I have always had really bad anxiety and its gotten a lot better as ive gotten older I was talking to a friend who is having these spurts of anxiety and hearing her struggles and listening to people vent online it seems like a lot of us are in the same positions

No hope for the future, little motivation and just constant anxiety and all together those may not make sense but I think about it like this

You just ended a chapter in your life you are still very much present in a pandemic and you dont know what to do next so what do you do? You sit and think and contemplate because you have all the time in the world to decipher your thoughts and that anxiety starts impacting every decision you make to the point of not wanting to make anymore decisions at all

Something that ive tried to start telling myself when im experiencing anxiety is to stop and breath and think and try to pivot those feelings into something that motivates, inspires, or uplifts yourself

Work is a big stressor for me because a lot of times I cant help but feel like I suck at my job and I dont think thats true but even if it is I tell myself that its okay and im still employed and can still learn and grow

We are having a new hire all team meeting at the end of this month where my picture will be on the screen and all this information will be shared about me and at my old job I would freak out not go just like overreact but I realize no one cares at the end of the day even if that image is burned in someones memory forever I will never know and it will never effect me

I think about how many times ive been nervous about boys and how they think about me and that anxiety seeps through my teeth like everyone could see it

The advice I gave my friend is really important when it comes to relationships when you are getting anxious about your relationship maybe because you feel like you are too invested you dont want to face a heartbreak with this person you have come to love so dearly try to stop and pivot that anxiety because anxiety is literally just strong feelings turn that anxiousness towards love and how grateful you are for this relationship or how much you love your partner and how you’ve seen what a great person they are and how you trust them and no they would never do anything to hurt you and I dont think this makes you oblivious to their wrongs but I do think it manifest positivity in your relationship and your feelings towards that person

Pivot your anxiety by honing in on your positive feelings instead of your negative

I wish there were more laws In place to protect the vulnerable who are constantly exploited I think about the family vloggers I think about literally every tlc show centered arounds someones addiction or disability and just get so sad and I think about people with there screws a little loose who are just put into sticky situations

I watched the Tammy Faye baker movie and I feel like ive seen the trope so many times a husband takes advantage of a woman’s likeness and somehow brings her down with him I think of teresa guidice from the RHONJ and so many other woman who have been caught in their husbands mess and I just feel like there should be a law stopping shit like that from happening

People love to put the blame on others for things they’ve done to a worse extent if that makes sense like her husband villainizing her for dry humpng that dude when he was doing other crazy shit and being so greedy in the word of being religious its just fucked up

I think of the trend in early social media when people were obsessed with capitalizing on sharing videos of the mentally ill and there’s just this level of no consent that reminds me of things like family vloggers and getting consent from their children where even if the person says its okay you dont really know if thats what they would want in a clear state or as an adult in the children’s case

Tlc is another can of worms because they have this platform and they have the ability to do something and instead of intervening in a more helpful sense they milk the controversial, addicted, vulnerable people for content instead of helping

And I feel like people would say thats not there job or whatever but why isn’t why is their guise to help people but they just do the opposite and dont even fairly compensate their talent

I think about honey boo boo, the Duggars, and the slaton sisters,

Honey boo boo was living in awful conditions and then was living with her mother and her new boyfriend who was a sexual predator and instead of stepping in in a legal sense and removing those kids from that situation they just took the show away and removed a way of revenue from these poor people at the time and hey maybe there was nothing they could do it just rubs me the wrong way

The Duggars are fundamentalist christians who as a group often have some views that are very strict and can be straining on children growing up and I often wonder what tlc’s laws are when working on shows like this and having to correspond with CPS im not saying that the Duggars should’ve had CPS called on them but I think about Jon and Kate + 8 and how one son recently retracted a statement of a parent harming them and I wonder what role television companies have in situations like that and always making sure kids are in an okay environment

The Slaton sisters and my 600 lb life situation really pisses me off but I think it has more to do with my beliefs towards it as a fat woman I look at Tammy and see all the people in her life who have failed her

I watched all the seasons of this show and I just saw her get bigger and bigger and imagine tlc’s eyes with dollar signs instead of pupils and it just made me sick to my stomach they held the weightless surgery over her like a carrot and then continued to create these triggering conversations or like bring up shit to push her to not caring and that might sound dramatic but tv is so fucked up like I believe it and then with the misleading editing and the amount online hate those two women get it would drive me to feeding into my addiction as well

I have a lot of qualms with capitalism but one of my biggest one is where do you stop when what you are doing is morally wrong?

The more black history months I live through the more I wish the month would just go away I just feel like each February just brings more devastation and negativity to the black community due to racists not being able to live it down

I remember as a kid I was driving home with my friends family who I spent the afternoons with while my parents were working and her older brother looks at their mom and says why isn’t there a white history month

And she said something along the lines of slavery and how it highlights people who were once targeted to their race something to that extent

This month has been crazy it started off with bomb threats at HBCU’S which is so disgusting and something that has been happening at a lot of these colleges and universities for a long time

I think about the situation with Lauren Smith-Fields and the amount of black women who have been claimed missing or killed and the lack of media coverage Lauren and these women have faced and how the only similarity is skin color

I think about the fighting racial issues and how hard it was to hear my mom say how shocked she was that its somehow gotten worse I was saying the other day I miss 2004 and I meant that shit

I think about how hard people have had to work to see makeup shade ranges and people who look like me on tv and think damn we are still so divided the racial issues right now look so similar to 40 years prior and for that we should be ashamed

I think of how many n-word scandals we see and the recent judge who blamed her n-word video on sleeping medicine its just scary

I live in Virginia and the critical race theory debate is one that just boggles my mind no we are rewriting history and having debates over a topic that isn’t even mentioned in K-12 schooling its hard to feel like expressing how proud I am to be black can leave me hate-crimed this day in age

I think about all of these stupid issues tearing the black community apart and having us arguing instead of coming together to support all black people there is this crazy amount of biphobia and its often discussed about black women and often tolerated when executed by black men its disgusting and I don’t think we should have to teach people to be tolerant and accept people of all sexualities you would think that a group of people who have been on the other end of so much hate and lack of acceptance would understand the importance of lifting up black LGBTQ+ members

I just want to live in a world where I can be me and feel comfortable and safe and I cant really look around right now and look and say that but I hope one day I will or someone who looks like me will. Also nick cannon isn’t helping this situation get it together nick!!!!!!

i was thinking this morning about why I haven’t had any good valentines day or how ive been single my entire life and how I could give myself a cute valentines day but it all came down to the fact that valentines day isn’t real

My mind went back to middle school and wanting to be someones valentine

My mind went back to high school and wanting to have a cute date night on valentines day

And its like this romance that I have always wanted but never gotten to experience and its still somehow fueled by capitalism

This materialistic ass holiday with the cutest decorum and sweets that makes me so envious and sad

I love romance I love romance movies I love romance books and I think thats what has made me realize how brainwashed I am and how stupid I am when I see real life sad, difficult, and how unromantic it is

And although this holiday is so fake that doesn’t lessen my yearning for wanting myself to have it anyways since im bored and Ive never gotten to have one lets manifest my perfect valentines day

Sadly valentines day this year is on a fucking Monday what a Debbie downer

My perfect valentines day would definitely NOT be on a Monday it would be on a Sunday

Sundays are amazing its especially in the morning its like that breath of fresh air the roads are always clear and open the air always feels better I always feel like I can explore the world on a Sunday morning

Anyways I -

When I started writing this I didn’t know what to say and I think its because my perfect valentines day is probably spent alone or with friends as much as I yearn for romance and shit I think I would have the ick the whole day if it was with a romantic partner

My perfect valentines day would start with a walk a beautiful walk where the sun is colored to perfection I would see it rise on my walk the air would feel fresh there would be huge trees everywhere and colorful flowers it would just be amazing I would feel so refreshed after my walk my playlist would be curated so perfectly that every song played made sense and made me want to belt the lyrics at the top of my lungs I would drink a nice cup of water before heading back home to a breakfast like chicken and waffles with orange juice I would take a shower and a bath probably too using the best products ever like bath and shower bombs and bursts with music blasting colored lights a natural plant in the shower just like amazing vibes and then I would probably take a nap or watch a movie like TATBILB and bake and just feel like I had nothing to do and the crazy thing is there is an alternate universe where I am living that life everyday and hopefully one day I will be able to live it anyways if you feel like valentines day has caused you anxiety and you feel bad for not having some perfect movie like day I understand I want to say everything happens for a reason but honestly I don’t know if thats true or helps I would say look to the stars and spend this day with friends and loved one or just doing what you love!!!!

alcohol

drugs

fat obesity food

health care

$ and house ownership

rent and the stuff running out

I saw a great video of AOC talking about how we cant give up and how we cant let the propaganda work against us when we are making strides towards everything we believe in and I really loved it Its hard to not feel like we are living in a downward spiraling society when you really analyze our living conditions

I think about my opinion on alcohol and how we are drinking our sorrows constantly to not think about how shitty our lives are and I think about other countries with a deep drinking history like Ireland and Germany and how they seem to have such a better relationship with alcohol i dont know I could completely wrong but it just seems like they drink for different situations than we do

I feel so bad for the people in my life who cant commit to dry January when I literally couldn’t tell you the last time I drank any alcohol and its no shade our society glorifies drinking to fuel the economy but what about the bad decisions it makes how about the negative impacts it has on your body? What about the amount of people who become addicted to drinking and have to commit to being sober and the impact that has on their lives and of course I think that impact could be positive at the end of the day and some may say you have to go through some bad shit to learn but what if the world was just more transparent and everything wasnt fueled by money and Americans were actually able to live their best lives

The Sex and the City reboot has gotten a lot of negative feedback but I think it was great for them to highlight how the pandemic led to an increase in alcoholics and alcohol consumption in general

I think about the food industry and how sadly I wonder how much skinnier and healthier I would be if I lived in a different country its like everything we do is to fuck up our people and create more health issues and more medical costs capitalism is literally at the root of everything and I just wish I could escape it

Its hard to follow AOC’s words when you hear about how difficult it is to buy a house and how rent prices are increasing and how all of these mega companies are blaming things on inflation while they refuse to lower the heads of the corporations salaries its so tone deaf and disgusting and millionaires and billionaires and trillionaires shouldn’t exist when we have people who need government assistance while working multiple jobs its gross

I wonder how this all connects to the supply chain and how things are running out and its so weird because of how money controls that as well I dont know why but I automatically thought about Logan Paul and his new juice with KSI and how shit like that is in stock but people have been reporting of outages of tons of other shit like I remember not being able to get chicken for a month and of course thats not the end of the world but it just makes you wonder what is really going on

I think about how people are calling this generation lazy and how no one wants to work in the eyes of boomers but everyone I know wants a job has a job or is looking for one and these older people are failing to admit that we lost 1,000,000 people to a pandemic that many of them are failing to admit is real

I just wonder if we will all feel okay soon and everything will go back to normal the way the world feels right now is just not right and gun violence isn’t helping that I’m starting to get scared because there literally was a mass shooting near where I live last night and I can’t fully dwell on it like ive experiences immense sadness over things way smaller especially considering Ive frequented the place the shooting started I’m just scared im becoming desensitized and ive always been really scared of guns…

I just hope things better

i weirdly got to this thought when i was thinking about how some shows are created based off of other successful shows i was thinking of how yellowjackets is a mix of the wilds and this is us with the soundtrack of euphoria for some reason it reminded me of being reprimanded and punishment

why do we always feel like in order to teach someone a lesson we have to inflict physical or mental pain i have a lot of opinions about jail and more specifically the death penalty i am so against the death penalty it’s not even funny the point of it disgusts me and the biggest oxymoron hypocritical thing i see is conservatives super religious christian’s being okay with playing god i think it also should be noted that black people and people are more likely to be imprisoned and killed by the death penalty and the amount of mistakes the amount of unsolid cases that wrongly allowed someone to be persecuted is disgusting

i also think if you are so for wanting someone to think about the crime they committed and live an awful life killing them is an easy way out for that they aren’t even giving the time to think about their crime

i don’t think anyones life should be taken away for a crime that they did i don’t want the things i say in the episode to make it seem like people who committed awful crimes should just be given a stern talking to but also who are you to decide someone’s fate? we come into this world not choosing to be born just being here and now you are saying this person gets to choose if someone else lives or dies? i don’t understand and this is not similar to abortion in any right because just like i said before we don’t choose to come here and we get to choose our lives trajectory we get to choose if and when we have children but i just don’t think it’s right that we’ve created this caste system this hierarchy where people can choose for someone else i don’t know it really upsets me

i think about kids and when you are doing something wrong some are forced to endure mental pain via verbal abuse and some even feeling physical harm why can’t things just be discussed and understood i am such a fan of gentle parenting because a lot of kids brains aren’t even fully developed when they experience this pain and begin to pass it down to their families because they feel it was okay because their parents did it

especially when you make the connection between whooping your kids and slavery and how we haven’t evolved as a race to realize why we do that and how traumatic it is and how we are continuing the pattern of slave trauma in our people

i think about that quote about how we are mixed with the most racist misogynistic disgusting slave owners like we have our blood and how apparent it is how we fall into racist thought processes and ideologies against black peoples and other races as well it’s so scary and i just want psychological strides and an outrage of physical abuse on children

the more entries i make the more i realize im trying to understand my childhood trauma and healing my inner child my inner child is sad :(

thanks for listening and try to talk things out instead of inflicting physical or mental pain onto the people you love and cherish

openly working against neurodivergent students

gifted students

former gifted complex

telling kids who’s smart and who isn’t

brooke micicio nightmare tweet

fostering anxiety

kees getting beat for his grades

me being chased around a table

black parents feeling like there kids have to be smart

comparing kids

I was watching the newest Abbott Elemntary episode and I’m so happy that this show is allowing me to see myself on screen in so many different ways that I havent seen before.

It makes me wonder when our society will further think about neurodivergent students when designing the school education system and how we refer to our students and their brains and behaviors

It was cool to see their ways of solving the apparent issues of the gifted program and trying to highlight each kid for what they are talented in or excel in because at the end of the day our school system rewards memorization not necessarily using our brains

I saw a tweet this week from Brooke miccio about how she’s years out from college and still has nightmares about failing a test and I think that just shows how toxic the system is

I think back to tests and how its literally just regurgitating information instead of actually putting it to use in most tests

these memorization tests are setting up people with ADHD and other learning disabilities up to fail

and of course IEP’s are a thing and help a plethora of students

but I think about how fucked up our medical system is and how many people are diagnosed with things that could’ve impacted how they learned ,later on in life its insane so many kids could have done better in school and had completely different trajectories for their lives due to these mishaps

I think about my history with the gifted program and my experience as a test anxious students I was like half in the gifted program and similarly to Tyler’s character in abbot I always felt just not quite smart enough

I think about my identity as a black woman and the clip in the episode where all the kids say hey im smart over each other and it brings me back to my parents and how many black parents feel like their kids have to be smart to release generational curses and become successful

I remember being chased around my house scream crying from my mom because I got a c on a test in elementary school and then I saw a tiktok from Kees Crawford about how we would get spanked and whooped if his grades weren’t good growing up my bad grades resulted in punishment devices being taken away from me and it created this feeling of anxiety and sacredness when it came to my studies

And that transition for formerly gifted students has to be hell I always felt dumber than the smartest people around me but woah was I in a shock when I got to college I think of a lot of the people I thought were smart growing up and how many of them I saw struggle in college and drop out its like this advantage this tier they are given as children come back to bite them on the butt especially in college because you dont just have to be smart to survive college you have to be mentally stable and independent which isn’t necessarily learned through school or these gifted programs

I just want more thought In the systems we create and of course it will never be perfect and everyone thinks differently and learns differently but the more we can help the better it will be at the end of the day i dont even know what steps to take for it to be done but I just hope it happens :)

One day I got really bored and wrote down all of the controversies Gabbie Hanna had been in and I was shocked when I think of Gabbie I think of the boy who cried wolf but I couldn’t even tell you when she actually cried and needed help if that makes sense

I was listening to Gabbie’s new podcast and I physically had to stop because she was just complaining and being negative the entire time something that gabbie has shown over time that a lot of influencers do is refuse to become irrelevant I think back to her shadow banning scandal when she was like constantly going off about it and when her music didn’t do as well as out loud when she had David dobrik promoting at the end of his vlogs and the entire vlogsquad behind her

In this new podcast gabbie talks about how much she hates social media and how she needs social media to do her job but it is so privileged and her thought has a lack of depth she talks about wanting to create and how the only way she can do that is by being on social media which I disagree I think using social media to push what she creates is the only way she can continue to have her influence and the only way she can afford her current lifestyle

She harps on wanting to just be creative I remember a while ago she talked about wanting to have a candle business but it seems like she will never step away from her platform she wants an army of people behind her at all times

I saw a tiktok when people were talking about how she is obsessed with fame and thats just true she’s obsessed with being known but she’s turned to hating social media because she got critiqued for her actions

She said in her new podcast that social media tried to convince her she was a terrible person and how she figured out that wasnt true I disagree gabbie is awful at receiving feedback and critcism like her situation with Rachel Oates and her book

The more I hear from gabbie the more I see Trisha Paytas They both are obsessed with that fame and their lavish lifestyle that they won’t give it up even if its better for their mental health

I see people who refuse to be wrong and everything that they say is right in their eyes

But what is different is Trisha never says she’s shadow banned she’s transparent about her views going up and down and she knows someone will always watch but gabbie is obsessed with numbers she started losing subscribers she hid her subscribers from her channel Gabbie Hanna wasnt seen as marketable to her so she switched back to the gave show

During the time of the Jessi smiles situation which was awful and I have some old tweets of mine to talk about here but during that time she knew know one wanted to give her money or views so she phrased her video titles and thumbnails to resemble drama channels and you could say this is just marketing she’s just doing her job it comes a time where that manipulation and that marketing becomes obsessive and toxic and I think examples of people with this mindset would be David dobrik

Okay so here is something I tweeted back in June

i am so peeved about gabbie and this series thing you’d think if she was so “sick of the lies” she would just get off the internet and start a new life? why spend so much time trying to convince people you’ve changed if you believe it yourself???I used to support her but it’s just too much and she doesn’t seem to care about telling the truth or being respectful just solely about getting in front of the story and sharing her own narrative it’s extremely frustrating that she can’t own up to her wrongdoings

So if you’ve listened to the podcast before I talked about in one episode about how i got this book and almost never read it but one night I just felt moved to go to my shelf get it and start reading it and it was just what I needed at that time its a collection of quotes and I enjoyed it dearly when I opened the book I saw the former owner had annotated it and I started to as well and I wanted to read some of the quotes that stood out to me and what they meant to me and how I think they applied to my life in hopes that it will reach others who are at the same point and needed this information as well!

“A genius is one who shoots at something no one else can see, and hits it.”- Anonymous

“The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.” William Lyon Phelps

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” - Charles Mingus

“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.” - John Andrew Holmer

“Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something” - E.L. Simpson

“To get nowhere, follow the crowd.” - Anonymous

“People who drink to down their sorrows should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.” - Ann Landers

“Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.”- Ludwig Borne

“I have the greatest if all riches: that of not desiring them.” - Eleonora Duse

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.” - Elbert Hubbard

“To wish to progress is the largest part of progress.” - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

(1ST century A.D)

“If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.” Eldridge Cleaver

I had this crazy realization one day after work this week when I was driving.

Driving is so therapeutic to me and I finally made the connection to why. I once said there are so many things that we do because our parents do them but I never stopped to realize how different I am from my parents and why.

As a woman I have always had a weird relationship with the idea of being a mother but more specifically being a stay at home mother. At times in my life, I wanted to be a stay at home mom, be a teacher. And these are things my mother never wanted to be and things she never told me to be but why did I want to be them?

Growing up to two working parents, as a child I rarely saw them. I spent a good chunk of my life being watched by my best friends mom and my neighbors mom there I picked up so many habits.

I found my love for country music. My friends mom was a single mother so I saw her life and how she lived it and there were so many things I wanted to replicate so many things I cherished. And now when I drive aimlessly every weekend and listen to a lot of the country music I am doing so because of her. My parents never did any of that if it wasn’t for my time with her I wouldn’t do that.

It was so crazy to realize.

My quote was:

routine ignorance follow the leader

how many things am i doing just because my parents did them

how do you break a habit

I failed to realize its not just my parents and how important it is who you surround yourself with especially as a kid because it impacts so many things you grow to think and believe as an adult.

So this quote this thing that I wrote I analyzed on my old podcast with my friend and we talked about how it goes both ways there are things we solely do because our parents did and they can be so big or small that we don’t even think to change them and there are things we see our parents do that rub us the wrong way and we make sure that we never do them as an adult

The more I thin about it there is a connection to so many things through this thought because I think about why we know we don’t want to do something and its based on how we feel or what we learn which is usually learned from a source outside of our parents like school or teachers or friends

This makes me scared for society and the future because it reminds me of the banned books going on and Texas and the literal handmaids tale which ironically is on the banned book list

Ive always been super fascinated my fundamentalist culture and super religious groups like mormons and they are the perfect example of this they shield themselves and other followers of the religion from the outside world and a lot of super religious groups don’t believe in schools and this allows the brainwashing to continue and it just strengthens what I was talking about in my quote you just get further sucked in and those habits become generational curses.

Its so crazy because on Tiktok they often say that we are shifting to a white supremacist dictatorship and a society where everything is controlled by a small group of people like Gilead and sometimes I thought it was a stretch but the more I think about it the truer it becomes