(Source: rookiemag.com)
- Always ask for more money at your job, even if you don’t think you deserve it.
- Try to be kind to the people who are rude to you. It’s not personal, they’re just having a really bad day/month/life.
- Don’t go to doctors that advertise. Ask a friend for a recommendation.
- If you are hungover, drink water, eat a banana and try to sleep it off.
- If you believe in opportunity, opportunity will present itself.
- Sometimes when things are really bad, you just have to go through the motions of your life until they get better.
- Surround yourself by only the books, images, music and people that make you happy.
- Your ability to speak honestly about your weaknesses, failures and disappointments is your greatest strength.
- Nothing is more fulfilling than helping other people.
- There really are plenty of fish in the sea.
- Wear sunscreen or a hat when you’re in strong sunlight.
- You need to take the big risk, even if it scares the living crap out of you.
- Sometimes water is thicker than blood.
- Shoes that are too tight can be stretched by a shoemaker.
- Don’t worry about living a life that looks good on paper.
- Go to the gynecologist every year, even if you hate it.
- Be careful about confiding personal information. Relationships change.
- Go to events and parties and lectures you have no interest in going to.
- Ask yourself what you want. Then take the necessary steps to get it.
- Don’t stay in a bad relationship because of the anticipated misery of a breakup.
- When you have a headache, drink a glass of water before you do anything else. It might just be dehydration.
- Anyone worth having sex with should think that you’re gorgeous the way you are.
- When people are speaking gibberish English with a bunch of unrelated words strung together they’re usually talking about a band.
- Just because you’re in love doesn’t mean you’re with the right person.
- You can have a fulfilling life without ever having kids.
- Do what comes naturally to you, it’s what you’ll have the most success at.
- Be thankful that things you wished for didn’t come true. Know that this will happen again.
- Let yourself be happy when you’re happy.
- Force yourself to overcome your fears.
- Remember that no one else has it figured out either.
(Source: thoughtcatalog.com, via lajoiedevivre)
I have a New Year’s Resolution for all of you. This has nothing to do with your weight, your friends, your family. No one is telling you to go the gym, to stop biting your nails, to get out more. I just want you to do one thing and embrace it fully. This year, I want you to listen to yourself. Listen to your own advice. So many of you write to me saying, “I know I shouldn’t but…” and “he says he’s not ready yet, but…” and “I know he sounds creepy, but…” Learn to structure a sentence without “but”.
I know I shouldn’t.
He’s not ready yet.
I know he sounds creepy.
Drop the conjunction. Listen to what you are telling yourself. Stop making excuses for people and start making strides for yourself. If someone isn’t making room for you in their life, don’t make room in yours for them. If things feel off, they are. If your gut and your mind are throwing up the timeouts begging you to listen, then listen.
I am not telling you to stop throwing caution to the wind. Every life worth living involves a few Hail Marys. Buy the plane ticket, quit the job, kiss the boy. But when you’ve overstayed your welcome and you know it, get the hell outta dodge. Not everyone or everything is going to be what you want it to be, and thank God, because if we constantly got everything we wanted, we would never be happy. Be thankful for the duds, for the misguided ideas, and for the best laid plans, because without them, we would have nothing to strive for. All I ask is that this year, you explore rather than dwell. You try rather than wish. You set your sights on the impossible rather than settling for what seems appropriate.
Every little piece of advice dolled out here revolves around two main ideas: do not give in and do not give up. So many of you are stuck in lives, relationships, and cycles you seemingly can’t get out of. Yes you can. And it’s going to be difficult. It’s going to seem impossible. You’ll get your dreams crushed, your heart shattered, your everything taken away. No one goes to war without losing a few men.
So if you’re stuck at a dead-end job, or surrounded by negative friends, I want you to do something scary and lonely. I want you to look for a way out. Enter your mind. Picture the depths of your cave of horrors. The gloom and poison and darkness your life possesses. Now tell me, how do you escape? You climb. You search for the light and oxygen and freedom and you climb ‘til your hands are raw and knees are bloody, ‘til you can barely breathe and hope is a memory. You climb. Some of you will be lucky. Some of you will find fortunes just around the bend. Some are already so blessed, but the rest… the rest must fight. Whether you rely on God, on each other, or on the comforting rhythm of your own heartbeat, you must remember that there is something better and sometimes the journey itself is the true destination. We are a species of seekers. We are builders, strivers, connectors.
Settle not on what seems inevitable. Accept not what is unworthy. There are billions of people in this world, every one more curious than the last. Every single one of them wants to feel important, needed, cared for. When you have a dream, people want to be part of it, for the success of one is the success of the group. Connect with people, reach out, talk to strangers, compliment them, email leaders, and never think you are less than you are. We all start exactly the same. We all end exactly the same.
The next time you’re asking for advice, listen to yourself first. Every life needs a few Hail Marys, every life needs a little common sense, but above all else, every life needs courage. To know your fate is a cruel trick, but to be able to write the journey we make is the greatest gift of all. I beg of you, do not squander that.
Before I flew back to New York, my father gave me a handwritten account of his childhood and teen years asking me to type them. He seemed embarrassed. “I thought if you guys were ever interested in my life, then it should be written somewhere. But you know, if you’re not, that’s OK. Just toss it.” After reading it and reflecting on my own childhood, my father did everything in his power to give me a better life than he had, a life worth reading. The back-burner is not enough. Mediocrity is not enough. A life un-lived is not enough. It’s not enough for me, it’s not enough for you.
I wish you not a happy new year, but an enviable new year. A year of confidence, success, and gall. A year of triumph and change, of love and joy. And may this year be the best year yet.
- You astonish me.
- When did you get so wise, woman?
- I’m honored to share even a minuscule fraction of your miraculous DNA.
- You’re simply… beyond.
- Your ebullience is infectious.
- You remind me what ‘possible’ feels like.
I love this!
By Thought Catalog.
I feel personally identified with the following:
What I Say: “I sent you that email yesterday. Yeah… It must not have gone through.”
What I Think: “Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god.”
What I Say: “Yeah, I don’t know if I’m gonna go to the club tonight. Kinda not feeling well.”
What I Think: “I live in a world where I have to justify not wanting to spend 12 dollars a cocktail so I can scream across a dark, sweaty room to ask my friends how their weeks were. I live in a world where that is what I should want to be doing. Maybe I should just be honest and tell them if I wanted to get airborne herpes, I would lick a subway pole like a respectable human being.”
And thought this was hilarious:
What I Say: “I’m just not really looking for a relationship right now.”
What I Think: “The Friday-night potential of free food on a first date is now outweighed by the certain combination of ice cream, wine, and Tumblr.”
“None of these things is a “guilty pleasure”—I don’t think anyone should feel guilty about feeling pleasure—[…]”
“There is nothing more exciting than being surrounded by people who are freaking out collectively about a piece of culture.”
“Is there some official document that declares what’s respectable and what’s trashy? NO! That document does not exist!”
“These days on top of band pins we have Pinterests, Tumblrs, and Facebook profiles dedicated to telling people about the people, music, movies, animals, food groups, etc., that we love.”
“But why would you want to reduce people to stereotypes? When you reduce people to one-dimensional stereotypes, you limit the way you see the world, and limit your LIFE! In reality, people are BEAUTIFUL MULTIFACETED GEMS, and if you like Best Coast as much as you like One Direction, that’s great! And, more than that, who cares?! People who care about that are scared of your LAYERS. They want you to be easy for them to understand, but you are large, you contain multitudes.”
The other day my mom was telling me how two young women were raped, tortured and killed because a handsome man smooth talked them and took them home after they left drunk from a club. Now I normally just sit and nod when she uses scare tactics to scare me out of doing things that don’t involve studying (which she does a lot), but this time she just went straight into telling me how stupid these girls were and how she was so grateful I wasn’t stupid like them. This totally crossed the line.
So a man rapes, tortures and kills two young women and we are expressing disgust at the women for “putting themselves in that situation”? What the actual fuck? Why is rape the only crime in which it is acceptable to blame and degrade the victim?
The active agent in this situation is not the woman. The active agent is the RAPIST. There cannot be RAPE without a RAPIST. The rapist is the one planning the action and looking for the innocent victim to, in this case, seduce and take home. True, getting drunk at a club and going home with a random guy are not always safe choices. But, firstly, why blame these women when they have taken the same actions that millions of other women have taken without being victimized? Getting drunk at clubs and going home with handsome strangers are not uncommon occurrences, so why is it that only when a woman gets raped, she is degraded for making this choice? Are we saying that a lack of judgment on a woman’s part (which is hardly fair to say because of the influence of alcohol and manipulation) justifies rape? Oh, she should’ve known that guy was a rapist, so she got what was coming for her. Are we expected to see every environment as a potential danger, every man as a potential rapist before we stop being blamed?
Secondly, how many responsibilities are we going to continue to put on women to prevent themselves from getting raped?
She shouldn’t have been walking alone. She shouldn’t have accepted the drink. She should’ve taken a self-defense course. She should’ve checked under her car. She shouldn’t have led him on. She shouldn’t have gotten so drunk. She shouldn’t have trusted him. She shouldn’t have been wearing provocative clothing (which is complete bullshit). The list goes on and on.
Yes, prevention is important, but when we place all these responsibilities on women to prevent their own victimization, aren’t we implying that if they do get raped, they’re somehow being irresponsible? There’s this prevailing attitude that women who get raped are in some way provoking their rapist or being reckless or putting themselves in “unsafe situations”. In reality, a VAST majority of rapes (93% according to the US Justice Bureau of Statistics) are done by friends, family, and acquaintances of the victim, people we believe we can trust.
Everyone is a potential victim of rape and the sooner we stop blaming victims of rape, the sooner rape victims will overcome that feeling of shame, speak up and not only bring about justice but reach out for help and heal. Trusting the wrong person is not a crime. Rape is a crime. I really cannot believe this victim-blaming rhetoric is still occurring in a developed country of the 21st century.
By Aniko Villalba.
Aniko es una blogger que escribe sobre sus viajes. Tuve el placer de conocerla en octubre (creo?) del 2011, y hacerle algunas preguntas, ya que ella estaba exponiendo alguna de sus fotos en la universidad y se presentó la oportunidad. No hubieron muchos que se acercaron, lo cual fue medio triste, porque los alumnos, sin saber, cruzaban por los alrededores, salteándose la oportunidad de charlar con alguien que trabaja de su sueño y que pertenece al movimiento que empieza a marcar tendencia, el de los bloggers y los trabajadores independientes.
Desde entonces vengo leyendo su blog, más que nada esporádicamente. Sus relatos sobre Asia me los comí todos y con muchas ganas, y además de hacerme sentir cosas como si hubiera sido yo la que viajó, me dio la oportunidad de conocer un poco más sobre aquella parte del continente, del cual no sabía mucho.
Este artículo me gustó mucho. También disfruto mucho de escribir en cuadernos, y la verdad es que me doy cuenta que cuando más escribo es cuando tengo la oportunidad de viajar, y que inevitablemente lo vivo como un viaje a mi interior también. Amo los cuadernos, hace años que muchos seres queridos me los regalan en situaciones especiales, y bueno, quería archivar este link porque logró poner en palabras ideas que comparto.
Me gusta aquella lentitud que viene con viajar y escribir a mano, tragar todo lo vivido de una forma más pausada, mas vivida. Más desconectada de lo superfluo y más conectada con el mundo, más conectada con la vida, conmigo misma, y con Dios.
Some of which sound pretty interesting and worth trying out:
“I started a ritual every night, where I light half a stick of incense and honor the day that just passed (whether it was “good” or “bad”), this moment, myself and all life.”
“Writing to my friends, family and loved ones. I write at least five letters a week. It makes me feel close to people and I do it without expecting anything in return.”
‘I have a little “I love…” book in which I write simple things I love in life – “an avenue of trees”; “picnics”; “Just enough red wine”; “the smell of a bakery early in the morning”.’
An article on rookiemag, which I’ve become obssessed with, written by Tavi, whose writings I ‘m particularly fond of.
She divides the article into three subtopics:
1. Wearing what you want
“People are afraid of trying to be creative because they’re afraid that they won’t succeed, but who said your “success” in getting dressed has to be evaluated by other people? As long as you’re into what you’re wearing and it makes you more comfortable with yourself, it doesn’t matter if someone else thinks you’ve put together a perfectly composed outfit. Actually, the effect of your confidence will only add to how stylish your outfit seems. It’s like the best catch-22 ever.”
“Again, it’s about the whole people-deciding-your-image-for-you thing. Don’t let them. Make them feel stupid for trying.”
“It comes down to this: if you dress “weird,” kind old ladies will come up to you on the street and tell you that you made their day. And that will make your day. It’s the most delightful thing.”
2. Your physical self / Liking your body and face
“But it helps to surround yourself with images of women who aren’t like the ones you typically see in tabloids or on TV. Images are powerful, and it’s only when I find myself looking at certain fashion magazines or Tumblrs that I feel myself once again grow insecure about how I look.”
“It is so, so important that influential female people and characters who are not conventional, in their looks and/or personality, exist.”
3. Your internal self / brain / personality / sould / that stuff
“This is why pop culture needs more strong female characters. Not like, I’m a superhero and I’m supersexy and STRONG and my boobs look really good in this catsuit but oh wait I’m totally two-dimensional. Like, multifaceted, with many layers. Like, you know, human. Can we get a list going in the comments of characters like this?”
“When it comes to becoming the person you want to be, you have to know who you want to be first. And it’s hard to know what we, as girls slash women, really want. I may want to look a certain way because I know it will get me respect and people will pay attention to what I have to say. But Idon’t really want to look that way, I “want” to look that way because it’s what they want, and I’ll benefit somehow, but I don’t know who comes out on top in the end.”
“Besides: everyone else is too busy worrying about themselves to worry about you, so you don’t need to be concerned with what they might think.”
“I don’t want to believe that I should be concerned with being beautiful, I want to believe that I can be comfortable with myself […]”
“I just wanna like what I like and do things I enjoy and have solid friends and be too busy experiencing this grand old thing we call life […] to worry whether I’m allowed to or not.”
Sorry for the eternally long entry, but this girl is just so smart.
(Source: thoughtcatalog.com)
‘I kind of love not sleeping, you guys. I didn’t always. But there actually is something deeply magical about those hours of the day that no one else is using. It’s like you’re the only person in the world. ’
