@foreveracharmedone / foreveracharmedone.tumblr.com
cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."
-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Hot take but praise is a good tool for encouraging healthy behavior. Positive reinforcement is good. Relying exclusively on punishment to change people's behavior is both cruel and ineffective. If someone does better than they did yesterday, let them know you appreciate it, let them know that they're improving!
"Don't praise anyone for doing the bare minimum" is a shitty take that prioritizes your sense of superiority over the actual betterment of people. I understand that things shouldn't be as bad as they are, and anger can often be justified, but you need to get over the propaganda that kindness is naïve, that cynicism and bitterness are intellectual. Withholding praise from those who haven't caught up with you doesnt actually help them, it doesn't motivate, it doesn't encourage, it only discourages them. It breeds bitterness and apathy, which are antithetical to empathy.
Growth isn't something you do on your own. People need support, they need community. Bootstraps won't get them there. Kindness will. Do you want results or do you just want to feel superior?
not sure if this will make sense to anyone besides me but: the antidote to negativity is not positivity, its warmth
positivity tells a sad person that there is no reason to be sad. warmth asks the sad person if they want to go get some ice cream
You’re not over exaggerating. You’re not too sensitive. You’re not too much. If it hurts you it fucking hurts you. If it makes you angry, then it makes you angry. There’s nothing wrong with you for feeling.
See the source for the whole comic, it’s brilliant.
Here’s an easy resolution: This stuff is all free as long as you have access to a computer, and the skills you learn will be invaluable in your career, and/or life in general.
Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the world. Excel excellence is one of those skills that will improve your chances of getting a good job instantly, and it will continue to prove invaluable over the course of your career. What are you waiting for?
Perhaps no other skill you can learn for free online has as much potential to lead to a lucrative career. Want to build a site for your startup? Want to build the next big app? Want to get hired at a place like BuzzFeed? You should learn to code. There are a lot of places that offer free or cheap online coding tutorials, but I recommend Code Academy for their breadth and innovative program. If you want to try a more traditional route, Harvard offers its excellent Introduction to Computer Science course online for free.
You could use a pre-existing template or blogging service, or you could learn Ruby on Rails and probably change your life forever. Here’s an extremely helpful long list of free Ruby learning tools that includes everything from Rails for Zombies to Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Go! Ruby! Some basic programming experience, like one of the courses above, might be helpful (but not necessarily required if you’re patient with yourself).
If you’re not interested in coding anything other than fun game apps, you could trythis course from the University of Reading. It promises to teach you how to build a game in Java, even if you don’t have programming experience! If you want to make a truly great game, you might want to read/listen up on Game Theory first.
Spreeder is a free online program that will improve your reading skill and comprehension no matter how old you are. With enough practice, you could learn to double, triple, or even quadruple the speed at which you read passages currently, which is basically like adding years to your life.
With Duolingo, you can learn Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, or English (from any of the above or more). There’s a mobile app and a website, and the extensive courses are completely free.
Full disclosure: BuzzFeed and other websites are in a partnership with DuoLingo, but they did not pay or ask for this placement.
Tired of your farmer’s market haul going bad before you use it all? Or do you just love tangy pickled veggies? You too can pickle like a pro thanks to SkillShare and Travis Grillo.
You can take the University of Washington’s Intro to Public Speaking for free online. Once you learn a few tricks of the trade, you’ll be able to go into situations like being asked to present at a company meeting or giving a presentation in class without nearly as much fear and loathing.
UC Berkeley put a stats intro class on iTunes. Once you know how to understand the numbers yourself, you’ll never read a biased “news” article the same way again — 100% of authors of this post agree!
Knowing the basics of psych will bring context to your understanding of yourself, the dynamics of your family and friendships, what’s really going on with your coworkers, and the woes and wonders of society in general. Yale University has its Intro to Psychology lectures online for free.
Step one: Learn how to play guitar: Justin Guitar is a fine and free place to start learning chords and the basic skills you’ll need to be able to play guitar — from there, it’s up to you, but once you know the basics, just looking up tabs for your favorite songs and learning them on your own is how many young guitar players get their start (plus it’s an excellent party trick).
Step two: A delightful free voice lesson from Berklee College Of Music.
Step three: Have you always thought you had an inner TSwift? Berklee College of Music offers an Introduction to Songwriting course completely for free online. The course is six weeks long, and by the end of the lesson you’ll have at least one completed song.
Step four: Lifehacker’s basics of music production will help you put it all together once you have the skills down! You’ll be recording your own music, ready to share with your valentine or the entire world, in no time!
Let Stanford’s Stan Christensen explain how to negotiate in business and your personal life, managing relationships for your personal gain and not letting yourself be steamrolled. There are a lot of football metaphors and it’s great.
If you struggled with math throughout school and now have trouble applying it in real-world situations when it crops up, try Saylor.org’s Real World Math course. It will reteach you basic math skills as they apply IRL. Very helpful!
All kids draw — so why do we become so afraid of it as adults? Everyone should feel comfortable with a sketchbook and pencil, and sketching is a wonderful way to express your creativity. DrawSpace is a great place to start. (I also highly recommend the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain if you can drop a few dollars for a used copy.)
BuzzFeed’s own Katie Notopoulos has a great, simple guide to making an animated GIF without Photoshop. This is all you need to be the king or queen of Tumblr or your favorite email chains.
Have you never really “gotten” jazz? If you want to be able to participate in conversations at fancy parties and/or just add some context to your appreciation of all music, try this free online course from UT Austin.
Macalester College’s lecture series is excellent. If you’re more interested in journalism, try Wikiversity’s course selection.
Another invaluable skill that will get you places in your career, learning Photoshop can be as fun as watching the hilarious videos on You Suck At Photoshop or as serious as this extensive Udemy training course (focused on photo retouching).
Lifehacker’s basics of photography might be a good place to start. Learn how your camera works, the basic of composition, and editing images in post-production. If you finish that and you’re not sure what to do next, here’s a short course on displaying and sharing your digital photographs.
Instructables has a great course by a woman who is herself an online-taught knitter. You’ll be making baby hats and cute scarves before this winter’s over!
If you are lucky enough to have a regular income, you should start learning about savings and investment now. Investopedia has a ton of online resources, including this free stocks basics course. Invest away!
Unf$#k Your Habitat has a great emergency cleaning guide for when your mother-in-law springs a surprise visit on you. While you’re over there, the entire blog is good for getting organized and clean in the long term, not just in “emergencies.” You’ll be happier for it.
Most cities have free community classes (try just searching Google or inquiring at your local yoga studio), or if you’re more comfortable trying yoga at home, YogaGlohas a great 15-day trial and Yome is a compendium of 100% free yoga videos. If you’re already familiar with basic yoga positions but you need an easy way to practice at home, I recommend YogaTailor’s free trial as well.
It’s simple and just imagine the minutes of your life you’ll save!
“sometimes i remind myself that i almost skipped the party, that i almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.” - every last one, anna quindlen
i know we all like to Joke & Bond over how depressed we are and make jokes about existential dread bc we really are absolutely fucking depressed and there’s certain comfort and humor in knowing we’re not alone but. god i wish none of us were sad. living like this isn’t fun at all and i hope it gets easier and softer for all of you
Fuck anyone who says I have to forgive everyone, “for my sake.” I worked hard for this anger. I worked hard to love myself enough to hate them.
Shit, yeah, this is a thing that is hard to articulate. Some people don’t feel healed by forgiving the people who hurt them, because that’s what they kept doing over and over and it only led to getting more hurt. Sometimes you feel healed when you’re finally brave enough to say “This person was horrible to me, and I did not deserve that treatment, and I don’t have to be okay with it.”
Nick Lake, In Darkness
there will be a moment when you realize you are more grown up than your parents are. this is the loss of childhood, my love. it is when you’re standing in the kitchen and one of your parents is screaming about something and you recognize: you will let them win the fight not because you are wrong, but simply because you know that they will keep shouting unless you drop the subject. you expect them to have childish understandings of things. they will hold onto their concept of the world as if it was not a changing thing. they must be right, and they must be somehow more right than you, always, in everything. their idea of control is so necessary to who they are that you just let it go.
this is the moment. you are 11 or 17 or 21. and you realize that you’re more mature than they ever were.
and in some odd, sad way, this frees you. where they have stagnated, you continue.
Tumblr’s tendency to promote political isolation (i.e., only associating with people who completely agree with your personal polemic) cannot feasibly carry over to most parts of your life. Like I want you all to know that part of being a successful adult with a job and networking and all that requires making connections with people you disagree with and not making a big deal about it.
Um, I’d strip in front of everyone I’d ever met, including my family priest, for 100k a night.
