POSITIVE MENTALITY IN A NEGATIVE ENVIRONMENT (THREAD)

First, know that WE are the captains of our ships.

All that you allow to mentally affect you, is because you allow it so.

If you're feeling down lately, here's a quick test to figure out why:

👇

💖 Have you met up with your friends IRL this week?

🏋️‍♀️ Have you exercised today or yesterday?

🎨 Are you working on stuff that's meaningful to you?

🤝 Have you helped someone today with something you're good at?

Imagine going about your life, when a virus develops into a pandemic. Suddenly the rulers of your country are like "We're going to let the virus infect us, don't listen to the outside world".

Most people in your country are like "Awesome!", and ridicule you if trying to opt out

You hear about all these stuff like chronic health issues the virus causes, in different research papers available on the internet. It appears to be a serious problem, likely to ruin many lives. You do however never hear it mentioned in the debate in your country.

On the news you hear people with fancy titles, downplaying the virus, and ridiculing other countries for trying to stop it.

The resistance is futile, they say. We are all going to get infected in the end anyways.

You see the schools in other countries closing down, but in your own country they remain open. Parents are not allowed to keep their children at home. If they do, they are punished by the government, shunned as bad parents by those who think the herd immunity strategy is awesome.

You later find out that the people leading the response to the pandemic, reasons around how it is beneficial to keep schools open in e-mails with each other. They reflect on the benefits of open schools, for children getting infected, thus contributing to the herd immunity.

1) I was 30 years old. And in what many would consider a dream job. But I was pretty miserable. Because I knew I was letting my real dream--to become a screenwriter/filmmaker--die.

2) Sitting in my office one night, it hit me, if I did let the dream die, I would become toxic, because that's what death does, and that toxicity would ooze out of me, onto those I loved.

3)In that instant, I decided to make a shift, to find a way to finally, after years of denying it, do the thing. Try, at least. So I went to my best friend, @DavidLevien, who was already writing, and asked him for help.

4) David gave me The Artist's Way and said that when we had the right idea, he and I would write a screenplay together.

5) Soon thereafter, I had to good luck of walking into an illegal poker club in NYC, called David in the middle of the night, and we decided to write the thing.

Life gets better when:

You understand that grades never mattered but how you grade yourself does

You learn from disagreements, you don't get upset

You keep your private life private

You often have your phone in DND mode

Three years ago today, I was icing my knuckles because I’d beaten the fuck out of a man who had groped me in a club a couple of nights before. I wrote about it in my new essay https://t.co/SqzluTtJKb 📷 @rerutled #IBeatMyAssaulter

After I explained to a club manager what had happened, he ooked at my Beloved and asked me “Why didn’t you let your husband take care of it?” I almost beat him up too.

“First of all, he’s not my husband. Also, this is my body, I take care of it.”

Patriarchy enables and protects men who sexually assault women, and it demands that only other men “protect” us.

As long as we obey and behave in ways it approves of, of course. Protection is conditional.Because if we disobey, ha! I don't want to be protected. I want to be free

I started #IBeatMyAssaulter and women from around the world shared stories.

Five days earlier, I had started #MosqueMeToo to talk about being sexually assaulted during pilgrimage and women from around the world shared stories 🎥 @rerutled

And between the two #, men were showing me how easily the goal posts can move.

Under #MosqueMeToo men asked me, “Why didn’t you make more of a fuss?” Under #IBeatMyAssaulter men said, “You made too much of a fuss. You were too violent. Don’t you think you overreacted?”