Vulnerable

About a year ago, in my English class, every unit we focused on a certain question and during the unit we were supposed to figure out how the stories we read and the lives we lived connected to the question. One unit I struggled when the question was along the lines of “how do words have meaning?” I didn’t do the greatest in that unit, and in attempt to recover from the many low C’s that I received when I couldn’t describe how words have power and meaning, I wanted to recap a moment from one of my vacations to answer the question, 'what does vulnerability mean to you?'

To me, vulnerability is standing 5,000 feet in the air, enclosed in a colossal cloud that hides the deadly precipice just feet away from my shaking knees without a hand to hold

Vulnerability is stumbling around in the mist, groping around for a strong branch to keep me upright, the shrubbery giving me a false sense of security, hiding me from the real danger

The Webster dictionary defines vulnerable as an adjective meaning ‘susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm’, but it sounds so much less dangerous than it feels

To answer your question, Mr. P, and to reclaim the points I lost when I had let myself answer, unaware of what it’s like in the real world and how words can change someone and have more meaning than just their definition, experience is just one of the things that can give meaning to words.

Vulnerable is just one of the things I felt while crawling down the rugged path, but not in a million years could the Webster dictionary accurately describe how hard my heart was pounding, or the numbness and buzzing in my feet, or the knot in my stomach, just imagining what it would be like to suddenly trip if there happened to be a single twig out of place. My entire life I’ve told everyone and even myself that I wasn’t afraid of heights, but for just a moment, I knew what it was like to be truly afraid of falling to your death.

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Idk man. I don't know what this was. I just needed an excuse to use these pictures and to try and calm myself down while still thinking of how horrible I did in that unit a whole freaking year ago.

I wrote this about two months ago, but never really found the courage to actually post it because this really isn't my thing??? It doesn't even really make sense, but I hope you enjoy anyway. xD

Anyway, I also did this in video form, if that's your kinda thing. I apologize in advance for my voice. xD Also, I don't have the world's greatest mic, so it's really soft, so sorry about that too. 

THANKS FOR READING WHATEVER THIS WAS

EAT LOTS OF FRUIT STAY HEALTHY KIDS

DRINK LOTS OF WATER STAY HYDRATED TOO

AND READ A WONDERFUL BOOK FOR ME.

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Btw, this was filmed near Mount Wai'Ale'Ale in Hawaii, 'one of the wettest spots on earth' (it really was, too). The video footage and all photos in this post are mine, and I'd really appreciate it if they weren't used without credit/permission Thank you!! ^_^

Problematic Faves

(x)

Alright, there was some drama that went down on Twitter today over Alex from All Time Low just recently after something he tweeted, and because this kind of drama seems to happen a lot lately, I decided I wanted to talk about it somewhere where I don’t have a certain number of characters to rant.

So, every once and a while, you might be scrolling on Tumblr, or Twitter or whatever, and you come across something that one of your favorite celebrities/youtubers/favorite famous person said that was rude or messed up or whatever. Of course, there will always be those people who just brush it off, thinking that their favorite celebrity is always perfect and makes no mistakes whatsoever, so this is not that big of a deal. (Either that, or they just don’t want to address it, fearing that people will say that they’re not a ‘real fan’ for calling out someone who said something stupid or hurtful.)

Let me just say, first off, there’s nothing wrong with calling out someone for saying something that is hurtful or rude or whatever and telling them how it might be offensive to someone. “BUt Ur nOT a REaL FaN iF yoU saY tHEy DiD sOMeThiNG wRoNG!!1” Okay, but listen up; it takes exactly $0.00 to admit that your 'fave is problematic'. Everyone says stupid things. Admitting that your favorite celebrity messed up doesn’t make you a bad fan, it means that you’re not a mindless fan and don’t just follow someone because you think that everything they do is perfect and could do no wrong. If you think something a celebrity said was messed up, it’s up to you whether you still want to be a fan of them anymore.

Second, a lot of celebrities/people in general lately like to use the phrase “I’m sorry you got offended :))))” and then just go on with their day, acting like they did nothing wrong. That’s not a valid apology. All that does is push the blame of what THEY did on to the person that was hurt by the thing they said/did or whoever told them that what they said was wrong, and that’s a messed up way to deal with a situation. (For example, suppose you saw a plate of cookies on the kitchen counter and you ate them all. If someone came up to you and told you that was wrong, you wouldn’t respond with ‘oh well, it’s your fault for not locking the cookies up in a safe place far, far away from me.”) If someone does react that way, don’t accept their ‘apology’ and just move on, if they messed up, they need to own up to their own mistakes. (Especially considering they’re a celebrity, and are held up to higher standards with so many people looking up to them. By now, they should know how to act on social media.)

If they actually cared, they would apologize formally and admit they did something wrong and say that they’ve learned that what they said was wrong and that they won’t do it again. If you’re going to judge someone based on something they did wrong, judge them on how they reacted to the situation and how they owned up to their mistakes and took responsibility for their own actions. It shows a lot about them as a person.

Another thing, just because they did apologize doesn’t automatically make what they said okay. If a burglar robbed a bank, the cop wouldn’t let them go, money and all if they simply said ‘sorry’. They were the ones that said something wrong, and they can’t go back and fix it, but they can learn from their mistakes.

This does apply to everyone in your life, but I wanted to make this about celebrities/youtubers in the meantime, because this always gets brought up in my timeline whenever somebody famous says something wrong, and I’m getting really tired of watching people pick sides.

Anywho, that’s all. Just watch how people act, how they own up to the dumb things they say, don’t be a mindless fan, and have a fantastic day.

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((ALSO I WILL BE RESPONDING TO COMMENTS SOON. YOU GUYS LEFT SUCH LOVELY COMMENTS ON THE LAST POST, THANK YOU SO, SO MUCH, I JUST HAVEN’T GOTTEN TO RESPONDING YET. HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY. <3))

You're Going to Make Crappy Posts (and that's okay)

This has happened to all of us, I’m sure. Or, if you’re a new blogger and your posts are going well so far, maybe this hasn’t happened to you, but believe me, it’s inevitable.

You’re going to make a crappy post every once and a while.

Every once and a while, you’re going to post something that, for whatever reason, doesn’t get half as many views as your usual posts, or gets little to no comments. It’s sometimes hard to tell why; it could be because the title was boring or didn’t sound exciting enough, or the pictures weren’t as good quality as usual, or maybe you scared off all your followers by introducing a new topic or something, but it’s bound to happen. And it’s frustrating, because sometimes it might’ve been the one post you put a lot of time and effort into, just to see it flop. But guess what??? That is perfectly. okay.

Some people take the message of no one showing up to the party as “maybe I should take a break because I have no inspiration right now”, which is perfectly fine, but others may take it to the point of “maybe no one likes my blog because all my ideas right now are crap.”

I think it was Ed Sheeran (Word wants to change Sheeran to sheering I’m laughing) that first said this, but I heard it from Doddleoddle, because she’s my queen. xD There was this quote from him, ‘Writing songs and playing live is like turning on a tap in an old house; first you’ll get the mud and dirty water, but the more you get it out, the quicker the good water starts flowing.”

This is the same for blogging, or taking pictures, or drawing, or playing music, or—whatever. Whatever you do that is considered “creative”, this applies to it. People who decide to take the creative route in life often struggle with coming up with creative things with all the other creative people out there to compete with and get frustrated when people don’t like something they recently put out as much as their other things.

I mean Panic! At the Disco themselves shoved their album Pretty. Odd. in the corner because it didn’t get as much attention as all their other albums. (It was a beautiful album btw A+)

The point of all this is it’s okay to make “crappy” posts. It’s okay to end up making something that you’re not particularly proud of. It’s all part of being a ‘content creator’. If you ever decide to have a profession or even just a hobby that requires creativity, let yourself make a few not-so-great things along the way. Don’t give up because you’re in a slump or people don’t like what you’ve been putting out recently. If you want to take a break, that’s fine, but in order to keep the flow going, just keep the tap water running, washing out the dirty water, and soon hopefully you'll be able to get back into your old routine.

One comment I got from the fabulous Olivia, sums up the other part of this wonderfully. 

But, as a content creator, do let yourself take breaks every once and a while. Don't completely drain every little bit of energy from yourself because you feel like you NEED to put up another blog post for your followers because you promised one the day before. There's a difference between being out of ideas when you really really wanting to post and completely draining yourself of all your energy. It's so very frustrating to not be making something, as someone who's constantly doing things, (I know because my school website had a surprise shutdown last week and even though everyone kept telling me 'LUCKY YOU DON'T HAVE SCHOOL' I couldn't help but panic because I felt like I had to be doing something. It just felt wrong not doing anything.) but you need to give yourself time every once and a while to step back from everything. 

this was the video that inspired this post. it also partially inspired

 my manufactured personalities post.

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I'm so sorry I disappeared again, I've been writing posts I swear, see here they all are

obviously you've already seen some of these

wow look at all those posts A+ to me for actually getting something done.

Now if only I could bring myself to post them.

Which is exactly what I'm going to be doing now.

Thanks for not unfollowing me during my little hiatuses (hiati????)

I HOPE YOU'RE ALL DOING JUST WONDERFUL THIS WEEK AND THAT

SCHOOL IS GOING WELL SO FAR, AND IF IT HASN'T HERE'S A MAGICAL PICTURE OF PETE TO GRANT YOU A GREAT REST-OF-YEAR

HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY FOR ME

DRINK LOTS OF WATER STAY HYDRATED KIDS

STAY IN SCHOOL DON'T DO DRUGS

AND READ A MAGICAL BOOK FOR ME AND LISTEN TO SOME GREAT MUSIC

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one thing that I really love about these more wordy posts that I've been trying to get into is that I'm actually getting better at talking to people in real life, which means the absolute world to me. I'm not so scared anymore to talk to my teachers and other classmates and I've been able to smile at strangers more often and say thank you to the waiters and waitresses and everyone else I can't even explain to you how happy I am about this guys. I'm not scared anymore.