First of all: You don’t feel bad because you are bad. Right now you may feel worthless or useless or empty but i promise, you are wonderful. You are a precious human being and i love you.
Checklist:
– Did i take my medication?
– Did i drink enough water?
– Did i eat enough food?
– Did i sleep enough?
– Did i have too much caffeine?
Dehydration, hunger, lack of sleep, a missed dose of medication and caffeine can all have a negative impact on your mood. Take care of your body and you will probably feel better mentally as well!
– Did i move enough?
– Did i move too much?
Both too much and too little exercise can have a negative impact on your mood. Think about your own specific need and ability to move, note that it’s not about “getting fit” or “losing weight” now, it’s just about the amount of exercise your body requires to feel comfortable. If you had too little, take a walk. dance to your favorite song or just do a few nice stretches. You probably don’t feel like it but it may pull you out of your sadness! If you had too much, listen to your body and allow yourself to rest. Exercise is important but too much doesn’t benefit you, it just exhausts you, physically and sometimes even mentally. You deserve a break!
– Did i have enough enjoyable social interactions today?
– Did i overstimulate myself with too much social interactions?
Both loneliness and overstimulation can be draining. Think about the last few hours of your life. Did you talk to others in any way? If not, try to talk to someone, even if it’s “just” a call, a text or a message on tumblr. Don’t feel like humans? Cuddle your pet or even a stuffed animal. If you did, did you enjoy those conversations? Not every social interaction is uplifting. Maybe you also had to talk to many people or people you don’t feel comfortable with. In those cases, it might be helpful to isolate yourself for a while and just spend some time with yourself.
– Did something upsetting happen recently?
– Did something upsetting happen a long time ago but it still bothers me?
Both is valid. It may help to talk about it, to friends, families, people who went through something similar, a doctor, a therapist. It may also help to write it down, so you get it out of your head. Creating art in any form may also help you. Distractions (such a reading, watching funny videos, taking a bubble bath, listening to music, basically anything that makes you think about something else without harming you or others) are a good idea for a short-term fix but if you find that the bad feeling doesn’t fade away even with distractions and you can’t stop thinking about it, it’s better to talk to someone about it.
– None of those apply/I did all of these but i still feel bad!
Sometimes you just feel bad for no reason. That’s okay. If this is a new feeling, you may just want to wait it out. Everyone has bad days but even the worst day will pass. If this isn’t a new feeling and you’ve felt bad for two weeks or longer now, please talk to a professional. Prolonged negative emotions may be a sign of a health problem.
Tag: self
art tips post
for all the artists following me
- draw fast. it’ll look messy for a long time but you’ll improve faster than if you spend 4 hours on every drawing
- if you draw in pencil and have a habit of erasing all of your mistakes, try drawing in pen or marker. i know it’s scary but it’ll help in the long run (i’m speaking from experience)
- try different methods and mediums but don’t worry about mastering any of them, just have fun
- if you’re not rich, buy art supplies from the dollar store, not the art store (seriously. i go through a sketchbook about once a month and i’d rather spend $4 on one than $15)
- there’s no wrong way to learn. you can copy other people’s art if you want to, just don’t post it
- DO NOT worry about having a consistent style. do not. just draw however you want
- if you want to make original characters then do it. don’t worry about if they’re original, or a good design, or if they have an accompanying story. make sonic ocs. do it. it’s fun and it’s not hurting anyone
- try not to kill your back. stand up and stretch once in a while
- make a folder and save all of your favorite arts for inspiration
- draw from life. draw your dog. draw your teachers. draw your desk. draw your own hands (seriously that’s the best way to get better at drawing hands)
- in general, drawing from life or a photo is better than drawing from a diagram
- draw whatever you want. draw youtubers if you like youtubers. draw undertale if you like undertale. when i was a kid i drew nothing but shadow the hedgehog and horses. everyone deserves to draw what they want without being mocked, and if people start making fun of you, block them and keep drawing
- don’t expect to get any notes at first. don’t let it discourage you. if you want validation go show your art to your mom or your friends or your teacher or your grandma
- take breaks, but don’t give up.
Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your training, your education and your culture. From the very beginning you have been told how you should be; nobody has ever told you that you are good as you are.
Stop telling yourself that the grass is greener on the other side, because it’s not. It is greener where you water it. So take control of your life and start watering your own pastures and grow your own greener grasses.
Stop both envying your neighbor’s green grass AND watering your own. We’re in a fucking drought. You can’t sustain that shit. Think beyond the lawn that society told you to want. Put in some native plants that will thrive and bloom with very little water. They might be a little more spiny than what you first planned, but there is great beauty and variety in these hardy survivors. Your yard will be way more interesting and friendly to wildlife than that of the people who took the easy route and poured on water at the expense of other people and organisms. (This has been a California-themed post hijacking.)
No but like along with being literal good advice (GRASS AND LAWNS ARE A TERRIBLE IDEA WE SHOULD REVERSE THIS CULTURAL EXPECTATION NOW) this is also metaphorically good advice (as I’m sure you knew when you posted it).
There are sometimes things that you take for granted that you are just Expected To Want or Do or Be that you don’t actually have to. You’re so used to it you don’t even think about it, but the moment you do a less resource-heavy alternative appears.
On an environmentally friendly level this is a terrible example, but a couple years ago I was talking with my therapist about problems I was having being a functioning human being, and I went on a rant about the dishes and how they stress me out and I feel like I never get them done and then I hate myself and after listening to this whole rant I expected my therapist to give me the normal pep talks about being kind to yourself and taking it on a little bit at a time but instead he just had the most exasperated look on his face and he said,
“Buy some paper plates.”
He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world and I was completely speechlessly thunderstruck.
He said, “As an environmentalist, I am giving you permission for your own health to buy some paper plates. Problem solved.”
I don’t always use paper plates now. My mental health does allow me to keep up with the dishes better than I was (though these days my physical health has started interfering). But when I feel that slipping? I skip the cultural expectation that I should just be doing the dishes all the time. I conserve my (metaphorical, the opposite of literal in this case, sadly) water, and I buy some paper plates.
There a thing that’s ruining your mental health? Your life? It feels like a simple thing that other people can just DO, but you can’t? Often there’s a simpler solution. If you are tired of taking care of your hair, cut it into a pixie cut to save yourself the hassle. Hell, shave it off. You don’t need hair! Google hangout is a great alternative to going out when you want to talk to a friend but aren’t sure you can get yourself out of your house. If food stresses you out, buy shit you can just grab and eat without even having to microwave (I fucking love cottage cheese and vegetables for this exact reason).
You do not have to cook. You don’t have to date or get married. You don’t have to be monogamous if you do want to date or get married. You don’t have to be straight. You don’t have to be a boy or a girl. You don’t have to look a certain way or talk a certain way or eat certain things. You don’t have to go to college. You don’t have to be in that major. You don’t have to own a house. You don’t have to want or have kids. You don’t have to wait for the perfect partner to have kids if you do want them.
It’s such a normal thing to have a lawn that many people don’t even consider the time, money, and water it would save to just get rid of it and replace it with an alternative that takes into account the native environment of where it’s growing. How much easier their life would be without maintaining something that just went there because it was expected with no regard for whether it naturally fit, and instead put in plants that serve the same function but actually thrive and take root with no real effort.
Instead of fighting to maintain expectations, throw away your lawn and plant natively instead. Both literally and metaphorically.
you can be quietly agender and youre not any less agender for it
lately i’ve been replacing my “i’m sorry”s with “thank you”s, like instead of “sorry i’m late” i’ll say “thanks for waiting for me”, or instead of “sorry for being such a mess” i’ll say “thank you for loving me and caring about me unconditionally” and it’s not only shifted the way i think and feel about myself but also improved my relationships with others who now get to receive my gratitude instead of my negativity
Friendly reminder
“Doing your best” does not mean working yourself to the point of a mental breakdown.
this one still smashes me in the face ten times a year. do not ignore pain, it’s no longer your best at that point
Hey!!!
That thing you wrote that isn’t “good enough” to put up on the AO3. You can put it up there! The AO3 isn’t meant to be The World’s Classiest Showcase. It’s an archive. It exists because most other forms of hosting fannish work eventually degrade or disappear. Accounts get deleted. Websites shut down. The AO3 preserves those things. Ten years from now you’ll be like, “Shit, there was this really great tag essay, but the person changed their Tumblr URL and then Tumblr closed up shop…” (look, even Tumblr will die eventually) and your only hope of finding it will be if the page was cached, or if somebody uploaded it to the AO3.
The AO3 exists to preserve ephemera as much as substantial works. You know how valuable it is for archaeologists to be able to read the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii? The little things, the notes, the headcanons, the notfics, the meta, the back-and-forths, are all important too.
‘laziness’
I’m a lazy person.
What I mean by this is that I do not do my homework; I miss deadlines at work because I’d rather play games than do the work; I have projects I’m excited about but instead of starting them I scroll aimlessly through tumblr. I have occasionally failed to turn in important assignments because I didn’t do them because I didn’t feel like it.
My whole life I’ve thought of this like a personality trait. I can’t do things unless they’re interesting because I’m lazy. I tend to get in trouble with jobs and at school because I’m lazy. I hated the personality trait, I wanted to change it, I aspired rather desperately to be a hard-working person and caused myself a great deal of pain trying to imitate one, but I was still thinking of it as some sort of fundamental tendency, some sort of fact about me.
queerhomestuck 