Do You Guys Think That When He Was Recording "Whiskey For My Men, Beer For My Horses" Toby Keith Had

Did I mention that this woman is so beautiful but like not in a stalkery way?

Getting older is so fucking hard.

I'm going to be 35 in a couple months and it really sucks that I feel like I'm wasting my life, especially my 'good' years, the years I *should* have been happy, healthy, hot. My life hasn't materially changed since around 2019, which feels like yesterday and like a previous life. Of course I have done things, some of them really cool, and I've made memories and ticked things off my bucket list. And the world has gone through some shit and so have I, but in many ways I feel like I've stagnated. It feels like I'm too late to enjoy life, feel beautiful, be loved.

I look at the past through a rose-colored rear-view mirror so of course I think of college as my happiest time, even despite all the shit that happened during those first four years (the aftermath of both my grandfathers dying, being unhappily chronically single, my mom's drinking getting so bad she was hospitalized, being so socially anxious it took entire semesters to make friends, a handful of unrequited crushes culminating in a severe heartbreak, subsequent desperate dating escapades, a retail job I abhorred).

Then there were two huge shake-ups: I got a boyfriend and I got into grad school. The next couple years I also generally think of fondly--moving a few hours away from my family, moving in with my first boyfriend, going to school to study what I have always loved. Something about being far away from everyone we knew made those years feel like an extended honeymoon. It was far from perfect but it was something.

When I got my first "real" (full time with benefits and paid sick leave etc.) job, those six months of commuting were ROUGH, but honestly they were acutely rough, so different from how things would get the next year. Because 2017 was maybe the worst year of my adult life? (Still has nothing on my childhood/adolescence though.)

(there is a lot I could say about my ex but the highlights are that he was 13 years older than me, emotionally stunted, incapable of taking care of himself or anyone else, manipulative, selfish, used me, and ended up virtually cheating on me with some kind of cam girl.)

Perhaps the best illustration of how that relationship was and how it ended is that even now, over SEVEN years after I broke it off, I STILL have nightmares where we're back together. The relief I feel when I wake up and he's not in my life has not faded a bit.

In 2018-2019, I was doing great. I started taking care of my body, got my own place and a cat, met new friends, reconnected with my siblings. And then...2020 happened. I really can't complain about it--nobody I knew died, my job was fine, I got vaccinated for free as soon as I could. But something about it just sapped so much of my soul. I like to think I was doing better in the second half of 2021, when I was vaxxed and could see my friends and hug my siblings again.

But at the end of 2021, my grandma got sick. And I spent a lot of 2022 helping her and my sibling keep afloat. It was a rough year for all of us--Grandma needed a lot of help, my sibling was seriously struggling, and my own health/mental health took a back seat.

At the beginning of 2023, Grandma died. That was much worse. She was the closest thing to a mother I think I'll ever have. Then my sibling moved in with me and was struggling with mental health for a full year. We're 9 years apart and I often feel more like a parent than a sibling given what our childhoods were like, and let me tell you, parenting a 24-year-old is not fucking easy. It could be so much worse but damn. This kid will give me gray hairs.

Toward the end of 2023 we lost our foster kitten and I don't have words to express how hard that experience was. Our other sibling also moved about 90 minutes away which made things harder.

In several ways 2024 felt like progress-- sibling finally got a job and was in therapy, I got a new therapist and spent way more time with friends, I did some traveling and flew in a plane for the first time.

And then... The other bad thing happened. To top that off, before Inauguration Day, I found out my closest friend was moving to Colorado. These past three months have flown by and now she's gone and I'm not doing so hot.

I'm 34, I've been single for seven fucking years, I still don't own a house because I'm only halfway done paying off my student loans, I work for the same damn company I've worked for since 2016, I still haven't published a book, my health still isn't great, I have no friends nearby, I've been in therapy for years but I'm still dealing with the same bullshit, and I feel like an asshole for bitching this much about a soft and cushy, privileged life, especially given the state of the world.

Tldr; this sucks

it’s crazy how grrm wrote the first woke beauty and the beast where a hot guy falls in love with an ugly woman and people will bend over backwards still to say brienne is actually attractive. like no she’s not and it’s not more feminist to say she is 👍

Some info to remember later:

92.7% of households in the US make less than $250,000/year.

Half of American households make less than $75,000/year. (The median is $80,000.)

27% of households in the US make less than $40,000/year. (The poverty line for a family of 4 is $30,000.)

The income tax rate increases as income increases until $600,000, where it's capped at 37%.

This means that someone earning a billion dollars a year pays the same percentage in taxes as someone who earns a million in a year. And both of them are richer than 9/10 American households.

The one that gets me the most riled up is tRaNs WoMeN iN wOmEnS sPoRtS, period, but ESPECIALLY when combined with the MeN cAn DrEsS uP aS wOmEn AnD iNvAdE tHe pUbLiC bAtHrOoMs bullshit. Because I don't think there is any clearer sign that you don't actually give a single shit about women's safety than bringing up those two talking points in the same argument. Even IF either one of these things was a real concern for ANY cis woman, the idea that being beaten in a sport is on the same level as being assaulted is sickening. There is no faster way to show me you have zero understanding of the dangers that non-cis-men face or fear.

This internal contradiction of conservative politics is even more stark when you look at what they say versus what they do.

Going back to the tRaNs WoMeN iN tHe BaThRoOmS bullshit, the fact that you even talk about this shows not only how little you understand about the trans community, but also how delusional you are when it comes to actual crime against non-cis-men.

You wanna protect women? How about stop putting abusive men in positions of power. Stop trying to force women to stay with the person who is statistically most likely to murder them by cutting off abortion rights and no-fault divorce. Stop cutting programs that help the biggest portion of poor people in our society, which is children and single mothers. Start actually prosecuting rapists AND sentencing them like you believe rape is actually a crime. Stop raising boys to believe that their feelings are the most important thing on earth and that any woman who doesn't cater to them should be demeaned, abused, or killed. Stop passing legislation that ensures more women will die because they can't abort a fetus they don't want. Stop ignoring and perpetuating the systems that make Black women and WOC more likely to die in childbirth and more likely to receive inadequate medical care. Start funding more research on female bodies and ending male-centered medicine. Start passing and enforcing regulations to decrease the gender wage gap which at this point is mostly a motherhood penalty. Stop trying to pass legislation that will make it harder for married women to VOTE.

That's how you protect women. Not by scapegoating marginalized groups and pretending like you ever gave a fuck.

Whenever Haymitch insulted Effie's outfits during the main triology, it wasn't his fault, he was being possesed by Maysilee's ghost

reblog to explode a landlord

Murmur, Cameron Barnett

Another thing I've realized is that debate "topics" are not and should not be viewed as existing in a vacuum, and I honestly think that conservatives/right-leaning thinkers push this idea because they know, unconsciously or otherwise, that their ideology is internally inconsistent.

For example, take the abortion debate and the antivax debate. In the latter conservatives will argue that people have the right to choose what happens to their bodies, that the safety of others should be considered secondary or not at all, that their autonomy should come first. And those same people will argue that the life of a fetus is more important than the life of its parent, that the fetus overwrites the autonomy of the parent and that the parent should have no right to end the pregnancy regardless of their feelings on it.

Obviously there are other arguments on both topics out there, but as an example, you can see how disingenuous the thinking is. Somehow the life of an unborn zygote is more important than the life of its creator and the right of its parents to make stupid medical decisions is more important than the safety of all the kids in its future daycare.