Fandom random, she/her by birth but happy with all pronouns, blog often animals and self help atm as not currently writing fic but when I do it's usually Hurt/Comfort (absolutely require the comfort). Fandoms include MacGyver, the 9.1.1's, SEAL Team, CSI &etc. Just reblogging pretty and contains my fic if you search.
Pretty gif in the header by Panchostokes (you're a gif queen).
having depression makes your friends seem like the coolest most put together people on earth like wow… you got out of bed, had breakfast, went to work, AND spent some time on a hobby when you got home….? that’s so impressive you’re like superman or something. can i borrow your power.
is the world really such a terrible place? yesterday i asked if oat milk was extra and the barista said yes so i said ok just regular milk then and when she gave me my chai latte she whispered “i used oat milk ;)” doesnt that make u want to live another day?
here is my life philosophy: next week there might be someone ahead of you in line at the store who’s short a quarter and you have a quarter and you can give it to them. if you weren’t there, they’d have to put something back. the week after that you could be getting lunch and the waiter might ask if you want some pancakes someone else ordered and never picked up. you could find someone’s lost cat. you could watch someone’s bag while they go to the restroom. there are so many ways you are going to touch other people’s lives and they are going to touch yours and there’s no way to know when it’s going to happen. so you have to keep living!!! i wouldn’t want to die knowing that tomorrow the barista will give me free oat milk just to be nice.
When I was 11 years old - we went to Sea World for my birthday. This was to avoid the realization I had no friends, and no one to come to a birthday party and probably because someone gave my mother free tickets at work. It was kinda a shitty day despite being at a theme park full of cute animals. There was a new roller coaster there that had just opened so we decided to go on. I was nervous. I’d never been on a roller coaster.
A group of 6 college kids were ahead of us in line and started chatting with me. Full on just having a fun conversation with someone literally going through the beginning of a very awkward middle school period. I was so shocked they wanted to talk to me. I think my mom mentioned it was my birthday. They were very nice about it. When we got on the ride they told us to go ahead of them so we could sit at the front of the car since it held 8 people.
Now the ride (called Journey to Atlantis - I believe it is sadly no longer there) started with a slow ride of beautiful visuals of dolphins and oceans and computerized images of this imaginary Atlantis before going up the hill to the beginning of the coaster, where it paused for about 30 seconds, and then the ride started. The college kids must have known there would be a pause. Maybe they’d ridden it before I’m not sure.
But as we sat there on that peak, 6 people I’ve never known, and will never know again, sang a very very lonely 11 year old happy birthday. Loudly. And with gusto. They were happy and laughing and joyful. And it made me feel less alone in the world.
I am 29 years old this year, and I still remember them. I still remember that kindness. It is so important. It doesn’t go into a vacuum. It exists beside me in my daily life. And I love the idea that I have been that person to someone else too.
It’s stunningly lovely to be human when we’re kind to each other.
it’s so wild when people complain about religious inclusion like “oh so you think THEY should get special privileges/accommodations to do x, y, or z??”
and the things they’re talking about are like. exceptions to rules or norms that in themselves shouldn’t exist. yes Richard, we actually should have diverse meal options at work events to accommodate people with different diets. yes, people should be allowed to take time off to be with their family during whatever holidays or life events they so choose. yes, people should be able to wear clothing that makes them comfortable. nobody should be happy about these restrictions existing. stop bitching about the singular jewish or muslim person in your workplace and realize that everyone deserves better.
I had an interesting experience recently, which I feel like culturally Christian people might benefit from hearing about. I’ve been recently in the process of helping to plan an event. Many attendees at this event keep kosher. Since kashrut is a very specialized dietary restriction, which I know not all venues can accommodate, my first question to all of the potential venues I’ve looked into has been “do you allow outside kosher catering vendors, or otherwise have some way to allow for kosher catering?”
One of the venues I reached out to replied that they were “capable of providing for our dietary needs.” Now, since I’d asked about several possible catering options, and since they’d only replied generally and without actually specifying which they were saying they could do, I was a bit suspicious. So I followed up, and asked what exactly they meant by that: did they allow outside caterers in general? or did they have a specific kosher catering partner? or could they actually cater kosher food themselves? what?
Their answer was – and I swear I’m not making this up – that they didn’t allow any outside caterers, and couldn’t cater any food which was actually kosher, but that they could provide us with a menu that included “knishes” and “potato, pancakes” [sic], and so hey, that was basically the same as providing for our dietary needs, wasn’t it?
Now here’s the thing:
The dietary restriction shared by the most people at this event is keeping kosher, but one of the attendees, who doesn’t keep kosher, has a severe peanut allergy. If we had done what we were planning to do and simply specified “peanut free”, and if the venue had decided, like they were apparently willing to do for the kosher food, “well ok, it’s not actually peanut free, but it’s mostly peanut free, and that’s basically the same thing”? They could have literally killed her. And if I hadn’t specifically asked, in detail, about kosher catering first, I might never have known about how lax they were about providing for dietary restrictions in general.
Now could we have explained the nuances of kosher restrictions to this venue and tried again? Yes, possibly. But their unwillingness to even try on the first pass made it abundantly clear that they were not a safe venue to work with on allergy grounds. We crossed the venue off our list immediately, and I reached out to other people in the area who I knew might be planning similar events in the future, and warned them to never use this venue, either.
Accommodations like this are instances of the curb cut effect. If you don’t personally have a diet or a family obligation or clothing needs that need accommodating, it’s easy to get annoyed at the people you see who are loudest about asking for those accommodations. But having those options available helps everyone, and the fact that some workplaces and and businesses and event vendors refuse to accommodate these needs should be a red flag to everyone.
Maybe you don’t care about kosher or hallal food. Maybe you’ve never had reason to take off work at an unusual time of year, and maybe you’ve never wanted or needed to wear anything unusual. But today it’s your Jewish or Muslim coworker, and tomorrow it could be you or someone you care about – with a surprise medical diagnosis that limits your diet, or with a sudden family emergency at an inconvenient time of year, or with a sensory problem you’ve struggled with your entire life but can no longer mask, or who knows what else. We all deserve better, and the people who are openly saying so are not your enemies.
[ID: a doodle of two people looking away from each other. The first person is thinking, “If they wanted me to know they would tell me. I shouldn’t ask about it.” The second person is thinking, “If they cared about it they would ask me. I shouldn’t talk About it.” End ID.]
