I had a little moment today I wanted to share, because it reminded me of something important and I thought it might help others too.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had milia around my eyes. They’re little skin-toned oval bumps that are apparently caused by sun damage. Dermatologists have told me that it was a probably a result of wearing glasses and no sunscreen for so many years, while the glasses magnified the sun around my eyes. The milia never bothered me until I was told that they should bother me. As soon as others labeled them a flaw rather than a feature, I accepted that and never looked back.

The beauty industry and other women have made me see my milia as an imperfection. I went for a facial last year and was told, unprompted. “we can’t fix your sun damage here, you’ll have to laser it off.” I’ve picked at my milia to try to remove them myself, even when it caused me a lot of pain. I’ve been told that they’re harder to remove as you get older, so I should see about getting that taken care of soon.

None of this was malicious, mind you, and I carry no ill will towards the women who have perpetuated this information. We are all victims of a massive cultural push for aesthetic perfection, eternal youth and a poreless, infant-smooth face. We assume that the women around us with features we feel insecure about share that insecurity, and we swap tips on “fixing” these things out of a desire to support one another.

I mentioned to Connor that I was looking into how much it would cost to laser my milia off. He looked up at me and blinked, clearly surprised. “Oh,” he said. “To be honest, I always thought they were cute. Like little freckles. I didn’t realize they were anything else.”

It was my turn to be surprised. Was he right? So many people had told me that milia were DAMAGE and FLAWS. The average person must see them and think they’re ugly, right? Or the milia must have some health risk, right?

I looked it up. They’re harmless. They might as well be freckles for all the danger they pose me.

I looked at myself in the mirror again. Connor was right. They DO look like cute little freckles. And when I pushed aside the filter of what I’d been told to think of that part of my face…frankly, I like them! They give me character!

Laser therapy to remove milia averages $100-400 per session, and can take up to around 5 sessions to complete.

I was considering saving up $500-2000 to get rid of harmless, tiny face bumps! Money I could use for a relaxing facial, meals with friends, gas for a road trip. Things that matter, and that truly make me happy. Things that focus on self-love, not self-loathing.

To be clear: if you have milia and it genuinely bothers you, I don’t judge your decision to seek removal! We all have visions of what we want to look like, and there’s nothing wrong with seeking to achieve that.

But we all – women in particular – need to stop spreading our perceived insecurities. Don’t offer unsolicited advice about the appearance of others! Try to be conscious of when you’re projecting your own negative self image onto others. And take a minute to ask yourself where negative ideas about your appearance come from. Is this something you genuinely don’t like? Or is it something you’ve been conditioned to want to fix? I think it’s easy to forget to examine our self image with a critical eye when it’s something we live with every minute of every day and has been influenced by insidious messages from a really young age.

If no one’s told you lately, you don’t have to look like anyone else to be beautiful. And you don’t have an obligation to be beautiful at all. Your worth is so much more than what you look like. Protect yourself and your happiness, because you deserve happiness.

fuck it until you make it

brendaonao3:

naomisalman:

gather round, folks, that i may pass down the tale of Fuck-It Jonn, because that dude is just the GREATEST FUCKING CONMAN in the WORLD, and he WASN’T EVEN TRYING. he absolutely fucking STUMBLED ON ACCIDENT into THE SCAM THAT WOULD DEFINE HIS ENTIRE LIFE. the lie that transformed his ENTIRE EXISTENCE out of SHEER RANDOM BULLSHIT.

and his sole motivation was to EAT FINGER FOOD.

consider:

in the Wayback Days™ before i was born, the people who would later become my parents had this friend named… yeah, let’s say jonn. i’d rather not say his real name. bitches not snitches, and all that.

so. france in the late 80s. jonn and my parents had just finished school and all found jobs in computer engineering. (not that they STUDIED computer engineering, mind you. no, they were all studying how to become fish farmers or some shit. but those were simpler times, when knowing how to turn the fucking screen on got you a comfortable salary at the ripe old age of 24 years old.)

except that jonn, who was a chill hippie kind of dude, was bored to death by his desk job. so bored that he decided to just up and quit. “fuck it”, was basically jonn’s motto. fuck it, he’d find something better! fuck it, and things would work out! EXCEPT (as you may have guessed) THEY DIDN’T. for months and months he didn’t find another job. and so he ended up depressed, struggling, and eating dinner at my future-parents’ tiny apartment, three times a week, so he wouldn’t literally starve.

time went by. jonn was still unemployed. so before his resources hit rock bottom, jonn did the only logical, reasonable thing. what’s that, you ask? begged for his old job back? went back to school? crawled home to his parents? ha ha! obviously you do not share jonn’s ADVENTUROUS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT. and also you lack his BIZARRE LOGIC AND PLAIN WEIRD APPROACH TO LIFE.

what jonn did was: say “fuck it” (again) and leave for thailand.

because you see, thailand was cheap by french standards. so cheap that even a penniless dude on unemployment could live there for weeks on end, spending much less than he would have in france, as long as he didn’t mind roughing it. and jonn didn’t mind! “fuck it”, he’d said. and by god, he would stand by his words!

so jonn gamely scrounged up the money for the plane ticket and then… yeah. basically bummed it out in thailand. for two months. seeing the sights. sleeping on the street. making new friends.

and one of these news friends turned out to be very adept at FORGING PAPERS.

huh, jonn said to himself (probably high at the time) this sounds not at all shifty and more like a ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY; what could POSSIBLY GO WRONG. my new thai best friend is even offering me a FAMILY DISCOUNT. for fake papers. fuck it! let’s have some!

as far as i can tell, jonn… didn’t even need fake papers?? like, he was literally just trying not to pass up on an opportunity here. so he smoked some more weed (i can only assume) and got A BRILLIANT IDEA. fake ID card? LAME. fake driver’s licence? HACKNEYED. fake medical degree? PEDESTRIAN. no! jonn got himself a fake press card.

but why??

well, OBVIOUSLY, just so he could get into cultural events for free – conferences, art premieres, etc – and eat all the finger food. that was his grand plan. stroll into press-only events, wave his poorly-made card around, and gorge himself on canapés. no more going hungry! ever! jonn would live off tiny slices of toasted foie gras and flutes of cheap champagne for the rest of his life!

so now jonn, Very Obviously Fake Journalist™, is back in france and he’s DOING THE THING. and guess what? this was before google. before facebook. before linkedin. impersonating a journalist was very easy. if people asked where you worked you just said you were freelance, then steered the conversation to current politics and stealthily devoured the entire buffet while everybody was busy debating.

and so. this is what jonn is doing. his monumentally stupid plan is actually working. this is how he eats. with thai-made fake papers and sheer fucking confidence. and of course people start noticing him eventually! jonn is always fucking there! at all and any events in paris! because, again, THIS IS HOW HE EATS! but it’s always the same people running around in these circles, anyway. so nobody’s surprised to see the same dudes popping up over and over again. jonn blends in! and jonn is very good at making friends. and changing the subject. and eating canapés.

and then ONE DAY

one of jonn’s newfangled journalist friends (a REAL journalist, mind you, who has NO IDEA that jonn isn’t What He Seems) basically goes: “dude i’m so swamped rn. everyone wants everything all at once. fuck. shit. are you swamped too?”

“oh, for sure,” jonn says through a mouthful of his twenty-ninth serving of canapés that night. “not a second to myself”

“god. fuck. tell me about it. shit. i’m just so damn swamped.” Real Journalist shakes his head. “if i could only find someone to cover for me on this one article.”

now, i know i said before that jonn was smoking weed. but i must confess now i said it for humorous effect. i have no idea if jonn’s ever been within five hundred yards of a blunt his whole life. but what you must understand is that jonn is Chill™ on like. a soul-deep level. his whole mind is one long exhale of smoke followed by the words “fuck it”. this is a man who left his job for no reason, lived in thailand on a tourist’s visa for two months, got fake papers there for the lol of it all, and is now living off press-only events in paris. jonn was BORN HIGH.

SO. when RJ asks him: “dude. jonn. you said you were working freelance. i know you’re busy but don’t you think you could maybe cover for me? just this once?”

jonn NATURALLY answers: “fuck it. sure”

then goes to an unemployment center and applies for one of their free one-week classes. on journalism. jonn spends ALL OF ONE WEEK learning How To Write An Article Like A Real Journalist With A Real Press Card. then writes the article. basically bullshitting his way through that thing. half-assing the life out of it. faking his heart out. because why not? FUCK IT.

i have NO IDEA if he actually did a good job or not. but it was in fact good enough for RJ who really must have been truly swamped, and was so truly grateful that he told all of their mutual journalists friends. who were ALL SWAMPED. i’m given to understand it’s the natural state of the journalist in the wild.

and so jonn is now REGULARLY COVERING FOR ALL SORTS OF JOURNALISTS.

not making much money i assume. but still, not bad for a dude who studied journalism for five whole days.

and well, it’s kinda fun! better than moping around at home waiting for the next free canapé press-only premiere. so jonn keeps at it. and eventually it occurs to him that hey! he spent two months in thailand. why not make an article out of that? so he writes himself a lil paper, retelling his Bumtastic Adventures in the Land of Thai People, Cheap Living and Forged Papers (That Last One Having Nothing to Do With Him Personally of Course). and he’s kinda proud of it. so much that he gives it to his journalist friends. can they maybe pass it around? see if anybody would be interested in publishing it? for a modest fee and some more canapés?

and yeah. someone was in fact interested in publishing it. and that someone was:

THE

NATIONAL

GEOGRAPHIC

(french edition.)

so jonn got a REAL press card. got a FULL-TIME JOB at the national geographic. and spent the REST OF HIS WORK LIFE traveling abroad for six months, then going back to paris the rest of the year to write about his wacky journeys. he’s retired now, having published several books full of his articles and photographs. he’s bought a b&b in the french countryside with all his money. and continues to say “fuck it” to any problem that comes his way like the absolute fucking legend he is.

as far as i know, none of his journalist buddies nor his boss ever found out about any of this.

Okay, this needs to be a movie SO bad

Hey Maggie! This is maybe a bit of a difficult question, at least to ask, but do you have any advice for handling chronic pain in a general since? I have both mental and physical chronic pain and some days it’s just… hard to be a creator, or to have enough spoons because of one thing or another. How do you fight it? Thanks! Annie

maggie-stiefvater:

Dear oquinn53,

It’s hard to describe to non-creators how difficult it is to be abstract when you’re in pain, or when you’re exhausted, or when illness or drugs or mental illness has washed you up on a strange chemical shore. All art requires an element of abstraction, of big picture thinking, because art at its heart is simply the act of imposing artificial structure upon the world. With writing, you don’t even have the concrete sensory anchor of paint or clay or bricks. You have only words, in themselves already art, some past human’s clumsy attempt to translate a concept to a vocalization.

When you’re an animal under duress, the big picture feels very unimportant.

I’ve talked a little bit about my health struggles over the past 18 or so months, the implosion of my immune system, the shrinking diet, the fatigue, the failure of my adrenals, the discovery that hookworms were living in my fucking face. It was all pretty impossible. The part that made it the most impossible? The brain fog. Brain fog’s pretty common with all sorts of inflammation, and before I figured out that a huge part of my problem was that I had face-friends, I was pretty much always locked in brain fog. Some days it was just confusion. Light inability to finish sentences predicted from 3-6 pm, bring an umbrella. Other days, I couldn’t remember my home address.

The problem was I had a book due. So I threw myself against it, because that’s how I had always approached life. Screw you, brain fog, illness, allergic reaction, I’m just going to push through.

I would get up every morning and begin working on ALL THE CROOKED SAINTS. One labored word after another. I would sit at the computer for 12 hours to accomplish a paragraph. The next day, if the fog had cleared a little, I would ditch all of the repeated words and the sentences that led to nothing. Most days that was everything. Some days I got to keep a few sentences. On good days, I tried to use my brain to solve big picture problems and get enough of it down that my fogged brain the next day wouldn’t mess it up too much. Then I would get up the next day and I would do all this again. 12 hours. 1 paragraph. I would do it again the next day. The next day.

I used to write rough drafts in four months in four hours of writing every other day. With Saints, I wrote for 12 hours a day for an entire year. Quite literally I did nothing else — everything else fell apart and away. I muscled through. If I couldn’t understand words, I sat there and I typed nonsense until I could. I read it aloud until the words sounded familiar. I leaned heavily on every beta reader and critique partner — tell me when I start to make a book, friends, please, tell me when I’ve gotten into the weeds. Finally I managed to turn it in.

People say that book doesn’t sound quite like my others — no, it wouldn’t. I fought wars for that book. They say it sounds more precise, more poetic, more deliberate. Yes, it would. Every word was stolen, snatched, cobbled, carefully assembled. I can reread any of my other books, but not that one. I open it to a random page and I can only remember the weeks it took to accomplish each of them.

I’m telling you all this because I was wrong.

Back in early spring of this year, after I’d gotten the hookworms out of my face but while I was still dealing very intensely with all the physical damage left behind, a very wise woman gave me a piece of advice. She told me to start a journal. In the morning, she said, write down the percentage that I felt I was that day. 20% Maggie. 90% Maggie. Then I should write down what I accomplished that day.

I thought at this point she was going to tell me to admire how much I’d gotten done each day despite being ill. I didn’t want that; I didn’t need a pep talk. I needed my brain.

But that wasn’t what she said. She told me: write down what you’ve managed to do on a 20% day, what you’ve managed to do on a 40% day. Eventually you’ll have a guide so when you wake up and you’re at 20%, you won’t try to do the things you do on a 40% day. You’ll know you can just go watch a movie or sit with your goats or whatever and not feel guilty, because you were never going to write words you could keep or be able to exercise or whatever.

And that was the right way.

It meant I no longer labored for 12 hours each day, doing nothing but trying to smash my way through a draft. Instead I slowly began to write bits and bobs in on my good days. A funny thing happened then: once I was not spending every second forcing myself to do things I couldn’t, I found I had enough energy to actually start to work on myself. To look for patterns in my good and bad days. To research healthcare providers and new studies on what was wrong with me still. Slowly I found I was able to chain more of the 60% days together, then 80% days. Slowly I began to realize that although it was taking months, I was improving overall.

I threw out every labored word I had written on my current book and I began again with ferocious and structured joy. It took me only a few weeks to completely regain the wordcount of that draft I forced, only this book was free and easy and ridiculous and batshit and I loved it.

I still have 20% days. Really, seriously, don’t let hookworms in your face, especially if you already have an underlying condition. I don’t know when I’ll actually be completely better. But I do know that on those 20% days, I don’t have to make things. It’s ok. I can spend those days enjoying whatever I can. Consuming art instead of making it. That’s enough. That’s right.

I’m very proud of Saints, both how it turned out and what it took from me. But I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. There’s a better way.

Good luck,

urs,

Stiefvater

I’ve had serious brain fog all week, and trying to complete my script that’s due tomorrow for work has felt like fighting an undertow when you can’t pull your head above the waves for even a single breath.

Thank you so much for sharing this. It feels so good to know that I’m not alone, and that one of my favorite writers struggles with this too. It doesn’t mean I can’t be a successful writer. I just have to learn to be work with myself instead of against myself.

Thank you thank you thank you, and I hope for more 90%+ days for you soon.

lay-some-hate:

systlin:

kawuli:

This person is my new best friend

Farming systems need to fit into their natural and social environment. Sometimes we describe this as a socio-ecological niche.

Caption;

In a minute.

So, taking it that you said you live in
Arizona and “your family has a farm in Chihuahua,” A quick
congratulations are in order. You’re an absentee landowner! You’re
right at the peak of farming’s social pyramid. Living the dream.

So you probably don’t participate in
the day-to-day management, you just collect checks. Pretty common
situation for absentee landlords. From that distance, it’s
understandable that you have a poor grasp on water, land, and how
they play out in various types of agriculture.

But let’s take a step back.

Lots of cultures have used low or no
meat diets. The Ganges valley, ancient Egypt, China, much of early
Europe, ect.

Notice anything in common there?

They’re all very, very wet. Plants that
are edible for humans grow readily.

They also had intense hierarchies where
elites could just tell the lower classes they weren’t allowed to eat
meat-whether via religious teachings, custom, or just straight-up
economic exploitation to where animal protein was unattainable. But
that’s a whole different discussion.

On the other hand, lots of cultures
have used mostly or all animal diets.

E.G. The Bedouin, Mongols, Maasai,
Inuit, ect.

What do these have in common? They’re
in places that are either very dry or very cold. Either the plants
that grow are very sparse & tough, or none at all.

Humans can only digest specific types
of plant matter. We need tender stems, leaves & fruit; enlarged
seeds, or energy storing roots.

The entire rest of the plant is
inedible for us. Stalk, branch, dry leaves, ect.

And without intense irrigation, the
only plants that grow in dry areas are entirely made of things
that humans can’t digest. They’re almost entirely cellulose. Tough
stalks, fibrous leaves covered in wax and hair, thorns, ect.

That’s why we call these areas ‘scrub’.
The only use humans can make of the natural vegetation is to scrub
pots.

But…cows, sheep, goats, horses,
bison, deer, camels & other ruminants can digest all of it.

That’s what those 3 and 4 chambered
stomachs are for. These animals GI tracts are fermentation chambers
full of microflora that break long, tough cellulose molecules down
into sugars and fatty acids that the cow can use.

We can’t do that. We eat straw, we just
poop out straw.

That’s why people living in deserts,
scrub & dry grasslands aren’t vegetarian. They’d starve. They
kept close to the animals that can digest what grows there;
ruminants.

(The oceanic food chain that Inuit &
other maritime peoples are looped into is a whole ‘nother
discussion.)

Failure to recognize the role of local
environment in diet is a major oversight in the vegetarian community
at large, so again, no personal blame here.

Traditional vegetarian societies are
trotted out to showcase that low/no meat diets are possible. But it’s
done w/o recognition as to why ‘those particular’ societies did it,
and others did not.

Paying attention to local environment
is a huge part of sustainability, and yet sustainability movements
don’t always do so well at that.

We can also fall short by failing to
recognize that for dry regions, the bottleneck in productivity isn’t
land, it’s water.

As an absentee landowner, you may or
may not be aware of how much irrigation water it takes to grow
vegetables in a desert. Math time.

Let’s start w. cows. Best figures for
cow carrying capacity in landscape similar to Chihuahua are for dry
part of CO. Double that for Chihuahua’s longer growing season, and 10
cows would need about 73 acres to live on (wild scrub w no
irrigation.)

Cool, so we don’t have to irrigate to
feed those cows. All we have to do is give them drinking water. How
much? A cow needs about 18.5 gal/day, so 10 of them for a year would
need about 67,000 gallons.

67,000 gallons is a decent amount of
water.

Now let’s look at how much it takes to
grow vegetables on that same land.

Most plant crops need about an
acre-inch of water per week.

For the non-farmers and absentee
landlords following along, an acre-inch is just how much water it
takes to cover an acre of land 1” deep.

It’s about 27,000 gallons.

An acre of crops needs that every
single week.

Chihuahua’s got this amazing long
growing season. So let’s say a veggie, grain, soybean or other plant
protein farm in Chihuahua’s got crops in the ground 40 weeks out of
the year.

73 acres x 40 weeks x 27,000
gallons/week = 79 MILLION gallons of water.

That’s a thousand times more water.

It takes a thousand times more water to
grow an acre of crops for human consumption, than it takes to grow an
acre of cow on wild range.

Again, as an absentee farm owner you
may or may not be aware already. But for audience at home, most of
Chihuahua’s irrigation water comes from the Rio Conchos.

The river’s drying up so hard that it’s
the subject of a dedicated WWF preservation project.

“But that’s not a fair comparison. An
acre of crops can feed 10x as many people as an acre of cattle.”

Exactly. A crop-only diet can feed 10x
as many people. But it takes 1000x as much water.

In places where there’s limited land
and a surplus of water, it makes a lot of sense to optimize for land,
so there, grow & eat crops.

And in places where there’s a lot of
land and limited water, it makes sense to optimize for water, So
there, grow & eat ruminants.

It’s really interesting to me that the
conversation around vegetarianism & the environment is so
strongly centered on assumptions that every place in the world is on
the limited land/surplus plan.

You know what region that describes
really well? Northwestern Europe.

In many ways, viewing low/no meat diets
as the One True Sustainable Way is very much a vestige of
colonialism. It found a farmway that works really well in NW Europe,
assumed it must be universal, and tries to apply it to places where
it absolutely does not pencil out.

My pressing concern is that a fucking gringo OWNS LAND in Chihuahua