you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
you know I once googled how very organized housewives kept their homes super clean. And one thing they suggested was, if a task can be done in less than 2 minutes, do it right away.
And I have to think about this very often when depression tells me to delay doing things, if it tells me something is too much work right now etc.
If I can do it in less than 2 minutes I can do it no matter how exhausting it seems.
That’s what I tell myself. And it works!
I get more done and after 2 minutes I usually realize the pain doing this thing is not so horrible as my brain suggested. And then I keep going and expand the task and get real work done, holy shit
That’s…. actually brilliant. Two minutes is so short, it’s relatively an easy amount of time to FORCE yourself to work on something, even when you’re just completely deflated.
What works really really well for me is to compound annoying tasks that don’t require much thought with something actually pleasant. It took a long time to find the actual pleasant thing, but with audiobooks I can actually end up looking for chores to do because I want to continue listening to the book, and it doesn’t combine well with anything except the most mindless work.
That’s how I cleaned my bathroom top to bottom two weeks ago, after barely being able to pick up empty loo rolls from the floor for…well, months.
When somebody says that “a man likes to feel like a man,” all I hear is “A man likes to feel superior to you and it’s your job to make him believe it.”
Someone said this to me once, that a man needs to feel like a man, I replied “well I’m not stopping him” and had to watch this fragile creature try to explain to me that my strong personality could demean men.
Like, if I have to pretend you are a strong man and cater to that then clearly you’re not that strong dude.
This post has the most weapons grade dick energy ive ever seen.
i spent christmas alone while my family got together and fought, and honestly i feel so good about this
i bought myself presents, cooked a big meal, drank wine and watched Home Alone 3 w/ my dog. I don’t feel sorry for myself at all.
meanwhile my sister threatened to disown my dad so he threatened to disown her, while my mom enabled and my other sister downed a bottle of wine to deal.
on the other side of the country, i was busy discovering, to my delight, that the that the 3rd installment of the Home Alone franchise not only stood up to the test of time, but contains some of the best oneliners and comedic timing I have ever seen.
honestly, keep toxic people out of your life. family isn’t everything, and bad family is often worse than no family. don’t be afraid to put in some distance, especially during high stress times like the holidays. you don’t actually owe them anything.
being alone for the holidays is so much better than being with people who make you unhappy.
a smug indulgence. tell yourself, “i’m gonna do this thing because i like it, and there’s nothing you can do to make me feel bad about it!” eat that cake! read that romance novel! be free!!!
sometimes you just gotta live strictly by spite and that’s that
It’s about time someone got around to uncovering all the cheat codes for this “human being” software. It’s only been out for like 10,000 years.
?????????????
I’ve used this technique for about a year, and I can safely say that it has efficiently transformed my sleeping habits from several hours of struggle to fall asleep, to passing out in a matter of minutes.
It’s a form of Alexander Technique. It’s a technique that was designed for actors to keep their body in ready working condition and give it the best way to perform. This is the method used to calm, and center the body. Once the body is at that point it can perform anything you want it to.
Reblogging for later reference after I tried it earlier today to try to calm down. It actually does help a lot, not just for sleep but if you have problems with anxiety.
My default mental setting is “vibrating intensely in the background.” After doing this, I felt noticeably calm and relaxed – I wasn’t as fixated on my breathing, I wasn’t tense, my movements weren’t jerky and I didn’t feel like I had to be as tense as possible to be under control. 10/10 would recommend.
me gonna try it
dont wanna reblog but insomnia is a bitch for some ppl so heres for my mutuals having trouble sleeping.
I use it for anxiety attacks. It works and I say this as someone who thought it was bullshit. I now have a timer at work set to one minute twenty seconds to do this exercise.
Firefighter demonstrates how to put out a kitchen fire
Reblog to actually save a life
To explain. The latter works because you’re cutting off the supply of oxygen to the fire and suffocating it
as opposed to slapping oxygen inside the pan with the downward motion
Reblogging, because this is so important. When I was learning how to cook for myself in my tweens, I had at least a five years of fire safety seminars from school drilling this into my head, and I STILL had that instinctive put-the-fire-out-with-water reflex. Didn’t even think. I saw our oily burner catch fire after frying eggs, whipped around towards the sink for water, and my brain immediately screamed NO!!! NO WATER!
I mean that fire safety stuff straight up bitchslapped me out of REFLEXIVELY setting my house on fire. I found a pot lid and inched it over the burner before turning off the heat. Even if you think you know this stuff, panic is powerful shit. Make knowledge more powerful.
“Even if you think you know this stuff, panic is powerful shit. Make knowledge more powerful.”
if you have hearing loss & ask me to repeat something & I say ‘nevermind’ I promise it’s not cause I’m a jerk treating you like an inconvenience, it’s cause I realized what i said was fucking stupid
Okay but like, please repeat it anyway, and then add that you realize it’s stupid? Or at least say “I’ve realized it was stupid, so I’d like not to repeat it”. Please don’t just say “nevermind”.
Yes PLEASE do this. I’m hard of hearing and when someone says “nevermind” it always feels like they’re actually saying “ugh your hearing loss is such a pain in the ass, it’s not worth the damn effort” even if that isnt the truth. I don’t care how dumb it is, the clarification makes me feel so much better.
this is really important feedback, thank you! From now on I will make certain to either repeat myself or explain respectfully why I prefer not. You deserve to feel comfortable and respected in all conversations. My insecurities and self-consciousness is a issue, but it’s my issue to deal with.
When I was a kid, my mother once found me in the kitchen, swearing at the dishwasher and shoving its filter around. She had me step aside and showed me a better way of finding out what was wrong with the filter: looking for objects stuck in it, moving it from side to side, taking it out and inspecting it and its seating more closely, and so on.
At the time, this looked like magic. The filter wasn’t working, and I was angry – when I got mad, it felt impossible to do anything other than fight the target of my anger. But my mom was capable of doing otherwise. When faced with the same situation, she calmed down almost immediately and got systematic.
When I said this seemed magical, she told me that she used to fight inoperative appliances too, until she was shown enough times that a systematic approach works better on complicated, broken inanimate objects. From repeated exposure, she learned a mental motion which she called “Don’t get mad, get curious.”
I think there are three broad categories of response to problems (situations where trying what’s worked before isn’t producing good results):
Get mad
Don’t get mad, give up
Don’t get mad, get curious
They’re appropriate to different kinds of problems, and it’s useful to consider in advance which problems call for which reactions. It’s also useful to learn how to switch modes on purpose. This post covers which contexts call for which reactions; how to switch modes is an open question, and approaches tend to be highly individualised.
Getting mad is useful when:
You’re being mistreated,
Both submission and strategic action have failed repeatedly,
Future cooperation is off the table or isn’t worth it.
Getting mad is best used as stop energy: it’s a way of getting someone to stop doing a thing you dislike, to go away and leave you alone, or to give up their claim on some resource. It’s a bad way to convince someone about matters of fact, it burns goodwill (if any exists), and it makes you less capable of strategic thought, which may put you at risk.
Giving up is useful when getting mad wouldn’t serve your values and curiosity has produced a lot of dead ends. It’s an adaptive response if you’re sad and tired, and don’t expect more negotiation to help your position now, but want to leave the door open for future discussion and potential compromise.
Giving up helps you pick your battles. It’s a bad way to engage with situations that are likely to kick you when you’re down, and/or net-negative situations you really could just leave. It’s a good way to sustain net-positive relationships at those times when your curiosity has been used up.
Getting curious is useful when getting mad wouldn’t serve your values, and you don’t feel like giving up yet. Getting curious helps you learn new information that might be useful: it’s easier to be surprised by the output of curiosity than it is to be surprised by the output of anger or surrender.
It’s the best response to situations where you want something you haven’t yet gotten, getting what you want is feasible, and the thing you want is not best obtained through intimidation. However, curiosity isn’t a generically appropriate response. It costs willpower, which isn’t always available, and it leaves you open to manipulation if you’re interacting with an unsolvable problem.
At times, I’ve struggled with overusing one or two of these strategies and neglecting the other(s). My problem-solving ability is significantly improved by using each of these strategies only when they’ll help.
artherra 