You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?

If I told you I wrote this while thinking about the dangers of being visibly trans vs never trying to transition at all, happiness followed by a bright, burning end, smacking hard against a concrete ocean vs playing it too safe and never flying high, dooming you to a cold, crushing end from drowning, You'd believe me, right?

27-4-25

A collection of Black Books of Hours

the morgan’s black hours is fully digitized btw :) have a look at it!

NYC, The Morgan Library, MS M.493

It’s beautiful!

Hey kid you want a job?

Great get online and go to a job board. Indeed, Linkedin whatever. Now you're gonna search for a role that's in your city, fits your qualifications, and doesn't seem like a bad time.

See that easy apply button? Don't hit it they just throw those in the trash. Now you're gonna want to go to the company's website and check their careers page.

Oh? That job doesn't exist anymore. Cool go back to the job board and find another one.

Great you found another job, you're on the company's career page and the job exists!! So you're going to need to make an account on the career page website. They're using Workday, the same site as the last job you applied for? Who cares? You need to make another account for THIS job's workday page.

Now you're going to upload your resume. That'll autopopulate about 15 boxes with everything on your resume, except formatted wrong and with tons of errors. So just go through and painstakingly check the dates on all of that and rewrite everything you already laid out in an aesthetically pleasing format on your resume.

Ok time for the cover letter, explain why this specific job and company are deeply important to you. You love their mission statement and wouldn't even laugh if their ceo was gunned down in the street. You'll really want to reiterate the things you just spent the last 20 minutes filling out on the resume section

(Remember to include language from the job description, people who work in HR are lower than dogs and they need patterns or they get confused.) Write about a page, but hey don't sound too desperate or robotic this is where they judge your character!

Maybe add your portfolio site at the end here, who knows if that helps no one has ever clicked mine haha.

Anywayyy time to hit apply! Congrats! You'll see that confirmation email come in and you should be getting the rejection letter in about 2 weeks. Unfortunately your resume didn't have the right buzzwords and the AI auto rejected you :(

Time to start again and try not to kill yourself!

Listen to me

Listen very closely

The above is exactly why half of my friends come to me, and cry they're suffering, and I get to bestow my job hunting knowledge on them. I love this shit, it's a game.

For credentials my fastest job hunting time has been 1 week. I searched for 1 week, got an interview, and was hired within a week. My slowest was 1 month, while out of work, while telling ALL my interviewers that I quit my work without notice (I was testing my interviewers to see how shocked they'd get when I'd tell them why, anyone who wasn't shocked I would tell them at the end that I will keep them in mind (not)). My entire average is 2-3 weeks.

Firstly, what you're gunna do is pick a job sector. You're gunna pick a few of these by the end, but for now pick one. Maybe you wanna do bookkeeping, maybe you wanna do something in doggy daycare. Maybe you're a sous chef. Idk! Figure out what abouts you want first. Do not apply to anything yet. You're gunna look at the job description, I've picked out a few for bookkeepers below.

Now what you're gunna do is you're gunna look for "buzz words", or rather words that are gunna appear commonly and indicate the tone for that job. I've highlighted some, but not all in my examples below

Just look at that snout at how similar those descriptions are!

Now that you've got your buzzwords, you're gunna slap those babies into your resume! You see, since your resume is usually read by a computer first, you're gunna trick the computer into giving it to a person. Really what the computer is scanning for is how similar your resume is to the job description. Remember your bullet points, and to keep it short, try to only have 3 to 5 bullet points per job:

- Processed over 500 invoices a day in an efficient and accurate manner

- Curated reports for management review by utilizing available data

- Monitored and recorded over 100 submissions each day increasing accuracy by 50%

These are some great, made up examples I pulled from those buzz words. You might notice I added some numbers into there. That's something you'll wanna try and note for yourself, how much of something you can do, how accurate, how much efficiency you increased, these look GREAT when your resume gets past the computer and is moved in front of a real person.

Now you have your sector-based resume with lots of buzzwords. This is great! Now for the easy part. You're gunna channel your inner "IDGAF" And you're gunna send that to every listing you like on indeed. Filter for "Apply on Indeed" and spam that shit. Sometimes you gotta answer a few extra questions, but if they give me more than 5 quick questions I trash the submission and move on.

Don't waste your time jumping through hoops, streamline it for yourself and use the same methods companies are using. Push MASSIVE amounts of average quality resumes out. The more opportunities taken = the greater the chance of success. For every opportunity taken you've now pitched a chance of success, for every resume you cannot submit because you're piddling around on their stupid website or answering 50 interview questions online, you send out a 0% chance of success.

So go, try this, and see how it works for you.

Some additional things to consider:

- Add random shit in your resume, I added my "Board Game Club" (BDSM group) into my resume for hobbies and discussed how I got my start using sparklines there

- Never underestimate the flair of a little Clipart fleur-de-lis or something on your resume. Never put colored Clipart, but a little floral or swirl design located somewhere nice makes it stand out

- if you don't have a degree that doesn't mean they won't pick you, twice now I've come to a job without a bachelors and being honest that I was only getting an associates before I think of my next steps

- Embellish, do not lie. Jargoning your job description to make it sound cool and professional is GREAT. Do not give me a resume saying you can use CNC machinery when you've only used a 3D printer. Just tell me you know how to program and manage a 3d printer and want to learn CNC machinery.

- Keep. Your. Resume. To. Two. Or. Less. Pages. You don't need EVERY job, only the relevant ones, if your interviewer asks about the gap, tell them what job you had during that time (or if you wanna lie say you were taking college courses and were on a break, you dont need a degree to say you took courses) and that you only wanted to showcase the most relevant ones

- I'm serious on that last one I'll eat your fucking resume

TIL my high school has a Wikipedia page (I learned this via my sister telling me she was watching WWE and did I know one of the champions went to my* high school? No, I did not, but now I have more questions.) This surprised me as my graduating class had fewer than 70 people, and so I ask you:

* My siblings and I attended different high schools.

...I need to post on this because this led me to the discovery of quite a lot about my high school on Wiki, and

A) it had a long section about the censorship of our student newspapers and the lawsuits regarding the teachers involved, which I very much remember because I was there

B) there was a surprise section about how my favourite English teacher, who encouraged me to pursue the Running Start program, was indicted for sexual abuse with students seven years after I graduated

I didn’t miss that social cue I just thought it was stupid 

‘i saw your social cue but am ignoring it in the hopes you learn to use your words and communicate like an adult. hope this helps’

gentle hands

New bracelet and flat art listings on Etsy!

My boyfriend and I need help. Badly.

His shop is here! We have a bunch of stretch bracelets and flat art right now.

We are going through it, guys.

We just had two vet visits, one for Fancy and one for Junie, totaling ~$1k. That's on top of over $5k in existing vet debt from the boys dying last year. Fancy will need another ~$300 visit in a little under two weeks for imaging.

A water issue soaked the carpet in my room, which is now full of mildew, and also reactivated some old mold in the wall, making the room unsafe, unlivable. I have had to move out of it and into the studio, which I now cannot use.

Our sink doesn't work, our oven doesn't work, our dishwasher doesn't work.

We have been trying to take care of everything ourselves for months but we just can't anymore. We can't pull ahead, no matter what we do. We are sinking.

So we have stretch bracelets up for sale. We did some larger sizes, and some that are more masculine in style, so hopefully everyone can find something they like. The listings are bare-bones, so if you have questions, ask.

There is also a lot of flat art, some relatively detailed stuff and some quick marker sketches I used to do while gaming and never intended to sell. Here they are! Sizes vary widely, I've tried to get all the listing details right, but if you have questions about size or whatnot, feel free to ask.

I'm going to be making more posts and maybe a fundraiser for the vet debt, but if you could boost this one to start with, it would help a lot.

And if you feel like pitching in directly, his Paypal is theothershea@gmail.com

we have to write poems in my creative writing certificate program, so I pieced something together from Belphie's medical reports

my professor really liked this and said that it should be 'the nucleus of a chapbook' (so like 15-30 poems of the same theme that I would attempt to get published) but now I feel awkward because I think that she thinks HE DIED? but it turns out, everything will be alright! his heart recovered! the FIP meds are working!

if I do make a chapbook, this will be the next page:

and then this will be the page after that:

I couldn't believe how fast he went from death's door to running and playing once we got the GS441525 into him. I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who's spent their time researching and legislating it!!

Op please please try to get your chapbook out there.

I felt so much just with these few pages.

good news, it's finally here! the risograph booklet of Belphie poems can be pre-ordered at greerstothers.shop

Belphie also has a special message for you under the readmore:

Sound on

unveil your heart

the whole irony poisoned way of seeing something unusual and reacting with quips of 'kill it with fire' or 'i just lost brain cells' is such a muted way of trotting through this beautiful timeline, and such a common reaction from those raised by the internets depths. i hear this a lot with my books

and it just makes me think, 'do you realize that you have trained yourself to experience shock as dismissal?’ so many irony poisoned buds have wired themselves so that something 'unusual' equals disgust instead of wonder and curiosity and joy at the strange corners of our timeline.

i should be clear, this is not really a complaint. everyone can trot their own trot and these buckaroos often still buy or share my books out of curiosity, but i cant help but feel bad for them. there is so much wonder in this existence and some of it IS WEIRD. i mean A LOT of it is weird.

but by training yourself to react with an automatic veil will create such a haze across your experience. maybe you read a tingler and DO enjoy it. maybe you eat a food that seems unusual. maybe you listen to a musician with a video that people share to make fun of and YOU find something powerful

there will be plenty of things out there that are not to your taste, but this culture of saying yuck to sincerity to get little more than an empty laugh - it will destroy your heart.

False Knees Store

my advice to you is to never waste your time trying to fit into a club or hobby or any community who makes you beg for acceptance and approval just to participate when you could do the alternative—get involved in a niche and endangered hobby run primarily by old people.

i wanted to learn how to hunt ruffed grouse and train bird dogs so i sent an email to my local chapter of the ruffed grouse society explaining that getting into wildlife groups is intimidating to me because I’m trans

and all they saw was that someone under 60 wanted to learn to hunt grouse & several months into my mentorship I was told that like 7 old guys argued over me until they had to pick a number between 1 and 100 to decide who got to personally mentor me.

imagine vying for the acceptance of some gatekeeping weirdos when your mere interest could be inciting verbal combat among retirees

my mentor was so sweet & funny too. he suggested we meet over lunch first so he could tell me about what to expect before we got started & I emailed back “I’m ready to get started right away!”

and he said “I was actually suggesting lunch first for your comfort on the assumption you wouldn’t want to get together with a man you’ve never met, in the woods with a gun.”

Like, I trusted him because of the referrals I got from one of my professors but like, right you are sir fair enough. Lunch it is.

exactly 😌

[Image ID: Tumblr tag reading: #you're right. murderers can't have lunch (thumbs up emoji) /End ID]

The Fox Fairy/Spirit has a lot of variations throughout East Asia. I chose to base mine off the Huli Jing, and Tang dynasty dress. The shapeshifting, predominately female nine tailed fox also takes the form of a Kistune in Japan and Kumiho in Korea.

One of my favourite interpretations of this being is Good Hunting, the short story by Ken Liu (though not the Love, Death, and Robots inspired short animation! :( )

Original art by me! More phenakistoscopes on my page.

the thing is like. i get that it's scary and makes people who do desire to get pregnant uncomfortable when we talk about the brutality and violence of pregnancy and the damage that pregnancy can do to your body

but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.

the lies around pregnancy - that it's inherently safe, that it doesn't do you permanent damage, that it's only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like

all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that

there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are

but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo

this is a process that permanently changes most people's bodies, and that's even if the pregnancy doesn't do them like. severe illness or injury

and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that

bc to live in a society that intentionally obscures and hides facts about a completely optional and dangerous process does so for a reason, and that reason is based in a very sinister ideology that does not value bodily autonomy or informed consent

the number of people who are pregnant and don't know about what induced labour entails and what post partum bleeding is horrifies me

Here is a story about the depths to which pregnant people are seen as a vessel for a baby, and the importance of finding prenatal care that assumes you are a human and not a baby holder:

When I was pregnant I was in a million forums for pregnant people because (cough adhd hyperfixation) and I had something called SPD (Symphysis pubis dysfunction) (not Sensory Processing Disorder though I also have that) which is where your pubic bones separate early (more or less) because they get all loosey goosey as your body gets ready to crank that baby out.

Except my pubic bone got confused and got misaligned at like 3 months pregnant. I could barely walk. I couldn't roll over in bed. Doing something that required me to shift my weight from one foot to another like opening a door knob was like an excruciatingly painful knife being stabbed into my pubic bone, I can't express how intense and blinding it was.

So I am in one million baby forums like "am I dying what is happening why is there a knife in my pubic bone" and all these people are like "I have that too! my doctor says it's normal and not to worry because it doesn't hurt the baby. I just deal with it by laying in bed for months in excruciating pain and think about how lucky I am to be having a little miracle growing in my body."

So lol nope. I went to my midwife and they are like, "Oh squeeze a can between your knees look up a physical therapy youtube on SPD" and I did that can-squeeze thing and it CURED THE PROBLEM in ONE DAY. I had been SUFFERING, y'all, it felt miraculous.

And I was so full of rage (flames, flames on the side of my face) that people are being told "Oh, it's NORMAL just deal with it" "It doesn't hurt the baby." Like, look, yes it's NORMAL but it's 100% treatable!!! SPD (again, not Sensory processing disorder) affects 1 in 5 pregnant people.

I was lucky to have amazing midwives (need a gender neutral term for that profession, but they see pregnant men and women)(side note highly recommend midwives if you are gender nonconfirming/a man/etc) and I have DOZENS of examples of shit like this.

(Another example is post partum friends being like "oh I am peeing my pants 900x day after giving birth" and my doctor says it's NORMAL so I just dealt with it for decades. My midwives were like "Oh that's normal and also physical therapy cures that in like 2 sessions")

When my sister was looking to get pregnant she was given the best advice. She was told that being pregnant is an experience akin to being in a moderate sized car crash, in terms of risk and lasting injury.

Some people in moderate car crashes are very lucky, and walk away with zero injury. Some are very unlucky, and die. But most people fall into the third category, where they'll be injured at the time, then heal, and then for the rest of their life they have some minor and liveable complication from the injury. Like a knee that lets you know when the rain is coming, or a back that doesn't like seats without lumbar support, or a shoulder that never quite gets its full range of motion back.

The vast majority of people survive and thrive, like. But their body is never the same again. And people should know that when they make the choice of whether to put their body through that or not

my mom had a complication postpartum that caused pain and swelling in her left leg. at the time she was told it was "milk leg" and that it was normal and she'd be fine, but it never went away or got better. she finally found a doctor recently who was willing to do some tests and found out it's a condition called "May-Thurner syndrome" and had surgery to fix it

she's been suffering with this since she gave birth to me. I'm 38 years old. she had that surgery last week.

there needs to be more dialogue about the things your body goes through during pregnancy. "that's normal" or "everyone goes through that" need to stop being used to shut down conversations about the horrific, permanent damage that can be done to bodies during pregnancy and childbirth. just because it's "normal" doesn't mean it needs to be endured

Childbirth is widely recognized to be one of the most excruciatingly painful things a human can experience and often causes permanent damage or disability, on top of risk of psychological trauma and extreme depression or psychosis from rapid changes in hormones.

Anti abortion, pro-natalist, "traditional" types just pretend none of this exists and make up a version of reality where people giving birth will magically not be distressed or traumatized by, for example, needing their genitals ripped open and stitched back together, because childbirth is Natural and Supposed To Happen, so the pain, injury, and risk of disability or trauma don't "count" as those things in the same way they would if there was a violent accident.

Having listened to a lot of pro-lifers speak

I think some of these folks think women are automatically not going to be traumatized or feel horrified or really suffer in a fully human way, from pregnancy and childbirth, because that's what women are For.

And to accept that women can feel and perceive pregnancy and childbirth to be just as distressing and traumatizing as any equally excruciating, physically violating, potentially lethal or disabling event, would explode their entire worldview, because that's the Point of women, that's what a woman Is, a thing that is Supposed To do that.

So even if they are women themselves, they convince themselves that God/nature has miraculously made pregnancy and childbirth an Exception to typical human reactions to things.

So when somebody says "That sounds awful and I would do anything to stop that from happening to me." they think that this feeling will be erased by a magic cloud if the person actually got pregnant.

Acting like people aren't capable of feeling the full range of emotions about something because of their biology is really dehumanizing! Just because somebody has the capability to give birth, doesn't mean their minds cannot experience it as a nightmare, a torture, or a trauma.

It is the same horrid dehumanization of insisting that every woman will have a magic switch flip in her head that will throw every previous opinion in the garbage and make her want to have baby baby baby baby.