Kristar, she/her, 26, Pansexual/demisexual. I'm AmErIcAn. I enjoy things like Hannibal, Beastars, Good Omens, Stranger Things, anything gay, & whatever else. Mobile header by the fantastic hcnnibal.
thinking of the time I ordered olive garden online and I put “please speak to me in an Italian accent” in the special requests category and completely forgot about it, and when I went to pick it up the guy comes out and goes “eyyy I got-a your-a order bappada boopity!” and when I told him he didn’t actually have to do it he was like “a-nooo I was-a looking forward to it! I was-a the only one-a brave enough to do it!”
there are literally ppl in the notes acting like I made this up…. guys if I were gonna make up a story it would be about literally anything other than this
Have any of you heard of the Harvard MIT Pigeon Prank?
An MIT student dressed in a
black-and-white striped shirt went to the Harvard football stadium every
day of one summer, blowing a whistle while scattering breadcrumbs or
birdseed to coax neighborhood pigeons down onto the field. At
Harvard’s opening game of the season, upon the referee’s first whistle,
it’s said that hundreds of pigeons descended onto the field, causing a
half-hour delay.
Adulting advice: if you think you can’t do a thing because you tried it as a child or teenager and you sucked really badly: try it again.
You may not notice it, but as an adult you continue gaining motor skills, insight, problem solving skills and above all patience and resilience in the face of failure. Also puberty can be a nightmare. For some of us it’s just harder to do things when we’re full of insecurities, low impulse control and focus, heightened emotions, etc. A thing that was hard for 15 year old you might not be hard for 25 or 35 or 45 years old you.
I thought I was the absolute worst at sowing because I tried to learn it in my teenage years and failed spectacularly at the most basic tasks. Turns out I just didn’t have the patience and focus for it yet. I tried it again recently and it didn’t take long at all to learn how to make my own clothes. (And oh my, being able to make any outfit I want in any fabric is a queer superpower.)
It really sucks that we’re told quite early in life what our talents are and we end up assuming that there are some things we’re just not good at, when the truth is that learning as an adult is just completely different from learning as a child.
Oh man, since I’ve been like… 32+ ? So many things have gotten easier.
It’s not something anyone tells you. In fact, I think with our youth-obsessed culture, there’s a tendency to think that you’re going to peak young. Generally, this just isn’t true.
A lot of the improvement feels, like the OP says, kind of effortless. It’s me going back to cooking after not cooking for six years and suddenly, oops I’m pretty damn good at it. Why? I wasn’t cooking in the meantime, I wasn’t practicing. (I didn’t even have a stove.)
But other mental qualities were developing that make everything easier. My executive function, decision-making, motor skills, etc. are all better than they were, through completing thousands of other tasks. I can think, know, and focus better.
There’s a huge element of this, also, which is enabled by emotional capacity and maturity, which is even harder to describe. It’s easier for me to do things like tell the truth because I can actually understand the truth of how I feel and I am more likely to have the confidence to say it. It’s easier to make the right decisions, to weigh all the factors. Especially for me since I was really not consistently good at this in my teens and 20s (I was possibly more impulsive and risk-seeking than many people, but that just makes the contrast more apparent.)
The other thing to consider is that when you are a teen/child, you’re being taught things often in a very specific way that’s been determined by someone else. My dad, for example, wanted me to understand how engines worked, so he explained them to me while we both looked under the hood of his various cars or trucks. I learned absolutely zero things by doing this.
When I was 21, I decided I wanted to know, so I learned how engines worked from an educational website with animations and quizzes. And of course, I was able to learn it. It’s not that complicated. I was never unable to learn it, I was just not able to learn it that way.
YES.
And for the record: I don’t wanna shit on teens and young adults here or to discourage teens from trying complicated things. Everyone is different and not every teen is as much of a distracted and easily discouraged mess as I was. And as you say: a lot of why things are often harder for teens is because they’re not given the space to choose what they want to learn and how they want to learn.
Also, everyone at every age is allowed to make tons of bad decisions and mistakes and fail at tons of things or do things they enjoy without ever becoming good at it.
If you can’t wash it off, paint over it, replace the item, or buff it out, turn a message of hate into one of love!
I would never condone someone to do this discreetly and in mere seconds with a quickly concealed permanent marker, for example on a public bench or bus stop. Certainly not anything like whipping out a tat machine and adding to an unconscious white supremacist’s existing tattoo. That would be illegal! :) And, dear followers, I would never encourage you to do something that’s illegal.
So, please only use this when someone has defaced your personal property to avoid breaking the law! Because that would be illegal, and following in the law is always in everyone’s best interest. :)
You ignore calls. You block, unfollow, and mute harmful/toxic people on social media. You stop checking up on people who do not give a damn about you. You read a lot. You listen to good music. You run. You cut your hair. You dye your hair. You get a new piercing. You get a new tattoo. You make new friends. You delete apps from your phone. You cut people off. You get enough sleep. You eat breakfast. You drink water. You do your laundry, wash your dishes, make your bed. You take showers, you take baths. You sing, you laugh, you cry. You watch movies. You build relationships with other people. You take a class you really like. You stay in touch with people who only prove to you that they want you around. You change. You adapt. You start over. You begin again.
That is how you do it. That is how you move on.
And trust me, you will feel so much better for it.
