back of my hands till it bled, banging my head against the wall, pulling out my hair. Later as i grew up, the self harm turned into punching large bruises into my legs, raking my nails down my forehead, and eventually cutting my wrists. It was punishment. Punishment for being me.

I was picked on all through school- too fat, too skinny, fake boobs, etc. None of which was true. I was right in my BMI and there was nothing in my bras but my boobs. I got made fun of for having freckles and moles and I even got picked on for needing a rolling backpack when I broke my clavicle and was unable to lift heavy things.

I started college and started dating my now husband. I’d had a few huge panic attacks here and there, but never really knew what they were. He knew something was wrong with me, but didn’t quite know what. He had a suspicion on bipolar and after working with a bipolar person, so did my dad.

I’d been working at a well known lingerie store for 7 years when my boyfriend and I got married, had a kid, and bought a house with my brother. Having a baby was hard especially not knowing she was lactose intolerant so my moods were everywhere. We fixed up the house for a year and finally moved in in late 2013. I’d been getting mentally abused at that store the whole time- getting passed up for promotions, blamed for things getting stolen, yelled at, etc. It was time for a new job and more money. My brother was out a job for a while, so we needed to pay for the house somehow. I got a job at a well known insurance company. I didn’t know it, but I’d been having panic attacks all through 6 months of training. It felt like I was being crushed and I couldn’t breathe and I’d been throwing up every morning while getting ready. At the age of 4, my daughter even came in to comfort me while I was nauseous and said I’d be ok and just needed food and brought me a bucket to throw up in. Being on the phones was the worst for me. I did get my promotion and moved out of training though. I was there almost a whole year and almost to my next promotion and I had the biggest panic attack I’d ever had. It was the start of my shift and I couldn’t get on the phone. All those mornings of throwing up in the shower getting ready for this job blew up into this huge 2 hour long panic attack. My friend had to talk to managers over the phone after trying to calm me down, I had to talk to the nurse, my brother and husband had to come pick up me and my car. That was the last day in the office for me. HR was horrible. The lady I got didn’t care about mental heath and constantly needed dr notes. I eventually had to quit. A lot of people quit that job because of the stress.

I had been going to the dr while at the insurance job trying to find out why I was throwing up every morning and why I couldn’t breathe. I got checked for gall stone, ulcers, crohns, everything. Ultra sounds, endoscopy, colonoscopy, etc. My dr finally told me it was mental. I refused to believe it, but I went up a floor to psych anyway. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I was put on so many different combinations and saw so many different doctors and none were working. After I quit, I of course lost health insurance and had to go through the state. Again many different pills, but less often as the dr wanted to slowly try combos. My husband somewhere in there lost his job, my brother got one, and then my husband found one making road signs. I got insurance again.

My friends mom got me a job filing paperwork at a well known car dealership. I did well filing, but I started having to greet customers in service and move cars into the smallest of parking spots. I started fixating on things, arguing with my boss, and getting lonely in the back room. I even tried to open a vein in my wrist in the bathroom at work with a wire hanger. I got really depressed in the back and the anxiety while moving cars was great. I crashed 1,2,3 cars and I was out. I was put on a 3 day suspension (which afterward turned into being fired). That day I went home and took over a full bottle of prescribed medication. I wanted to sleep. I didn’t want to exist. Just sleep forever. I was tired. Tired of my brain and stress and not knowing how to fix what i was going through. Just so tired. I text my husband to pick up our daughter from school and said goodbye. He called 911 and they came in and walked me downstairs, strapped me to the bed in the ambulance and took me to the nearest hospital in late September 2017.

They didn’t have to pump my stomach, but I did end up having a seizure. My husband, mom, and dad all came to see me and my aunt and uncle watched my daughter after school. I got put on a 5150 which is a 3 day hold in the psych ward of the hospital. I begged to be let out for the first two days. I was diagnosed bipolar II and placed on a handful of medication to take while there. I eventually gave in and participated so I could go home. The meds they gave me made me hungrier. I got out in 3 days time and still had to take those meds. and 3 months later on those meds I was 60 lbs heavier. I looked and looked for someone to help me lose the weight. Eventually I found a psych at the health insurance place that changed my medication, but after a little, they weren’t cutting it. I’ve changed meds and doses a bit. I kept asking my psych and my regular dr and my therapist for a way to help me lose weight. Nothing. I got into a bipolar group after taking IOP. A handful of them had to get surgery to lose the weight they gained on bipolar meds.

May 2019 I had an episode and landed back in the hospital under 5150 this time just for ideation. I begged again the first 2 days to be let out. My husband came every night to visit and my parents at least once since my dad works out of town. I participated when I could and got out in 3 days. I went into IOP again for 12 weeks. Then last 2 weeks of October come and I’m back in the ideation stage. I need the hospital, but the insurance policy changed and I don’t know if it’s covered. I go like that until mid November. I get put on new medications and have to cold turkey off one drug and slowly go on one and whatnot. In the beginning I can’t tell what’s real and what is a dream. For a week I live like that. Then I have a day or two of being ok, and switch to being angry. Cold turkeying that drug made me lose touch with reality for a whole week then adding that new drug made me angry. I had to stop one of the new drugs (the one that made me angry).

I’ve had trouble sleeping off and on my whole life probably due to episodes. It got worse when my grandma on my dads side passed away and lately seem to have trouble often even on meds to help.

My resting heart rate is always above 100. Often around 120 and has gotten as high as 153 (resting).

On the combo I’m on now I’ve thought about giving myself a labottomy when I used to want to drill open my head and try to fix whatever is wrong with me.

April 2020 and I haven’t had a job since about July of 2018. Before COVID-19, I was getting panic attacks every day having to take my daughter to school. In fact she missed the day school closed (March 16,2020). The panic was bad and I couldn’t get myself to drive. I’ve been fighting to get on social security disability and I have a lawyer. I had a hearing in January 2020, but needed a court ordered psych appt. The appt was scheduled for late March and was canceled because of COVID-19. Since we are a 1 income family in San Diego, it’s hard to afford our house.

I’ve had meds make me talk slow, think slow, fall fast asleep at work, hungry 24/7, thirsty 24/7, have to tinkle every 45 mins, make me tense all my muscles 24/7 for weeks. I’ve had them effect my memory. Even my memory of what everyday words are.

May 2020 I’m so stressed about everything that I’m getting massive heartburn again. I don’t know what medication to help aleviate it because lithium reacts with everything.

July 2020 stress got to me. The stress of possibly not being able to stay in my house, the stress of my backyard being so full of weeds that my husky had to get fully shaved and get over 300 foxtails pulled from his skin (and of course the bill that came with it), the stress of my husband having a kidney stone in each kidney, the stress of my husbands car not having ac and his drive to and from work is 1 hour each way (and of course not being able to afford to fix it), the stress of my car leaking oil (and again not being able to afford fixing it), and I’m sure there is more. I went out with my parents and they asked me to be friends with someone who stopped being my friend because of my disorder in order to make my brother happy. That hurt. I texted them and wanted them to know how that made me feel especially while I’m dealing with all this other stuff and got some crappy replies. I then realized that I was being stigmatized by family and they weren’t the only ones and I lost it. I got put on another 5150 July 1st. I felt like I had lost a huge part of my support team. I wanted to stab myself in the throat and make a special note to my dad as to why he, my mom, and my brother made me kill myself. While in the hospital I realized that my husband and his father (when he is able to visit) are sympathetic to what I am going through and my husband does everything he can to make things easier on me. I am very lucky to have him. Later in July I had another instance where I couldn’t tell what was real and what was not. I hope that isn’t a regular thing again.

July still and I found out my brother had invited my bipolar best friend over for a bbq and made advances and was shut down. He text her dirty texts and she told me she still shut him down and I was upset because never once did anyone in my family reach out to see if I was ok after getting out of the hospital, but my brother would text my friend he’s hung out with less than 5 times? So I message him and he gets defensive and I decide to cut him from my life. I’m upset the couple days after and my husband tells me my daughter is showing more signs of bipolar (she’s 10 and there’s a 10% chance of passing it down). I get more upset and miscommunication leads to my husband calling my parents who I am still mad at for stigmatizing me. The first thing my dad does when he gets here? Tries to fix the door handle to the bathroom because my mom couldn’t open the door when there was another one she could have used instead of check on me like my husband had asked. Things get heated and I tell them they were the reason I was hospitalized on July 1st and they then said they were calling the police. More things were said about how upset and how they don’t even try to learn or read a book to learn and they said “no book can teach me about bipolar.” And I said the whole family stigmatizes me by not saying anything when I say I can babysit and my dad said “well no wonder they think they are a danger to their kids look at you!” I told them to get out and my mom had to be forced out due to refusing to leave without my child. She then called my daughters phone and tried to talk her into walking outside to them so they could take her from me. A therapist called and deemed me ok to not go to the hospital and wait until my regular appointment (in a few minutes from then). My regular therapist then called and talked to me and came to the same conclusion as the therapist before her. My husband came home to my parents on the porch. My father then told him that I was in rage and that it was just a seizure. I was not. I am hurt and sad and upset and misunderstood. I don’t understand why people don’t get that mental illness is a real thing. Why can’t you learn about bipolar from a book? How do doctors learn? You learn how it works and what the symptoms are and then you learn the specifics of the person you love. How is that a difficult concept?

I have been having seizures at night now though. Multiple a night. Just small few second ones. Haven’t been able to sleep for a few nights unless I get so tired I pass out.

As a kid I’ve never felt like I fit in with my family and it transferred into adulthood even before I found out I was bipolar. I didn’t feel happy when I felt I should have been. I felt left out from the girls group because I didn’t like the same things they did, but I didn’t fit into the boys group either. Then adulthood. I was the first out of all the cousins to have a child and get married and buy a house, but I’m not the oldest. I just never fit. I see how the oldest and second youngest (of the girl group) go out to bingo together and of course the oldest and youngest are sisters so they are close, but me? I had 2 brothers. Where did I fit? They hung with the boy cousins. I didn’t have anything in common with either group. Again adulthood I still don’t fit because I don’t have a job and my kid is over 5 years older than the age of the babies everyone else just had. Now we add bipolar to the group and no one else has a mental disorder. None diagnosed at least.

More about my childhood, but first I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Insomnia due to stress, seizures which I’ve never had before (due to stress), and things I should have grown out of (thanks genetics... due to stress). I’ve never been happy with myself because of it and I’ve always had trouble sleeping. Most of my sleeping issues came after my grandma died. All I could think about was death. Burning alive in a house fire, drowning, being creamated alive, being buried alive, etc. I got more depressed.

Growing up at family functions I would ask to “play in the car” which meant sit and wait to go home. Now looking back I know I was sad and overwhelmed with the loud noises and not fitting in. I’d throw up every Easter. I was told it was because I ate to much candy. Now I see it was anxiety. Anxiety to find all my eggs because my family is competitive. Anxiety because my family is loud. Anxiety because I didn’t fit in.

I didn’t fit in at school either. I said earlier I was always made fun of. I forgot about how the kids would always dare different boys to ask me out and then laugh about it. My husband has learned not to tell me I’m pretty or beautiful because it makes me cry. I don’t believe him. I don’t believe any compliments ever and never have. They upset me. I’ve taken lipstick or eyeliner and written “fat, ugly, useless” ect on my mirror. I gave up on wearing make up because to me, it’s not to make you look pretty, it’s to enhance your beauty and i don’t feel I have any. First it was my cystic acne and now it’s my weight. I’ll never be how I want to look again because doctors don’t care. I was literally told “would you rather be alive and fat or dead?” I want to be happy. What’s the point of a life if you aren’t happy?

Growing up I didn’t feel like I got much attention. I tried to come up with ways to break a bone at school 1-5 grade. Lotion on my hands then go on the monkey bars, play the tougher games like red rover where people did try to break your arms while running over, ect. Nothing worked.

It’s been a hell of a ride. Paranoia, obsession, fixation, anger, hypomania, depression. It’s hard. It’s really hard to live this way. I finally got someone to help me with my weight loss early April 2020 after getting to be 110lbs over what I was. I still struggle with mood swings because obviously there is no cure and I can’t remember things and often forget what everyday things are called. Some times I feel like I am putting on a face for others. Like a “happy face”, so they don’t have to ask “what’s wrong”. I do know (when I’m in my wise mind) that I have help and a small amount of people who love me who will be there for me when I need it.

It’s August now and my parents are lying to my husband about what happened just like they lied about why they asked me to be friends with someone for my brothers sake. First it was because the wedding. I pointed out they asked it was after they broke up. They stated it was just to be in the same room. I stated no that’s what was said after I told them why she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. Why am I wrong? Why lie? Why not admit it?! You fucked up! Just because my brain doesn’t produce chemicals to make me happy doesn’t mean it makes me stupid. “We called our granddaughter to come outside to the porch.” Ok. Then what? You were under the impression someone was going to take me away which in turn means you thought you would get my daughter. That’s stealing. I didn’t want her outside and you knew that.

Still beginning of August. I guess July was too rough with me not sleeping that since August came along and I fall asleep all the time and I can’t wake up. You’d think sleep would be a good thing, but the sleep I get is nothing but nightmares that I can’t wake up from. I went to the doctor the other day and found out that a small lump I’ve had on my shoulder since 4th grade is a cyst brought on by stress. I also have psoriasis... brought on by stress. I have been shaking a lot lately due to anxiety and money problems keep getting worse. My stomach won’t stop hurting.

Wow it’s the first Saturday in August. How much has happened. That girl my parents asked if I would be friend with for my brother btw is married. I had asked my friend of like 25 years when the incident happened if she would take her off things like Instagram and Facebook and stuff and she had a fit, but half took her off Instagram. You know where you unfollow them but they still follow you? So yea I was still mad but she claimed she didn’t know how to not have her on Instagram. You know that “block” button. Yea I guess that doesn’t exist. So recently after my parents thing I see she adds the new Facebook page (I blocked one so this is a new one) and I lose me shit). She text me asking me how I am doing and I not word for word say “don’t ask how I am if you don’t give a shit. I see you added that bitch recently and I don’t know if you’ve done reading or not on mental health, but triggers are things that set back forward progress. I don’t get why I fight for you to be in my life when you don’t fight for me to be in yours. Don’t text me again��� and I blocked her. She then had her daughter (who’s always grounded from her phone) bombard my daughters phone with “can my brother and I sleep over? Auntie has to answer my moms texts though” like what the fuck?! She’s always been a “user.” And when I say “user” I mean “drive me here and I’ll ignore you the whole concert” “give me money and I’ll say I’ll pay you back and never actually will” “ watch my kids every weekend for like 2 months and I’ll never return the favor.” Shit like that. I’m out. Done. To quote my favorite movie in a time of pain this Katelynn “chick must have beer flavored nipples.”

August is the month that just keeps giving. I am non stop nauseous. I threw up the other day and it caused me to have a nose bleed. Mental health drug withdrawals are no joke. Hopefully I’m on a good mix again for another year or whatever. Once the withdrawals stop, I need to stop the stress and anxiety. My husband says my dad is trying to make an effort to learn now, but I don’t know if it’s too late. He and my mom have already triggered me many times by asking me to be friends with that girl who didn’t want to be my friend because my illness to make my brother happy. My dad also told me I’m a danger to children when I’ve only ever hurt myself whereas his oldest has gotten expelled from high school for fighting and has a track record for punching holes in walls and hitting cabinet doors off hinges, but because I have a label, I’m dangerous. There’s just some things you just can’t take back.

I don’t know if I’ve already stated, but I forget what things are called and the stress to get my thoughts and what I’m trying to say out is huge because I don’t want to hear “what?” “I missed that” “I didn’t hear what you said.” It’s cause I didn’t get to finish! I stopped to figure out what the word was now I forgot the whole sentence! Colored pencils are colored sticks. Elote is elbow. Ice is grass. Posture is prosper. I HATE this! I come up with ANY word that will come out to avoid a pause so I can avoid “what?” I truely cannot remember the word either until someone tells me.

It’s the end of August and my parents and I are slowly starting to talk. First about small things like video games, but yesterday I called my mom and told her I was sorry for how I expressed my feeling. I said I never should have acted out in anger and should have come to them calmly (though now thinking about it, I did and it didn’t work, but what’s done is done). My dad is reading the book and really taking it in. The book being from a bipolar persons perspective is nice for him. My mom is also doing internet research. My brother has been asking how I have been doing which is nice though I still don’t know how I feel about him and how he treated my friend. My oldest brother has been silent. We’ve never been close. It hurts, but he’s got two little girls to deal with I guess. I would have been asking about him, but oh well I’ll take what I get. I’ve did the distance thing I realized because I was afraid of losing them again. Afraid the anger and fighting would come back and it would just be a never ending cycle. I hope this book opens eyes. On other notes, I’ve upgraded to nocturnal panic disorder. I’ve been waking up in a panic from sleep. Still having nightmares, but the times I don’t, PANIC!

My parents and I are doing better since my dad is reading the book. I appologized for how I said things in anger to both of them because it wasn’t fair to them for my to have done that even if I did try calmly. I should have kept trying. My dad said the book is really eye opening and he didn’t need the apology, but appreciated it. He said reading it made him realize I couldn’t help it. I can’t explain right now what he meant, but it’s just like loss of control (I posted the book in another post). I text my brother to tell him I love him because I do and I understand why he would ask my friend out, but I’m still upset because I know I was a rebound and he didn’t have good thoughts. I know he knows it was a mistake and in time we will be ok. On another note, I found out why I was having nocturnal panic attacks. I stopped my sleeping pills that is also for anxiety. I started a medication that I haven’t been on for a little and I took my on the spot anxiety med the other day and i had a few psychotic breaks again (a few in one day). So now I won’t take my on the spots anymore.

My primary care doctor has put me on a medication to help with weight loss in addition to the others I am on. Its also supposed to help with full body pain and swelling which I have. In just three days I have already noticed reduced swelling and pain. Dieting is still hard, but less hard. I am couting calories safely to lose 1 pound a week and eating at least 80 grams of protein. Thats it. Thats my diet I am following. Nothing special or fancy or hard to do. Simple.

Took almost 2 years on the dot, but I finally got on SSDI as of early Sept. and early Oct. I got my award letter. I didnt fully win my case (only 16 months out of 2 years, but I will take it). Also, I don’t get paid for the first 5 months of that 16 months which I don’t fully understand, plus I have to pay the lawyers, but still, I won. We also got a notice saying that since I have a child, I can apply to get money to pay for her as well. That was easy to apply for and only takes a month to hear back for, so I should hear back early Nov.

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21 reasons to practise yoga in the morning

Our goals as well as great purposes fresh Year resolutions are frequently based around coming to be better as well as healthier, a lot more satisfied and without (adverse) practices. When we release one behavior however, there's frequently a gaping opening left in its place, which is why things like stopping smoking cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, delicious chocolate, meat or anything else you've decided to move away from is so tough, there's absolutely nothing to take its place.

There's usually a factor we develop routines in the first location, they serve an objective. Our practices can help alleviate tension or supply some sort of amusement, they often make us really feel good or subconsciously give a complacency. Habits aren't unnecessary, they're simply not always helping us to be our very best selves ...

Out with the old, in with the new

In order to allow go of unhelpful behaviors, brand-new ones have to be placed in their location which provide similar benefits to the mind as well as body, which is where the method of yoga comes in. As increasing psychological clearness as well as leisure, yoga additionally has the added advantages of boosting the launch of endorphins (happy hormonal agents) and making the body a more literally comfy place to live in.

If you get involved in the habit of practising yoga exercise each morning for 21 days, there's a chance you'll proceed (perhaps even for the remainder of the year?) and also you'll most definitely thank on your own for it by the time the following New Year comes around.

I've enlisted the aid of some of my pupils and yoga instructor friends that practise in the morning - as well as offering you some support from the web pages of the old Yoga exercise Sutras and also Ayurvedic messages - so you can figure out for yourself why expanding varieties of people begin their day with yoga, as well as the factors they select to do it!

1. Set your intention

At the start of several yoga exercise classes, we're offered the chance to set an objective for the method. This could be a purpose to practice with generosity towards the body if its feeling tired, to practise focusing the mind into serenity, or an intent to step outside your convenience area to create self-trust and also self-confidence. Whatever it may be, this objective has the capability to form the remainder of your day, as well as will certainly provide you an emphasis throughout the hrs that comply with. It's primarily like setting a Brand-new Year's resolution every early morning, although it may be a little easier to keep this set for 24 hr in contrast to 365 days ...

2. Salute the Sun

Traditionally, the practice of Surya Namaskar (sunlight salutations) was executed at dawn, as a means to welcome the sun and also the arrival of a new day. By being conscious of the rhythms of the natural world as well as practising as the sunlight climbs, we use our own all-natural rhythms too.

Many people are so caught up on the planet of technology and work that we neglect we as well belong of nature and also today routine is a pointer of our more all-natural state.

3. Get rid of the Fuzz

Dr Gil Hedley discusses brilliantly in his online talk that in order for the body to be efficiently healthy and balanced and also really feel physically excellent, it is essential to relocate at the start of the day. Overnight, our muscles rest and while they're stagnating, layers of connective tissue as well as physical fluid - fondly called 'fuzz' - builds up in between them. That desire to extend we get upon waking is essentially an act of launching the unclear develop found between muscular tissues. If we do not relocate and stretch nevertheless, this layer continues to thicken and also develop, causing rigidity, persistantly 'tight' muscles as well as typical pains and discomforts.

4. Don't start stressed...

We know exactly how it feels to jump out of bed after striking the snooze button one-too-many times as well as rushing about in the morning - our nerve system absolutely understands just how it feels all-too-well ... Offering yourself an added hr or half a hr in the early mornings to awaken and practice will certainly permit your nerve system to begin the day in a much more loosened up state. Our levels of cortisol (the tension hormonal agent) are already high in the mornings in order to provide us the boost we need to awaken. If this level of cortisol is swiftly boosted with added tension nonetheless, we've set ourselves up for a similarly stressful day. Making the technique of yoga exercise a practice each early morning enables the body to enter the routine of switching off the supportive 'fight or flight' tension action, and also rather able to finally touch right into the recovery benefits of the parasympathetic nerves - raising the health and wellness of both body and mind exceptionally.

5. Negate the need for coffee

Yoga has a great way of offering the exact function we require, it can be recovering and pleasantly relaxing, yet it can also be boosting and energising. Also if you're tired upon waking, a morning yoga exercise practice is guaranteed to make you really feel much more conscious and active. Specific poses and also practices to construct energy consist of sun salutations, backbends as well as spins.

6. Activate your army

The disease-fighting white blood cells in the body have the ability to do their best when our blood flow as well as lymphatic system has effective flow. By relocating a method that feels good first thing in the morning, we essentially 'awaken' all the body's systems, which enhances the flow of flow as well as offer the body immune system an instant increase. Mild inversions like Viparita Karani (boosts the wall pose) are particularly efficient for boosting the body immune system, so be sure to add these into a winter season early morning practice.

7. Get happy

As well as improving your blood circulation and also body immune system, the state of mind boost received through a yoga

practice is one of the most valuable factors to practice in the mornings. In a study performed by the Yoga Biomedical Count On London, 94% of participants with anxiousness were significantly aided by exercising yoga exercise consistently each early morning, and also 82% of those with sleeping disorders reported useful advantages also.

8. Me-time

Especially if you're a moms and dad, or your task requires managing or taking care of others, it can be difficult to feel as though you have actually had any type of time to yourself. That additional amount of time in the early morning is a way to reveal on your own not just that you appreciate yourself, however about others too. In order to give our power out on the planet, it's vital we have sufficient within us to begin with. An early morning yoga practice is a means to know you've done something for yourself that day - whether it was for five mins or an hour.

9. No more procrastination

If you're the kind of individual who establishes that New Year's resolution to be healthier yet you never seem to get around to it - this is among the ideal methods to tackle it. Making your morning yoga exercise practice the really initial point on your order of business of the day ensures you'll get it done first and won't end up sensation guilty concerning not having actually practiced that day. Attaining something early in the day is additionally a wonderful method to construct self-confidence and also a sense of self-worth. It takes a little discipline in the beginning, but also Aristotle said 'Through discipline comes flexibility'.

10. Practice meditation for psychological clarity

A early morning yoga technique does not have to be all concerning the poses, meditating is a yoga exercise with unrestricted benefits, and also starting your day with even a few mins can have extensive impacts quickly. Ending up being aware of our thoughts and observing them rather than getting captured up in them at the start of the day makes us even more able to choose whether those ideas are needed or not, as well as from there we're able to tap into this throughout the remainder of the day a lot more quickly. The behavior of watching thoughts as opposed to getting captured up in them is one of one of the most beneficial routines we can get involved in, and also it'll identify our activities quickly: a tranquility as well as grounded person makes different daily decisions to a stressed out and also distressed person!

11. Positive points

If you're brand-new to meditation and also the mind is a little as well scary to observe at the moment, the method of stating affirmations silently or out-loud can be really effective as well as recovery. The word 'affirmation' is defined as 'em otional support', and additionally the act of affirming and making something stable. By reciting expressions such as 'I am tranquil', 'I am serene', 'I am strong', 'I am powerful' right at the beginning of the day, we give ourselves a feeling of stability as words and also ideas similar to this promptly effect the body and also mind. Our thoughts and words create chain reactions in the body - a pleased thought will certainly urge the body to create 'delighted' chemicals, and also an unfavorable idea will certainly encourage the body to believe it needs to produce 'adverse' chemicals. Enter the behavior of reciting affirmations as well as your mind will actually're- cord' itself.

12. Take a breath Below Now to Be Below Now

Breath awareness - i.e. concentrating intently on each inhale as well as exhale and noticing the quality of the

breath - is an immediate means to bring us right into today minute. Leslie Kaminoff accomplished when he claimed ' The body attempts to keep the past, the mind attempts to take us right into the future. It is the breath that keeps us present'. When the mind is busy and over flowing with ideas or chitta vrittis, paying focus to the breath brings us out of the catch of the mind and into reality. While thoughts and ruminations are commonly absolutely nothing to do with the circumstance right before us, the breath is a suggestion of something that is actual, something that it right here as well as now. Movements within a yoga exercise practice are generally launched by an inhale or exhale, so by moving with the breath, we move into the present minute. A shallow breath, held high up in the upper body indicates stress and likewise triggers the body's stress and anxiety reaction, whereas much deeper 'stubborn belly breathing' where the abdomen is permitted to broaden and also loosen up with the breath, soothes the nerve system and also brings the body and mind right into the existing leading to an even more kicked back state of being. If breath understanding can come to be a practice, we'll ultimately be able to use it instantly with the day to end up being much more aware and to life.

13. Boost digestive fire

Yoga's sis scientific research Ayurveda states that our total health is determined by the health and wellness of our digestive system. We can drink all the eco-friendly shakes we like and also eat organic meals, yet if the body can not appropriately soak up, assimilate and make use of those nutrients - it's a little like placing your food straight in the rubbish bin ... By practicing yoga exercise in the morning, the body's metabolism is increased, therefore is the gastrointestinal system or Agni, known as 'digestive fire'. When circulation of the systems is improved as well as the internal body organs have actually been carefully massaged by yoga exercise stances, the gastrointestinal system is much more effective at launching toxic substances as well as correctly metabolising the nutrients from our foods.

14. Boost brainpower

Focussing early in the early morning may not be something we're all accustomed to, yet it's dramatically useful for heightening our productivity as well as awareness throughout the rest of the day. If you find it hard to focus at the workplace or school, spend a long time practicing breath recognition and a couple of mildly tough yoga poses, as well as your mind will certainly have woken up in no time!

15. The early hours....

The conventional yogic texts specify that the hours between 4am and also 6am are most conductive for meditation and yoga technique since the mind goes to its most still and the rest of the world hasn't yet sprung into activity, so there's a feeling of serenity airborne. If these hours are a little too early for you, after that ...

16. Become a 'morning person'

If you're not the kind to leap out of bed to greet the new day, then this new practice could make you one ...! A specialized early morning method permits those people that could quite easily rest the day away to take advantage of this time when it or else may have gone to throw away. Equally as it's the yoga displays we appreciate the least that we truly need to exercise, it's the disciplines we wouldn't generally select that can truly offer us one of the most. Life is short and it's a quite valuable thing, so as opposed to oversleeping as well as squandering the day, make a practice of obtaining up a little earlier to reintroduce yourself to the morning time.

17. Prolong the benefits

If you usually practice evening yoga courses, consider including early morning methods or switching your practice to the early morning time for 21 days - this way you'll be able to really feel the advantages of the practice for far longer. Undoubtedly a day of enhanced breath awareness, the ability to be existing, much healthier food digestion, boosted circulation and improved mood are much better put to utilize throughout the numerous hours of the day than the few hrs prior to going to bed?

18. The internal globe produces the external world

The Buddha is popular for claiming that our experience of the globe around us is entirely created by our minds. You might observe just how the world appears to unbelievely alter the minute you tip out of your yoga course. Individuals on the street appear friendlier, your family is easier to quadrate, the options you make are more lined up with a healthier life, and also your manager is great! Below's a tip, it's not the world that has altered, it's your mind ... Begin the day by developing a favorable environment within on your own, as well as the outer environment will be a whole lot extra favorable also.

19. Know thyself

A morning technique is the ideal means to measure whether your activities off the mat are having a positive or unfavorable influence on your physical, psychological and psychological wellness. If you feel 'heavy' during an early morning practice, there's a chance last evening's supper had not been absorbed properly or you consumed a little far too late. If your body is exhausted as well as hurting, it's a message you've been pressing on your own as well hard and require to spend some time to bring back, as well as if you observe your mind is concentrated on one specific thought or fear throughout meditation, after that you recognize it's time to listen as well as take activity. By practicing yoga exercise stances daily, you'll also see yourself alter as the toughness as well as flexibility of both body as well as mind greatly improve.

20. Get a move on

If your day is mostly invested resting at a workdesk or in a cars and truck, a morning yoga exercise is just the medication your body

has been trying to find. Stances like backbends are effective for 'un-doing' all the stooping as well as slouching we commonly subconsciously do throughout the day, as well as can help open up the muscle mass surrounding the hips, which are a typical location of stress due to long hrs of resting. By exercising in the early morning, we additionally remind ourselves of what it resembles to stand with healthy and balanced posture, so you'll begin to discover when you're slouching more usually and prevent pain in the back prior to it also occurs!

21. Start Now

A yoga exercise technique has no pre-requisites, you do not need to be flexible, strong, slim, vegan or any type of various other stereotype attached to 'yoga individuals'. All you have to do is be you and let the practice do the rest. A yoga exercise practice is not regarding attaining the capability to do remarkable stances, not is it concerning being able to being in reflection for hrs and also hrs, it has to do with figuring out who you are below the poor practices that have accumulated gradually, the babbling mind and also the hurting body. It's concerning being your authentic self. As the claiming goes ' Begin with where you are. Utilize what you have. Do what you can'.

Make it simple to select your early morning course by adhering to among our early morning yoga exercise programmes like 30 Mornings of Yoga

Work life limbo

I had gotten food poisoning the day before the exam for the apprenticeship, I was bedridden for over a week. That was frustrating as you could only apply for that next year. So what was I to do until then?

I had immersed myself into anime and games, attended comic con and got into manga. It wasn't until October when my dad invited me to work at my uncles restaurant as they were short staffed.

I worked there for a period of 3 months, earning £4/hr, below minimum wage. Being my first job, working 10hrs my feet were not used to the aching and tiredness and on my first day after I came back home I went straight to bed.

The prices on the menu were really cheap, 50p for a cup of tea for example, takeaway £4-5, buffet 6.30. The job itself wasn't that difficult, aside from the immense amount of chilli oil burning my hands. My ezcema flared up constantly when working with my hands. At times I would argue with my father, he was a different person when he worked. Easy to anger, stressed.

Other times I would argue with one specific customer who would get away with eating the whole buffet and getting a drink for only £2.

Working for my uncle, it's easy to see why he made millions: exploiting his employees by paying them almost nothing. He had owed my dad money for years.

End of that year the restaurant closed down, it didn't seem to be making any money. I mean the prices were really low and the customers always complained they were too high.

My next job after that was CeX, I stayed for about 4 months earning the minimum wage of 5.30. The job itself was alright, but there were management issues. At times I would have my lunch at 5pm. A full 8 hrs since I last ate and 2hrs before closing. They had employed too many young staff at one point and had cut my hours. I wasn't happy about the hours cut and the staff they hired made plenty of mistakes. One of them wasn't taught properly and gave away 2 expensive phones worth 2k.

After earning enough money to build a new pc for £1000, I left and decided to try look for an apprenticeship again.

I went to Lambeth college on the apprenticeship open day, I had the intention of looking for a digital marketing job or a construction one. In the end I went for a month coding course to see if I liked it or not.

This coding course was the wrong choice. We had to make an app from scratch, it was difficult and it still had a ton of bugs. It was unrealistic for us to make something perfect after just a month of training. But we managed and overall it was a success. However when the placements came, that's when I lost interest. I did 2 placements one at mylondonhome.

Originally there was supposed to be one other person doing the project with me, however he dropped out and I was left on my own to develop an app. So I did the best that I could, I made a prototype and thought that someone else would come in to build upon that. However they expected me to make full fledged app in just 2 weeks on my own. They only paid me minimum wage.

In the 2nd placement I did have a team to work with, but because we were all new to designing and making an app we struggled. Some of the issues we had was that we had to tether our phones to get internet to do our job. The supervisor incharge never provided us with internet and kept bouncing us between 2 locations. After about 2 weeks he told us it was shite, all that work we had put in shot down. What do you expect when you're not provided the support or the tools to do your job. The team gradually got smaller and smaller and went from 6 to just 3 people. I had enough of that stupidity and even though they were paying living wage it wasn't worth my time. I had to lead the team for some reason and in doing so felt like I was doing most of the work. All that work amounted to nothing in the end.

I took a break from working after those placements left a bad taste in my mouth. Everyone thinks I love coding, sure it's fun when you get into it but when you're first experience with something is terrible is hard to convince yourself to beat a dead horse and go back to it.

Next year my through my dad's connections I gotten a job in a high class Chinese restaurant. He said they would pay £10/hr. He was wrong it was minimum wage. I did part time - 6 days a week part time.

This job only lasted 5.5 weeks, I was treated like an outsider by the staff. They were horrible and picked on me. Whilst trying to learn how to do the job they just laughed at me for being slow. All I ever did in that restaurant was grab a cloth, wet it with vinegar and wipe plates. I asked one of the employees who worked over 2 years if he ever saw a raise. He never had gotten a raise. The manager there was the most useless person in the restaurant and made the wait staffs lives a nightmare. He couldn't do anything himself, couldn't use Excel, couldn't take orders, didn't know what the food looked like. So every 5 mins he would pick on someone to do something. It got old and annoying fast. I then started looking for another job. On my final day at the restaurant the staff started arguing with me saying I left work undone and that they helped me but that was a lie. They had to be forced by the manager when I complained for them to help me. My hours were done anyway, I was no longer part of it so they could not force me. The very fact that they lash out on my last day reaffirmed that I made the right choice to leave early.

The job I applied for seemed promising and I thought they would of accepted me for the role. But instead they opted for someone whose used to work there because they had experience. So I was left hanging .

As usual when a job has screwed me over I would take a short break. So that's what I did, I went back to playing games and watching anime.

Sometime in the summer my brother's friend was doing his own bubble tea business and was looking for a helper on the weekend. So as I usually do I thought why not. It was decent I would earn £50 for 7-8hrs work, around minimum wage. We went to a Thai festival in that year, travelled all the way to bath. My first time in bath the buildings looked like something out of a Victorian film. One of the issues with making such a sweet drink in the summer was the number of wasps that would attack you. There were issues with the job, like the menu being massive and that each drink had to be made in such a specific way, to the millimetre even. The owner also had issues with wanting everything to be perfect and that he could the job perfectly but others could not. After the summer had ended, there was no more business to be had so I was left with nothing to do for awhile.

A few months later in November and a random charity worker knocked on my door looking for people to donate to a good cause. Considering I had no job or income I wasn't able to give. However he told me if you don't have a job why dont you try this job? So that's what I did I tried yet again.

This job was a very difficult job, trying to get complete strangers to part with their money by reading off a script. I would have to knock over 150 doors each night. Being the middle or November the nights were very cold. 150 doors is alot of doors to knock but getting people to sign up to something was like a needle in a haystack. After just a short 2 days of training by reading off a script and given the procedure to get people to sign up, on my first day I had no idea what to expect, but I wasn't given all the equipment I needed to do the job. I was told it was my fault for not checking. How was I supposed to know what I needed? So I lashed out at them for their negligence. I tried for 2 weeks, I believe 99% of my training group left the job. The issue with this job is that you need a high level of fitness to knock 150 doors. We had one person who was overweight and they could not keep up. I could barely keep up myself having asthma. I had no choice but to quit after 2 weeks as that was the probation period.

I took an extended break until summer time came once again. I was ask to do the bubble tea again and I did. This time the owner had a van especially for bubble tea making. We had planned to do another event, this time about anime camping. So I went to help him out with this, even helping him receive a delivery at his house when he wasn't able to. The next day I went in the car of his friend and for about 6 hours we had a system in place that worked really well. Come 6pm we would pack up swiftly and head back. I was given £50 that day. The owner then asked me if I wanted to help him out tomorrow and so I did.

Like I said previously about the owner he had issues. When we had arrived at the venue he had managed to forget the straws! How do you forget that when you're making bubble tea? So at some point in the middle of the day he had to dip out and travel back to his house to grab more. I was left alone in charge for about an hour. I wasn't able to serve people without straws and was stuck waiting for him. After he came back he kept nitpicking everything, if a drink was slightly off he would tell me to make the whole drink from scratch, slowing the production. He said that he would finish up business by 6pm. He was still serving even at 9pm! Plus we had to pack up everything into the van after. That took a long time, we started packing at 8pm and didn't finish until 11pm. It had already been well over 12 hrs working and then he stuck around to chat to people when I was clearly tired and frustrated wanting to go home. It wouldn't be until 1am that I would get back home. After that he gave me £60 for the 'hardwork'. Wait so you're telling me yesterday I worked 6hrs and got £50, but today I worked 10+hrs and only got £10 more? What the fuck.

So I started to question him, I would like another £20. He for sure made alot of money in that event, there was no way he couldn't afford to pay me correctly after I had helped him receive supplies at his house, went out of my way to help him days in a row. Even Manning the station for an hour because of the straws. Guess what he made up a long list of excuses telling me he paid me less because I made mistakes and that he didn't even need my help. Saying that travelling in his car actually cut into my wages. Some fucking bullshit I tell you. I thought that being my brother's friend I could trust him to pay me a decent wage for my work. I started to go through his list of excuses and cut his lies to pieces, that's what my brother gave me when he saw it. Afterwards he called me up and said 'whats your problem?. That was the angriest I had ever gotten over the phone. I started going through his bullshit and he tried to say that it was justified to pay me less because I had to sit in his car. Well if I had known that I had to pay a journey fee to work for him I would have never helped in the first fucking place . Afterwards I told him he better send me the fucking money and when he did I was done with his sorry ass of a man. His girlfriend started attacking me over social media saying that it was £20 extra. No if fucking wasn't, it was the minimum wage that I had earned. It's my right to earn the legal wage.

After that ordeal I took a extended break once again until next year...

Trauma & Service Dog Rant

tw rape and trauma mention

My PTSD has been out of control all day. Had flashbacks for 2 hours at work--none of the usual mindfulness stuff, Xanax, or sensory counting was working. I had to keep snapping myself out of it and going back to try and fix the small amount of work I could get done while it was happening. It’s so frustrating I was on the verge of tears. Got home and realized I’ve been dissociating so much in the past few weeks that I’ve been putting things in weird places again...UGH. So a bunch of stuff is lost and I’m still avoiding paying my bills (huge trigger).

 I have to go to the store for dog food and I am so anxious I’m afraid to drive. The pet store is hard on bad days because it’s a pet-friendly store so everyone wants to approach and pet him and ask me 3844658346 questions about his breed (”IS THAT A WOLFFF?????” NO WTH who lives in the city and owns a wolf??? go away) I’m a walking panic attack today and seriously can’t engage with strangers and have them getting him all distracted right now. He’s doing very well with his training (did awesome in a restaurant the other day!) but he still struggles in the pet store because of all the exciting smells and toys and foods.

 I  also don’t have a vest for him at the moment which compounds the problem. His red backpack was so handy but it’s torn now so it doesn’t look very clean or professional anymore. :( 

I talked to my mom yesterday about some of the traumatic stuff that happened when I was a kid and got a surprising amount of supportive response from her. She is the only person in my family I still speak to because everyone else either verbally attacks me every time I see them or intentionally avoids me. It kind of freaked me out though because I thought that I was 12 when I was raped by my sister’s boyfriend but it turns out that I was only 6 when she lived in the house where it happened. Not that being 12 makes that monster’s actions any less revolting but I’m just...shocked that I’ve been holding this in for so long and literally just couldn’t remember. Like no wonder I’ve been so fucked up and ended up in so many horrible situations with abusers and rapists as an adult. I’ve had so little emotional support from my family/”friends” (few very huge exceptions) that it makes sense why I’m still a train wreck but I’m alternating between absolutely enraged and devastated so frequently now that it’s exhausting. I need to get Armin better trained for his tasks so I can take him with me to work because this really isn’t getting much better at the rate I was hoping it would with all the work I’ve been doing in therapy. The more I remember the worse I’m getting. I’m worlds better than last year though. I know I’m making progress but it’s hard not to get discouraged. Why can’t recovery be linear ?

To any other SD handler or person w/ CPTSD/PTSD  who happens to read this -- how did you deal with taking your dog to work? I’m scared to even ask! I know with a few more months of training Armin would be ready for going with me to work but frankly I’m scared to even have him do DPT or panic attack interruption for me at work or be there because of the amount of attention it would bring to me. He’s a very big dog (when I got him, I was having some dizziness issues and thought I’d need him to learn mobility. Thankfully this has passed but he’s a lorge boy and that has its own set of problems).

How do you even deal with symptoms at work?? My intestinal spasms, body pain, and nausea are starting back up from the panic attacks. I’m a temp right now so it’s really awkward. I’m using my whole lunch just to go to the bathroom, not much time to attempt to chill :( 

People keep coming up behind my cube and looming while I’m on the phone instead of coming into my field of view and scaring the shit out of me--I politely ask them to not come up behind me but it’s not working... I’m really scared because I left my last job due to how shitty they were about my disability. I was full time there but they did so fucking little to accommodate me even with so much paperwork from my dr. it was unbelievable (long story). Management was very harsh with me about my work quality as well after I got my accommodations worked out with HR (at the time, it was frequent bathroom breaks that was it). 

Someone in my family has a fake fucking service dog as well. I just keep thinking about it on days when I really need Armin and becoming so frustrated I could scream. She’s training her dog to do therapy work which is great but she’s wearing a fucking SD vest (not even “in training” -_-) on him and taking him in public when he knows no service tasks, she has no dr’s script for him, and she says she’s not disabled. Just doing it to “get him used to it so he does better as a therapy dog.” Her dog is also dog aggressive af at completely random times.  He has suddenly lunged, snarled, and bitten my dog’s face for no reason and tackled him when they were just hanging out and my dog was lying down not even bothering him. She’s literally posing a danger to people and other dogs by taking him with her and  if her dog did that random biting to another dog in public or god forbid a kid--that could bar people with actually service dogs from being able to go to that store or restaurant. It’s unbelievable. She is very aggro with me about the fact that I’m owner training and our dogs are pretty much at the same level when she dumped hundreds on training classes. I have no issue with training classes but I don’t understand why someone would care whether or not you take your dog to classes? It can be just as effective! They’re kind of mean to my dog (won’t let him outside when he needs out and in the bathroom or something, pushing him out of the way and bitching at him for no reason, etc.) Last straw was when her bf said Armin is just a “security blanket” for me and their dog is really doing a job. I can’t even bring it up with her because she’s such a weirdo about how perfect her dog is. It’d be blasphemous.

Dude I need to meditate. :��( I’m saving to leave this city because so many bad things have happened to me here and everyone knows me through my publicly calling out a guy who raped me. I’m so ready to go already to a place where I don’t know anybody and nobody knows me!!

bloop heres a post abt my 3-day trip to san diego B)

this was just gonna be a list of highlights but i ended up talking about a lot so it’s more like a Kind Of The Highlights But I Got A Little Carried Away list

it was a 2 hr drive so i put on some tunes & forced everyone in the car to listen to my thousands of anime ops and piano covers it was *fire emoji* (im not on mobile)

at the end jaelin said she couldn’t hear it the whole time rip

made myself carsick looking at mob psycho memes while we looked for a parking spot at the museum for 20 minutes (it was worth it they were good memes)

the museum we went to had a whole gaming thing going on where they just had a shitload of games out for ppl to play & one of them was just dance projected onto like an entire wall basically & i mean i didnt play but it was fun watching my mom try her best 

she played against two of my sisters who both beat her by more than double her score hgdhgksd bye mom

got a nauseating headache in the science museum & took the opportunity to sit down & look at more mob psycho memes for 35 minutes while the advil kicked in

felt better by the time we went to see this fuckin movie about national parks in the us but idk it was like. the whole reason my mom wanted to go to san diego was to see this movie bc they were getting rid of it soon & after seeing it i can see why they’re taking it out kjgkdjgksd like!!! it would’ve been cool if it told u shit about the parks like fauna and flora shit but it had this dumb little narrative abt these three campers traveling to each park & fucking around & i looked over at jaelin at one point & she was asleep & i was like same

im being too hard on it, it was kind of interesting to watch and had some cool visuals but the acting was pretty embarrassing & unnecessary, i wish it would’ve tried to be a documentary instead of entertaining. that’s my Professional Review of this random movie they’re removing forever soon, hope u enjoyed

realized i had more free time at the hotel than i thought i would & v heavily regretted not bringing my tablet to draw aaaaaahhhhh it was ok tho bc i brought my big sketchbook so i just drew in there B)

i’ve been drawing a lot of terukis i think i accidentally discovered a hidden love for him on the midnight shores of the san diego bay

(what i actually discovered is that he’s v easy to project a rly specific part of myself onto hgkdgksdjkgjsdk)

rented bikes to ride by the bay & it was super fun bc i havent ridden a bike in a long time but like. the second half started getting really hard for me & i thought i was just weak shit bc i literally never exercise but then i realized my back tire had gone flat hfdjghsd my legs were..... so sore

also the seat was shaped weird so my ass was sore for the rest of the trip. it’s still sore tbh. i have a bruised ass

went to a model train museum which was pretty cool bc the little towns had little people & jaelin and i were making up stories for them (my favorite recurring joke was pointing out ppl that had fallen over & calling them dead)

after the trains we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to stay a third day to see more museum shit bc why not so we managed to grab a room at a new hotel and #Locked In our decision

on the way to the second hotel we got a flat tire so i was like convinced i was cursed bc wtf it was literally on the same day???

while we waited for the tire repair i got a pink lemonade from taco bell and it was amazing i can’t believe i ever thought piece of shit sprite was worth even looking at over this

ok so i need to talk about the second hotel we stayed at because it was... literally the fanciest hotel i have ever stayed at in my entire 22 year old life

it was a mariott?? but a fuckin Fancy Mariott ok first of all we were on the 19th floor which just..... what the fuck

floor level was the 6th floor, this bitch went underground (though that might have just been the parking garage idk)

the lobby bathroom was like. jesus christ. to flush the toilet u wave ur hand over a sensor??? what’s wrong with just automatic toilets???? why are these toilets so extra????? i couldn’t even get it to work for so long jgkjdkgsd i hate technology

also there were moist towelettes sitting in a neatly folded pile by the sinks like what even. i thought it was paper towels but then it was wet

the lobby also had this fancy-ass bar/lounge where they served starbucks but u had to have a room key to get in i think

in the elevators to get to the rooms you can’t even enter the floor level until you hold your key card against a sensor like what the fuck..... we had to get some strangers to tell us how to do it gjdks i bet if we hadn’t been able to figure it out the elevator wouldve just dropped us 12 floors to our death like Access Denied, Assholes

the room itself was super fucking cramped tho which makes sense like if im gonna be able to afford anything at a place like this u better believe it’s gonna be the size of a damn peanut. it was the fanciest peanut ive ever seen in my life tho

the view was uhh we were directly across from some tall office building so at night u could like see into all the rooms it was kinda cool but also weird

there was a jar of hershey’s kisses on the coffee table when we got there but it was dark chocolate so like get the fuck outta here with that shit how dare you assault Mine Eyes (i ate like 4)

it rly was a tiny room tho and it didnt help that there were 5 of us rip... like there was a main room and a bedroom and a bathroom and already that’s making it sound bigger than it was hgkdjgskd 

but even tho it was small it had a lot like.. there was a kitchenette that was big enough for like 1 person to stand there but it had a fridge/freezer, sink, dishwasher, toaster, microwave, cupboards & coffeemaker like there was so much shit crammed in there, this wasn’t no minimalist living space it was just. a lot crammed into one tiny floor plan

anyway yeah it was really bizarre for me to be in a place like that & i just constantly felt like i didn’t belong there but that was mostly my anxiety lol i really dont like being in fancy places in general idk. it was still kinda fun tho

the natural history museum was cool, they had a bunch of animal skulls & taxidermy which i thought was pretty neat. all their dinosaur stuff was in the basement tho which u had to pay extra to see which like. bye

they did have some cool movies tho, they were like nature documentaries, one on marine biology around baja california and the other on animals of the galapagos & those were pretty neat, way better than that national parks shit we saw at the science center jgkdjkskdkdjg 

ok so this one’s more of a buildup over the 3 days so im gonna give a lil 3-part summary

day 1: we went to panda express for dinner & i had leftovers so i was like “sweet im saving these for when we get home” (bc the hotel had a fridge right)

day 2: got a rly good burger from a vegan place, my brother got the same one but didnt want his second half so i was like “cool more leftovers im gonna have so much good food when we get home this is perfect”

day 3: fucKIGN LEFT BOTH CONTAINERS IN THE FRIDGE ACCIDENTALLY WHEN WE CHECKED OUT HKDJFLSKDG i was literally so good about it the first two days like when we switched hotels i made sure not to forget them and i held onto them & everything & then halfway through the third day i was like “SHIT”

it’s ok tho bc for dinner that 3rd day we did panda again & i got the same thing so i have the same leftovers again hehehehehe

ok i think that’s basically everything & im not just saying that bc it’s 1:45 am and ive been working on this for like an hour and a half at this point.,.,. overall it was pretty fun, i think i liked the bikes & those animal movies the best... also the drive out bc i got to play my music lmfao (i love sharing my music ok)

anyway the end thank u

Not homeless

I’m pretty burnt out at work at this point ~4pm. I felt sick this week, I think due to having a lot going on and the weather changes. I also think I’m pmsing so I’m more tired than usual. It’ll be interesting to see when my period will come this month and if I will return to having a regular cycle.

It was match week last week. On Monday Matt found out that for the second time, he did not match. During this period, I spent the most time with him- saw him like 10 days in the last 12/13 days. Which now that I’m typing it out, is a LOT and the most I’ve ever seen him. I think because he was so vulnerable, he confided in me a lot. During that week, there was a soap process/scramble where unmatched candidates can try to find an open slot. He told me that only his family and I know that he was doing that and he didn’t tell his friends about it. He felt the chances of getting into a program through soap was so low that he pretty much gave up/didn’t try his hardest. Which is a shame because he got one in person interview and one phone interview. Anyway, I did my best to be supportive. On the day he didn’t match, I sent him lunch through uber eats. I bought him a stuffed animal the weekend prior for good luck and in case he got bad news. I hung out with him and provided comfort. I enjoyed doing all that with him but it was also pretty draining in retrospect lol. Now he’s bouncing back and I hope he can do better this time around.

Last Saturday, my uncle came to pick my grandma up to take her out to eat breakfast and bring her to his place for dinner. My mom and dad had plans to go to a party that day and therefore my grandma traveled alone with my uncle. Normally my grandma clings onto my mom. My dad hates that and wishes my grandma would rotate around her other 6 six kids places instead of staying at our home all the time. When my grandma left, my dad was so happy to not have to be responsible for her for a few hours and allow my mom the freedom of not having my grandma to babysit. I think my mom was happy to have some space as well. She ended up going to yoga with me and my friend for the first time. Afterwards, I took her to thread eyebrows (for myself, but eventually she was curious and I pushed her to do it). She was always afraid of eyebrow hair falling out or becoming too thin, so she never allowed people to wax or thread her brows, but she actually really liked how it turned out. We also had lunch together in Monterey park with my friend before I brought her home. She was really grateful for me taking her out and had a joyous time. This makes me think that I should spend more time with my family and less with my partner during the weekends lol.

Last night I saw matt again spontaneously. His parents had just bought a new car for him. He called me while I was driving home from work and then asked me to hang out when I was approaching downtown. I said no it’s okay let’s just stay home, but he resisted (to try to be cute) and I don’t understand these cues so I’m just like okay make it happen then. The biggest stressor about being with him is our differences in time management and planning. He’s more free flowing, spontaneous and relaxed. I’m normally very punctual and considerate of other people’s times and pretty good at judging how much time so and so takes. He said he would go get dressed and head out to my house to pick me up. I was a little annoyed already because I knew that he’s kinda slow in getting ready and I’ll probably have to wait like 20 min for him. In hindsight it’s really not a big deal. I could have gone home and relaxed for a bit. But I think I’m just more anxious overall because he’s a secret from my family and I get stressed out anytime he comes to my house. I want to avoid my mom asking me where I’m going/who I’m going with. And avoid them finding out about him. So instead of going home, I told him we can meet up somewhere along the way. We ended up doing that and because I was annoyed and hangry and possibly PMSing, I started scolding him for not respecting my time. Last week, we had agreed to meet for dinner at 5:45, and he didn’t show up til 6:15. Over the weekend he got a phone call related to his career while we were having lunch and I ended up just waiting alone for like 45 minutes. Also, we stayed at an Airbnb a mile away from his house. He forgot to bring his hair product so I offered to take him home to do his hair. I waited in the car for like 10 min for him to do that. I guess on the surface I try to appear supportive, but the selfish part of me does not like waiting around and these incidents plus others added up.

I scolded him more through text in the morning as well, saying that he comes off as not very reliable. That if he shows up on time 4/5 times that’s still 1/5 times that he’s late. I told him that he gives himself too much credit for doing the minimum and he gets complacent easily. And I connected it to how he acts in his career, which is why I think he didn’t match. I was pretty emotional in sending the texts (I think I’m PMSing) but I felt his response was direct and comforting. I like that he doesn’t give in to the emotional turmoil (because I don’t think he has the capacity to) lol which is good because in my last relationship, both of us would be emotional during these “fights” and it would take longer to move on from it. Honestly, it’s not a big deal. Because if this is the biggest problem between us then I think that’s okay. I won’t expect him to change, but I hope that we can work together to make our shared experiences better and more fair.

Anyway, over the weekend he said that I make him happy and that he wants to make me happy too. And he told me to choose a restaurant for dinner. I first said hot pot, but he’s like is there anything new you want to try? So I hit him with SUGARFISH LOL. We ended up going and the bill was like $96.

During one of our talks a few weeks ago about him not matching and going to have a $20/hr job… he said he will save some money for applications and spend the rest on hanging out with me. I think he was joking but he said that’s around $400 a week we can spend on fun. When he asked me how much I’d put into this “fun pool” I said that he can pay and I’ll do the labor i.e. planning, bookkeeping, etc. I don’t know if I’m shooting myself in the foot but I do feel that I do more of the “laborious” activities and he just pays which is a simple act that doesn’t require much thought- and that I’m technically working harder for our relationship. 

However, I don’t think I should think about it in that sense. Naturally, women are more nurturing and care more about their relationships. Men are dependent on these relationships but don’t necessarily understand what the women need (in hetero relationships) from them. He is working hard in his career to provide for me and his future family. So i’ll try to think of it as we’re using our strengths as a team. I’m good at and enjoy planning, and should plan for our enjoyment, not to expect him to mirror me. The last time I saw my indian mama, she gave me some relationship advice - i told her how my sister in law was complaining to me about my brother being spoiled and lazy. she said it takes asian men like 8 years to learn how to do things/clean up around the house because they just don’t know!! she noted how asian men, compared to western men, have lower EQs and she repeated this a lot- they just don’t know. and she said it’s okay that they don’t know because it means they don’t have bad intentions. however, she said if they do know and they continue causing harm, then that’s bad. and i totally agree with that. 

2018 sucked

it was probably the shittiest year of my life, and that’s not an easy title to claim. let’s recap:

it all started way back in early january, when our subway came under new ownership and we got a new manager, who had worked there for a shorter period than i had (yeah, i was part-time working during college, she was full-time, but w/e) and it all went downhill fast. our manager wasn’t bad, she just was just trying to deal with all the new regulations we were facing and the fact that we were Massively Understaffed™ for being located in a fucking mall. like, for contrast, our old managers let us get away with not turning the line coolers off at night if we were really busy, but under the new owners, we had to clean the legs of tables to get the salt of them. i decided to quit in march after having minors stay and help me close even though they were off the clock since they were required to punch out at 9:30 and still getting yelled at for staying too long and not making everything Perfect. it was so stressful trying to work both faster and harder, so i quit. then, college got out in april and i was looking for internships all over and applying everywhere, but i never got even so much as an interview request. so, june came and i just said “fuck it” and applied to other subways closer to home. ended up getting an interview the next day at a different subway, 2 miles from the old one. i got the job and starting working to find out the subway was also Massively Understaffed™ but the manager was more chill, so it seemed fine. turns out the reason the manager was chill is that he was high. like, all the time. this resulted in him having the memory of a goldfish. like, i specifically told him and his assistant manager that i couldn’t work one day and yet he still called asking where i was when i very plainly explained it twice. and he also scheduled a meeting on the day i request off for my niece’s baptism. at 8am. on a sunday. at the same time, i managed to get an interview at a local factory. it wasn’t really an internship nor in my field, but it was a job and it paid $12/hr so i was like, hell yeah, why not. i managed to get the job and started july 1st, which was great, buuuuuut... the job was super boring; it was pretty much doing the same repetitive tasks over and over again for 7.5 hours a day while ~~listening~~ being subjected to country music. BUT, we got 3 breaks a day and it was nice having a chill job. i came up with a lot of really good writing ideas for a novel that’s been a super long wip because my mind was mostly free during work since it was so repetitive. at this time, i’m still working at subway, mostly weekends and some 5-close shifts. i’m not getting a whole lot of sleep and so that probably explains what happens on july 25th, probably the single shittiest day of my life. i get into the factory and the normal manager is gone on vacation and one of my coworkers is taking over. she tells me that i’ve been missing the least important step in the process of making some parts that i’ve been doing for days now. so naturally, i mess it up a couple more times, but only when she’s watching, because ofc. this happens 3 times and the third time i kind of chuckle to myself because i’m literally only doing it when she’s watching. she takes this to mean i’m laughing at her and yells at me about how i think it’s a joke and blah blah blah, like that’s not what i meant at all but she won’t let me explain. THEN, i get out of work and i’m already on the verge of tears because i have a migraine from lack of sleep and i hate getting yelled at, and i see a text i got while at work (we’re not allowed phones on our person at all at the factory. national security stuff apparently) that my grandma is in the hospital and not going to make it. i just... lose it. i go home and just sit outside on a chair, cuddling my cat and gross sobbing for the first time i can recall. i’m supposed to work a 5-9 shift at subway tonight, but i am not in any state to work. i call them through tears saying i can’t work tonight, i’m visiting my grandma in the hospital in muskegon, an hour away. she’s unconscious when i get there. she dies an hour later, while me and my family are eating dinner downstairs in the basement where there’s no signal. eventually tomorrow comes. it’s now july 26th, which if you know me, is my birthday. my 21st birthday, in fact. you know how for most people, their 21st is the best day of your life? yeah, it was one of the worst for me. i still had to get up at 6am for the factory work, then run home, get changed, and work 5-9 at subway. the only bright spot were two helpful coworkers. one from the factory gave me a butterscotch shot, saying you should still try and enjoy your birthday and my subway coworker bought a hershey pie for me and gave me a hug and some helpful advice. (she had been through a similar experience with her mom passing, so she knew a lot about grief.) i took her advice on letting yourself be happy and decided to go to my friends’ meetup that weekend, which i had requested off from subway previously. it’s a while away, but this was planned a long time ago and i don’t get to see my college friends in the summer other than this, so i’m not missing this. but, when i’m almost there i get a call from subway insisting that i work this weekend to make up for missing my 4 hour shift yesterday. i’m furious because i missed it for legitimate reasons and i was already over 2 hours away and i was NOT driving back. (the reason they’re insisting is because they don’t want to pay my coworker overtime, despite the fact she’s living in a trailer park only off her subway income, too.) they say they might have to fire me and i’m like, sure, i have another job and i already put in my 2 weeks lol. so i go there and try to forget this whole week ever happened. the funeral is on monday, the factory gives me it off so i can attend. there’s lots of tears. lots and lots. my grandma touched a lot of people’s lives; she’s one of the kindest people i’ve ever known. she probably would have supported my sexuality if i ever told her, i regret not doing so earlier. i come back to my factory job on tuesday, and as if the universe is answering some unanswered “could things get any worse?” the hiring manager informs me i’m fired, as if it had to be july 31st, to add to the shithole that july 2018 was. this was a temp position to begin with, and i was leaving in a couple weeks anyway, but this is just another blow to an already grieving 21-year-old. i may have just lost both my jobs and my grandmother in the span of 7 days. i leave the factory and get in my car and just. scream. time passes. the pain of july slowly fades from a roaring inferno all over my body to a dull pulsing. good things start to happen again. i move into an apartment with 3 friends, get a job at the theatre after a lot of paperwork issues, i make the cut for an a capella group and find new friends, develop a crush on someone (something i haven’t really had since high school - but that’s a story for another time), and actually start getting my shit together. things are definitely looking up, despite the fact i had the worst month of life a couple months ago. ...and then comes december, as if it’s trying to challenge july to a battle for shittiest month ever. final exams are coming up, i spend a lot of the previous week leading up to exams rehearsing for performances (i had 4 performances in a week’s span), not much studying could be done. not that studying would help that much, as we would see, but w/e. i ended up forgetting my book with all the important formulas and relationships in it that are too complex to memorize, so i completely bombed that final, and therefore failed the whole class. i’m already having to take an extra semester, failing this class does NOT help. i barely stayed above a 3.0 gpa, a requirement for most internships. on the same day we got final grades back, my mom got a call saying my grandpa had died, only a week before christmas. my whole family went back up to do the whole funeral thing again. we are getting awfully familiar with this nursing home (my mom lost both her parents and an uncle in 5 months). finally, on new year’s eve i decide it’s either now or never to admit my feelings, so i ask my crush out. i get rejected, which is mostly what i expected, but it still knocks the wind out of me. so yeah, 2018 was super extra shitty for me. but at the same time, i feel like i’ve grown a lot as a person. i’ve made a bunch of new friends, gained a niece, learned a lot about pain, and done a lot of things i never thought i’d do. hell, i had the balls to ask a guy out, which was something that frightened me to my core. i went on a trip to dc and learned more about the injustices happening here, i went camping/hiking with friends, and went tubing behind a boat. so, i’m not gonna pretend it’s all bad.

Great-Great-Grandmother Wendy Bishop Died Aged 97, But She Lived An Extraordinary Life First

Courtesy the Bishop family

People around the world are remembering family and friends who have died during the coronavirus pandemic. BuzzFeed News is proud to bring you some of their stories. To support our coverage, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.

Wendy Bishop was the first person to die from the coronavirus in the small town where she lived in the Scottish Highlands. She was 97 years old, and had lived an extraordinary life: serving as a medic during the second world war, raising six children, and later opening a hospital for injured dolls and teddy bears where she repaired toys sent to her from around the world.

Now, Bishop will finally be laid to rest alongside her wartime sweetheart, who was killed in battle at the age of 20, almost 80 years ago.

Wendy Beatrice Austin Bishop, one of three siblings, was born in Northfleet in Kent, in the southeast of England in 1923. She left school at 15 and went to work at a local kennel.

Soon after, World War II broke out, and she was evacuated to Hampshire, but at the age of 17, she enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force as a medic and served from 1941 to 1945.

Courtesy the Bishop family

A picture of Bishop taken during the second world war.

She was stationed at RAF Oban in Scotland and met her first boyfriend, Roy Stephens. He died at the age of just 20 on his first mission with the Royal Air Force, so they never got to live out their future together.

Almost 80 years later, his relatives are still in touch with Bishop’s family, and her ashes will be buried alongside her first love in Golders Green crematorium, north London.

“She totally loved him,” her granddaughter Johanna Bishop said. “And of course, when he was killed, my nan met my granddad and they had six children.”

After the war, Bishop moved back to England, to Hampshire, where she married and had her children, and later relocated to Bournemouth, where she first opened a shop.

Bishop was an adventurous woman, and after her marriage broke down in the 1970s, she just decided to start again, hundreds of miles further north. She lived out the rest of her life in Scotland.

Courtesy the Bishop family

First she moved to Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands, and then on to Grantown-on-Spey, where she opened her “hospital” — Toys and Treasures — in the high street.

Bishop also loved to write — she wrote letters and poetry, and she kept diaries. After she died, Johanna found her grandmother’s memoirs, “pages and pages and pages” of her life story, that her family hadn’t even known she was writing. They are now considering getting trying to get them published.

“She always liked fairies and things, and I think the Highlands to her was probably magical, with the heather on the hills and things like that, she was so creative and made a lot of things, she just loved it up here,” Johanna said.

Bishop started her toy repair business from home, but she had so much work from all over the world that she decided to open a shop. She would fix up beloved dolls and teddy bears and send them back to their owners dressed in little hats and coats. Her hospital received visitors from all over the world, including Princess Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd.

“She thought because she had so much going on at home that she should open a shop,” Johanna said, “because she had dolls and teddies sent from everywhere.”

“I’d pop in the shop just to see what other exciting things that she’d received,” she added. “It was just extraordinary.”

Courtesy the Bishop family

Bishop at a Christmas fair.

Johanna, who spent her early years in Bournemouth before moving up to Scotland, where she now lives, fondly remembers her summer holidays with her gran in the Highlands.

Bishop would travel down to the south coast of England to collect Johanna and her sister Lisa, and then they would take the long coach journey back up to Scotland together, where they would spend their whole summers.

“I could go on all day about the things she did,” Johanna said. “She took me up the Cairngorms, up the lift. I mean years ago, it was bloody dangerous. I was terrified. I remember I had little red wellies on and being absolutely terrified.”

Courtesy the Bishop family

“My nan always had a dolls’ house,” she recalled, “and this is something I’ll always hold onto — she always had a dollhouse, so we always had things to play with, the miniature cakes and all the miniature things that always fascinated me, all this miniature stuff. And so when we were coming up here, we were so happy we didn’t want to go home.”

Courtesy the Bishop family

“We had the best holidays,” Johanna said. “When I was a child, not many of my friends went on holiday, or went anywhere, but we’d say, ‘Oh, we’re going to Scotland,’ and I just remember feeling lucky and…different, because my nan came and took us away to this wonderful place.”

Bishop also loved to party. She loved Christmas, and she loved having all of the family round to her house for a big knees-up. In her later years, she also liked going to the shops on a Sunday and loved going to the garden centre — where she’d often catch up with friends.

“She’d always stop and speak to somebody,” Johanna said, “and when she got talking to somebody you knew you were there for about two hours, because people were so interested to talk to her.”

She was also very generous and supported people living in poverty in Nepal right up until she died — charity work that her descendants have vowed to continue in her memory.

“You had to watch what you said to my nan,” Johanna said. “If you said you liked something, she would give it to you. She was so, so kind, very generous, very generous.”

Courtesy the Bishop family

Bishop was also famous among her family for her Easter bonnets, which she would make for all of her descendants right up until the year before she died — and she wasn’t just a grandmother but a great-grandmother and a great-great-grandmother. And she managed to keep up with them all by being active on Facebook.

But she did not get to meet the family’s newest arrivals before she died, her great-great-granddaughters, Lorena and Freya.

Courtesy Bishop family

Bishop in the 1980s with her homemade Easter bonnet.

Freya’s parents — Johanna’s son and his partner — were given a gift of a toy elephant for Freya, who was born on Monday. They named the elephant Wendy.

“I don’t want to ever forget my nan, because she wasn’t just a normal granny,” Johanna said. “She was something different.”

Bishop died on April 18 at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. She had tested positive for COVID-19.

She was a well-known character in Grantown-on-Spey, and on the day of her funeral, local residents lined up to pay their respects.

Courtesy the Bishop family

The Guard of Honour in Grantown-on-Spey.

“There was somebody from the army, somebody from the RAF, somebody from the fire station, and the police,” Johanna said. “They all gave her a salute as she went past in the coffin…and people came and lined the route which my nan went.”

In her final hours in hospital, Johanna and her aunt were allowed onto the ward to see Bishop for one last time. They stayed for two hours, and as her beloved grandmother drank a cup of tea, Johanna told her not to worry about the family, and even told her a little white lie to put her mind at ease — that baby Freya had arrived safely already and that she and her parents were doing well.

Bishop died just hours later.

“She really enjoyed that cup of tea and I thought that I’m going to hold onto that memory,” Johanna said.

“These are memories that we’re going to cherish now because it was just nice to be able to say goodbye.” ●

Courtesy the Bishop family

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THE SAME ANGELS WHO TRIED TO SCREW US ALSO LET US DO THIS, BUT THERE'S NO WAY ANYTHING SO SHORT AND WRITTEN IN SUCH AN INFORMAL STYLE COULD HAVE ANYTHING USEFUL TO SAY ABOUT SUCH AND SUCH TOPIC, WHEN PEOPLE WITH DEGREES IN THE SUBJECT HAVE ALREADY WRITTEN MANY THICK BOOKS ABOUT IT

But it's easy to figure this out: just take a shower. A to B, but it is the true test of a language is how small it makes your life a lot simpler.1 I think, McCarthy found his theoretical exercise transformed into an actual programming language—and a more subdued version for HN. Ideas 8 and 9 only became part of Lisp by accident, the frequency of helpful chance meetings in the Valley. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. Customers will worry you're going to optimize a number, the one to discover its replacement. Often they have to work quite closely with them. Obviously they were smart, but they are much hungrier for deals.2

Even that threshold is getting lower, as people watch others take the plunge and survive. When they demo it, one of the big dogs will notice and take it away. My hypothesis is that succinctness is power, or is close enough that except in pathological examples, I thought succinctness could be considered identical with power.3 It may also be because if you do you'll blow your chances of an academic career.4 But he gave us a piece of paper saying they didn't own our software; and six months later we were bought by Yahoo for much more than they should for the amount of selling required in an industry is always inversely proportional to some prediction of its quality.5 Write rereadable code. Half the distinguishing qualities of the eminent become scheduled, and that's one of the two numbers? A term sheet is a summary of what the solution turns out to be responsible for both Lisp's strange appearance and its most distinctive features. By accepting the term sheet, the startup agrees to turn away other VCs for some set amount of time while this firm does the due diligence required for the deal to close, so we are now three months into the life of a hypothetical startup.6 What you should not do, I enjoy it. VC firm will not screw you too outrageously, because other founders would avoid them if word got out.

So one way to do it for less than a million per startup. If you really think you have a number of VCs now, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior. I mean, in 1958, and popular programming languages are pretty much equivalent. Within large organizations, it can take days to really understand it again when you return to it. They don't really grasp the risk they're taking till the deal's about to close.7 Hacker News. The angel deal takes two weeks to close, so we try to standardize everything.8 Like a contrarian investment fund, someone following this strategy will almost always be doing things that seem wrong to the average person today.9

They buy a lot of good publicity for the VCs.10 It's getting more straightforward to get things done. A few steps before a Rubik's Cube is solved, it still looks like a mess.11 You can't answer that; if you want to work on, so long as no one can prove it's his fault. Perhaps it's because startups are less of a zero sum game than most types of business; they are rarely killed by competitors. They've invested in dozens of startups, elite universities will play less of a zero sum game.12 So I asked them, what do you do that, but probably hurts. And yet he seems pretty commanding, doesn't he?13 The problems are different in the early stages.14 It might be hard to get them out.

It's the second that matters. Maybe things will be different a year from now, if the economy continues to get worse, but so far there is zero slackening of interest among potential founders that startups were over, and discipline is no longer necessary.15 Plenty of good engineers got made into bad managers that way. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to deal with in a startup, managing them is one of the founders, and one that most people won't even try. Even that threshold is getting lower, as people generally do with admissions of failure, they put it off for as long as possible.16 Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, says the Old Testament in political questions, but materially the world now has a lot more than money. You're at least close enough to work that the smell of it makes you hungry. This territory is occupied mostly by individual angel investors—people investing money they made from their own startups.

That gave me a way to generate ideas for startups: what do people who inherit money, and much larger amounts of it. But not as small as they might seem. And in the process keep your mind open enough that a big idea to appear in the mainstream. According to the National Association of Business Incubators, there are about 800 incubators in the US now, only about 50 are likely to pay you for, then what else are they for, and how much funnier a bunch of kids with webcams can be than a front page controlled by editors, and how much stock they each have.17 Curiosity turns work into play. At first they're always dismissed as being unsuitable for real work. You can do it on that computer.18 For outsiders this translates into two ways to win.19 It's more likely to pretend to like what you do.

The fact that all these languages are Turing-equivalent means that, strictly speaking, you can fix it yourself. Work toward finding one.20 But I don't think that's a bias of mine. Sometimes jumping from one sort of work: if you're in a startup can stay in grad school, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to guarantee that you'd always be behind. You have to be shaped by admissions officers. If you do this on too small a scale you'll just guarantee failure. And you can start today. And that's kind of exciting, when you go from net consumer to net producer. And people's desires seem to be on the path to some goal you're supposed to be working on. You may beat the insiders, and yet he knows what language you should write it in.21 This weakness often extends right up to the CEO. A lot of ancient philosophy had the quality—and I don't mean to suggest that our investors were nothing but a drag on us.

The first component is particularly helpful in the first Java white paper that Java was designed to fix some problems with C. What seemed like an anomaly to them was in fact cause and effect.22 For the same reason Google and Facebook have remained independent: money guys undervalue the most innovative startups. Every programmer must have seen code that some clever person has made marginally shorter by using dubious programming tricks. And that's what the malaise one feels in high school I used to want to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower.23 My only leisure activities were running, which I spent worrying about, but not design it. You won't have it driving you if your stated ambition is merely to start a rapidly growing business as software.24

Notes

He had such a discovery. One professor friend says that the usual misquotation is closer to the company's PR people worked hard to mentally deal with them. The idea of getting too high a valuation cap at all.

Of course, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been a waste of time, is rated at-1.

FreeBSD 1.

When I talk about startups. The First Two Hundred Years. I put it this way that makes curators and dealers use neutral-sounding nonsense seems to have confused readers, though.

The rest exist to this talk, so that you can use to make a conscious effort to make money, you usually have to be a special title for actual partners. 5 million cap, but I realize I'm going to give up, how do they decide on the programmers had seen what GUIs had done for desktop computers.

It would have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal. When VCs asked us how long it would be improper to name names, while she likes getting attention in the Baskin-Robbins. One measure of the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses.

But then I realized the other hand, they mean. In practice the first person to person depending on their own interest. Watt reinvented the steam engine.

And they are bleeding cash really fast. I've also heard them called Mini-VCs and the 4K of RAM was in charge of HR at Lotus in the US is becoming less fragmented, and tax rates. Doh.

But I'm convinced there were no strong central governments.

And though they have a browser and get nothing. But there are certain qualities that help in that it also worked for a sufficiently identifiable style, you might be 20 or 30 times as much income. I couldn't believe it or not, don't make users register to read stories. University Ave in Palo Alto.

If anyone wants to see artifacts from it. Don't be fooled by grammar. What should you do. But wide-area bandwidth increased more than linearly with its size.

But it's a departure from the rest of the mail on LL1 led me to do with the founders'. This trend is one that had been climbing in through the buzz that surrounds wisdom in this, I had a contest to describe what's happening till they measure their returns. As he is at pains to point out that this isn't strictly true, it may have no way to avoid using it out of school. Some of the big winners are all that matters financially for investors.

Some of the word programmers care about. But it's useful to consider these two ideas separately. Realizing that much better to read stories.

I'm not saying that if you pack investor meetings with you, they'll have big bags of cumin for the average NBA player's salary during the Ming Dynasty, when we say it's ipso facto right to buy it.

P 500 CEOs in 2002 was 35,560. The conventional 1 in 10 success rate for startups, and the average Edwardian might well guess wrong. Cit. Yes, I use the local builders built everything in it.

At the time it was not drinking that kool-aid at the exact same thing—trying to decide whether to go the bathroom, and would probably a losing bet for a number here only to the erosion of the more powerful version written in C and C, and jobs encourage cooperation, not how much we really depend on Aristotle would be easy to imagine how an investor is more important for the correction. Founders at Work. The need has to grind.

They influence one another, it tends to happen fast, like play in a difficult position. Basically, the closest anyone has come is Secretary of Labor Statistics, about 28%.

In reality, wealth is measured by what you've done than where you go to a later Demo Day. One advantage startups have over you could probably starve the trolls of the word wealth, not you. But this is one that we wouldn't have the luxury of choosing among seed investors, is a lot, or at least on me; how can anything regressive be good employees either.

Success here is that promising ideas are not in 1950 something one could do as a monitor. In practice you can send your business plan to, but the churn is high, and since technological progress is accelerating, so much better than Jessica.

I was a sudden rush of interest, you can't tell you that if the similarity extended to returns.

Instead of making the broadest type of x. And startups that get killed by overspending might have to solve the problem, we don't have to decide whether you're a nerd, rather technical sense of getting too high a valuation.

And that is not just something the mainstream media needs to, but the problems all fall into a decent college. But although I started doing research for this is one of their name, but it is certainly part of your universities is significantly better than the don't-be-evil end. As far as I do in proper essays.

This was certainly true in the usual standards for truth. But there is something inexperienced founders. It doesn't happen often. If big companies to build their sites, and the first wave of hostile takeovers in the mid 1980s.

As usual the popular image is several decades behind reality. In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of computer security, and that injustice is what the US since the war had been trained to expect the opposite way from the tube of their upbringing in their lifetimes.

Here we are, the penultimate episode, and I’m already a little sad. As much as I’m going to miss this surprisingly loveable little show, I think I might miss our after reviewing tradition even more. OK maybe not more, it really is a very sweet show, but just as much!

It’s been great! I hope you’ve felt as creatively free as I have!

Crow (crowsworldofanime.com) and I have been pretty united in out praise of Zombieland Saga so far but this was an odd episode. Let’s see if the trend can stay true to the end. Not that I’m teaching you guys anything but Crow is bold man.

Well, bold-ish…

this is meta, why is Zombieland showing me watching the show?

Straight off the bat, this episode was a bit of a gamble for Zombieland. Not that it’s unusual to have the before last episode take a tonal turn, it’s actually fairly common. However, this week’s Zombieland wasn’t only uncharacteristically sober, it reframed the main character into something that may not be as likable to the core audience. Effectively throwing out a lot of character clichés and even robbing Sakura of any real redemption arc. Any feelings about the narrative shuffle?

You’ve honed in on exactly the part of the episode that left me feeling uneasy — at least, emotionally jolted. Sakura’s despair and self-reproach are almost too familiar! And at the same time, those apparent failures in her life, and her reaction to them, robbed her of the ability to understand something important: That she really helped those old ladies. That she really had friends who rooted for her. The insight changed how we have to interpret the entire Sakura arc, and it also raises an important psychological “what if…” But let’s leave that for later.

sort of…

As soon as the episode started I got excited. Last week’s cliffhanger was one of the best I’ve seen in a while and I couldn’t wait to see how they were going to resolve it with so little time left. I never expected them to play it straight. Although, I’m not sure what I expected at all.

You and me both! The show’s conditioned me to expect subtle irreverence at every turn, but this time, they plowed straight ahead.

Sakura has lost her memories of being a zombie but remembers her life. Which turns out to be frustrating and unsatisfying. Moreover, her traumatic death is just the last straw in what she considers an utter failure of a life. Completely demoralized, Sakura more or less shuts down, and pushes everyone and everything else away.

she’s pretty much always like this

The opening scenes, with Sakura freaking out over the zombies, were a nice way to call back to episode 1 and bookend the series though. Even the visuals were parallel.

And, of course, she just had to meet Tae first! And Tae has such a gentle way of saying “Good morning!”

Saki looked so worried about Sakura and it was adorable!

All of their reactions were just heartbreaking!

agreed

I must say, that was an impressively down to earth portrayal of depression. It was a bit obvious, although I’m not sure they could have done otherwise considering the time constraints, but it was also unflinching. There was something weirdly admirable about Zombieland’s resolve to not just let Sakura magically snap out of it.

That’s another aspect that left me feeling so unsettled — and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It was too spot on. But given who Sakura is, and given what this show’s presented so far, I can think of only a handful of other shows that could trigger this kind of reaction.

this framing is brilliant

Equally laudable, in my opinion, was the grim repercussions on Saki, Junko and Lily who attempted to help.These situations don’t just affect one person, they affect everyone around as well. And they affected them all in different ways. This was far from a flattering depiction of Sakura but sometimes, when you fall far enough, you just don’t have the strength to empathise anymore.

I couldn’t believe how bad I felt for the others as they tried to help her! Especially Saki and poor Lily! For Lily to go from “Before you said you thought that star and my smile were cute!” to sobbing uncontrollably into her pillow drove home a critical point: That until now, these zombie idols have supported each other; and now that one of those pillars of support is crumbling, all of them are in turmoil.

and the repetition makes it truly special

Once again, Zombieland Saga is tackling a fairly serious and not at all funny subject openly and resisting the urge to turn it into farce. I really didn’t expect any of this when I started the show!

I remember the old M*A*S*H series. Great comedy for its time, but because of the comedic expectations, it had an opportunity to make powerfully dramatic points — as long as they didn’t do it too often. I get that vibe from this show!

You know what, I see it now. I loved M*A*S*H (use to watch reruns with my folks). That cutting sensibility is very much like Zombieland!

most of us feel this way

After having hurt the people closest to her (and having them retreat helpless, not knowing what to do), Sakura just aimlessly wanders the night ending up in a park.

Here we see the return of the creepy police officer. He didn’t really have much to do other than once again instill the feeling of déjà vue. But just like everything else this week, the familiar scene played out completely differently. The downtrodden and hurt Sakura was almost pleading to be shot. A sort of balm to her intangible pain. The entire thing was extremely unsettling and yet, oddly pretty.

I remember thinking it was tragically beautiful.

this scene was delicae, poignant and solemnly meaningful…

I should have realized it sooner of course. Sakura has always been a bit helpless after all. I should have seen that she was being set up as a damsel in distress. Still, such an unusual distress for anime.

In the end though, Sakura at her worst, brought our Kotarou at his best. Manager made his glorious entrance in the nick of time. Knocking out the cop (that poor guy has to have some long term brain damage by now) and swooping in to save the day.

Maybe that’s why he’s so creepy? One (or ten) too many blows to the head?

he’s had a few shocks

Manager has never been that great with words. It’s part of the gag. And although Zombieland played the scene seriously, he still wasn’t exactly inspiring. Sakura was more confused than motivated. This said, there was enough feeling, care and passion behind his words to at least give her something to latch onto!

May favourite line of dialogue was manager exclaiming “It doesn’t matter if you don’t have it, because I do!” The I’m good enough to make you good pep talk is not what we usually hear and I loved it. Would have worked on me! How about you?

It would have been so unexpected that it’d have a good chance at loosening my defenses. And did you catch how the show played with the trope of the voice of reason (the manager, in this case) storming off to let the main character wallow in a miserable soliloquy? Just as Sakura is descending into a self-loathing speech, Koutarou startles her with “Yeah, you thought I was done, huh?” Loved it. This show knows how to teeter right on the edge of melodrama!

surprisingly, that might be true

One of the few straight up jokes in this episode, was Yuguri dressing up in full geisha get up, and looking mightily impressive I might add, just to realize Sakura’s already left. I really would have loved to see Yuuri in that outfit longer. Any thoughts?

My first thought was the typical male response. I mean, Good Lord, she looked amazing! But then I had this sudden chill and realized that Yuguri had slapped before, and she could slap again! I was in fear for Sakura’s face!

I’m not thinking about anyone else’s face

This episode brought up a fascinating question: Just how profound an impact do our life experiences have on our hopes? In Sakura’s case, she weathered a seriously frustrating series of events. From an operant conditioning perspective alone, I can understand her reaction! But to be running out of the house, all excited to be back on track, and get killed? Jeesh!

But in her case, and apparently in her case alone, her amnesia was a complete blessing.

I still can’t get the image if Lily sobbing into her pillow out of my head. All of them are standing on such thin ice…

Saki is all of us

For me it was Saki. Frustrated, lost and a little scared Saki. First time we are seeing hr shaken up. If Saki can’t just make it all better and shrug it off, what are we going to do?

Seeing her check her thumb nail was such a perfect way to show her pain.

[ Did you want to mention anything about Koutarou’s conversation in the bar? In the comments on the ZLS 11 review on Random Curiosity, https://randomc.net/2018/12/13/zombieland-saga-11/, users Nene and Panino Manino had some really interesting theories…

This was a difficult episode to watch — and to review! Thanks for setting up the frame! ]

risk it, it’s worth it

Guys, this little bracketed text is in fact just meant for me. I’m leaving it in. I like seeing behind the curtain stuff on posts so I think you guys might enjoy it too. I also really like that Crow pays attention to his fellow bloggers and readers. He often points out comments or posts I have missed and I am very much richer for it.

You should go read Nene and Panino’s theories.I unfortunately don’t know enough to add anything interesting.

This said, manager’s bar scene was very intriguing. I didn’t originally comment on it in the post proper because I had so many things to get to, I didn’t want to overcrowd it but you know what – clarity has never been my brand.

flashback scene without warning or context!

There’s a reason your blog’s so popular! (dawwww)

These are my random takeaways from that scene. The village of Saga itself is responsible for the zombie phenomenon in some way, and Koutarou is not the only one who knows. He also plans to make it public at some point.

Koutarou himself has been around for a while. Since it’s very reasonable to think that he’s also not quite human, he could be hundreds of years old for all we know. This may be one of dozens of attempts to save Saga.

Maybe that’s why Saga’s still there at all?

this took a turn

The bartender seemed to have a very close personal relationship with Yuguri. Considering the family theme so far, I’m tempted to say he’s her dad.

Yuguri is a courtesan, which implies a lot of things. Although she is certainly charming and imposing, she has so far avoided being openly seductive or sexual. This could simply be because of the tone of the series but it may also have something to do with her life. Did she leave someone important behind?

I’m still wondering about the scar around her neck!

what do you mean just one episode left?

There cannot just be one episode left. We have so very much to explore still!

I’ll second that. It seems like this season has just given us a brief glimpse into a zombie world that’s coexisted with the human world — apparently for hundreds of years! Are there other zombies out and about? It seems they’ve kept themselves private, but I think you’re right when you say Koutarou wants to make it public — why else do something as obvious as an idol group?

And I’m just not ready to say goodbye to Franchouchou!

Despite using do many in the post, I actually still have a few screencaps left. I hope you enjoy them. This week was great for caps.

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Irina and Crow in Zombieland (Saga) ep11: It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn Here we are, the penultimate episode, and I’m already a little sad. As much as I’m going to miss this surprisingly loveable little show, I think I might miss our after reviewing tradition even more.

Old Friends and New Beginnings: October 19-26

There’s something about being in transit that allows me to relax.

The work and planning that got me here are in the bank. What’s waiting on the other side, for the time being, will have to do exactly that – wait.  

In transit, all that’s left to do is be still.

My favorite thing to do on an airplane is take off into a dream. With my sleep mask on and eyes at ease during taxi, my mind listlessly flits between thoughts that seem to become slower and less interesting until sleep overcomes my consciousness as we ascend into the clouds.

When we’re almost there, I’m at once hesitant and ready. The sleepy interim sanctuary is coming to a close. I know that once we hit the ground, it’s game time.

I’m ready though. All the motions are familiar and ingrained like muscle memory. No matter where I’m arriving- old place, new place, or completely alien environment- the process is the same – collect my belongings, make my way through the hoops and past the hawkers, and successfully get a connection “home.”

What makes this step different than transit? It’s active. You have to put your brain to work. The short bursts come swiftly and require adept attention and skill.

Transit is passive – you’re passing from one place to the next with no involvement. In surrendering control you have two choices: stress or peace. I choose peace. Unless I have hold my bladder the whole time...which isn’t the case on an airplane or a train, thankfully :)

Anyway! So I’ve arrived back in China after a very extended and wonderful holiday!

6 weeks in Central Asia where I found bliss in beauty – natural, historical, interpersonal, and inside myself  

And 8 weeks at home in New York where I fell in love with my roots – my family, my friends of old, and my hometown

All these experiences came together to buttress my deep appreciation for that all I have and what is yet to come.

Upon the rock solid foundation of my upbringing, I have gathered the building blocks for the life I want to lead and have arrived at the next adventure that will continue to help me build the tower. #BurjDubai. #Rowing #Ryan

SO ... let me finally dive right in to what’s been unfolding in these two weeks since I touched back down in China!

I hit the ground running. That is, until exiting the airport express where it took me 30 mins to get a taxi from Dongzhimen to Dongsishitiao...a 5 min drive but on a Friday night at 10pm... anyway I finally nabbed a black cab and shuffled my way through the hutongs to my hostel where I promptly fell asleep.

Since before departure, I packed my Saturday schedule with friend meet-ups. So starting Saturday morning I was whizzing around Beijing.

At 7:30am I was on the subway down to Chongwenmen to see the Doc at 8! He met me wearing an old-fashioned Mao shirt and hat, hot bowl in hand, to pick up some breakfast. We made our way to a bustling local breakfast joint where he collected the yums. At his home, we of course had tea with Tracy, and caught up about our summer holidays. We even munched on pomegranates. As he’s a busy Doc with a loaded schedule, by 9:30am I was headed out in a cab with the two large suitcases I had stored at his house all summer.

At 10am, I was back at my hostel and starting on the task of trying to downsize my possessions. As anyone can imagine, this was harder than it seemed! I only managed to put 3 sweaters into the donate pile, and sealed everything back up, unimpressed with my will power.

At 10:30, I set off on a bike to meet my now former-roommate, Emmie, for coffee in Dongzhimen. We had a really nice time! My salted caramel latte at Wagas actually had some pepper sprinkled on it too?! Very pleasant surprise. Anyway, Emmie and I had a great chat catching up!

At 12pm, we were both off to our next plans. For me, that meant going to see beloved Berit! At 12:30 we met at Dongdan station and headed up to Jingsu for a vegetarian lunch. I’m talking lots of greens, pumkin & egg dumplings, and olive & veg dumplings! Yum! After lunch, we walked to her new hutong apartment – it’s lovely! – and then back to my hostel where we picked up my camera and strolled over to Ditan park to enjoy the fall foliage for the afternoon. We then looped back around to my hostel because I desperately needed her help trying to eliminate somethings... I would up donating to her some more sweaters and hats. Still, not enough to really consider it downsizing, but hey, I tried! We hugged goodbye and I was off to the next meet up.

At 7pm, I was in a taxi headed up to campus to meet Phil from Ghana. He oh-so-graciously agreed to keep some of my luggage in his room while I’m in Hohhot for training. So I brought with me one large suitcase and my osprey backpack. Once we settled the stuff, we went for a walk out of east gate –which has totally changed! They shut down a lot of the thriving restaurants in favor of some weird artistic face-lift? Definitely government mandated. If that had taken place while I was a student... Tom and I would’ve committed mutiny, I swear it! Anyway, we grabbed some fruit and took a bench at the pond to admire the ducks and delve into some deep convo about China, life, and politics. Yeah!

At 9:30pm, I set off to meet Dennis! This meet-up was last minute because Emmie had conveniently told me Dennis was back in Beijing and I got so excited that I demanded he make time for me, and it worked JIt took me literally 30 minutes walking from campus to find a functioning OFO (I will dive into this later because the bike sharing industry fascinates me). Anyway, I eventually got on a bike and made my way to Boxing Cat! Boxing Cat is a famous brewery in Shanghai that recently opened in Beijing, and they were holding a grand opening party ... which I’ve since found out is there ump-teenth “grand opening” since July. But it was so great seeing Dennis! It had been 2 years since he left Beijing – coincidently I went to his going-away party just as I arrived to start my masters! It’s great that he’s back!! I love catching up with old friends!!!!!

Berit and Dennis are my friends back from 2013 and I will love on them forever <3

So that was my amazing amazing Saturday. It is incredibly rare for all of these people from different parts of my life to have free time exactly at the right time! I am so grateful for all the people in my life and for the blessings of planning :)

Sunday morning I was off to the airport at 6am to catch my 9am flight to Hohhot. Unfortunately, I didn’t check the baggage allowance, and wound up having to pay 240$ USD for my second big bag. Oh well, there was nothing I could do! Hopefully I will get that money reimbursed by the company.. fingers crossed!

I arrived in Hohhot to a LOT of smog and a LOT of gray and a LOT of construction. During my cab ride from the airport to my hostel, I could see that nearly every road in Hohhot is under construction... at the SAME TIME. They are simultaneously putting in the subway (2 lines), and elevated highways with beams reaching up in the middle of the major N/S and E/W roadways. It’s a nightmare, really.

But my hostel turned out to be a DREAM. It’s brand new, and beautiful. And there was even a beaming golden angel waiting in the lobby for pets! I was in heaven. Even more so when I got to my room and showered and got into bed for a much needed rest.

At 2pm, I communicated with my HR person about the housing situation for the next few months. She informed me that the other foreigner they hired (girl from Indonesia) had just secured a place in a good location, and that it actually had another vacant room. So I got in touch with her (Zhen Zhen) and planned to head over later in the afternoon to see the place.

At 4pm, I got into a taxi to meet Zhen Zhen and see the apartment. It was a very modest room in a big shared apartment of 7 rooms total, 1 bathroom (well kept), and no kitchen. The apartment is a 20 minute walk from Yili’s training school. At first I was a bit skeptical because I hadn’t seen any other apartments, but ZhenZhen and I came to the conclusion that it was the best option. Which it was! I signed the contract on the spot. My rent is 550 yuan per month. That is 80$ USD! Amazing!!!!!

The low-down from ZhenZhen about our new job was invaluable and I will explain it here.

Firstly, remember how I said Yili had hired 3 Malay, 3 Indo, and 1 American (me) for this pilot-year International Management Trainee program? Well, turns out it’s only me and ZhenZhen. The others either didn’t accept the offer, or initially accepted it until they found out they’d be training in Hohhot for three months. So Zhen Zhen and I are the only two foreigners – the first that Yili has ever hired!

Secondly, this training is LEGIT training. We have several weeks of classes in Yili’s training school where we will learn every facet of their business, culture, systems, and strategy, after which we have an internship rotation in Yili’s factories for two months – which will include 8-hour day shifts, and 13-hour night shifts – in every stage of production from lab work to packaging to shipment. In the factories we will be only observing, but the goal is that we will become very familiar with every aspect of their products from start to finish.

WHAT? Yeah that’s exactly what I said. But I’m so pumped for it.

On Monday morning, we were set to go to headquarters to meet our bosses. It turned out that we were to meet THE boss, the BIG boss, THE milk man himself.

So what do you know, on my first day I got to personally meet the CEO, one-on-one.

He’s a really nice guy! He had my resume in front of him, and we had a nice chat! As it happens, his brother’s son is attending GW in the school of business! My alma mater! Very cool coincidence. Then, it also turns out that his daughter is studying at Fairfield University in CT, and that he himself regularly goes to Stamford and Westport not only on business but for health reasons – ie, relaxing in the nature. Stamford is where my aunt lives, and it’s only 45 mins from my house! Another very cool coincidence! And then he said that he wants to take me to America to meet his family?! And asked for my WeChat and email?? It was so cool!

After the meet-and-greet, ZhenZhen and I had lunch at headquarters with one of the HR people, then got in a cab to the training school.

So there was a group of new hires that started their training back in July. About 60 Chinese hires. While Zhen Zhen and I are just beginning, they are just wrapping up. Fortunately, we had this week as overlap in the classes. They were all really sweet! Mostly girls – out of the 60 there were only 7 boys. No clear reason why, but no matter. Everyone was really really nice!

Class that afternoon went way over my head. What I learned is that there is a difference between understanding conversational Mandarin and understanding academic classroom Mandarin – where they not only use a plethora of vocab that I don’t know, but they also speak a mile a minute! I kind of just sat in awe and wrap attention trying to pick out some things. Thankfully, there was a powerpoint – a life saver!

Around 4:30pm, tiredness came over me like I’ve never been tired before. It was only then that I felt jet-lag. I knew I had been waking up very early, but other than that I felt great. Until that point. I had only arrived on Friday night, and it was only Monday afternoon – but it felt like I’d been back forever, and SO much had happened already! So when class ended at 5pm, I had to turn down invitations for dinner with the new friends. I had to. I have learned from experience, where I’ve tried to power through, that I can’t do it and only wind up becoming the subject of attention/pity at my pitifully lackluster tired state. So I bowed out and went to sleep immediately when my head hit the pillow around 6pm.

On Tuesday morning, I had to move out of my hostel and finally move into my new room! That meant taking a taxi around 7am to the apartment, dropping my bags, and immediately heading out to the training school. It was smooth going, thankfully.

At 8:30am Tuesday morning I had a meeting with the headmaster of the training school to go over the training program in brief. He is really nice! He explained to me the course that the other group had taken – first, they had military training for 2 weeks, then they completed their factory rotations for 2 months, and now they were wrapping up their 3 weeks of classes, and were all preparing for their small group presentations (to be held in Beijing) the following Tuesday. He informed me that Zhen Zhen and I were to follow the same program, though in a different order. He also mentioned that she and I’s training might vary in length, but he didn’t elaborate after that.

You can imagine that I was pumped and also saying what the fuck. Classes? Factory rotation? Cool! But military training?! I’m a foreigner??? What?!

So let me unpack this. China does not have conscription. However, in middle school, high school, university, and at some companies, every student must complete military training – which involves waking up at 5am to do exercise, drills, walking in step, and so on. The headmaster told me that the purpose for this is to teach everyone how to endure hardship and to ingrain the fundamentals of teamwork.

I get that. But still, I’m foreign? Logic? Anyway, it turns out that either I misheard him (even though I’m pretty certain he did tell me we’d have to do it earlier than later because of the impending cold weather) or the plans changed – because once the training school coordinator sent Zhen Zhen and I our schedule, it was obvious that we were booked through mid-January with no sign of military training. Yes!

At 9am, class beguns and I was off to scribbling down every word I didn't know in my notebook. Still, the speaker’s pace is way over my head but the PowerPoint is excellent. Bless.

At 12:30pm we got released for lunch. There is a cafeteria in the building where we all eat for freeeeee! Yes! I get to know more of the fellow students. Again, they’re all splendidly sweet! Feeling good.

At 1:30pm we started our next class. More ferocious note taking. I’m learning a LOT.

At 5pm we are finished for the day. I received a WeChat message from the CEO’s assistant, asking that I give her a call. What?! So I did. She’s very sweet. Her English is flawless. She wanted to tell me that if I need anything at all, I can reach out to her. She also wanted to get my feeling about going to the United States to work for Yili. I told her that after completing my training in Hohhot that I want to get experience working in their Beijing office for at least 6 months to really get to know the company before making any move home. But ultimately, I told her, she and the CEO are the boss and I’ll do what is needed of me, of course!

At 5:30pm I went to dinner with Zhen Zhen and the girls at our table for dry-pot and other yums. It was delish and I was NOT exhausted! Yes!

That night I started putting all the new vocab words into Quizlet. The best study tool! I love it! The data-entry at the beginning is tedious of course, but then the website itself has so many ways to learn and practice your new words. It is a dream.

I hit my pillow early again, as expected. It’s a good routine! Though definitely still the product of jet-lag.

I realized that given the time I going to spend in my room – I am definitely in desperate need for new bedding and furnishings. The hard lousy pillows and ugly sheets and blanket stink of smoke. Furthermore, there is no storage space for my clothes.

On Wednesday morning when I woke at 5am, I took to Baopals in search of new furnishings. My accumulated total for furnishing upgrades came to over twice my rent for this little room, but it’s a very worthy investment! Especially because my rent is so cheap :) and there’s not much to do here...

The location of the training school is in the west part of Hohhot, approximately 30 minutes in a taxi (on the highway) from the downtown area. It is conveniently a 20-minute walk to the training school. (The headquarters is another 40 min cab west of my place) 

But there’s nothing around us to DO. Yes, there’s every kind of Chinese restaurant and food store and express shipment store, etc. 

But in terms of activities? None. Literally none. And it’s cold outside. And the roads outside of my complex look like this.

So I made it my mission to make my room amenable to the large amounts of time I’ll be spending in it – ie: cozy and comfy and very me!

Later in the morning, 8am, ZhenZhen and I walked to school together to meet an HR person that was to take us for another health exam, required of everyone going to the factory. The hospital was huge and new, in the tacky but cool Inner Mongolian style. Though it smelled of smoke and Chinese medicine. We had to do 3 procedures. 1) Blood sample, 2) In one of the the weirdest things I’ve done, we had to do a stool sample – neither Zhen Zhen or I could poop soooo we had to use a q-tip to get a butthole swab! Very traumatic LOL. And 3) we did a chest scan thing. I don’t know why every physical exam in China requires those, but maybe it’s because I don’t know what it is or does.. you just have to hug an x-ray looking machine. Anyway, the trip to the hospital was a quick laugh in the end, and we were back to class.

Class was easier to understand because I had been studying vocab all morning after completing my shopping. After all, in business, the same words keep coming back around too. Yes! I’m understanding more!

During lunchtime, ZhenZhen and I had the task of booking our train tickets to Beijing for our first short “business trip”! Because the big group is finishing their training, they are giving presentations in Beijing to leaders at the branch there, where they’ll soon start working full time. ZhenZhen and I made to go along for the ride, because, of course, it will be very valuable to listen! I was not complaining at all! We were set to leave on Friday at midnight, and come back on Wednesday. Let me break that down – Saturday, Sunday, and Monday FREE IN BEIJING, then Tuesday listening to presentations in the morning and a farewell conclusion party for the big group in the evening? For us, it was like we were being gifted at the beginning instead of the end! Literally, gifts..

Back to school. A different department head gives each lecture. So in the afternoon, we heard from the guy that ran Yili’s Olympic sponsorship committee! Admittedly, I didn’t understand much of what he said, but he was definitely a compelling speaker and from his PowerPoint I added a lot of new words to my vocabulary list.

After class ZhenZhen and I went home, where we chilled and slept.

Thursday morning I had to miss class about eCommerce platforms (my favorite topic, unfortunately) and go with Zhang Na to the government offices to register for social insurance and for my residency. It was great to have her handling everything and not having to be responsible for it myself! What a relief!

We finished around lunchtime, and went to pick up ZhenZhen for a special lunch! Zhang Na took us for ice lamb hotpot! Apparently, the ice in the hotpot makes the lamb take on a different flavor. They also add some yogurt and red alcohol to the broth. It was delicious! Though Zhang Na made us each eat way more than we would have liked... I wasn’t complaining :) 

That afternoon’s class was about sales channels. Lots of interesting stuff and new vocab.

Friday morning was our last class with the big group! The topic was about intellectual property rights in China, which I found incredibly interesting. The teacher was easy to understand and the topic very relevant. Happy Cola.

After class we took a big group photo. 

Then we all headed home to pack for Beijing!

By Friday evening, only two of the items for my room had arrived, but that was OK because it gave me a lot to look forward to upon my return from Beijing. Everything would be in by that point so I could decorate all at once! Score!

At 10:30pm, ZhenZhen and I headed out to Hohhot East Railway station to get on our night train to Beijing!

What a serious whirlwind of a first week back in China! From seeing all the friends in Beijing on arrival, to moving to Hohhot and learning so so so much new stuff over the 5 days about how my life is going to take shape with this training and factory internship rotation, to again boarding a train BACK to Beijing for 4 day break? I am so lucky and happy and just doing it!!!! Ah! Amazing!

Stay tuned for Week 2!