The End, By Alister Lockhart.

hey kids

you know why I like redemption narratives? because a redemption narrative says: no matter how broken or wrong or bad or stupid or ridiculous or harmful or sad or terrible, you can atone.

there is still a road back. it might be rocky and steep, complicated and messy. walking it may take all your life. you may lose your foothold, slip and fall back into the abyss, but the wall is still there. the ascent is still there. hard is not the same as impossible.

you are never too far gone. you are never beyond saving. 

History wants so badly for Cleopatra to be beautiful. Like they can’t conceive of Rome being intimidated by anything less

I’m gonna be honest: I’ve always hated New Year’s resolutions.

I feel like resolutions are about setting yourself up for shame and failure. For instance, ‘I will adhere to a new diet’ or ‘I will mediate every morning.’ Then one morning, because you’re a human person, you forget to meditate or you don’t have time to meditate or you can’t be bothered to meditate. And then your resolution is broken, and you have failed.

How about this year we start thinking in terms of quests? A quest is completely different from a resolution. For instance, ‘I will take the Ring to Mordor’ or ‘I will find the Arc of the Covenant’ or ‘I will figure out what kind of work makes me happy’ or ‘I will learn how to become open and trusting in my relationships.’

No shame involved. If you’re on your way to Mordor and you take a wrong turn and accidentally end up in Isengard, you haven’t failed. You’ve just gotten a little off course.

A quest is about the intention.

A quest is about the journey.

A quest is of indefinite length and uncertain duration.

A quest allows for unforeseen circumstances and unexpected turns.

A quest cannot be accidentally broken, only voluntarily abandoned.

Sometimes, if the plot changes, you (the hero) might choose to abandon your quest for a different quest, and this is not failure.

This year, I’ve decided to stop thinking about what I should be doing and start thinking about where I’d like to be going.

And then begin by taking a single step.

STILL ON PATROL

I learned something new and horrifying today which is… that… no submarine is ever considered “lost” … there is apparently a tradition in the U.S. Navy that no submarine is ever lost. Those that go to sea and do not return are considered to be “still on patrol.”

?????

There is a monument about this along a canal near here its… the worst thing I have ever seen. it says “STILL ON PATROL” in huge letters and then goes on to specify exactly how many WWII submarine ghosts are STILL OUT THERE, ON PATROL (it is almost 2000 WWII submarine ghosts, ftr). Here is the text from it:

“U.S. Navy Submarines paid heavily for their success in WWII. A total of 374 officers and 3131 men are still on board these 52 U.S. submarines still on patrol.”

THANKS A LOT, U.S. NAVY, FOR HAVING THIS TOTALLY NORMAL AND NOT AT ALL HORRIFYING TRADITION, AND TELLING ALL OF US ABOUT IT. THANKS. THANK YOU

anyway now my mother and I cannot stop saying STILL ON PATROL to each other in ominous tones of voice

A lot of pets will ignore you, but only a cat will follow you from room to room and check your lines of vision to make absolutely certain that you can see them ignoring you.

Previously, I’d only seen the first two panels and assumed it was the complete comic.

This version is much better.

Disclaimer: this post applies to everyone. No matter what your grades are, how much your income is, what classes you are taking this applies to you. 

It’s okay to fail 

If you studied for two weeks before the test, stayed up all night studying, made countless amounts of flashcards and you still failed it’s going to be okay. 

Failing is inevitable. You won’t always get the grade you desired, no matter how hard you work. Don’t beat yourself up for not working hard enough, or not studying early, or procrastinating. No one is capable of doing well in all of their scheduled classes without messing up every once in awhile.

It’s okay to not be constantly working

There will be times when it will be incredibly difficult to get started. Everyone procrastinates in some way or another. Please understand that procrastination does not include taking care of yourself. Taking care of yourself means doing whatever it takes to make you feel healthy and happy. Your mental and physical health is just as important as school. 

- breaks are necessary - taking a nap or sleeping is necessary - doing something you enjoy is necessary - exercising is necessary

It’s okay if your day does not go as planned

Did you sleep in? Go on Tumblr for three hours? Not get any work done? That’s okay. When you have free time: sit down, make a schedule of what needs to get done first before anything else, set a timer, and get to work.

It’s okay to Treat Yo’ Self

I’ve always struggled with the idea of giving myself care and love. My New Year’s resolution for 2016 was to love myself the way I love other people. Every time you decide not to do something ask yourself “Would I be proud of my best friend if they did this?” or “Would I do this for my favorite person?” If the answer is yes, then go and do whatever it was you didn’t want to do. Today I made french toast, something I normally wouldn’t do because of the time it takes, but I know I would do it for my best friend if they asked me to. 

Please believe in yourself

Don’t listen to other people when they say you can’t do something, or you’re not good enough, or you’re not trying hard enough. No matter how well they know you they will never know what you’re going through. Getting a single task done is an achievement that should be celebrated. 

17% of cardiac surgeons are women, 17% of tenured professors are women. It just goes on and on. And isn’t that strange that that’s also the percentage of women in crowd scenes in movies? What if we’re actually training people to see that ratio as normal so that when you’re an adult, you don’t notice? …We just heard a fascinating and disturbing study where they looked at the ratio of men and women in groups. And they found that if there’s 17% women, the men in the group think it’s 50-50. And if there’s 33% women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.

Source: NPR: Hollywood Needs More Women

(via febryafanblog)

let’s be honest though, millennial hate is totally a thing rich folks started because they’re pissed that we have really unpredictable consumer habits and it isn’t as easy to get us to buy into stuff, so they’re mad we aren’t just money giving/traditional economy supporting machines like they expected us to be

like look at how much millennial hate articles are things like “millennials aren’t eating cereal and it’s hurting the cereal industry” or “millennials aren’t buying houses and that’s bad” or “millennials #1 utmost priority isn’t trying to make as much money as possible” and rich folks are mad about it, so just posturing our unpredictability/nontraditional values as “laziness” gets everyone else on board the hate train in some weird attempt to collectively subdue us

So, my university does a lot of outreach Classics work, trying to make it less of an elitist subject and more accessible to children, and as part of that, I went to give a talk to a class of 6 and 7 year olds a few months back.

And here’s the thing. Classics is really often portrayed as the last bastion of academic privilege, a subject that is only taught to rich white kids so that they can brag about knowing Latin and get jobs as Tory MPs. But these kids were OBSESSED. They had already done some stuff on myths, and they were so excited to talk about it. They knew all the stories, all the heroes, the gods, the monsters. I have never seen such an excitable group of kids as these 6 year olds shouting about Odysseus.

For the lesson, I asked them to think of their favourite myth and to consider it from the point of view of the monster rather than the hero. The end goal was to show that often the monsters and heroes are quite similar. We decided to do Polyphemus (the Cyclops) in the Odyssey, and so I asked them why they thought Polyphemus might have been so angry at Odysseus that he killed some of his men.

Because he came home and found lots of strange men in his house, eating his food, said the kids.

So, I asked them, do you think that was a good reason to kill people?

No, they said, but he was very cross, and he didn’t do it because it was fun.

And then this KID, this SIX YEAR OLD CHILD, put her hand up and said “well, it was very bad of him, but if we’re cross with him then we have to be cross with Odysseus too, because when he came home from his adventure and found lots of men in his house, trying to marry his wife, he killed them, and that’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

AND LET ME TELL YOU

I am a published Classicist! A PhD student! And I have never made that connection before! Not once! And this child was six years old! And she made the link! By herself!

And so I tried not to show how gobsmacked I was, and we talked more about other monsters, including Medusa, and at the end of the lesson a lot of them said that they thought the monsters were not as evil as we usually think, and then I went home.

But I honestly haven’t got over how excited and engaged those kids were, in a totally regular primary school. Classics, in that classroom, was not elitist or inaccessible. It was something they understood, could really get their teeth into and use to think of new ideas of good and bad, of why we demonise different people for doing the same things. And that’s how I like to think about Classics. Not a series of dry texts in ancient languages, but as living stories that you actually can’t help but love, just a bit.