Day Five Of My Snarky Sarcastic Side Speaking Quotes From My Page-a-day Calendar! This Time Featuring

“My brain is rotting from the Wisdom Saga” has got to be some sort of paradox hasn’t it

So uhh. If you feel like talking about it. As someone who lives in the US, how are you being kind to yourself on this upsetting morning <3

Checked in with my loved ones first and foremost.

It's interesting. The vibe I've been getting from my circle is very different from 2016. Much less… dread and horror at a realignment of the understanding of what can and can't happen here, now, in this place and day and age. More "fuck, guys. again? whatever. enjoy your consequences, maybe you'll manage to learn something this time."

Frustration and anger is not the most positive feeling, or even the most fair one to express, but it is a protective one. It hurts a lot less than most alternatives.

And it's quite a shift. It was earthshattering back then. How could this have been allowed to happen? Why couldn't it be stopped? Why couldn't we stop it? Why couldn't I stop it? Why couldn't everyone see what this meant? Why couldn't I make them understand? Did they really not care? What did that mean about humanity as a whole? Were we so thoughtless? How could anyone be trusted?

It seems… much less earthshattering to see it happen twice. Disappointing, sure. Frustrating. But nowhere near as devastating as the first time I saw it unfold. We already knew it could happen. I've already had time to digest the implications. Now I'm just freshly disappointed.

It also feels less indicative of Crushing Truths Of Reality this time. We've seen shit get bad. We've also seen shit get better from here! We know both outcomes are possible, even inevitable. We know hoping for a better future is always worthwhile. This isn't the apocalypse. It's an unremarkably bad turn of events brought on by unremarkably self-centered well-documented human impulses. It's utterly mundane in its unpleasantness. It doesn't need to be dignified with despair.

A democratic election, no matter the outcome or the side we're on, makes us all acutely aware of how outnumbered we are by people whose worldviews and priorities are demonstrably incomprehensible to us. And the first time you get outnumbered, it's a shock. Defeat is haunting. It didn't matter how badly you wanted it; by the very function of democracy, you do not have the power to override greater numbers. (insert electoral college caveat here)

The second time through, I find myself focusing on a different facet that has dramatically reduced the amount of spiralling I'm doing. I don't expect this to work for everyone, but for me specifically, it helped to crystallize a few thoughts:

You don't have the power to control anyone else. You don't. You can't share your worldview and your revelations with them. You can't make them think or understand anything. You can lay it all out for them, but you can't make them listen, and you can't make it click. A mentor can't make their student learn a lesson; that's why teaching is so complicated and hard. An active choice must be made by the person to enable themselves to understand, and they must put the pieces together in their own mind before it makes sense to them, and the pieces must have been presented in a way that makes sense to them in the first place. Lead a horse to water, can't make them drink.

These elections highlight a disconnect in what different groups of people care about; and no matter how clearly you explain yourself or how passionately you perform, caring cannot be forced on someone. Understanding and connection cannot be forced. You cannot make anything or anyone matter to someone. They have to choose to see how it matters in order to internalize it. If they choose not to, that is not your failing. You couldn't have made them do it by just Explaining Better. They are not your responsibility. They make their own choices. You can't reach inside their head and connect the dots for them.

I'm a storyteller. I make stories and put them out into the world. I hope people get something good out of them, but I have no control over what that something is. I want people to be thoughtful and kind and compassionate and hopeful and see themselves reflected in stranges, no matter their differences. I can craft stories that I hope encourage this. But that is the extent of my ability and the extent of my responsibility. I control no-one's actions but my own, and so while I am not having the best day, I am at least content that I am doing what I can, and I am not shattering myself against impossibilities trying to control the things I can't.

Sometimes, people make decisions that I think are really bad. I can't make that not happen. All I can do is try to make decisions that will result in things I think are good. Today, that means checking in on people, and not assigning too much dramatic narrative weight to an ultimately mundane set of unremarkable bad decisions outside of my control. We'll take life as it comes and help each other out when and how we can. Everything else is out of our hands.

This is beautiful

I feel like there's something there. like I'm onto something. please fill this in

white people go like “is anyone going to redesign this nonhuman evil character as a poc?” and not wait for an answer

My favorite Disney princess is mister jalapeño anyway

Day 2 of my sarcastic snarky side personified speaking the quotes from my page-a-day calendar!!

"The stars at night have been dead for years. You're smiling at their frozen corpses."

Once again, the calendar is taking quotes from the @ unspirational Instagram account by Elan Gale.

I was on the road all day coming home from a family vacation so here I am posting this late at night again xD

I think at some point I might change to posting these doodles every week, if I run out of things to say for each individual day. We’ll see as the year progresses.

I need to go to sleep but someone remind me to ramble about Scylla for 20 hours tomorrow

My mom got me the page-a-day calendar “but first, anxiety”. Every day is a snarky sarcastic quote from the @ unspirational Instagram account by Elan Gale.

I’ve never seen Elan Gale’s Instagram, but from what I’ve seen of the calendar so far *cough*thebackoftheboxanddayone*cough*, these snarky sarcastic quotes are right up my alley for my snarky sarcastic side. So I thought, why not do a fun thing and doodle said snarky sarcastic side personified saying these quotes each day? And then expose those doodles to the eyes of the world?

-So here’s day one—

And here’s the sketch. I think most of my posts will be more of this kind of sketchy doodle, especially with college starting back up next week, but I wanted to go a bit extra for this first day.

Just wait until you hear about the Axiom of Choice

The maths fandom is wild. “Real” and “imaginary” numbers? I think you mean canon and non-canon. You guys seriously go “this is my number oc his name is i and he is the square root of -1” when in numbers canon lore it’s actually impossible to square root a negative but sure whatever. “Complex numbers”? I think you mean a character x oc ship. “f(x) = 3x - 5”? That is self-insert fanfiction.

I KNEW IT

I KNEW SHE WAS ALIVE I KNEW SHE WAS ALIVE I KNEW SHE WAS ALIVE I KNEW SHE WAS ALIVE ATHENA MY GIRL YES