#the amount of notifs i got from this blog alone today
Text
okay so suddenly this fandom is alive again? maybe i’ll start back writing for bh6 😁
#carina speaks!#send in requests!#the amount of notifs i got from this blog alone today#you’re all deprived of fics in this fandom huh?#ik the feeling 💔
16 notes
·
View notes
Note
As a queer servicemember who did serve during dadt that got out the year before it was repealed - FUCK DADT, it ruined lives and fuck the fact that it took so long for our military members to get their dishonorables changed and the fact that they left homosexuality on the new dd214s so former service members still had it follow them.
As someone who has never served myself and only has internet research and old Navy stories from my grandfather and cousin and one former coworker who was briefly in the army to go by, and every single one of them is cishet, I appreciate your input immensely. and, quieter, thank you for this, specifically, because this is exactly my point, I just don't have all the exacts to back it up like this. I've been doing my best to not rant about it and start things because it's about a fictional character it isn't that deep but also... considering how many people it affected in real life, yes it is.
I can't tell if you're yelling at me, specifically, or just using the anon function in my inbox to protect yourself from the fandom having different opinions (I get that, zero judgement whatsoever, I've been doing that a lot the last ~week just so I can have my opinion out there and avoid the backlash that comes with that and protect my sanity), but I'm going to put my own thoughts here, too, either way, because I feel like we're on the same page?
I know that using DADT seems like an easy out for speedrunning Tommy's timeline and making him younger than he would logically be to fit Lou's age (45 isn't old and 45 doesn't "look" all that different from 39 unless you're being ageist but whatever), but it's really not. There are so many complications that come with it - such as a dishonorable discharge.
Someone reblogged one of my posts earlier this week (the same person my vague post was about today, and I'll keep it vague I'm not here to call people out directly this is my blog and I'm going to put my opinion on it, no one should go harassing this person about any of it because it's fictional characters, they're allowed to have different opinions and headcanons about things), with a comment about how the LAFD (and PD? it's less relevant and I don't want to scroll back in their blog or my notifs for something minor like that) was hiring people regardless of sexuality in the 90s. Good for them! That doesn't change the dishonorable discharge tho!
Like... please correct me if I'm wrong, because again, I have no personal experience with any of this, just too much time on my hands and too many military blorbos, but when a dishonorable discharge shows up on someone's record, it doesn't necessarily say why it's there. It doesn't say if it's related to DADT or some other incident in the field or whatever it is. So yes, while the LAFD might have been hiring queer people far sooner than that, they still aren't going to look at a guy who has a (recent!) dishonorable discharge and say "yeah, we're going to put him through our training, which costs taxpayers x amount of money, and then hire him and pay him to have someone's life and death in his hands."
DADT and all the discharges that came from it completely ruined lives and made going on with any kind of career, especially something for the government even on the level of firefighting or police work, all but impossible. It's not an easy out to make Tommy the same age as Lou. It's actually completely nonsensical because he never would have been allowed to even get within 100ft of the fire academy, let alone be a senior member of a firehouse in 2009 when Hen joined the 1118.
There is a reason it's called a dishonorable discharge, and it would have completely ruined his life, no matter what the reason was for it.
(also, re: the game I play with Kit and Cass, the complaint this morning puts Tommy's age at 55 💛)
#alex says things#answered#anon#anonymouse#911#911 on abc#tommy kinard#lou ferrigno jr#thank you for this anon 💛#and thank you for your service#(for people who are new here there's a reason my bio says The Gay Mouse Blog)#(i saw the queer coded canon army ranger and got SAD every day for 3 years)#(going on 4 because he's still my specialest little guy)#but yes this is exactly what i've been wanting to say for so long#lafd rules and regulations aside#a dd is not something that can just be ignored#dadt would have completely fucked up tommy's life#for the love of god let him be old
18 notes
·
View notes
Text
The marriage pact - Maple syrup dreams
Henry Cavill x OC Alice - multi-chapter
< Part 21 | Part 22 Maple syrup dreams | Part 23 >
Disclaimer: Just fluff
Author’s note: Do you know what I just can’t get enough of? Whenever I’m writing my fanfics I keep Tumblr open in the background and there’s nothing more fun than seeing you, the reader, pop up in my notifications every few minutes or so, liking yet another chapter of a long fic. At some point I even know when you’re having a tea break, or taking a moment to make yourself some food. It makes me, as a writer, feel all gooey with happiness (and I quietly enjoy the fun along with you whenever you’re reading my works, my mind bringing me back to when I was writing that particular chapter you just liked). Ugh! I’m such a sap today! I love you darling readers! ❤️
Word count: 2.042
(Link to my Masterlist)
Dear readers,
I am writing this blog from a far, far away place. My fingers a bit numb from the everlasting cold, the taste on my tongue remembering I had far too much Maple Syrup Taffy and my everyday schedule suddenly consisting off shoving snow and rubbing down snowy dog paws.
Me and chocolate cake are in Canada, where we’ll be for the next 2 months as he’s working on a movie here. A movie? Chocolate cake? Hold on, you may think. Tell me more about this mysterious chocolate cake that you seem to be getting serious with! Well dear readers, though many of you know by now whom my lovely chocolate cake is, I’d still like to keep our privacy a little while longer. So let us just say; talk, dark, handsome and a very practical human heater when sleeping together. Especially when you are staying in this freakishly cold country and the actual heater is broken.
Today I’ll be visiting the movie set for the first time, and thereby a part of a new life starts that may have seemed totally ridiculous had you told me I’d be here a few months ago. But alas(ka), here we go!
Ali
‘Morning love.’ Henry chuckled, watching me shuffle through the tiny hallway of the trailer, my body clad in probably every sweater and wool sock I could find. ‘Hmmpff..’ I grumbled, plopping down beside him on the small bench in the kitchen nook.
It felt a bit like my student days. Living on each others lip, this shared living space no bigger than some 24m2, the heating unit broken and the food..well..not great.
‘Need me to warm you up?’ He smiled, gesturing me to scoot over to his lap. Silently nodding I moved up to him, feeling his arms snake around me and pull me snug against his broad and warm chest. ‘Ungh..how can you only wear one sweater and not be cold?’
Henry laughed. ‘It’s called 4000 kcal a day intake and lots of exercising.’ He kissed my cold cheek, his slight stubble scratching my skin. I sniffled and shook my head. ‘Does not sound like my cup of tea.’ - ‘Doesn’t have to be. I’ll keep you warm.’ He hummed, pushing a warm hand beneath my layers of sweaters. ‘Besides, the maintenance team is going to check on that heater this afternoon, so with a little luck we get home tonight to a nice and warm trailer.’ - ‘Goooood.’ I hummed, then squealed, feeling him tickle my skin ever so slightly. ‘Very good.’ He smiled, sniffing my hair before placing a kiss atop my head.
‘Hmm..In case I haven’t mentioned it, I’m so glad to have you here.’ He whispered, nuzzling my hair some more. I chuckled. ‘Oh you only mentioned it about a hundred times or so.’ I leaned back a little so I could turn my face towards his, our noses touching.
He was SO warm.
‘I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’ I murmured, laying a pillowy kiss on his lips. ‘Besides I got some small tasks to help the team out with today, so I don’t have to wait for you to come home like the good housewife I am.’ I winked, making him snicker. ‘Very good wifey.’ - ‘I mean, I’m no wife..but..you know..housegirlfriend sounds weird.’ I shrugged, turning to steal a sip of coffee from his large mug and thereby missing the loving glint in his eyes.
He watched me for a few more long moments, enjoying his coffee and staring into the abyss of 6 AM nothingness, Kal still snoring quietly on his dog bed. He didn’t want to ruin the moment as it was, but there sure was a whole lot going on in his head.
I was his first girlfriend to join him for such a long movie shoot. And for the first time in a long time he didn’t feel so very alone. Didn’t feel like it was just another fleeting moment of a good life. This was going to last. He would make sure it would.
‘Oh are you going to finish that.’ I pointed at a leftover bite of his breakfast toast. He laughed aloud. ‘Go ahead. And, I’ll make myself a mental note to make double the amount of breakfast tomorrow.’
I blushed slightly as I felt his gaze on me, chewing that bit of toast. ‘Sowwyy.’ I gulped, quickly swallowing the toast. ‘You really don’t have to..-‘ - ‘No please Ali. You travelled half the world just to be here with me. The least I can do is make you breakfast while you wrap yourself in not one, not two..but THREE of my sweaters.’
My blush became even more fierce when I felt his chest rumble with mirth.
‘Mwu..they’re just really nice sweaters.’ I mumbled, pouting at him. ‘Hahah. Oh Ali-bear. I have missed you so.’
Ali-bear? I raised an eyebrow at him as my blush slowly faded. ‘Ali-bear?’ I asked with mild confusion. ‘Yes, since you call me Henry-bear and you ARE part of the bear pack now.’ He winked, nodding at Kal who was blinking open his eyes, the large Akita stretching out his paws with mild exaggeration. We both laughed. ‘A-ha..so I’m a bear now, too?’ I looked at him and he shrugged innocently, making me laugh even harder. ‘Oh Henry..you are un-BEAR-able.’
—
The days on set were crazy long, crazy cold, but also crazy fun. After a week or so I got into a routine of helping for a few hours on set - moving and cleaning props, cooking meals with the cook, walking Kal -, followed by a few hours of working on my upcoming book and help out the Jersey Gazette with editing articles.
My life in Jersey felt like lightyears away, but I didn’t miss it as much as I had anticipated. All I really needed was Henry, silly as it seemed. Be it because we were crazy in love, or because we really had found great soulmates in one another. Even on 14 hour workdays we’d find the time to be there for each other, making life in general really rather pleasant.
Did I have a good idea for one of my stories? I’d pitch it to Henry. Henry needed to practise some new lines? I’d play his villanous counterpart. Did either one of us feel a little on edge? We’d have a quickie in the trailer.
Yes, life was good.
—
‘Hi mom..hello?..Mom? Can you hear me?’ The line crackled and my mom’s voice distorted in a wild flurry of screeches and blurred speech. ‘Let’s try again.’ I ended the call and waited for her to call me in turn, this time the line thankfully much more stable.
‘Oh! There we go!’ Mom exclaimed, hearing me giggle. ‘Hello Ali dear. Oh baby we miss you soooo!’
‘Hi mom. Miss you too! How’s everything at home?’
‘Quite exciting times over here..we finally adopted a dog! A four year old poodle mix, named Cookie. And she’s a lovely gal. Chewing on some shoelaces as we speak hahaha.’ - ‘Quite lovely indeed haha. So you truly miss me THAT much, hmm? Empty nest?’ - ‘Terribly. So how’s everything over there? Are you okay? Eating enough vegetables?’
Moms will be moms.
‘Yes mom haha. Plenty of vegetables. And I exercise everyday because it is crazy cold and there’s practically no other way to get warm..-‘ - ‘The things you do for love, hmm? I remember you experiencing your first snow. How you immediately ran back inside, not liking it one bit. And now you are living in meters of snow!’
‘Yes. The things we do for love.’ I heard the trailer door open behind me and looked over my shoulder, seeing two snowy bears enter, bringing with them a gust of icy cold air.
‘Close it..close IT!’ I exclaimed, waving at the door when Henry let it open, his arm filled with a number of plastic bags. Smiling, his nose also slightly red with cold, he bumped the door closed with his buttocks, Kal taking the moment to shake off the remains of snow in his fur and launching it at the both of us.
‘KALL!!’ I warned, the akita panting at me happily, acting as if he didn’t do anything wrong.
‘Shall I call back later dear? Sounds like you have some men to take care of.’ My mom’s voice sounded in my ear and I slowly nodded, my eyes tracking to Henry as he zipped out of his jacket and started rubbing Kal down with a towel, the dog continuing to circle away from him, thinking it was playtime.
‘Yea..call you back mom. Looks like Henry could use some help haha. Have fun with Cookie and send pictures!! Love you. Give dad a hug from me.’ - ‘I shall my dear. Kisses back!’ And that was the end of the call.
I quickly stood up and helped Henry dry off Kal, our smiles growing as the dog started to bounce up, licking our faces. ‘Who’s a good boy?!’ I cooed, rubbing him behind the ears, squatting down and allowing the dog to lean into me, going in for a big bear hug. The dog was more than glad to get all this attention, his head ducking down and pressing into my chest, eager to get even more pets. I laughed and looked up at Henry, seeing him get up and moving back to the bags that were now on the small kitchen counter, his hands digging through the contents
‘Whatcha got..-?’ - ‘Close your eyes!’ He stopped me mid sentence, looking over his shoulder with a mischievous glint in his ocean blues. ‘Ohhhkay..’ I said, slightly unsure, settling down so Kal couldn’t topple me over, the large Akita folding his large paws over my lap and also looking at Henry.
What was he up to? With a slow breath I closed my eyes, my hand continuing to trace languid circles through his fur. And then I felt something being pushed down on my head. Warm, soft. REALLY soft. A..hat? I wished to open my eyes but Henry clicked his tongue in warning, now picking up my hands and slipping them carefully in what probably were two mittens. My lips curled up in a smile, and I turned my head up expectantly.
‘Can I look now..?’ I asked quietly. Henry chuckled. ‘Almost.’
Then I felt something shift beneath my hands, Kal sitting up slightly.
‘Okay, now you can look.’
I opened my eyes and first saw Kal, wearing the cutest purplish blue knit scarf, and then the mittens on my hands. Also knit, but with a teddy-like material inside to keep my fingers nice and toasty. Reaching for my head I could feel a hat there. ‘With bear ears.’ Henry sniffled, nodding. ‘I know you don’t want me to get you presents. But it’s a bit of a special day.’
‘Special..day..?’ I quirked up an eyebrow, then smiled feeling the two small bear ears on my head. Slowly I lowered my hands again and gave Henry a studious look. ‘Special day.’ Henry smiled, sitting down beside me and Kal, his eyes glittering.
‘Did I ..miss..something?’ I gave him a suspicious look.
Henry chuckled. ‘Perhaps a calendar.’ He reached for my mittens and pulled me to his chest, noses nearly touching. ‘Happy half year anniversary sweet little icicle of mine.’ He said with a smile in his voice, his lips trying to brush against mine, but failing as I gasped in horror. ‘OOOH…I FORGOT.’
Henry laughed all the harder, shoulders shaking and Kal shifting so he could lean into the both us, head squeezed in between our chests. ‘That’s quite alright. Now c’mhere.’ He snickered, pulling my embarrassed face to his, our lips finally melting together.
And how hot and cozy that moment was.
Nothing big and outrageous. No hours of driving just to get to some half decent restaurant. It was just Henry, me and Kal. The three of us enjoying a first home cooked dinner in weeks whilst laughing at the extra warm clothes Henry had gotten me - he could not stand it seeing his girl be cold, and though he loved sharing his sweaters..he did need some of them for his own use too, especially when we went out for our morning runs.
It was sweet, thoughtful, simple and much of what I expected of true love. A maintenance kind of love.
And from here on any next steps in our relationship didn’t seem so scary. I had not even given the whole donorship thing a second glance since we had arrived in Canada. This? This might very well be it, you know?
--
General tagsquad: @harrysthiccthighss @tumblnewby @magdelen69 @thereisa8ella @mary-ann84 @darkbooksarwin @summersong69 @madbaddic7ed
Fluff lovers squad: @star017 @perhaps2remember @pterodactylterrace @witchersqueen @desperate-and-broken @toomanyfandomsshreya @deliciouslysassyarcade @pamacs-macs @cavilladdict @scorpionchild81 @lebguardians @sofiebstar @amberbabem @mis-lil-red @aestheticqueenb @misslalaland-blog-blog @ilieherecharmed-fics2readnrec @michelehansel @henryfanfics101
Want to be added to or removed from the tag list? Shoot me a message!
#henry cavill fanfiction#henry cavill fanfic#henry cavill fluff#henry cavill x oc#henry cavill x author#fluff#kal#henry bear#bear pack#maintenance#cold#family hug#romcom#the marriage pact#maple syrup dreams
38 notes
·
View notes
Note
If you get this, answer with 3 random facts about yourself and send it to the last 7 blogs in your notifications, anonymously or not! Let's get to know the person behind the blog ❤
ah, apologies for not answering sooner, my ask box notifications have been terrible from the moment I got Tumblr. Regardless, here you go:
• i think you already know this one, because i might've mentioned it before, but i think in song lyrics very frequently. I'll see a completely normal phrase or word, and immediately have a song with lyrics relating to it mentally start playing. because of this, I have a song stuck in my head almost 24/7. right now it's currently a toss up between Share Your Address by Ben Platt and Good Old-fashioned Lover Boy by Queen. you can literally ask me at any given moment what song i have stuck in my head, and i guarantee I'll always have an answer
• I'm sort of a jack of all trades because of my ADHD? my hyperfixations have varied wildly and been about completely different topics. I've coded minigames, I can still rattle off all the major bones in the human body, I'm teaching myself sign language, I've helped restore cars, there's a shit ton of stuff. of course, i still have major fields of interest that have always been there and haven't really wavered much like psychology and art, but every now and then I pick up a new interest or hobby that's super out of my wheelhouse and just sorta roll with it for a while. kinda weirds some of my friends out if they don't know that about me and i start rambling about botany out of the blue.
• my mom calls me "Bluetooth" sometimes because I end up saying and thinking extremely similar things to the person I'm talking to. often in sync with the other person talking or almost word for word. like, beyond the normal amount of "haha that's weird I can't believe we had the same idea" stuff. from what I can tell, most people usually only get situations like that if their conversational partner is relatively close to them, but with me it can happen with? kinda anyone? sometimes it feels like I can kinda hear people's thoughts sometimes, although I know that sounds completely impossible and I'm not saying I actually can. But the point is, I've done it 3 times today alone. yet another trait of mine that's pretty unsettling to new friends. Not sure what to make of it, but do with that information what you will
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
AC0/RD Digest & our network ambitions
Something that’s been needed for a long time is a reliable network digest for our users and subscribers. I’ve used Wordpress.org for the longest time (almost 4 years, in fact) as the HQ for our community site, however I’ve started to use Git and static sites as the new skeleton for the AC0/RD Network. In today’s post, I’m going to talk about what happened to the old portal, why Github alone isn’t good enough for what we are doing, and also about what the actual title of the post suggests: our email subscription service.
Grab yourself a tasty beverage and snack, because this is going to be a slightly longer post than usual...
Rest in peace Portal #1 - 2016-20
Thanks to AC0RD’s first sponsor, Sean Firth, I got into the Wordpress.org community when I was only 13, and to this day I am still an everyday user of the popular CMS. I used Wordpress to create what was known as the “Portal” for AC0RD, which had the following features:
A blog
A database - for all the data collected by our bots & software
A forums & community section - where our members could talk about anything and everything, regardless of whether it was directly related to AC0RD or not, as well as the projects that we are/were working on
A media section (with groups & user profiles ^^)
Project management
Community growth
Over the years, I had about 10 members (Nicholas Antipas, Josh Richards, Sean, etc) contribute small bits of data and helpful stuff to the portal, but mostly it was a one-man-band. I was the singer, the guitarist, the drummer, and the roadie. Almost all of the forum posts I did myself, and the site was sort of like a large notebook, where only I contributed stuff to.
I told myself that this would only be temporary, and that it would be good for documentation (SDLC) purposes (to an extent, this is roughly the same situation now - except each post is being read by a few people, the repositories on Git & the new portal are getting edited by more people. It’s a start). But as the months stretched into years, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed about the lack of community growth. I’d thrown almost every bit of my spare time into this project, and it led to a lot of sleepless nights (not to mention every time I screwed up something on the site, like the dreaded white screen of death. I often joke that 99% of my PHP knowledge comes from reading those error messages).
This is why that when the first iteration (technically the second iteration, however the real original only lasted <72 hours before I broke it - in my defense I was VERY new to WP) bit the dust, after the initial shock, tears and screams I took a few deep breaths and decided that I would live with it.
The portal had become a wasteland, a barren wild wild west that only had 1 person as far as the eyes could see. Every now and again you’d see signs of a skeleton that still had some flesh, but those sights were rapidly being swallowed up by the growing chasm of self-doubt and despair that accumulated over my 3.5 years as the maintainer.
I talked about this to my mentor Nick, and we both agreed that maybe it was for the better. While I had recent backups of the old portal, maybe it was better for us to just make those backups open-source and create a fresh portal. This way, the documentation would still exist (it would just be less easy to navigate), but we’d have the advantage of a fresh start, and all in all a better springboard for leaping into the pool of software development. I set up a new installation of Wordpress with hostgator and that was that.
With the recent influx of members - Rishabh Chakrabanty, Basanta Kandel, Dylan Vekaria and so many others (thanks largely to the Facebook post we did on our page), we have a fledgling, but thriving, community on github, with projects being developed on git, discussed on slack & reddit, and shared on the website, with this being accumulated on the portal (for more information about this accumulation of data, I’d recommend checking out our post on dashboards: here: https://blog.acord.software/post/611809431430283264/html-dashboards-for-administration).
The old portal will live forever in my - and our - memories, and in our open-source database, but I look to the future, and this is the way it will be.
Why Github isn’t enough
Github is great for software development, especially collaborative open-source work. But when you want to build a community around your company (especially when a huge amount of your community won’t have, or want, github accounts), you need something else.
Wordpress is great, because with plugins like buddypress you can create social networks like Facebook on a smaller scale for your club/organisation (again, I’d recommend checking out another one of our posts about social network construction here: https://blog.acord.software/post/611414544827432960/constructing-a-social-network).
I’m a big sucker for integrations between our services (for a list of services that we use, check out this page on our Stellarios documentation: https://acord.software/stellarios/hydejack/2020-01-25-integrations/). Github is great, because you can connect your various online accounts to it with services like Zapier or Integromat. To get my dream network, we’re going to have to use services like those.
AC0/RD Members Digest
I’d hazard a guess that you’re part of a number of online communities. Wouldn’t it be great to have the latest notifications and news delivered daily, weekly or monthly for all those communities?
Buddypress (thanks to plugins available on wordpress.org) has had this kind of feature - email subscriptions - for a while. What I wanted when I started this project was a perfect amalgamation between our awesome online communities - Reddit, the Portal, Github, Facebook, etc. While we could implement some sort of system that would send an email from Facebook, an email from Reddit, etc, for the digest (so that you’d be burdened with 5 emails everytime you get a digest), I thought of something a bit different.
The ideal scenario would be to be able to link your Portal (wordpress) account with the online services/websites mentioned above ^^, and for the content that is relevant to your account (i.e. from your friends or groups) to be emailed to you, as well as site-wide notices. Unfortunately, the closest you can get to this at the moment is to share a link to your social media profiles on your Wordpress profile. Obviously, this won’t do.
Over the last 24 hours, I’ve been thinking: how do we create a network digest?
What we will be doing is we’ll create weekly posts on the new AC0/RD Portal, which will have the latest content from our online profiles. You’d then be able to sort through these, and as you’re logged into those accounts, be able to find what’s relevant to you easily. This post can then be sent to your email, and can work in with integrations like Gamipress.
Of course, we can also easily set up automatic post systems (for the forums WITHIN groups on the portal) that would then be sent into your newsfeed. Both of these solutions would work well, and we’ll be working on ways to implement them as best as we can very soon.
<3
Limo
1 note
·
View note
Text
On the Verge of a Heartbreak - Chapter 27
So... I realised something when I was writing this chapter... and I hope I fixed it for the continuity? We’ll find out lmao.
Also, I now have a specific writing blog - @nekoabiwrites
I’m still going to be finishing this fic on my main, but whatever comes after and any side stuff I write from now on will be on there. If you wanna keep up with that, please go follow! <3
AU: School AU, Human AU.
Pairings: Moxiety, OC/OC
Words: 3208
Warnings: Nothing I can think of. Please let me know if there is anything!
Summary: Patton has a realisation that his friend group is about to be broken apart and wants to make sure everyone has that one final memory of them all together.
Once they got back to school, everyone in the group was made aware of Abigal’s extremely fortunate situation with her dad as well as how the double date went.
“Your dad owns the theme park?!” Sophia’s mouth dropped open.
Abigal reached out and pushed her mouth shut with a giggle, “Yeah, and the water park next to it and kinda everything else around it.”
“And you can get people in for free?” Ana butted in, clearly very interested.
“For the most part, yeah. If it’s more than like four people or something, I have to let my dad know and have him approve it, but yeah, I can.”
Suddenly, the conversation turned into Ana and Sophia trying to convince Abigal to take them to the water park next time they were all free, while others such as Asher and Em were attempting to talk them out of it as it was pretty bad to try and abuse such an opportunity. As most of them were thinking about their exams later in the year, they knew they would eventually have large amounts of free time that they could use to hang out more.
Patton was enjoying watching the two sides playfully argue with one another, more than happy that a lot of the focus was off of him and Virgil’s new relationship. It had obviously been stressful for Virgil to be the centre of attention the week before, with everyone asking questions and trying to get every single scrap of information from them. Now that they were occupied with a new development, Patton could tell that Virgil was a lot more comfortable and more like himself. He was even chiming in on the current argument with his quips that everyone was used to at this point.
But then Patton remembered that this was the last year they would all be able to hang out like this. Reggie was only still around because he currently was helping out at the reception office of the school, which was only a temporary thing while he worked out things in order to stay in America. He was taking a couple of extra classes as well, just in order to really prepare himself for the university that he was going to in the year after. The reason for him taking a year out was actually a part of the next of Patton’s thoughts. Both Asher and Abigal were a year above most of them and were in their final year, meaning that they would be leaving once their exams were over. The saddest part for Patton was when he remembered that Ayana was the only one of their group that was a year below him, meaning that in two years, she would left alone without any of them. Patton’s group that had been his rock for all this time was going to start breaking apart very soon and that was extremely upsetting.
“We should go during summer. Before you guys go.” Patton said, his voice sounding just a little bit choked.
Everyone fell silent. Patton quickly smiled and cleared his throat, in an attempt to cover up the sadness he was currently feeling. Virgil’s arm that was wrapped around him tightened, while everyone else reflected on his words. No one had actually verbally brought up the fact that some of them were leaving soon, until now and it seemed like some had just been forced to accept it as fact.
“Patton’s right.” Abigal spoke up eventually, a determined fire in her eyes. “I’ll make sure we can. One last big thing, y’know? Something huge and fun we can all remember!” She was suddenly extremely intense. Her phone was in her hand in a flash, typing rapidly.
Everything slowly went back to normal, everyone chatting about whatever came to their mind, but there was this underlying sadness. Patton felt horrible for causing it, but he didn’t know how to fix it. He decided to just keep being himself. Acting upset and pulling away from everyone would just make things worse, being who he was and just being normal would allow people to see that nothing would change once they all moved onto the next part of their lives.
As the year progressed, Abigal and Asher had to spend more and more time away due to exam preparation and all of that, as did a lot of the others, meaning that some lunchtimes only a small group of them were around for the whole hour.
Patton made it a goal of his to always be there. He would hate to leave Ayana on her own and he never knew who was going to be free the next day, so he took all of his work over there and did some of it while hanging out with her. The two got closer with each day, Patton even finding out how smart Ayana was. She was able to quickly pick up on a lot of the material Patton was having difficulties with in his revision, meaning that she was able to help him a lot.
The end of the school year was just a week away. Abigal and Asher had already completed all of their exams and had no reason to come to school, but they did make their way over once a week just to hang out at lunch, usually bringing extra special snacks to share just because they could. Almost everyone else was done with all of their exams and were just relaxing now, which meant that Ayana was no longer in danger of being left alone. Patton was the last one to finish his exams, with his final one being on the day before school ended. Thankfully, it was before lunch, so he was able to completely relax once he rounded the corner and found the benches.
Just as he sat down, his phone buzzed in his bag. He sluggishly reached in and found the device, immediately seeing that it was a notification on the group chat. Patton opened it curiously.
CatMom: GUYS. KEEP YOURSELF FREE FOR THREE WEEKS FROM TODAY BECAUSE WE ARE GOING TO THE WATER PARK!
CatMom: Also, there’s a surprise for that which you’ll just all have to wait to find out and I promise it’s a good one that will actually cause everyone a ton less stress.
Responses flooded the chat in an instant and Patton immediately felt his body humming with excitement. That lunch was filled with excited chatter. Sophia pulled up the park’s website and was listing off what it had, which got people even more excited. Patton was not only so happy that he was going to be able to spend a day during summer with all of his friends having an amazing time, but he was also so pleased that this was something Virgil was actually looking forward to, if his reaction to the whole thing was anything to go by.
The last day of school came and went and the three weeks after were filled with chatter on the group chat, several smaller meetups and many casual dates with Virgil. Patton could not recall a time when he was happier than he currently was. At least, until the day of the water park trip came.
Virgil’s dad dropped both of them off just like he’d done before, telling them to be safe and call him later. Virgil promised and shut the door, linking hands with Patton as they headed over to the entrance where they could already see a lot of their friends.
“Hey guys!” Patton called out, waving with his free hand as some of them turned around.
They all chatted causally for a while, waiting for Abigal to appear. Patton had totally forgotten about the whole ‘surprise’ part that she’d mentioned, but Virgil was very aware of it and was feeling his nerves start to come into play. He squeezed Patton’s hand a little in response, which was their way of asking for support. Patton responded with a gentle hug that wouldn’t arouse suspicions among their friends, as it was a fairly normal thing for them both to do.
Finally, the girl they were all waiting for turned up.
“Hello, hello!” Abigal addressed them all with a posh voice, “I hope you are all excited to have some watery fun today! Follow me through the gates!” All of them filed one by one through the turnstile, with Virgil and Patton giving each other confused glances. They both had noticed that Abigal had not spoken to anyone or shown anyone her card like she had the last time, but they both trusted her. Virgil glanced to the booth as he passed, noticing that no one was in there. Now, he was even more confused. He was so distracted that he bummed into Patton who’d stopped just in front of him.
Everyone got to see the park and the fact it was completely empty besides them.
Abigal threw her arms wide, spinning to face them all with a wide grin, “Surprise! It’s all for us today!!”
Disbelieving looks and stunned silence immediately followed her statement as everyone expected this to be a joke. Then, in a split second, everyone was excitedly cheering. They all headed off into the changing rooms to put their belongings away and change into their swim gear.
Patton was one of the first out of the changing rooms and he jumped straight into the water, sighing contently as he floated on the surface.
“LOOK OUT!” was the only warning he had to dodge the incoming Sophia, who was closely followed by Ana. Both of them cannonballed into the water almost directly next to each other, causing water to splash in Patton’s face. From the side of the pool, they could hear the employees who were called in to be their lifeguards telling them to be careful, but Patton knew that his two friends were pretty much going to destroy every single rule they could today.
Most of their group were out in the pool within minutes, but it took a fair bit longer for both Ayana and Abigal to come out. Once they finally emerged, they were greeted with shouts and questions about what took them so long. Ayana curled the towel she was hiding in around herself tighter while Abigal sighed and put her hands to her hips, “Um hello? Have you even looked at us?” She indicated to their hair, “Hi, we’re gingers and we’re fucking pale as shit. Have you guys ever heard of sunscreen before?”
“What is that?” Reggie asked, a playful smile tugging at his lips. He shielded himself from the gentle swats his girlfriend began to throw towards him before grabbing a hold of her and throwing her into the water. Everyone laughed as Abigal surfaced with a pout.
People began to split off into groups as some of them wanted to do different things. Sophia climbed out of the pool and challenged Ana, Abigal, Virgil and Reggie to the obstacle course. “Of course, everyone else can join as well. I just hope you like losing!”
Immediately, Ana was fired up. They clambered out and practically ran to the start of the floating obstacle course, starting it before anyone else could catch up. Abigal laughed and followed, also finding her competitive spirit being toyed with. Everyone else decided to watch from a distance as all three of them failed multiple times at first.
Thomas had noticed there was some foam-coated water guns hung up in a shed pretty close by and grabbed one. He filled it up with the water tank just next to it and fired a quick shot over to the pool, hitting Asher on the back of the head. The boy laughed as his unwitting target yelped in surprise and turned sharply.
“You wanna fight?” Asher grinned after realising what had happened, pulling themself out of the pool and walking slowly over. They grabbed their own water gun and started to fill it up, “You have until I’m done with this to run.”
Thomas jogged away, laughing the whole time. Only a few seconds later, Asher came after him. The two started an all-out battle, hiding around things and diving in the water to avoid shots. They managed to recruit everyone else onto teams and a war began.
Asher, Ayana and Virgil were on one team while Thomas, Daniel and Patton were on the other. They used all of the space available to them, but still tried to stay in sight of their vaguely impartial judges – Em and Reggie.
Em was happily floating in the main pool, relaxing as she kept score. She did eventually realise that was technically alone in the water, as Reggie was sat on the edge and just dangling his feet in the water. She swam over to him, “Hey, aren’t you gonna come in and swim?”
Reggie shrugged and watched the water gun fight happening in the distance between Virgil and Thomas, before laying down against the bricks with his hands under his head. “I just wanna enjoy the sun. Besides,” He indicated to his braided hair that was already in a tight knot at the back of his head. “I am not getting this wet.”
As if he’d called up the gods, Asher ran past, and Daniel aimed for him but managed to slip a little on the slightly wet ground. He lost his grip on the water gun and it fell to the ground, causing the water tank on the back to burst open. The world seemed to move in slow motion as the collected water drenched Reggie’s entire head and face. Em’s mouth dropped open as she gasped loudly, and Daniel stopped dead in his tracks, looking as if he was about to pass out from fear. Everyone else lowered their own water guns and slowly headed over to see what was happening.
Reggie wiped his face and stood slowly. He headed over to the water guns and grabbed one for himself. His eyes were blazing when he turned around after filling it. “Run.” was all he said before chasing each of them down. There were no teams anymore, just Reggie against them all.
Virgil dropped out soon after and went to just chill in the pool. He handed the water gun to Em, who happily joined in. He just floated around in the water, not really paying much attention to anything else. So, when his head bumped against something soft, he couldn’t help but jolt slightly in surprise.
“Hey.” Patton smiled down at him, a fond look in his eyes, “You mind if I join you?”
Virgil laughed, “Feel free.”
The couple swam around a little, mostly making small talk and laughing at their friends’ antics. They came to rest at the edge of the shallow end. Virgil had long since given up trying to keep up with the group running around and was instead focused on his boyfriend.
“Your idea was great.” Virgil said softly. Patton turned to look at him, his wet hair plastering itself to the side of his face. Virgil pushed it back into its usual spot gently, “This is really nice.”
Patton grinned, “Oh, I’m so happy to hear that, Virgie! I was worried you wouldn’t like it! Especially considering the whole theme park stuff before!”
Virgil let out a soft huff of laughter, which had Patton giggling along with him. It was a moment where the world seemed to just fall away around them; the shouts of their friends and the splashes of water were distant and unrelated to both of the teens. Something compelled Virgil to do something, he was close enough to count the freckles that dotted Patton’s face. Slowly and without much thought, he pressed his lips to Patton’s so gently as if he was worried Patton would be upset. All the doubt was immediately washed away as Patton kissed back, his hand coming to rest on Virgil’s face. Even under the water, Virgil could tell Patton’s skin was so soft. His own hand had come to rest just above his boyfriend’s hip, just barely holding him.
A sudden squirt of water against their faces had them jumping apart.
“Hey! That was rude, don’t interrupt them!” Virgil looked up to see Em scolding her partner, snatching the water gun out of their hands. Ana only laughed in response.
Sophia peered down at them from above, “We were looking for you two. We’re all about to go battle it out on the climbing thing over there and I need both of you on my team.”
“No fair! You’ll have 6 people!” Abigal shouted from behind her.
Patton immediately was clambering out of the pool, almost slipping back in once or twice, while Abigal and Sophia argued over whether or not someone could count as two people. Virgil followed his boyfriend out, a little more poised in his execution. Apparently, the debate had been decided as the rest of the group were already fighting it out. Virgil and Patton hurried over to join in.
For the first few rounds, the two teams took turns being inside the climbing frame. One would attempt to use the water guns to shoot the others outside and use cover to hide from their opponents’ attacks, while the outside team would be trying to shoot the ones inside with water gun and additional cannons that sat just outside it. The game would end when all of one team were eliminated. After that game had run its course, a game of water tag was played around on the frame.
The end of the day was spent far more calmly. They took a break to have some food, courtesy of Abigal’s father who stopped by to see how they were doing, before they all spent time in the main pool with some floating toys. Reggie spent some of it pouting as his braids were starting to fall apart now that they were soaked, but – after each person tried – it turned out Virgil was actually really good at working with his hair. This meant the emo was put in charge of re-braiding Reggie’s hair, which he wasn’t all too upset about. They both sat at the edge of the pool, chatting with their friends and generally just having a good time.
Throughout the whole day, Patton and a few of the others - mostly Ayana and Em - were taking pictures with everyone and of everyone, giving them all a way to remember their final big day together before they all headed their separate ways.
They all stood outside the entrance to the park saying goodbye. It wouldn’t be their last time before some of them headed off to college or university or wherever they were going, but it was likely the last time all of them would be together in one place for a while, so there was a definite air of finality and sadness.
Patton gave each of them an enormous hug, especially the three older ones. He thanked each of them from the bottom of his heart, making Abigal openly cry and the others all at least tear up a little. He climbed into the back of Virgil’s dad’s car and waved to them all as they drove away. He wasn’t going to lie, he did feel sad and that was his reasoning for gripping Virgil’s hand so tightly, but he knew they’d all be okay. They’d stay in contact, he’d make sure of it.
Last Chapter —– Next Chapter
My other stuff: http://nekoabi.tumblr.com/myworks
Mobile Accessible Masterlist: http://nekoabi.tumblr.com/post/181954641376/fic-masterlist
Abigal and Ayana belong to me.
Reggie belongs to @not-so-innocent-bi-sander
Daniel belongs to @doces-e--tuga
Ana, Em and Asher belongs to @fangsandrainbows
Sophia belongs to @notalwaysthevillian
General Tag List: @not-so-innocent-bi-sander @didsomeonesayprince @llamaly @justanotherpurplebutterfly @iaminmultiplefandoms @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @lowkeyvirgilobsessed @louisthewarlock @fangsandrainbows @xxladystarlightxx @sleepyssnail @ao-koshka
OtVoaH Tag List: @daughterofsomnus @chaoticcharm-stone-posts @notalwaysthevillian @iamsilentwolf @ab-artist @6tick6tock6 @lesliealiceinwonderland @kiwisandsprinkles @luckybanana948 @planetsandanxieties @nienna14 @theunoriginaldaisy @absolutesandersidestrash @fiive-second-cookies @i-read-by-lamp @analogical-mess @icing-on-my-lasagna @quietwords-loudthoughts @reinefandoms @hanramz-the-fander @sevencrashing @blenderkit17
#Sanders Sides#Fanfiction#Moxiety#Virgil Sanders#Patton Sanders#Anxiety Sanders#Morality Sanders#OCs#Lots of OCs#OC/OC#On the Verge of a Heartbreak#School AU#Human AU#just rambling#my writings
38 notes
·
View notes
Text
Maybugs Don’t Fly in June (3)
@ladrienjune 2018, Day 4: Protecting
Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | art | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
AO3 / fanfiction.net
Today was a nice day, Marinette mused, collecting her things after classes. First of all, there was no akuma attack so far and after yesterday’s tense battle Ladybug could definitely use some time off. She used this opportunity to gaze affectionately (but discreetly) at the blond in front of her. He had really helped her yesterday with Manon. The girl wouldn’t shut up about him the rest of the day, complaining that he had been much better at being a rag Chat Noir than Marinette and retelling all his ideas and made up stories.
As Marinette, she was definitely delighted; as Ladybug she was grateful and impressed. That’s why she brought a double amount of thank you treats for him today. She was happy to see he liked that little surprise and even slipped a few cookies into his bag, for easy access she assumed. She noted that he chose the cheese ones as well as chocolate chip and smirked at Tikki’s jealous whine from her purse.
The idea of Adrien as Ladybug’s sidekick had its undeniable appeal, although there was also the risk that Chat might see right through her and discover the identity of her crush. But maybe… just maybe, she could consider giving Adrien another miraculous one time? Alya wouldn’t be pleased, even if that would give her a possibility to gather footage for her blog, but maybe time would come where another set of powers, another wielder would be more needed than Rena’s illusions? Hmmm, an idea worth remembering for later. Marinette’s cheeks went red at the sheer thought of fighting with a masked Adrien at her side, protecting her and Paris at the same time. That would be awesome, and if he was as big a fan of the superheroes as he seemed based on what Manon had noticed, he probably would be as excited as Alya if not more.
After that Marinette’s lessons went in a blur, with the girl’s thoughts filled with vision of Adrien in skin-tight fashionable and stylish suit. He’d look good in royal blue. Too bad the peacock brooch was missing. Eh, just her luck. Maybe she could give him the bee comb? Or something from the lower compartments? And before Marinette even notice through her daydreaming and planning the school was over, the seat in front of her and the whole classroom empty. At least now she could finally treat her kwami to more cookies she saved specifically for her. She took one out of her backpack and opened her purse.
‘Want a cookie, Tik-’ she stopped abruptly staring at the empty space, lined with red fabric. ‘Tikki?’ she whispered. ‘Where are you?’
Silence was her only reply. But then she heard a gentle snore from somewhere near. Although she never heard Tikki snoring, there was no one else in the room who could make that sound. Marinette carefully lowered herself to the floor and searched for the source of the snoring.
The box of pastries she had brought for Adrien was lying forgotten under his seat, the whistle of a sleeping creature definitely came from inside. She never would have guessed Tikki was such a glutton to sneak her way into other people’s boxes of treats! All the more after she lectured the girl so many times about the importance of keeping her identity and her kwami’s existence secret. It was the miraculous holder’s responsibility to protect their kwami. How could Marinette do that if Tikki sneaked out unattended?
The girl huffed in indignation and pulled the box out. ‘What do you think you’re doing!’ she scolded opening the box. ‘You’re- a- a- a-’
‘Afternoon, Ladybug,’ a little black cat yawned blinking his green kitty eyes.
‘You’re not Tikki,’ Marinette pointed out eloquently.
‘Nope,’ he stretched his paws and arched his back. ‘The name is Plagg. Nice to meet you.’
The little sprite peeked from the box and after making sure they were alone he flew up to her face. ‘Got any cheese?’ he asked licking his lips. ‘The gougères were delicious, but they didn’t last long,’ he sighed mournfully.
‘You- you’re- ‘ Marinette forgot her voice for a moment and just stared at the sprite, so similar to Tikki yet so different. She would describe him as cute, but something told her he wouldn’t have appreciated that.
‘Chat Noir’s kwami,’ he finished. ‘Although temporarily Chat-less, it seems.’
Her eyes got as big as saucers. ‘Chat Noir is here?’
‘Was,’ Plagg shrugged. ‘He probably went home.’
‘Probably?’ Marinette asked weakly. The gears in here head were turning at high velocity. If Chat Noir’s kwami was here, then Chat had to be somewhere near - or had been for a while. That meant Chat must be much closer to her, than she ever imagined.
‘Easy, Ladybug,’ the black kwami flicked his paw, as if reading her thoughts. ‘You don’t want to accidentally figure my Chosen out. It’s bad enough you met me, Tikki is going to kill me for sure.’ He shuddered. ‘Speaking of the charming yin to my disastrous yang, where is she?’
Marinette sank to her seat in resignation. None of it made sense and Plagg was right, too many clues and bam! goes Chat’s secret identity. ‘I have no idea,’ she sighed. ‘How did you get here?’
‘I smelled cheese?’ he offered innocently. ‘I found the gougères and then I must have fallen asleep.’
‘You… smelled cheese,’ the girl echoed. ‘And came here. But that means-’
‘That means you have to stop thinking, princess,’ he warned.
‘Aren’t you even going to look for Chat?’
‘Nah, he probably went home already,’ Plagg plopped himself on the desk in front of her.
‘Do you know where Tikki might be, then?’ Marinette asked anxiously. That little cat’s attitude was slowly getting on her nerves and she was worried about her kwami.
The black sprite shook his head and stretched lazily. ‘Nope,’ he murmured. ‘If she hasn’t shown up yet, I’m as clueless as you.’
Now she felt the panic rising from the pit of her stomach. ‘Do you have any idea how to contact her?’
‘Do I look like a phone to you?’ he scoffed in reply and then his lips stretched into a sly smirk. ‘So… you seem to find yourself kwami-less, while I’m chosen-less, what a happy coincidence,’ he mused.
‘What are you even saying?’
‘Take me home,’ Plagg suddenly flew up and zipped to her.
‘You’re joking, right?’ she blinked at him in disbelief. ‘What if Chat comes looking for you?’
‘If he hasn’t come yet, he probably doesn’t know I’m not with him,’ the feline kwami replied easily. ‘And if you leave me here I’m gonna starve. I’m so hungry!’ he swayed slightly mid-flight. As if on cue his stomach gurgled, the sound much deeper than his size should allow. Plagg swooned theatrically. ‘Please, Ladybug! Don’t leave me here. I’ll starve. Chosens must protect kwamis! And I might come in handy if there’s an akuma attack.’
‘How?’
‘How what?’
‘How can you come in handy, if you’re not with Chat Noir?’ she asked and then his words finally sunk in. And just like that the day wasn’t so good anymore. ‘Oh no!’ she moaned, ‘Oh, this is bad. Neither of us can transform now!’ She cursed her luck. This was exactly the time Chat would need her email as she would need his. But she had yet to share that contact with her partner and now it was too late.
‘I will admit this is unfortunate,’ the kwami stated. ‘But I’d rather stay with you than here. Look at it like this: out of the two missing kwamis you at least know the whereabouts of one. That’s better than none?’ he suggested.
‘Okay,’ she sighed. ‘You’re probably right. Let’s go,’ she offered him the place in her purse and he happily curled up inside.
‘Can I get more of those heavenly cheese puffs?’ he asked hopefully.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she smiled, closing the clasp.
There was something right about having a kwami, even if it was the wrong one. Plagg’s presence somehow calmed her nerves. Even if she was still worried over Tikki, the little cat’s easy demeanor suggested his miraculous counterpart would be all right. If he wasn’t panicking, she probably shouldn’t either. Maybe he knew or suspected something he didn’t want to share? Still, what had been Tikki thinking! Sneaking out of her purse like that. Had she been trying to find Plagg? If Chat was at the same school she might have wanted to contact the other kwami. Which meant-
‘Stop it!’ Her purse hissed. ‘I can hear you muttering under your breath. Too much thinking isn’t good for you right now. It’s bad already that you know Chat Noir is in the same school.’
‘Fine!’ Marinette gave up. She reached the bakery anyway. ‘You want only gougères or something else too?’ she whispered.
‘Any chances for a cheese danish?’ the purse ventured.
‘You really like cheese, huh?’
‘What can I say? Rotten milk is the feast to my stomach,’ the purse snickered.
‘Oh god, I’m so happy Tikki likes cookies,’ Marinette muttered, collecting a few treats to a plate and heading upstairs. ‘I can’t even imagine the smell of your emergency food!’
‘A divine smell, mind you,’ the purse pointed out. ‘Even if my Chosen constantly complains about it. He’s just too young to appreciate good cheese.’
The girl chuckled, imagining poor Chat grumbling over it. He was kind enough to allow his kwami everything the little sprite asked for, even if that made him miserable at times.
Plagg was a good companion. He kept silent, although he snickered after seeing her room. ‘This pink is ridiculous,’ he offered as a way of explanation, but Marinette had a feeling this wasn’t what he meant at all. After that comment he patiently worked through the contents of the plate and then sprawled himself next to her screen, while she was doing her homework. She could swear he purred lightly, when she rubbed his cute head with her finger, but that might as well have been her imagination.
The afternoon was slowly melting into evening when a ping from her phone startled them both. It was a notification from her special e-mail account, that so far only one person knew of. What would Adrien want from Ladybug?
“Found your little friend. She’s fine. I hope you’re not too worried. How can I get her to you? A.”
Marinette stiffened, nearly dropping her phone. Adrien found Tikki?! But how? Where?
‘Oh, that’s good news!’ Plagg’s voice managed to break through the questions screaming in her mind. He plopped himself on her shoulder.
‘Yeah,’ she admitted, once again calming down. Was this a cat magic that she was somehow susceptible to?
‘Now I think we should go and get her,’ the black sprite suggested, clicking his tongue.
‘Are you kidding me?’ Marinette raised a brow. ‘I’m supposed to waltz just like that to the Agreste mansion and ask Adrien to return my kwami? Yeah, that would go well for my secret identity,’ she snorted.
‘Hey, I’m not saying you should go to him as Marinette,’ he took flight again. ‘That would be stupid indeed.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t exactly have any masks on me,’ she scoffed.
Plagg flew over to her and inspected her earrings. ‘It’s been a while,’ he mused, ‘and they aren’t as comfortable as my ring. But I can definitely work with that.’ He turned to her. ‘Obviously not everyone would look good in black, but with your ideas I bet you’re gonna give us a showstopper, huh?’ he wiggled encouragingly.
‘W-what?’
‘Claws out?’ he suggested.
#ladrienjune#ladrien#perdita writes#maybugs don't fly in june#ml fic#marinette dupain cheng#plagg#day 4: protecting
80 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dec 30, 2019
I’m starting this blog today of my thoughts. Recently, I’ve been losing my memories. I sometimes find myself repeating the same things over and over so I wanted to make a blog solely dedicated to my memories.
---
Today, I woke up at 8:15 am. I buried my head back into my pillow until the clock read 8:20 am and I finally forced myself up.
I didn’t even wash my face. Kind of was late for that.
Gross, I know.
I wore my Banana Republic turtleneck that my sister got for me during Christmas two years ago. One of my favourites.
---
At work, I came to a very messy desk. Christmas cards and chocolates were literally littered all over my desk. And of course, I had stacks of mail just waiting for me to be sent out. I think a lot of them actually contain greeting cards.
“Dear blah,
Please see attached what appears to be a greet card our office received on behalf of your company. Would you like me to courier this!?
Sincerely,
Rachel”
My coworkers opened their mystery gifts and I was feeling happy about it. Grace gave me a corgi sock from F21. I think she bought it for herself but maybe felt bad because she didn’t get me anything for Christmas.
---
One of the paralegals at work always creeps in behind my computer and catches me on my phone. It’s the same girl every time.
Why is she so damn sneaky?
I decide to use my WhatsApp on my desktop instead.
Apparently, she got engaged over the Christmas break.
I feel happy for her but this only fuels to my depression. All of the paralegals in my team are married or engaged and I'm the only one who is single and not to mention make the least amount of money.
Starting to think I might actually die alone.
---
I don’t know why but my mind felt like it was on crack all day, I couldn’t focus for too long without my brain feeling so exhausted and over or under stimulated? I kept sending random gifs and memes to my friends. I felt like I was playing a game.
I’m pretty sure my brain was addicted to the sensation of the notifications from my phone. I especially felt it because I was back at work and I guess I was feeling depleted. So maybe this feeling was more intensified.
---
I re-installed tinder and saw that I had a bunch of messages from the one guy from Spain. I actually really like talking to him because he knows how to carry a conversation. He acknowledges what I say and expresses his thoughts in a relatable way...then asks me another question. He is also very curious and engaging. But he has a girlfriend so he is still kind of odd.
Regardless, he is better than any of the guys I’ve been talking to on Tinder.
Honestly, guys in Vancouver don’t know how to talk.
They are not friendly nor interesting. They love to pose in front of trees though.
A total boner killer.
---
I decide to send some memes to Alex. He kind of sucks because he leaves me on read a lot. He claims he’s not big on texting but I think if we had a really good thing going, he wouldn't treat me like that.
But, I still send him memes because I like to make people laugh. (Assuming he laughs). I don’t care too much about the reactions people give me... well that’s not true. Maybe I just want him to laugh.
I mean, I sent a bunch of memes to Juan throughout the day and he replied in all caps HAHAHA. It's amazing. It's honestly all I ever ask for in life. I feel so accomplished when people laugh at my jokes or to things I say, it really makes my soul feel good.
Juan and I are on super good terms. I don't know if that is a good thing. I don't think too much though, I just go with the flow. I find that our personalities are just so similar that we almost have no choice but to get along. It sounds weird yet it makes sense to me.
Also, the thing about men. I don’t try to change them, I know my worth. If someone doesn’t treat me the way I like, I sit back instead and then cry about it.
I’ll know it when I find the guy I want to be in a relationship with. The right guy won’t even give me the time to think because I'll be too busy laughing.
But I feel depressed because the only person that is still making me laugh super hard is Juan. Who, I’m sure is probably laughing with his new girlfriend.
---
My boss dropped me off some treats and a bottle of wine. Honestly, I've never worked with such a sweet group of people. Everyone at work is so friendly and genuinely nice. I feel very lucky.
---
I came home instead of going to the gym. I told myself I will rest for an hour but I ended up taking a massive nap and never ended up going.
I plan to wake up at 7 and workout in the morning.
But I don’t know if I can. I just had noodles at 11:30 pm because that’s what depressed people do.
Well...that gives me more reasons to actually go and workout tomorrow but the clock says now it’s 1:27am.
---
And I still have to shower.
I also took this photo on my way to work
0 notes
Text
10 Q’s
RULES: ALWAYS POST THE RULES, ANSWER THE QUESTIONS GIVEN TO YOU, THEN WRITE 10 QUESTIONS OF YOUR OWN, AND TAG SOME FRIENDS!
Tagged by @suintor ♥
1. What’s your favourite item in your room that you own?
I would say my PC but if that doesn’t count then probably my Bioshock Infinite Skyhook.
2. Are you an early bird or a night owl?
See, my first instinct is to say night owl because I’m a massive grouchy bitch in the morning but at the same time I don’t really stay up that late? I usually go to bed around 11 or something so yeah.
3. Pizza, Ice Cream or Burrito?
Burrito! I’m scared to say it but I think I’m going off of pizza a little bit?
4. Most remembered dream that you’ve had?
It’s hard to think of any right now tbh. I usually only remember dreams just after they’ve happened and then I forget about them pretty quickly.
5. Which HP house are you in (Gryff, Slyth, Huffle, Raven)?
I don’t know which one I’d pick personally because I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan. But I did do that online thing once where the website sorts you and I got sorted into Hufflepuff.
6. Describe yourself in 4 words;
Introverted, Smol, Dedicated and Anxious
7. What age do you wish you could permanently be?
To be honest, I’d like to stay the same age I am right now (24). I feel like it’s not too young to be not taken seriously in some situations but also not so old that I’m considered, well, old lmao.
8. If you could live anywhere, where would you go?
As much as I complain about Scotland sometimes, I honestly do love living here. I think we take a lot of the stuff we have for granted and we really do have many advantages that other countries don’t have. I'm just worried for what the future holds because of Brexit now...
9. If you could change your name, what would it be?
When I was a teen, I don’t know why, but I went through a phase where I wanted everyone to start calling me Jamie? It was my favourite name and I also wanted to name my first kid Jamie lmoa I don’t know what the fuck. But in response to the question, I have no idea. I wouldn’t change my name to Jamie now but I don’t know what else I’d change it to. I don’t particularly like my current name but I also have no real desire to change it.
10. Biggest fear?
Losing the person/people I love the most in the world and being left alone.
Tagged by @univertistsims, thank you!
Rules: Answer the questions, tag some friends.
1. Favourite curse word?
Cunt.
2. Coke or Pepsi?
Coke.
3. What superpower would you like to have?
Invisibility.
4. Ultimate pet peeve?
People being two-faced and people who lie.
5. Without EP’s and DLC’s, Sims 3 or 4?
I actually can’t stand the graphics and style of Sims 3 so it would have to be 4.
6. What’s the last time you screamed at the top of your lungs?
I actually don’t even know. I did scream pretty loudly earlier today because I was getting out of my sister’s car and this MASSIVE bee came flying at me into the car and yeah, I freaked out a little bit because my hands were full with stuff.
7. What’s something you’ve done that you wish you could undo?
When I was a teenager I had braces but I hated them so I basically begged to get them taken off. They were taken off too early, my teeth weren’t totally straight and then on top of that I didn’t wear my retainer so they’ve gone back to being not straight and now if I want them straight (which I do) it’s gonna cost like £3k to get fixed.
8. If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
Answered above.
9. Last lie you told?
Uhhh, I’m not sure. Probably that I wasn’t mad when I actually was lmao.
10. Strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?
?? I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve eaten anything strange. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to food.
Tagged by @shannonsimsfan, thank you!
1. What is your current sims project?
Just continuing on with my Fontaine legacy right now.
2. What is it about sims games that inspires or draws you in?
I guess it’s a combination of the freedom to do whatever I want, to create lives and stories with characters I’ve made, to follow a family through generations and see what happens and also the massive amount of creativity the game allows.
3. Favorite sims community or forum?
Does Tumblr count? If not, probably Garden of Shadows, though I haven’t visited in a long time because I haven’t been playing TS2.
4. What sims blogs or videos are you enjoying lately?
I’ve got notifications on a bunch of simblrs right now, including @letichespixels, @simsthatsparkle, @sims-creations, @midpoosimmer, @womrats, @sammyshuno, @faerietalesims, @coreopsims, @ohare-lane, @suintor
I don’t really watch that much sims content on YouTube so I don’t have any channels or videos that I’m following
5. Favorite sim lit genre?
Uhh, I have no idea how to answer this one, haha. I guess just legacies?
6. Favorite part of simming (building, playing, creating content, writing, world building, etc?)
Actual playing, taking screenshots and creating sims.
7. Do you know any simmers in real life?
Nope, none! (Not to the extent of the Simming community anyway, I obviously know people who play and have played the sims. But there’s a difference, you know? You know what I’m talking about guys. And I don’t meant it in an elitist way or anything I just mean there’s people who play the sims now and again for a bit of fun and then there’s us on Simblr.)
8. Describe one of your favorite sims.
Brigid is probably my favourite TS4 sim so far. I think it’s a combination of me doing something different with her childhood and upbringing and just her personality and character in general. She’s so kind and caring and wants to see the very best in people and always give them a chance. She’s just super happy and cheerful and pure.
9. Have you ever had a sim you really disliked playing?!
Hmm... I dislike playing Frank, not in the way that I actually don’t want to play when it’s his rotation but just because he’s slimy and an asshole and it hurts me to basically play out these situations and actions in the game to my other sims because it’s so mean but that’s just the character Frank is and it’s things he would do so I have to do it :(
10. Do you picture yourself playing sims in five years from now?
100%, yes!
My 10 Questions;
What are you listening to/watching right now?
Other than The Sims, what have you been playing recently?
Do you have any pets?
What’s your favourite TV show?
Do you have any idea what you want to do when you’re older? Or if you’re ‘older’ what are you doing or what would you rather be doing?
Who’s your favourite YouTuber?
Where does most of your disposable income go?
What do you eat on an average day?
Do you have any other tumblr blogs?
What’s the last film you went to see?
I’ll tag: @letichespixels @peacemaker-ic @simpyre @crimsonsims @creatingsims @windenburger @midnightpoodle @wooldawn @ddeathflower @marquis-de-bechdel @simseternity @simsthatsparkle, @meisiu and anyone else who wants to do it, sorry if I didn’t tag you, just go for it!
#suintor#univertistsims#shannonsimsfan#non sims#nonsims#tag#tag meme#ask meme#text post#saviorhide#long post#10 questions meme#question meme
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
Narrating Personal Interest
Influence equals power and power equals money.
The topic of influencers interests me for many reasons. As a millennial, I can relate and understand the appeal of becoming a social media influencer.
I applaud the entrepreneurial ambition and creativity that goes into making shareable content online – even the absurd. The size of online audiences grows every day as more people join the Internet and therefore, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg regarding the influencer economy.
If you told me two years ago that a picture of an egg would be the most 'liked' post on Instagram, well I wouldn't have believed you. But 53 million likes later and here we are. Social networking sites are no longer just a fad amongst the youth. A report released in March this year confirmed that Instagram alone is a 1.7 billion dollar industry.
A lot has changed though since your teenager created their Instagram account back in 2009. I am fascinated by the growing power that social media holds in our society. I first began looking at influencers when I joined social media channels. Actually, as a matter of fact, I got a Facebook notification a few days ago celebrating my 12-year Facebook anniversary. Social media influencers have evolved since a decade ago, with more niche communities, larger audiences and now that profitability is existent. Digital monetisation has changed the game for social media influencers, as more users are being solely drawn in for financial gain which tends to result in higher amounts of inauthentic content.
Today, basically anyone can be an influencer as the barrier of entry is so low. It’s never been easier to create online content, to grow an audience following and to earn dollar bills. The age-old line, ‘I could do that’ perfectly describes the acceptance of the influencer movement. I would first like to showcase @justaconstructionguy, who as of this post has just over 500k followers on Instagram. A handful more than the 75 followers he had four months ago.
Social media influencers can grow an online presence in a short timeframe and gain a widespread following on platforms like Instagram. They are renowned for uploading #sponsored content and can earn up to $1,000 per 100,000 followers. I don’t know about you but that’s a pretty significant economical shift from a decade ago.
Finally, as the name of the blog suggests, I am interested in the authenticity of influencers and their viable longevity. Especially since Instagram (and now Facebook) recently announced plans to hide 'like' counts on posts in efforts to combat the rising concerns around the mental health of young people.
0 notes
Text
I'm A Little Awkward, But Most People Like Me
Pairing: Yixing/Baekhyun
Rating: pg-13
Genre: online friendship?
Summary: Baekhyun's a little awkward, spends too much time reading smutty gay fanfiction, and doesn't think twice before flying across the country to meet his favorite author.
He’s staring at the screen, the little line blinking, taunting him. He wants to say something. Anything. But what? Is it weird if he just gushes? Can he do that? Hi you don’t know me but I love ur fics and ur a great writer and i think i love you please be my friend. He quickly backspaces. “Definitely can’t send that.”
He lets his head fall onto his desk and pouts. “Come on Baekhyun, you’re a people person, you’re great at making friends. Just say hi.” He takes the bit of courage his little pep talk gives him and hurries to type something, not going back to reread it because he knows he’ll just backspace it all again. He lets out his held breath after hitting send and then hurries to exit out of the site, shutting his laptop and pushing it away from himself. It’s late and he should get to bed anyway, he has work in the morning.
He hates the sound of his alarm. It’s too loud. Each time it goes off, every five minutes for a half-hour straight, he silences it and forces himself not to cry into his pillow. He briefly wonders why his life can’t be like Kai’s in xingie’s latest fic. Why wasn’t he born into a rich family, with the luxury of never having to work a day in his life? He sighs, swings his legs over the edge of the bed and stands.
After getting ready it’s a short walk to work, too short. He looks up at the building, the glass window with the stupid purple coffee mug smiling down at him, and is disappointed that, once again, it hasn’t burned down overnight. The sound of the bell chiming when he opens the door annoys him, but one annoyance is quickly replaced with another when his manager, Junmyeon, marches up to him with that overly happy smile on his face.
“You’re late. Again.”
Baekhyun continues walking, thinking that if he ignores him he’ll go away. But Junmyeon only follows behind him, much too close.
“Third time this week, Baek. You need to be—“
“I know, Junmyeon,” he sighs as he ties his apron around his waist. “I know.” Junmyeon gives him a look, the one he uses when customers are being unreasonable, but doesn’t say anything more. “I’ll be on time tomorrow.”
He’s left alone after that to work. This part of his job he can handle, making coffee is something he’s always enjoyed. Plus, the sounds of the machines drown out potential conversations his coworkers might be tempted to have with him. On more than one occasion he’s turned the blender on specifically to drown out whatever nonsense Sehun was spewing, that kid seems to never stop talking. He’s cute, but god damn.
His first order of the day is a mocha latte and he smiles to himself. It reminds him of a fic by xingie he’d read not too long ago; the main character worked in a coffee shop and his super cute, much too flirty regular always ordered a mocha latte everyday. He’s torn from his daydream when he realizes he’s spilling milk all over the counter and it’s pouring onto the front of his apron. He curses under his breath, quickly grabbing a rag to wipe up his mess. Maybe if xingie actually replies to him he can tell him how he made a mess at work daydreaming about one of his steamy sex scenes from his coffee shop fic. He smiles.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Sehun’s voice calls suddenly, much too close to him. “You’re happy you just spilled milk all over yourself?” Baekhyun shoots Sehun a quick glare and then turns on the empty blender.
By the time he gets to sit down for his lunch break he’s ready to go home. His feet hurt and he looks like he pissed himself and he really just wants to finish the chaptered fic he’d started the night before. He sips from his coffee mug and looks to the clock on the wall above him. Fifteen minutes, thats enough time to at least get in half a chapter. So he pulls his phone out and quickly loads up the site, tapping on his subscriptions and smiling to himself.
It’s been a long read. He’s spent most of his free time for the better part of a week reading this fic. It’s by xingie, so of course it’s amazing, but this one. This one is it. This one is everything Baekhyun’s been looking for in a fic. He’s cried twice, gotten so angry at the main character he’s slammed his laptop shut, and had to stop reading to masturbate once. Okay, twice. Okay, it was three times, but xingie just knows how to write some good sex. Baekhyun pouts, he wishes he was having good sex. He sighs, rolls his eyes and refocuses. Ten minutes, start reading, he tells himself.
He’s just about to get to the part where Kai finally, finally, confesses to the short, big-eyed boy of his dreams when someone kicks his foot. He holds his breath to keep a shout in, because he’d rather not get in trouble. So he settles for an annoyed, “What?” Junmyeon doesn’t speak, just holds his wrist up to tap at the face of his watch. Oh, Baekhyun thinks, my break ended twenty minutes ago. He throws a charming smile Junmyeon’s way as he scrambles to his feet and rushes back to work.
He groans the entire walk home. Junmyeon had sat him down after work to explain to him the importance of punctuality. Sure, he drowned most of it out, but still annoying nonetheless. He unlocks his door and steps inside, “I’m not a child,” he pouts.
His apartment is small, but he has a cat so it’s okay. And, just like everyday, Socks the cat is sleeping in a little furry ball, curled up on the tattered old couch his friend Taehyung gave him as a move in gift. He curls up in a similar ball around Socks and pulls his phone out to finally finish what he’d started at work. “Alright Kai, lets see you finally admit your feelings.”
The message notification is a little unexpected, no one ever messages him. And then he remembers his half-asleep, 3am message to xingie.
From xingie:
Hey, thanks for the message! I’m glad you’re enjoying my fics… it’s kinda cool to get like, fan mail. I’ve actually noticed you’ve left me a few comments before so thanks for that! Hope to hear back from you!
Baekhyun stares at his phone, rereads the message a few times, and then screeches into the couch cushion. Socks gets up and gives him a dirty look before rearranging himself at the opposite end of the couch. “Sorry,” he says, then hops up to sit cross-legged. “What do I say back?” he speaks aloud, looking at his reflection in his dark tv screen. “How do I reply without sounding creepy?”
From dontcallmebacon:
Wow, okay. I kinda didn’t expect you to reply to me. I figured you must get a lot of messages because your fics are so good. Um, I don’t really know what to say now. I almost sent you a message yesterday telling you I think I love you, but I didn’t. I really love your last fic, Coffee House. I’m almost finished reading it right now. I got in trouble at work today trying to read instead of working. So thats your fault lol. Anyway, thanks for replying!
He hits send without thinking and immediately regrets. “Oh my god, I’m such a fucking creeper.”
From dontcallmebacon:
Also I’m sorry for how creepy that message probably came out I literally just rambled on accident. I promise I’m not usually this awkward.
After this, they end up chatting regularly. Xingie, Baekhyun learns, is actually really cool. They eventually exchange Tumblr information and begin following each other. Messaging there is just much easier, and a lot faster. Baekhyun may or may not stalk through Xingie’s blog, trying to find pictures to put a face to the name. He’s cute, he’s really cute. Like, holy hell what a time to be alive and gay, please Jesus let him be gay, kinda cute. He spends only a very reasonable hour digging deeper to find more pictures, learning his name is Yixing and that he’s not only cute but he’s sexy as hell when he wants to be. Baekhyun may or may not totally save a black and white picture of him biting his lip to his computer.
dontcallmebacon: you're a guy
xingie: i am, yes
xingie: is that bad?
dontcallemebacon: no i just… i guess i was expecting like a girl. since you know… its usually girls that write fics.
xingie: i can assure you there are plenty of guys that write fics.
xingie: why do you think i have such extensive knowledge of anal? lol
Baekhyun has to sit back from his computer, hands still resting on the keys as he thinks. Is that Yixing’s way of telling him he’s gay? Because well, Baekhyun’s gay. Baekhyun is very gay and Yixing is very cute. And, “No, quit that. Quit that right now.”
dontcallmebacon: youre really cute
Baekhyun mentally kicks himself, physically slams his head onto his desk. That is totally not what he was wanting to say. He hurries to try and save the situation.
dontcallmebacon: i mean like i saw a picture of yu and youre cuet not that i was like stalkinh you or antyhing
dontcallmebacon: wow that makes it sound liek i WAS stalking you which i wasnt i swear!
Baekhyun waits, watching the chat box, hoping he didn’t just freak Yixing out. It feels like hours, days, years that he waits for a reply.
xingie: so basically what ur saying is you stalked my blog?
dontcallmebacon: NO!
dontcallmebacon: ok yes i did but i just wanted to see what you looked like
xingie: ….you think im cuuuuuuuuute ^.^
xingie: send me a picture of you now, its only fair
Baekhyun almost spits up his drink. Yixing wants a picture of him? He quickly goes through his facebook, trying to find the cutest picture of himself he can. He chooses one and sends it and waits for a reply, playing some dumb game on Facebook to distract himself.
xingie: cute
A few months go by like this, Baekhyun regularly chatting with Yixing nearly all day and all night. Well, until he has to go to sleep before Yixing, timezones be damned. They learn a lot about each other in a short amount of time. They have a shared love for photography, food, animals and more importantly, BTS. They discover they have the same bias and ultimately decide, jokingly of course, that they must be soulmates.
Baekhyun gets in trouble more often at work now. Showing up late more days than not because he decided to stay up much too late to chat with Yixing. Spending too much time looking at his phone instead of paying attention to his work. He makes Yixing laugh when he tells him that he’s solely responsible for the new no phones policy at work.
xingie: i cant wait to meet you
Baekhyun leans back and just stares. They’ve been talking for three months now and sure, the thought of actually meeting Yixing has crossed his mind, but he never thought Yixing was thinking the same thing. He smiles to himself and runs his fingers over the keys.
dontcallmebacon: really?
xingie: uh yea duh youre fuckin awesome why wouldnt i wanna meet you??
xingie: unless ur a serial killer….. are u a serial killer???
dontcallmebacon: i feel like thats what a serial killer would say to make someone think theyre not a serial killer…
dontcallmebacon: are YOU a serial killer??
xingie: i would never kill you
xingie: might kiss you tho
Baekhyun feels his heart skip. His mouth falls open into a small smile as he types his response.
dontcallmebacon: you want to kiss me?
xingie: have you seen you? like youve seen how cute you are, right?
xingie: id totally kiss you
dontcallmebacon: well.. i never said id let you so..
xingie: would you let me?
Baekhyun’s smile widens and he bites into his bottom lip.
dontcallmebacon: totally
Baekhyun is wheezing as he throws himself into his computer chair; it rolls sideways and he catches himself with a hand on the edge of his desk. He opens his laptop with one hand, the other holding onto the cramp in his side, and quickly signs into Tumblr. As he’s waiting for his shitty internet to do its job he tries to catch his breath. “I need to start working out, jesus christ, it was only three blocks”.
He was at work when he got the notification. BTS was announced as one of the artists in the lineup for Kcon in LA this year. He likes BTS. Yixing likes BTS. Yixing lives in LA. It was so exciting and overwhelming all he could think to do was sprint the three blocks from his work to his apartment. He needed to talk to Yixing immediately.
The site finally loads and he has seven messages. Yixing already knows, he thinks to himself. And, sure enough, he opens the chat box to see a barrage of all caps, frantic messages.
xingie: KCON
xingie: BTS KCON EMRGENCY REPLY TO MEEEEEE
xingie: BAEK FUKCING REPLY TO ME YOU DICKBAG
xingie: BAKHYUNNNNNMNN HURRY IM DYNING
xingie: BTSSSS BAEK PAY ATTENTION TO ME
xingie: GOD DAMN IT BTS AT KCON IM SCREECHING AND UR IGNORING ME
xingie: IF YUO DONT REPLY TO ME THIS FRIENDSAHIP IS OVERR
dontcallmebacon: I WAS AT WORK IM SRORRY!!!!!!
dontcallmebacon: are you gonna go? to kcon?? BTS????
xingie: thank fuck i thought u were dead
xingie: uhmmm obviously im gonna go! bts in my city omgg
dontcallmebacon: im so jealous tell hobi i love him for me
xingie: dude just fly out here
xingie: FLY OUT HERE AND MEET ME AND SEE BTS OMG YESS
xingie: baek u gotta
Baekhyun reads the message over and over, thinking about it. He has extra money. He has time he can take off work. Why shouldn’t he fly out to LA? He’s always wanted to go. He’d get to see BTS and kiss a cute boy. He quickly checks his bank account, looks at a calendar, and then switches back to Tumblr.
dontcallmebacon: fuck it.. im in
I’m not gonna cry. I’m not gonna cry. Baekhyun repeats this in his head as he watches his mother walk away from him. She drove him to the airport so he wouldn't have to leave his car, and now she’s leaving. He’s never flown before and he’s moderately terrified. Where does he go? What does he do with his luggage? How does he get to his plane? A large group of people wearing matching shirts passes him, chatting animatedly in a foreign language and he’s jealous. He wishes he had thirty other people around him to tell him what to do. He looks at his phone to check the time. What if he misses his plane? He begins walking faster.
It takes a little time, getting into the wrong line two separate times, but he finally figures out what he has to do. He checks his bag, gets his ticket and then, sighs. “Another line,” he whines, looking over at security. This line moves faster. Each step he takes closer he begins to panic just a little more. He wishes Yixing was awake so he could message him, but it’s like 2am in LA right now, so he’s stuck with nothing but his own thoughts. He takes another step forward, heart beating fast. He begins running through everything in his head, everything he’d packed in his carryon. What if they find something I shouldn't have and I go to airport jail, he thinks.
He makes it through security, only slightly scarred for life, and from there it’s smooth sailing.
By the time he lands in Vegas for his connecting flight he’s starving and so ready to just be in California. He sits down to eat and excitedly messages Yixing, knowing he’ll finally be up.
dontcallmebacon: im in vegas now, coolest airport ever
xingie: ahhhhhhh so close!!!
xingie: im so excited ur almost heeeeere
dontcallmebacon: i knowww i just wanna get there already
dontcallmebacon: also i’ll have u know i only cried a little at the airport before i left
dontcallmebacon: i had a brief hour of panic but im good now
xingie: lol nice
xingie: well only a couple more hours left and then you'll be here
Baekhyun notices the time across the top of his phone and his eyes widen. He shoves the rest of his food in his mouth and quickly chugs the rest of his drink.
dontcallmebacon: gotta go, plane leaves in twenty and im at the opposite end of the airport eating.
dontcallmebacon: ill message you when i land in la!
When Baekhyun lands he messages Yixing like he said he would and sets off to find his bag. He realizes, pretty quickly, that he has no idea how to find his bag. He wanders aimlessly, he thinks he’s following the signs correctly; he turns around because he was going the wrong way, but finally, he finds baggage claim.
He drags his bag behind him to wait outside. And then, he gets nervous. What if he’s awkward? What if Yixing doesn’t like him? What if Yixing isn't really coming and this was just a big elaborate joke and now he’s stranded all alone in California? He shakes his head, knowing he’s just being dramatic. A black car slows and stops in front of him, he gulps. Yixing steps out, tall, handsome, exactly how Baekhyun pictured him. He lets out a weird breathy chuckle as Yixing steps up to him, a little dimple in his cheek as he smiles.
“Hi.”
Baekhyun licks his lips, his mouth is dry. “Hi.”
Yixing smiles again, looks from Baekhyun’s face to his bag. “You want me to take your—“
“Kiss!”
Yixing’s eyebrows raise, his mouth forms a little ‘o’. “What?”
“Kiss,” Baekhyun repeats, physically unable to stop the word vomit. “Kiss me.”
Yixing’s lips twitch, trying to keep the smile from forming. He grabs Baekhyun’s bag and tosses it into the trunk of his car, turning back to Baekhyun after. He laughs and ruffles Baekhyun’s hair playfully. Baekhyun’s heart stops when Yixing leans forward, lips pursed, and presses their lips together quickly.
“Welcome to California,” Yixing says with a laugh as he walks to the driver’s side and opens the door. “And, nice to finally meet you.”
Baekhyun stares with his mouth open as Yixing gets into the car. He licks his lips and lets out an awkward laugh. The window rolls down and Yixing leans over, hand pulling the handle to push open the door. “You coming?”
Baekhyun smiles and nods, pulls the door open and gets in. He looks at Yixing with a bright smile as he buckles, “Lets do this.”
@seonweon-sonyeondan for you. looooooove you
78 notes
·
View notes
Text
3 Shortcuts for Business Owners to Market Effectively Without Wasting Time
9-to-5 jobs are never truly 9-5.
There’s always something that comes up that needs to get done. ASAP. No questions asked.
Thank your boss for that one. Actually, don’t. That’s probably not a good idea.
But running a business is a whole new level of busy. Being a business owner in today’s world is damn near impossible.
Want to have a normal work-life balance? Good joke.
Need to take a vacation to refresh your brain? Sure. If you’re okay with a business-level apocalypse.
Family asking you to go apple picking this weekend? It isn’t happening.
As a small business owner, you’ve got to run every single department, constantly making sure everything’s running smoothly.
That means creating new content, generating big ideas, speaking with clients, landing sales, checking emails, and running marketing reports.
The list goes on.
You simply don’t have enough time in the day to complete all of these tasks.
You can’t scale your business to new heights if you ignore any of them though.
They need to get done. Your business and livelihood literally depend on it.
So what do you do?
You need to automate. Put boring, tedious, time-consuming tasks on autopilot to save yourself hours every week.
Marketing automation isn’t easy, but it’s necessary if you want to scale your business without dying from sleep deprivation.
Here are the reasons why you need marketing automation and three tips for small business owners to automate and scale.
How marketing automation can be your saving grace
Marketing automation is just what it sounds like: automating marketing-based tasks.
If you’re not too familiar with marketing automation, here’s a simple definition from Google:
The goal is to save you time and increase your ROI.
Automation does this by cutting out time spent on tedious processes. Meaning you’re using less labor. And less labor means less overhead.
But here’s the biggest benefit of all:
Less time spent working means more time looking at pugs.
Yes, it’s a real addiction that affects thousands every year (source: N/A).
Image Source
The more you can automate, the better.
According to the latest data, the vast majority of marketers using marketing automation strategies are successful in achieving their objectives:
Image Source
Another study discovered that 50% of marketers using automation tools found either some increases or massive increases in leads:
Image Source
But effectively gaining leads isn’t all that comes with marketing automation.
It shouldn’t even be the main focus.
Sure, it’s great that marketing automation can increase leads; don’t get me wrong.
That’s amazing.
But the goal here is to reduce time spent working without reducing profit.
If you don’t see a massive spike in leads, but you’re cutting out 10 hours of marketing work each week with automation, you’re effectively increasing profit by reducing labor.
See what I mean?
Even if the process doesn’t generate 10x the amount of leads, you’re spending less on labor.
Less labor = less overhead = more profit.
This is where people tend to go wrong. When you only focus on lead increases, you lose sight of profit and business growth.
There are dozens of ways to achieve profit and growth that don’t include landing more clients.
And according to Aberdeen, companies using marketing automation can reduce their marketing-to-close time by 49%.
That potentially means completing your work in half the time.
If you’re strapped for time and haven’t slept in weeks, it’s time to implement marketing automation.
It will not only cut down on your working hours, but it’ll also reduce your labor costs and help you generate more leads.
Here are three great ways you can automate your growth today.
1. Automate your Content Promotion
Content promotion is critical to business growth.
When it comes to driving new organic traffic and leads, nothing competes with top-notch content.
But having good content alone won’t always drive traffic.
So most marketers turn to promotion on social channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
All of these platforms are an easy way to generate more leads.
But it takes time. And lot’s of it.
In fact, Statista found that the majority of marketers are spending anywhere from one to 10 hours per week on social media.
Image Source
By scheduling content and loading it into your Buffer queue, you can quickly waste a few hours every week.
Coming up with tweets and trying to squeeze your content into 140 characters sucks.
Especially when you’re re-sharing that post five different ways.
Content sharing is a necessary process that’s tedious and often time-consuming.
On top of that, it doesn’t always equate to a perfect return on investment.
So it’s sometimes thrown on the backburner.
But that’s not an option in today’s world that’s obsessed with social media.
Thanks to marketing automation, it doesn’t have to be.
You can automatically share content from your blog to social media without lifting a finger.
Here’s how.
Start by creating an account with Zapier.
It’s a popular automation tool that connects thousands of different SaaS tools that you use daily.
Once you make an account, click on the explore tab and head to the “Marketers” section:
Next, you should be able to locate the following “Zap,” or automation process:
This is legitimately a lifesaver.
If social media is the bane of your existence, you will save hours every week from trying to post and come up with new ideas.
Click “Use This Zap” to start a new automation workflow.
Next, you’ll have to link your public blog RSS feed.
If you’re not sure what that is, you can set up an RSS feed in just a few minutes with this Google tutorial.
After plugging in your feed URL, you can head to the “Action” step, which is where your social post will happen:
All you have to do here is link your account, and you’re good to go.
So next time you publish a blog post on your site, Zapier will trigger this automation process and craft a tweet for you instantly.
You can use this automation technique for all of your social channels. If you don’t want to use an RSS feed, Zapier allows you to connect WordPress too:
Ditch the hours spent crafting tweets and social posts. Automate it instead.
2. Only Focus on the Important Emails
If you’re like me, you spend too much time checking your email.
It’s obviously not because you want to, but simply because your inbox is jammed with emails.
HubSpot’s latest research shows us that marketers spend an average of nearly four hours just sending emails every week.
Image Source
That doesn’t include checking your email. That’s just typing and sending emails.
Brutal.
Email sucks. It’s boring and often filled with junk.
Yet, your iPhone is blowing up every two minutes from new emails, distracting you from the task at hand and killing your productivity.
So, how do you only get notifications for the important stuff? How do you cut out those nearly 4 hours of sending emails each week?
By automating your email process.
In Zapier, you can set up an automation workflow that allows you to get notified only when specific people email you:
Do you have important clients that email you frequently?
Or even employees that ask time-sensitive questions?
Then you need this. It’s extremely easy to set up, too.
Click “Use This Zap” to get started. Be sure to connect your Gmail account to Zapier and select your work email as the inbox.
Next, you need to type in the search string that will trigger this process.
For example, you can enter a few different search strings:
Try using direct email addresses from clients, employees, or even another boss (like your significant other).
You can also set up simple subject lines like “from:client name.”
Once you save this automation workflow, you’ll get pinged on Slack whenever an important email comes in.
Meaning you can respond instantly and only spend time on the most important emails.
So silence your email notifications, get some work done, and respond to the big-ticket clients.
Stop spending four hours weekly on email with this automation tip.
3. Automate your lead flow
Collecting leads is awesome.
You just drove some quality traffic to your site and converted a few of them.
Great. Now what?
Do you download the data and upload it into a CRM? Or into your favorite email campaign platform?
Lead flow processes can quickly become tedious and time-consuming.
From downloading, formatting, and uploading lists, you could be spending hours on it weekly.
Plus, if you don’t follow up with a lead fast, you risk losing them.
Automation is critical when it comes to perfecting a lead flow.
From automatically sending nurturing emails to uploading lists without doing the work, you can quickly cut down your hours.
One of my favorite Zapier integrations is adding new sales leads directly to a CRM or email platform without doing the actual work.
You have much more important things to do besides uploading lists and creating new campaigns.
With Zapier, you can actually automatically upload new leads from your site or social media ads directly into a CRM or email campaign.
Zapier is great for this simply because of the integrations they offer.
You can connect it with the top services like MailChimp, HubSpot, and more.
If you use it, they most likely have it.
This is one of my favorite Zaps:
If you don’t use Constant Contact or Gravity Forms, don’t fret.
You can connect nearly anything with Zapier.
This is just an example of two integrations that are amazing.
If you set up this Zap, you are automating the process of lead gen to nurturing without ever having to worry about it.
With your favorite email platform, you can usually turn on settings to send newly-added leads a welcome email, too.
Meaning you are virtually skipping these steps:
Checking your leads, downloading the lead list, formatting it for your platform, uploading it, creating and sending a new campaign.
That’s potentially hours of work every week.
If you’re a lazy business owner like me, you can get tons of value from automating lead flows.
Conclusion
Running a small business is one of the toughest ventures you can embark on. Besides kids.
Don’t get me started.
From sleepless nights (or weeks) to chasing the ever elusive “work-life balance,” you’re always strapped for time. Your plate is constantly full to the point where nothing gets done.
Your workload exceeds human capabilities. And unless you’ve got the hookup on some new age brain transplant technology, you’ve only got one option:
Automation.
If you notice that tasks are piling up and taking up your time, you need to automate.
Do you want your business to have any shot at scaling and achieving new growth? If so, you’ve gotta cut out the junk that, though necessary, doesn’t directly contribute to growth.
But you can’t ignore it full scale. You just need to automate it, filter it out, or delete it entirely.
Freeing up time doesn’t just save you time. It can also help make you a lot more money in the long run.
About Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.
from Search Results for “analytics” – The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2jsnxti
#Digital #Analytics #Website
0 notes
Text
3 Shortcuts for Business Owners to Market Effectively Without Wasting Time
9-to-5 jobs are never truly 9-5.
There’s always something that comes up that needs to get done. ASAP. No questions asked.
Thank your boss for that one. Actually, don’t. That’s probably not a good idea.
But running a business is a whole new level of busy. Being a business owner in today’s world is damn near impossible.
Want to have a normal work-life balance? Good joke.
Need to take a vacation to refresh your brain? Sure. If you’re okay with a business-level apocalypse.
Family asking you to go apple picking this weekend? It isn’t happening.
As a small business owner, you’ve got to run every single department, constantly making sure everything’s running smoothly.
That means creating new content, generating big ideas, speaking with clients, landing sales, checking emails, and running marketing reports.
The list goes on.
You simply don’t have enough time in the day to complete all of these tasks.
You can’t scale your business to new heights if you ignore any of them though.
They need to get done. Your business and livelihood literally depend on it.
So what do you do?
You need to automate. Put boring, tedious, time-consuming tasks on autopilot to save yourself hours every week.
Marketing automation isn’t easy, but it’s necessary if you want to scale your business without dying from sleep deprivation.
Here are the reasons why you need marketing automation and three tips for small business owners to automate and scale.
How marketing automation can be your saving grace
Marketing automation is just what it sounds like: automating marketing-based tasks.
If you’re not too familiar with marketing automation, here’s a simple definition from Google:
The goal is to save you time and increase your ROI.
Automation does this by cutting out time spent on tedious processes. Meaning you’re using less labor. And less labor means less overhead.
But here’s the biggest benefit of all:
Less time spent working means more time looking at pugs.
Yes, it’s a real addiction that affects thousands every year (source: N/A).
Image Source
The more you can automate, the better.
According to the latest data, the vast majority of marketers using marketing automation strategies are successful in achieving their objectives:
Image Source
Another study discovered that 50% of marketers using automation tools found either some increases or massive increases in leads:
Image Source
But effectively gaining leads isn’t all that comes with marketing automation.
It shouldn’t even be the main focus.
Sure, it’s great that marketing automation can increase leads; don’t get me wrong.
That’s amazing.
But the goal here is to reduce time spent working without reducing profit.
If you don’t see a massive spike in leads, but you’re cutting out 10 hours of marketing work each week with automation, you’re effectively increasing profit by reducing labor.
See what I mean?
Even if the process doesn’t generate 10x the amount of leads, you’re spending less on labor.
Less labor = less overhead = more profit.
This is where people tend to go wrong. When you only focus on lead increases, you lose sight of profit and business growth.
There are dozens of ways to achieve profit and growth that don’t include landing more clients.
And according to Aberdeen, companies using marketing automation can reduce their marketing-to-close time by 49%.
That potentially means completing your work in half the time.
If you’re strapped for time and haven’t slept in weeks, it’s time to implement marketing automation.
It will not only cut down on your working hours, but it’ll also reduce your labor costs and help you generate more leads.
Here are three great ways you can automate your growth today.
1. Automate your Content Promotion
Content promotion is critical to business growth.
When it comes to driving new organic traffic and leads, nothing competes with top-notch content.
But having good content alone won’t always drive traffic.
So most marketers turn to promotion on social channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
All of these platforms are an easy way to generate more leads.
But it takes time. And lot’s of it.
In fact, Statista found that the majority of marketers are spending anywhere from one to 10 hours per week on social media.
Image Source
By scheduling content and loading it into your Buffer queue, you can quickly waste a few hours every week.
Coming up with tweets and trying to squeeze your content into 140 characters sucks.
Especially when you’re re-sharing that post five different ways.
Content sharing is a necessary process that’s tedious and often time-consuming.
On top of that, it doesn’t always equate to a perfect return on investment.
So it’s sometimes thrown on the backburner.
But that’s not an option in today’s world that’s obsessed with social media.
Thanks to marketing automation, it doesn’t have to be.
You can automatically share content from your blog to social media without lifting a finger.
Here’s how.
Start by creating an account with Zapier.
It’s a popular automation tool that connects thousands of different SaaS tools that you use daily.
Once you make an account, click on the explore tab and head to the “Marketers” section:
Next, you should be able to locate the following “Zap,” or automation process:
This is legitimately a lifesaver.
If social media is the bane of your existence, you will save hours every week from trying to post and come up with new ideas.
Click “Use This Zap” to start a new automation workflow.
Next, you’ll have to link your public blog RSS feed.
If you’re not sure what that is, you can set up an RSS feed in just a few minutes with this Google tutorial.
After plugging in your feed URL, you can head to the “Action” step, which is where your social post will happen:
All you have to do here is link your account, and you’re good to go.
So next time you publish a blog post on your site, Zapier will trigger this automation process and craft a tweet for you instantly.
You can use this automation technique for all of your social channels. If you don’t want to use an RSS feed, Zapier allows you to connect WordPress too:
Ditch the hours spent crafting tweets and social posts. Automate it instead.
2. Only Focus on the Important Emails
If you’re like me, you spend too much time checking your email.
It’s obviously not because you want to, but simply because your inbox is jammed with emails.
HubSpot’s latest research shows us that marketers spend an average of nearly four hours just sending emails every week.
Image Source
That doesn’t include checking your email. That’s just typing and sending emails.
Brutal.
Email sucks. It’s boring and often filled with junk.
Yet, your iPhone is blowing up every two minutes from new emails, distracting you from the task at hand and killing your productivity.
So, how do you only get notifications for the important stuff? How do you cut out those nearly 4 hours of sending emails each week?
By automating your email process.
In Zapier, you can set up an automation workflow that allows you to get notified only when specific people email you:
Do you have important clients that email you frequently?
Or even employees that ask time-sensitive questions?
Then you need this. It’s extremely easy to set up, too.
Click “Use This Zap” to get started. Be sure to connect your Gmail account to Zapier and select your work email as the inbox.
Next, you need to type in the search string that will trigger this process.
For example, you can enter a few different search strings:
Try using direct email addresses from clients, employees, or even another boss (like your significant other).
You can also set up simple subject lines like “from:client name.”
Once you save this automation workflow, you’ll get pinged on Slack whenever an important email comes in.
Meaning you can respond instantly and only spend time on the most important emails.
So silence your email notifications, get some work done, and respond to the big-ticket clients.
Stop spending four hours weekly on email with this automation tip.
3. Automate your lead flow
Collecting leads is awesome.
You just drove some quality traffic to your site and converted a few of them.
Great. Now what?
Do you download the data and upload it into a CRM? Or into your favorite email campaign platform?
Lead flow processes can quickly become tedious and time-consuming.
From downloading, formatting, and uploading lists, you could be spending hours on it weekly.
Plus, if you don’t follow up with a lead fast, you risk losing them.
Automation is critical when it comes to perfecting a lead flow.
From automatically sending nurturing emails to uploading lists without doing the work, you can quickly cut down your hours.
One of my favorite Zapier integrations is adding new sales leads directly to a CRM or email platform without doing the actual work.
You have much more important things to do besides uploading lists and creating new campaigns.
With Zapier, you can actually automatically upload new leads from your site or social media ads directly into a CRM or email campaign.
Zapier is great for this simply because of the integrations they offer.
You can connect it with the top services like MailChimp, HubSpot, and more.
If you use it, they most likely have it.
This is one of my favorite Zaps:
If you don’t use Constant Contact or Gravity Forms, don’t fret.
You can connect nearly anything with Zapier.
This is just an example of two integrations that are amazing.
If you set up this Zap, you are automating the process of lead gen to nurturing without ever having to worry about it.
With your favorite email platform, you can usually turn on settings to send newly-added leads a welcome email, too.
Meaning you are virtually skipping these steps:
Checking your leads, downloading the lead list, formatting it for your platform, uploading it, creating and sending a new campaign.
That’s potentially hours of work every week.
If you’re a lazy business owner like me, you can get tons of value from automating lead flows.
Conclusion
Running a small business is one of the toughest ventures you can embark on. Besides kids.
Don’t get me started.
From sleepless nights (or weeks) to chasing the ever elusive “work-life balance,” you’re always strapped for time. Your plate is constantly full to the point where nothing gets done.
Your workload exceeds human capabilities. And unless you’ve got the hookup on some new age brain transplant technology, you’ve only got one option:
Automation.
If you notice that tasks are piling up and taking up your time, you need to automate.
Do you want your business to have any shot at scaling and achieving new growth? If so, you’ve gotta cut out the junk that, though necessary, doesn’t directly contribute to growth.
But you can’t ignore it full scale. You just need to automate it, filter it out, or delete it entirely.
Freeing up time doesn’t just save you time. It can also help make you a lot more money in the long run.
About Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.
0 notes
Text
3 Shortcuts for Business Owners to Market Effectively Without Wasting Time
9-to-5 jobs are never truly 9-5.
There’s always something that comes up that needs to get done. ASAP. No questions asked.
Thank your boss for that one. Actually, don’t. That’s probably not a good idea.
But running a business is a whole new level of busy. Being a business owner in today’s world is damn near impossible.
Want to have a normal work-life balance? Good joke.
Need to take a vacation to refresh your brain? Sure. If you’re okay with a business-level apocalypse.
Family asking you to go apple picking this weekend? It isn’t happening.
As a small business owner, you’ve got to run every single department, constantly making sure everything’s running smoothly.
That means creating new content, generating big ideas, speaking with clients, landing sales, checking emails, and running marketing reports.
The list goes on.
You simply don’t have enough time in the day to complete all of these tasks.
You can’t scale your business to new heights if you ignore any of them though.
They need to get done. Your business and livelihood literally depend on it.
So what do you do?
You need to automate. Put boring, tedious, time-consuming tasks on autopilot to save yourself hours every week.
Marketing automation isn’t easy, but it’s necessary if you want to scale your business without dying from sleep deprivation.
Here are the reasons why you need marketing automation and three tips for small business owners to automate and scale.
How marketing automation can be your saving grace
Marketing automation is just what it sounds like: automating marketing-based tasks.
If you’re not too familiar with marketing automation, here’s a simple definition from Google:
The goal is to save you time and increase your ROI.
Automation does this by cutting out time spent on tedious processes. Meaning you’re using less labor. And less labor means less overhead.
But here’s the biggest benefit of all:
Less time spent working means more time looking at pugs.
Yes, it’s a real addiction that affects thousands every year (source: N/A).
Image Source
The more you can automate, the better.
According to the latest data, the vast majority of marketers using marketing automation strategies are successful in achieving their objectives:
Image Source
Another study discovered that 50% of marketers using automation tools found either some increases or massive increases in leads:
Image Source
But effectively gaining leads isn’t all that comes with marketing automation.
It shouldn’t even be the main focus.
Sure, it’s great that marketing automation can increase leads; don’t get me wrong.
That’s amazing.
But the goal here is to reduce time spent working without reducing profit.
If you don’t see a massive spike in leads, but you’re cutting out 10 hours of marketing work each week with automation, you’re effectively increasing profit by reducing labor.
See what I mean?
Even if the process doesn’t generate 10x the amount of leads, you’re spending less on labor.
Less labor = less overhead = more profit.
This is where people tend to go wrong. When you only focus on lead increases, you lose sight of profit and business growth.
There are dozens of ways to achieve profit and growth that don’t include landing more clients.
And according to Aberdeen, companies using marketing automation can reduce their marketing-to-close time by 49%.
That potentially means completing your work in half the time.
If you’re strapped for time and haven’t slept in weeks, it’s time to implement marketing automation.
It will not only cut down on your working hours, but it’ll also reduce your labor costs and help you generate more leads.
Here are three great ways you can automate your growth today.
1. Automate your Content Promotion
Content promotion is critical to business growth.
When it comes to driving new organic traffic and leads, nothing competes with top-notch content.
But having good content alone won’t always drive traffic.
So most marketers turn to promotion on social channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
All of these platforms are an easy way to generate more leads.
But it takes time. And lot’s of it.
In fact, Statista found that the majority of marketers are spending anywhere from one to 10 hours per week on social media.
Image Source
By scheduling content and loading it into your Buffer queue, you can quickly waste a few hours every week.
Coming up with tweets and trying to squeeze your content into 140 characters sucks.
Especially when you’re re-sharing that post five different ways.
Content sharing is a necessary process that’s tedious and often time-consuming.
On top of that, it doesn’t always equate to a perfect return on investment.
So it’s sometimes thrown on the backburner.
But that’s not an option in today’s world that’s obsessed with social media.
Thanks to marketing automation, it doesn’t have to be.
You can automatically share content from your blog to social media without lifting a finger.
Here’s how.
Start by creating an account with Zapier.
It’s a popular automation tool that connects thousands of different SaaS tools that you use daily.
Once you make an account, click on the explore tab and head to the “Marketers” section:
Next, you should be able to locate the following “Zap,” or automation process:
This is legitimately a lifesaver.
If social media is the bane of your existence, you will save hours every week from trying to post and come up with new ideas.
Click “Use This Zap” to start a new automation workflow.
Next, you’ll have to link your public blog RSS feed.
If you’re not sure what that is, you can set up an RSS feed in just a few minutes with this Google tutorial.
After plugging in your feed URL, you can head to the “Action” step, which is where your social post will happen:
All you have to do here is link your account, and you’re good to go.
So next time you publish a blog post on your site, Zapier will trigger this automation process and craft a tweet for you instantly.
You can use this automation technique for all of your social channels. If you don’t want to use an RSS feed, Zapier allows you to connect WordPress too:
Ditch the hours spent crafting tweets and social posts. Automate it instead.
2. Only Focus on the Important Emails
If you’re like me, you spend too much time checking your email.
It’s obviously not because you want to, but simply because your inbox is jammed with emails.
HubSpot’s latest research shows us that marketers spend an average of nearly four hours just sending emails every week.
Image Source
That doesn’t include checking your email. That’s just typing and sending emails.
Brutal.
Email sucks. It’s boring and often filled with junk.
Yet, your iPhone is blowing up every two minutes from new emails, distracting you from the task at hand and killing your productivity.
So, how do you only get notifications for the important stuff? How do you cut out those nearly 4 hours of sending emails each week?
By automating your email process.
In Zapier, you can set up an automation workflow that allows you to get notified only when specific people email you:
Do you have important clients that email you frequently?
Or even employees that ask time-sensitive questions?
Then you need this. It’s extremely easy to set up, too.
Click “Use This Zap” to get started. Be sure to connect your Gmail account to Zapier and select your work email as the inbox.
Next, you need to type in the search string that will trigger this process.
For example, you can enter a few different search strings:
Try using direct email addresses from clients, employees, or even another boss (like your significant other).
You can also set up simple subject lines like “from:client name.”
Once you save this automation workflow, you’ll get pinged on Slack whenever an important email comes in.
Meaning you can respond instantly and only spend time on the most important emails.
So silence your email notifications, get some work done, and respond to the big-ticket clients.
Stop spending four hours weekly on email with this automation tip.
3. Automate your lead flow
Collecting leads is awesome.
You just drove some quality traffic to your site and converted a few of them.
Great. Now what?
Do you download the data and upload it into a CRM? Or into your favorite email campaign platform?
Lead flow processes can quickly become tedious and time-consuming.
From downloading, formatting, and uploading lists, you could be spending hours on it weekly.
Plus, if you don’t follow up with a lead fast, you risk losing them.
Automation is critical when it comes to perfecting a lead flow.
From automatically sending nurturing emails to uploading lists without doing the work, you can quickly cut down your hours.
One of my favorite Zapier integrations is adding new sales leads directly to a CRM or email platform without doing the actual work.
You have much more important things to do besides uploading lists and creating new campaigns.
With Zapier, you can actually automatically upload new leads from your site or social media ads directly into a CRM or email campaign.
Zapier is great for this simply because of the integrations they offer.
You can connect it with the top services like MailChimp, HubSpot, and more.
If you use it, they most likely have it.
This is one of my favorite Zaps:
If you don’t use Constant Contact or Gravity Forms, don’t fret.
You can connect nearly anything with Zapier.
This is just an example of two integrations that are amazing.
If you set up this Zap, you are automating the process of lead gen to nurturing without ever having to worry about it.
With your favorite email platform, you can usually turn on settings to send newly-added leads a welcome email, too.
Meaning you are virtually skipping these steps:
Checking your leads, downloading the lead list, formatting it for your platform, uploading it, creating and sending a new campaign.
That’s potentially hours of work every week.
If you’re a lazy business owner like me, you can get tons of value from automating lead flows.
Conclusion
Running a small business is one of the toughest ventures you can embark on. Besides kids.
Don’t get me started.
From sleepless nights (or weeks) to chasing the ever elusive “work-life balance,” you’re always strapped for time. Your plate is constantly full to the point where nothing gets done.
Your workload exceeds human capabilities. And unless you’ve got the hookup on some new age brain transplant technology, you’ve only got one option:
Automation.
If you notice that tasks are piling up and taking up your time, you need to automate.
Do you want your business to have any shot at scaling and achieving new growth? If so, you’ve gotta cut out the junk that, though necessary, doesn’t directly contribute to growth.
But you can’t ignore it full scale. You just need to automate it, filter it out, or delete it entirely.
Freeing up time doesn’t just save you time. It can also help make you a lot more money in the long run.
About Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.
http://ift.tt/2Aejz1R
from MarketingRSS http://ift.tt/2zxBzQY
via Youtube
0 notes
Text
3 Shortcuts for Business Owners to Market Effectively Without Wasting Time
email marketing health insurance
9-to-5 jobs are never truly 9-5.
There’s always something that comes up that needs to get done. ASAP. No questions asked.
Thank your boss for that one. Actually, don’t. That’s probably not a good idea.
But running a business is a whole new level of busy. Being a business owner in today’s world is damn near impossible.
Want to have a normal work-life balance? Good joke.
Need to take a vacation to refresh your brain? Sure. If you’re okay with a business-level apocalypse.
Family asking you to go apple picking this weekend? It isn’t happening.
As a small business owner, you’ve got to run every single department, constantly making sure everything’s running smoothly.
That means creating new content, generating big ideas, speaking with clients, landing sales, checking emails, and running marketing reports.
The list goes on.
You simply don’t have enough time in the day to complete all of these tasks.
You can’t scale your business to new heights if you ignore any of them though.
They need to get done. Your business and livelihood literally depend on it.
So what do you do?
You need to automate. Put boring, tedious, time-consuming tasks on autopilot to save yourself hours every week.
Marketing automation isn’t easy, but it’s necessary if you want to scale your business without dying from sleep deprivation.
Here are the reasons why you need marketing automation and three tips for small business owners to automate and scale.
How marketing automation can be your saving grace
Marketing automation is just what it sounds like: automating marketing-based tasks.
If you’re not too familiar with marketing automation, here’s a simple definition from Google:
The goal is to save you time and increase your ROI.
Automation does this by cutting out time spent on tedious processes. Meaning you’re using less labor. And less labor means less overhead.
But here’s the biggest benefit of all:
Less time spent working means more time looking at pugs.
Yes, it’s a real addiction that affects thousands every year (source: N/A).
Image Source
The more you can automate, the better.
According to the latest data, the vast majority of marketers using marketing automation strategies are successful in achieving their objectives:
Image Source
Another study discovered that 50% of marketers using automation tools found either some increases or massive increases in leads:
Image Source
But effectively gaining leads isn’t all that comes with marketing automation.
It shouldn’t even be the main focus.
Sure, it’s great that marketing automation can increase leads; don’t get me wrong.
That’s amazing.
But the goal here is to reduce time spent working without reducing profit.
If you don’t see a massive spike in leads, but you’re cutting out 10 hours of marketing work each week with automation, you’re effectively increasing profit by reducing labor.
See what I mean?
Even if the process doesn’t generate 10x the amount of leads, you’re spending less on labor.
Less labor = less overhead = more profit.
This is where people tend to go wrong. When you only focus on lead increases, you lose sight of profit and business growth.
There are dozens of ways to achieve profit and growth that don’t include landing more clients.
And according to Aberdeen, companies using marketing automation can reduce their marketing-to-close time by 49%.
That potentially means completing your work in half the time.
If you’re strapped for time and haven’t slept in weeks, it’s time to implement marketing automation.
It will not only cut down on your working hours, but it’ll also reduce your labor costs and help you generate more leads.
Here are three great ways you can automate your growth today.
1. Automate your Content Promotion
Content promotion is critical to business growth.
When it comes to driving new organic traffic and leads, nothing competes with top-notch content.
But having good content alone won’t always drive traffic.
So most marketers turn to promotion on social channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
All of these platforms are an easy way to generate more leads.
But it takes time. And lot’s of it.
In fact, Statista found that the majority of marketers are spending anywhere from one to 10 hours per week on social media.
Image Source
By scheduling content and loading it into your Buffer queue, you can quickly waste a few hours every week.
Coming up with tweets and trying to squeeze your content into 140 characters sucks.
Especially when you’re re-sharing that post five different ways.
Content sharing is a necessary process that’s tedious and often time-consuming.
On top of that, it doesn’t always equate to a perfect return on investment.
So it’s sometimes thrown on the backburner.
But that’s not an option in today’s world that’s obsessed with social media.
Thanks to marketing automation, it doesn’t have to be.
You can automatically share content from your blog to social media without lifting a finger.
Here’s how.
Start by creating an account with Zapier.
It’s a popular automation tool that connects thousands of different SaaS tools that you use daily.
Once you make an account, click on the explore tab and head to the “Marketers” section:
Next, you should be able to locate the following “Zap,” or automation process:
This is legitimately a lifesaver.
If social media is the bane of your existence, you will save hours every week from trying to post and come up with new ideas.
Click “Use This Zap” to start a new automation workflow.
Next, you’ll have to link your public blog RSS feed.
If you’re not sure what that is, you can set up an RSS feed in just a few minutes with this Google tutorial.
After plugging in your feed URL, you can head to the “Action” step, which is where your social post will happen:
All you have to do here is link your account, and you’re good to go.
So next time you publish a blog post on your site, Zapier will trigger this automation process and craft a tweet for you instantly.
You can use this automation technique for all of your social channels. If you don’t want to use an RSS feed, Zapier allows you to connect WordPress too:
Ditch the hours spent crafting tweets and social posts. Automate it instead.
2. Only Focus on the Important Emails
If you’re like me, you spend too much time checking your email.
It’s obviously not because you want to, but simply because your inbox is jammed with emails.
HubSpot’s latest research shows us that marketers spend an average of nearly four hours just sending emails every week.
Image Source
That doesn’t include checking your email. That’s just typing and sending emails.
Brutal.
Email sucks. It’s boring and often filled with junk.
Yet, your iPhone is blowing up every two minutes from new emails, distracting you from the task at hand and killing your productivity.
So, how do you only get notifications for the important stuff? How do you cut out those nearly 4 hours of sending emails each week?
By automating your email process.
In Zapier, you can set up an automation workflow that allows you to get notified only when specific people email you:
Do you have important clients that email you frequently?
Or even employees that ask time-sensitive questions?
Then you need this. It’s extremely easy to set up, too.
Click “Use This Zap” to get started. Be sure to connect your Gmail account to Zapier and select your work email as the inbox.
Next, you need to type in the search string that will trigger this process.
For example, you can enter a few different search strings:
Try using direct email addresses from clients, employees, or even another boss (like your significant other).
You can also set up simple subject lines like “from:client name.”
Once you save this automation workflow, you’ll get pinged on Slack whenever an important email comes in.
Meaning you can respond instantly and only spend time on the most important emails.
So silence your email notifications, get some work done, and respond to the big-ticket clients.
Stop spending four hours weekly on email with this automation tip.
3. Automate your lead flow
Collecting leads is awesome.
You just drove some quality traffic to your site and converted a few of them.
Great. Now what?
Do you download the data and upload it into a CRM? Or into your favorite email campaign platform?
Lead flow processes can quickly become tedious and time-consuming.
From downloading, formatting, and uploading lists, you could be spending hours on it weekly.
Plus, if you don’t follow up with a lead fast, you risk losing them.
Automation is critical when it comes to perfecting a lead flow.
From automatically sending nurturing emails to uploading lists without doing the work, you can quickly cut down your hours.
One of my favorite Zapier integrations is adding new sales leads directly to a CRM or email platform without doing the actual work.
You have much more important things to do besides uploading lists and creating new campaigns.
With Zapier, you can actually automatically upload new leads from your site or social media ads directly into a CRM or email campaign.
Zapier is great for this simply because of the integrations they offer.
You can connect it with the top services like MailChimp, HubSpot, and more.
If you use it, they most likely have it.
This is one of my favorite Zaps:
If you don’t use Constant Contact or Gravity Forms, don’t fret.
You can connect nearly anything with Zapier.
This is just an example of two integrations that are amazing.
If you set up this Zap, you are automating the process of lead gen to nurturing without ever having to worry about it.
With your favorite email platform, you can usually turn on settings to send newly-added leads a welcome email, too.
Meaning you are virtually skipping these steps:
Checking your leads, downloading the lead list, formatting it for your platform, uploading it, creating and sending a new campaign.
That’s potentially hours of work every week.
If you’re a lazy business owner like me, you can get tons of value from automating lead flows.
Conclusion
Running a small business is one of the toughest ventures you can embark on. Besides kids.
Don’t get me started.
From sleepless nights (or weeks) to chasing the ever elusive “work-life balance,” you’re always strapped for time. Your plate is constantly full to the point where nothing gets done.
Your workload exceeds human capabilities. And unless you’ve got the hookup on some new age brain transplant technology, you’ve only got one option:
Automation.
If you notice that tasks are piling up and taking up your time, you need to automate.
Do you want your business to have any shot at scaling and achieving new growth? If so, you’ve gotta cut out the junk that, though necessary, doesn’t directly contribute to growth.
But you can’t ignore it full scale. You just need to automate it, filter it out, or delete it entirely.
Freeing up time doesn’t just save you time. It can also help make you a lot more money in the long run.
About Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.
Youtobe
0 notes
Text
3 Shortcuts for Business Owners to Market Effectively Without Wasting Time
9-to-5 jobs are never truly 9-5.
There’s always something that comes up that needs to get done. ASAP. No questions asked.
Thank your boss for that one. Actually, don’t. That’s probably not a good idea.
But running a business is a whole new level of busy. Being a business owner in today’s world is damn near impossible.
Want to have a normal work-life balance? Good joke.
Need to take a vacation to refresh your brain? Sure. If you’re okay with a business-level apocalypse.
Family asking you to go apple picking this weekend? It ain’t happening.
As a small business owner, you’ve got to run every single department, constantly making sure everything’s running smoothly.
That means creating new content, generating big ideas, speaking with clients, landing sales, checking emails, running marketing reports.
The list goes on.
You simply don’t have enough time in the day to complete all of these tasks.
You can’t scale your business to new heights if you ignore any of them though.
They need to get done. Your business and livelihood literally depend on it.
So what do you do?
You need to automate. Put boring, tedious, time-consuming tasks on autopilot to save yourself hours every week.
Marketing automation isn’t easy, but it’s necessary if you want to scale your business without dying from sleep deprivation.
Here are the reasons why you need marketing automation and three tips for small business owners to automate and scale.
How marketing automation can be your saving grace
Marketing automation is just what it sounds like: automating marketing-based tasks.
If you’re not too familiar with marketing automation, here’s a simple definition from Google:
The goal is to save you time and increase your ROI.
Automation does this by cutting out time spent on tedious processes. Meaning you’re using less labor. And less labor means less overhead.
But here’s the biggest benefit of all:
Less time spent working means more time looking at pugs.
Yes, it’s a real addiction that affects thousands every year (source: N/A).
Image Source
The more you can automate, the better.
According to the latest data, the vast majority of marketers using marketing automation strategies are successful in achieving their objectives:
Image Source
Another study discovered that 50% of marketers using automation tools found either some increases or massive increases in leads:
Image Source
But effectively gaining leads isn’t all that comes with marketing automation.
It shouldn’t even be the main focus.
Sure, it’s great that marketing automation can increase leads; don’t get me wrong.
That’s amazing.
But the goal here is to reduce time spent working without reducing profit.
If you don’t see a massive spike in leads, but you’re cutting out 10 hours of marketing work each week with automation, you’re effectively increasing profit by reducing labor.
See what I mean?
Even if the process doesn’t generate 10x the amount of leads, you’re spending less on labor.
Less labor = less overhead = more profit.
This is where people tend to go wrong. When you only focus on lead increases, you lose sight of profit and business growth.
There are dozens of ways to achieve profit and growth that don’t include landing more clients.
And according to Aberdeen, companies using marketing automation can reduce their marketing-to-close time by 49%.
That potentially means completing your work in half the time.
If you’re strapped for time and haven’t slept in weeks, it’s time to implement marketing automation.
It will not only cut down on your working hours, but it’ll also reduce your labor costs and help you generate more leads.
Here are three great ways you can automate your growth today.
1. Automate your Content Promotion
Content promotion is critical to business growth.
When it comes to driving new organic traffic and leads, nothing competes with top-notch content.
But having good content alone won’t always drive traffic.
So most marketers turn to promotion on social channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
All of these platforms are an easy way to generate more leads.
But it takes time. And lot’s of it.
In fact, Statista found that the majority of marketers are spending anywhere from one to 10 hours per week on social media.
Image Source
By scheduling content and loading it into your Buffer queue, you can quickly waste a few hours every week.
Coming up with tweets and trying to squeeze your content into 140 characters sucks.
Especially when you’re re-sharing that post five different ways.
Content sharing is a necessary process that’s tedious and often time-consuming.
On top of that, it doesn’t always equate to a perfect return on investment.
So it’s sometimes thrown on the backburner.
But that’s not an option in today’s world that’s obsessed with social media.
Thanks to marketing automation, it doesn’t have to be.
You can automatically share content from your blog to social media without lifting a finger.
Here’s how.
Start by creating an account with Zapier.
It’s a popular automation tool that connects thousands of different SaaS tools that you use daily.
Once you make an account, click on the explore tab and head to the “Marketers” section:
Next, you should be able to locate the following “Zap,” or automation process:
This is legitimately a life saver.
If social media is the bane of your existence, you will save hours every week from trying to post and come up with new ideas.
Click “Use This Zap” to start a new automation workflow.
Next, you’ll have to link your public blog RSS feed.
If you’re not sure what that is, you can set up an RSS feed in just a few minutes with this Google tutorial.
After plugging in your feed URL, you can head to the “Action” step, which is where your social post will happen:
All you have to do here is link your account, and you’re good to go.
So next time you publish a blog post on your site, Zapier will trigger this automation process and craft a tweet for you instantly.
You can use this automation technique for all of your social channels. If you don’t want to use an RSS feed, Zapier allows you to connect WordPress too:
Ditch the hours spent crafting tweets and social posts. Automate it instead.
2. Only Focus on the Important Emails
If you’re like me, you spend too much time checking your email.
It’s obviously not because you want to, but simply because your inbox is jammed with emails.
HubSpot’s latest research shows us that marketers spend an average of nearly four hours just sending emails every week.
Image Source
That doesn’t include checking your email. That’s just typing and sending emails.
Brutal.
Email sucks. It’s boring and often filled with junk.
Yet, your iPhone is blowing up every two minutes from new emails, distracting you from the task at hand and killing your productivity.
So, how do you only get notifications for the important stuff? How do you cut out those nearly 4 hours of sending emails each week?
By automating your email process.
In Zapier, you can set up an automation workflow that allows you to get notified only when specific people email you:
Do you have important clients that email you frequently?
Or even employees that ask time-sensitive questions?
Then you need this. It’s extremely easy to set up, too.
Click “Use This Zap” to get started. Be sure to connect your Gmail account to Zapier and select your work email as the inbox.
Next, you need to type in the search string that will trigger this process.
For example, you can enter a few different search strings:
Try using direct email addresses from clients, employees, or even another boss (like your significant other).
You can also set up simple subject lines like “from:client name.”
Once you save this automation workflow, you’ll get pinged on Slack whenever an important email comes in.
Meaning you can respond instantly and only spend time on the most important emails.
So silence your email notifications, get some work done, and respond to the big-ticket clients.
Stop spending four hours weekly on email with this automation tip.
3. Automate your lead flow
Collecting leads is awesome.
You just drove some quality traffic to your site and converted a few of them.
Great. Now what?
Do you download the data and upload it into a CRM? Or into your favorite email campaign platform?
Lead flow processes can quickly become tedious and time-consuming.
From downloading, formatting, and uploading lists, you could be spending hours on it weekly.
Plus, if you don’t follow up with a lead fast, you risk losing them.
Automation is critical when it comes to perfecting a lead flow.
From automatically sending nurturing emails to uploading lists without doing the work, you can quickly cut down your hours.
One of my favorite Zapier integrations is adding new sales leads directly to a CRM or email platform without doing the actual work.
You have much more important things to do besides uploading lists and creating new campaigns.
With Zapier, you can actually automatically upload new leads from your site or social media ads directly into a CRM or email campaign.
Zapier is great for this simply because of the integrations they offer.
You can connect it with the top services like MailChimp, HubSpot, and more.
If you use it, they most likely have it.
This is one of my favorite Zaps:
If you don’t use Constant Contact or Gravity Forms, don’t fret.
You can connect nearly anything with Zapier.
This is just an example of two integrations that are amazing.
If you set up this Zap, you are automating the process of lead gen to nurturing without ever having to worry about it.
With your favorite email platform, you can usually turn on settings to send newly-added leads a welcome email, too.
Meaning you are virtually skipping these steps:
Checking your leads, downloading the lead list, formatting it for your platform, uploading it, creating and sending a new campaign.
That’s potentially hours of work every week.
If you’re a lazy business owner like me, you can get tons of value from automating lead flows.
Conclusion
Running a small business is one of the toughest ventures you can embark on. Besides kids.
Don’t get me started.
From sleepless nights (or weeks) to chasing the ever elusive “work-life balance,” you’re always strapped for time. Your plate is constantly full to the point where nothing gets done.
Your workload exceeds human capabilities. And unless you’ve got the hookup on some new age brain transplant technology, you’ve only got one option:
Automation.
If you notice that tasks are piling up and taking up your time, you need to automate.
Do you want your business to have any shot at scaling and achieving new growth? If so, you’ve gotta cut out the junk that, though necessary, doesn’t directly contribute to growth.
But you can’t ignore it full scale. You just need to automate it, filter it out, or delete it entirely.
Freeing up time doesn’t just save you time. It can also help make you a lot more money in the long run.
About Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.
Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2017/11/3-shortcuts-for-business-owners-to.html
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
cfrog
space dude
mayskiut
REMPY
swft13hd
swft13hd
pubggametips
Pubg Game Tips & Tricks
kiwaninativecrafts-blog
Kiwani.native.crafts