– EW, I’m eating meat!
// Does it taste good?
– Absolutely fantastic.
// Are you dead?
– Nope.
// CTFD
– K.

// Now, luv, is it optimal?
– Not a chance.
// Prefer not to.
– What happens if I do anyway?
// Nothing.
– But it’s not optimal.
// Nope.
– It doesn’t matter?
// Not really.

“If you like it and you’re not dead, it’s not that big of a deal. If you’re trying to do better, and you slip, you’re still not dead.” — /<3

// I cheated on you. Are you going to leave me?
– I don’t know.
// If it will keep happening, are you going to leave me?
– Yes.
// I love you, but you have to leave me. Take whatever time you need to get over this, and go.
– But… why?
// Because not getting cheated on is more important than being with me.
– Can’t I have both?
// There’s a possibility you won’t.
– Why is cheating on me more important than being with me?
// My reason for cheating on you was that I’m not getting everything I want from you, and I can’t get it without making you do something you don’t want to do.
– So getting what you want is more important than being with me?
// Yes. I’m sorry, I should have told you before I did. Then you could have made the decision then, instead of now, when it’s much harder.

Don’t freaking lie, people. That’s compromising who you are and who they are. That’s an attempt to get something for nothing. Don’t freaking do that.

/<3

Life is about choices. Choices and priorities.

Know that there is always more and less, yes and no. You must always choose between one thing or another, put one thing above another thing. The only way to surely be miserable, in fact, is to refuse to choose.

When, for example, you want a person, you must make a choice. You can sacrifice yourself, who you are, just for that person. There are ways to guarantee your place in their lives. There are techniques, and attitudes you can adopt. You can transform your entire life, just for them.

Or you can preserve yourself.

If you refuse to choose either, you put yourself in a place where you’re attempting to be yourself, but changing only a little bit at a time. And that change makes you feel as if the person you want is obligated to react in the way you want. After all, you’ve sacrificed a part of yourself to them. You’re in a place of ambiguity, and neither yourself nor the other is more important. They seem to have equal standing.

Have you ever been asked what you would do for a million dollars? The question was asking about how much you value money. But you had a limit, didn’t you? Where the action was unquestionably too horrifying or degrading that a million dollars would not justify it?

If you were presented with that ultimatum, to do that horrible thing for the money, you could easily refuse the offer, with no regrets, couldn’t you? If you were certain that it was too much to ask of you?

Basically: No matter what life throws at you, you can have anything that you want. If the consequences or steps leading up to it are too much, then you won’t want it anymore.

Then it doesn’t matter.

/<3

Whole Foods is literally the best place to get vegan substitutes. For example, I just got some shredded almond cheese. Shredded. Vegan. Cheese.

It’s delicious.

I made vegan tacos today. Using Smart grounds Mexican Style, Whole Foods almond shredded cheddar, Tofutti Better than Sour Cream, Whole Foods salsa, chopped lettuce, and a hard taco kit.

However, I have yet to find the alfredo.

/<3

What if we don’t do it all in time?
What if we never get there?
What if something awful happens?
What if the end isn’t what I thought it would be?
What if something goes wrong?
What if they think horribly of me?
What if they don’t like me anymore?

Well, what if?

Then what?

/<3

// The three necessary virtues for optimal progress are confidence, self-awareness, and fearlessness.
// And of those three, fearlessness is the most important.

// I am capable of anything.

// Independence is incredibly important, especially emotional independence.

// I want to take care of people.

// I don’t need Vicodin to solve cases.

// “If people aren’t there to take care of me, stroke my ego, and worship me, then what are they for?”
// “To enjoy, of course.”

/<3

P.S. Sometimes, words are more important than Adobe Illustrator. :P

Doing things last minute can be just as productive, with no loss of results.

Contrary to popular belief, the key to doing things well isn’t planning ahead. It’s the feeling that planning ahead gives you. Any idea what that might be?

Knowing you have things all planned out days in advance is comforting. It makes you feel as if you know what you’re doing.

But you can know what you’re doing even as you procrastinate. So you have a week to do a project. A few days go by and you don’t touch it, while everyone around you is nearly done with their projects.

A common myth is that people get stressed out in these kinds of situations because they procrastinate. In reality, they feel stressed because they think they’re not ready. While doing things ahead of time can give you that feeling of readiness, cultivating that feeling independent of when you do your work gives you a bit more freedom.

So you do the entire project at the very last day. Your emotional meter and opinion of yourself will stay stable, so long as you know you’re capable of doing whatever it is you’re doing, and you’ve decided to do it.

That’s it. No planning ahead. No doing projects as soon as you get them.

You get to procrastinate, and do at least as well as you would if you planned ahead. Maybe even better.

Welcome to paradise. :)

/<3

Totally freaking vegan. Who’s missing out NOW?

Being a vegan for… an unknown amount of time, I’ve found throughout the years that people think a lot of funny stuff about us. Like, for example…

1. We love animals.

Seriously, let’s take of this one first. Even though it applies to both vegetarians and vegans, it’s pretty much my first question every time I say I’m vegan, if current company aren’t total douches. To quote Jade Puget (an avid vegetarian), “I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals. I’m a vegetarian because I hate plants!”

Contrary to what seems to be everyone’s belief, we’re not all PETA2 waving, meat-eater shunning, self-righteous bastards. Not all of us. We’re much too lazy for that.

Besides, I kick pigeons.

2. We’re dangerously unhealthy.

While this could be skewed in several different directions, it’s generally totally stupid. Responsible vegans take supplements to make sure they catch every possible nutrient, and while a lot of vegans don’t… Yeah, like the meat-eaters are getting all their dailies either, right?

Vegans aren’t any more unhealthy than you are. Nor are we necessarily any healthier. A healthy meat-eater is still healthier than an unhealthy vegan. Which brings me to my next point…

3. If you go vegan, you’ll lose a lot of weight.

Actually, this is part true, but the weight you lose from going vegan is often toxic sludge backed up in your colon. That colon-cleansing stuff? Yeah, same thing, but going vegan is free. The problem is, though, that going vegan doesn’t burn much fat on its own.

More often than not, people who first try to go vegan will consume a lot of carbs. And, I know, we hear so much bad rap about carbs, but it’s all been researched. The thing is, since they’re not eating so much meat to fill them up, they’re eating carbohydrates, which are dense with unnecessary calories, which contribute a lot to the weight problem. If you’re trying to lose weight, your best bet is really lean meats.

Fellow vegans, please don’t kill me.

4. Going (and staying) vegan is difficult.

Yeah, it takes willpower, but the most difficult part is going vegetarian. One thing I’ve found is that, once I went vegetarian, it was only a few months before my body alerted me to the fact that the dairy wasn’t doing a whole lot for my system either. One day, I just didn’t want milk in my cereal anymore. So I picked up the carton of soymilk and dumped some in there. Been vegan ever since.

Staying vegan/vegetarian is the easy part. After a while, you just stop seeing meat and dairy as food. It doesn’t look disgusting, it just… looks like a rubber hose on your place. Really. And what’s funny is, if you try and eat it, often your body will tell you to stop eating, even if you’re still hungry.

I warn you, if you ignore it, you’ll have a hard time digesting your triple-meat, triple-cheese lasagna for the next, oh… week or so.

I know this from experience. Unfortunately.

5. Vegan food tastes nasty.

Of course, while it’s never foods we’re used to, since we grew up with meats and cheeses and such, it’s not always gross. There are hundreds of substitutes out there, if not thousands. And among them, you’re almost guaranteed to find one you like. I’ve managed to substitute most of my favorite foods (including mayonnaise–they make vegan mayonnaise!!!) with non-dairy products, and the only thing I miss a lot is Fettuccine Alfredo.

And when they make good vegan Alfredo, I am never going back. Promise.

6. “I can’t go vegan because I can’t stand the taste of/am crazy allergic to/am deathly terrified of soy.”

To the first, most soy products that substitute as something else (especially meat) don’t have much of a soy taste to them. Even soymilk, which blatantly states the culprit in the name, has flavors that don’t taste very much like soy at all. You just have to shop around a bit.

Secondly, there are entire brands of substitutes that use rice, hemp or almond instead of soy. And if you like the idea of hemp ice cream (I sure do), I’ll have you know it’s the best freaking ice cream ever. Better than the dairy stuff. Really.

As for the last point, sorry, man. Veganism isn’t a substitute for therapy.

7. No one cares if you go vegan.

Uh, fail. A little known fact about the vegan diet: it helps the environment. Think about it. Everyone’s all worked up over pollution and car emissions and whatever, but they don’t realize going vegan is the best thing they can do to reduce their carbon footprint. There are entire essays and websites about this stuff. I’m serious, go look them up.

Let’s get rid of the first problem before tackling the smaller issues like car emissions, yeah?

Frankly, I don’t actually care whether or not you go vegan after knowing this. Just don’t wave your Prius in my face and expect me to be impressed. :P

/<3

Of course, right?

Here’s the deal. We’re all doing the best we can, and there are no requirements to be alive.

What you have to know is that there is a baseline. It’s called normal. Keep your head above this baseline and you’re in the clear.

It usually involves things like not being totally, insanely awkward and/or annoying, keeping basic hygiene, etc. As long as you don’t actively scare people off (whether you realize it or not), you’re probably above sea level.

The rest goes deep into specifics.

So you can keep the baseline. Cool. Now you won’t utterly fail at life. But what about being above the baseline?

That usually takes some kind of focus.

You can be above the baseline in certain areas, and from above to extraordinary, and from extraordinary to revered, but it all takes time.

Also known as beginner, intermediate, and expert, by the way.

So you’re above the baseline. Sweet. Say you love the guitar. Sweeter. But you’re a beginner… Not so sweet.

You’ve played a few riffs, and you can get down the basics well enough. It’s not like you’re sitting there with no idea how to even hold it. This entire thing is beginner mode. Pretty much anyone can sit down with a guitar and figure out what you have. Not impressive, but not bad.

Intermediate is where you do the cool shit. You’re sitting there with a mad solo up the fretboard, and everyone around you is sitting there going, “Dude, how did you do that?” You’re awesome. But you’re still not a pro.

Expert is when it’s not all about showing off anymore. It’s about being a part of the music. This is the part where you know everything, and you put your own twist on things. You have a special way of playing riffs, holding power chords. You have a personal style, fully developed. You know the basics like breathing. You’re a king, and you’re perfectly fine keeping it to yourself.

Just remember that you can’t really “suck” at it. You’re above baseline. You’re kind of not allowed to suck.

EVERYTHING you do above baseline is fantastic. Lots of people really can’t get past the part where they figure out how to hold it.

Normalcy isn’t something you strive for. It’s laziness, not wanting to do anything above baseline. It’s nothing, basically.

And just because you haven’t reached your goals doesn’t mean you suck. You just moved the baseline up a bit.

Three words to fix that problem:

Move it back.

/<3

Everyone needs a biography. For some of us, it’s actually in our best interest to have an autobiography. Because, after all, who knows more about our lives than we do, right? Biographies written by someone else are for dead people.

Am I right?

Current progress on my autobiography. I think it’s coming along nicely, don’t you?

So let’s start this up. Every good book has a theme. Let’s call this one “possibility,” or “anything is possible.”

Every book also has a main character, good or not. That’s… um, me. Check.

Plotline? Well, that writes itself as time goes on.

Conflict! Me against… society. The way most people think.

Moving on.

The title of this book will be called Point B, and it’s kind of what one would call a memoir, but like that really makes a difference, right?

Generally, it’ll be a record about how I, a fifteen-year-old girl with unprivileged circumstances, got from point A to point B. And it’s all about the point B, hence the name.

In lieu of actual details, I’ll be posting some of the ideas from the manual-gone-memoir, in hopes that someone will find them useful.

First up: The basics.

Point A is where you are. Point B is where you want to be.

It’s all about Point B.

The idea is to get rid of prerequisites, since they only slow most of us down. Follow the Nike crowd. Just do it. Yeah?

From Point A to Point B. Ideally, don’t do anything that will perpetuate or worsen Point A, but do all you can to get to Point B.

It really is just all about Point B.

Pretty much all you need to know now, right?

/<3