Stream of Consciousness

Social Media and Guns Are the Same Type of Thing

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EVERYTHING is a 2-sided coin.

I believe social media is no different.

Take away twitter, take away blogs and instagram and tik tok, etc… People will STILL find a way to hurt each other.

I think everything we have created or discovered is usable for good or evil. It all depends on the choices we make.

Like guns. Take away guns, make them illegal – bad people will get them illegally and if they cannot, they will use a knife, a brick, their nearest blunt object. If someone has decided they’re going to kill someone, the objects available won’t typically change their mind about killing them. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Guns and social media are both TOOLS.

How we use them matters.

And I will always, ALWAYS, opt to have social media even though it spreads pain. Humans will always find a way to spread pain (I don’t understand why, but it’s true). But look at the good social media can do.

THE POSITIVE POTENTIAL IS LIMITLESS.

How would the isolated, abused, and young human being know there are good people in the world? That there ARE people that exist that truly care? Or people that have been through the same thing and

Are.

Now.

Okay.

They made it through and you can too.

Without social media I wouldn’t have known.

Social media connects us and HUMAN CONNECTION is the only way to live this life. Isolation hurts most of us. It is literally a way to torture another human.

We need each other. And social media can connect us.

I will keep it because there is goodness that comes of it. And I want to squeeze all the goodness out of this world there is to find. We deserve to enjoy this life, we deserve hope and inner peace.

How has social media helped you?

Stream of Consciousness

3 Ways to Build Self-Trust

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“…if you made a list of people that you trusted, would you put your name down?”

-NF

 

Would you?

If not, here are three ways you can begin working on building self-trust.

  1. Work on awareness concerning what you are emotionally feeling and what you’re physically feeling. If we don’t know what we’re feeling, how are we going to be loyal to ourselves?
  2. Work on truly being who you are. If we aren’t being true to ourselves, we’re not going to take ourselves seriously.
  3. Look for things you’re good at, what you’ve succeeded at, and what you like about the choices you make. Think about the people you trust. More often than not, its someone you like, right?

I have some more ideas, but that’s all that’s really formulated in my head yet. So that’s that.

Do you trust yourself? Why? If you didn’t always, how did you get to a point where you now do trust yourself?

 

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Shadow Poetry

Condemned But Unmovable

Daphne Shadows1 Comment

I am a broken home.

Empty halls and beds to roam.

I am forbidden to find the door.

Pay no mind to the blood on the floor.

 

The echoes, they lie,

An eerie nightmare cry.

The shutters are all locked.

Walls are shadow pocked.

No one comes to the door.

No, no visitors anymore.

 

I can’t breathe in between this madness

And this dreary, possessive sadness.

I am a broken home no one sees.

I am the gatekeeper without any keys.

I am a broken home no one sees.

I am the gatekeeper without any keys.

 

The decay and rust have taken control.

Scars and damage that compromise the whole.

 

But I will kick out a window and light every candle.

Because this brokenness is something I know how to handle.

 

By Daphne Shadows

Written Word

And then there were three…

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In the darkness, they shivered, trapped, looking around wide-eyed and blind. Golden moonlight dripping down, down, down, until there was nothing left but his silver, skeletal remains.

They would not survive this. And yet, they couldn’t leave him. Huddling together, grabbing onto one another’s arms, hugging close, they awaited the gates to open.

The pool of savory sorrow grew, leaking toward them. Closer.

Closer.

Stream of Consciousness

Making Goals You’ll Keep: Step One

Daphne Shadows1 Comment

So you have a goal or a dream or a vision of a goal or there’s SOMETHING you’re wanting to do, become, or learn. But you’re inundated with mocking laughter, failure stories, and all the talk of how no one ever keeps their goals.

With all this fuss about goals being pointless – what’s a person to do? Not bother? Live a goalless existence where nothing we want to achieve is ever achieved? Stay the way we are forever in the hopes that life will someone change something for us?

Yeah, no.

That sounds terrible.

A lot of people don’t want to try to change their life or habits because of how much pain it will cause. But what we don’t realize is that NOT changing is painful as well.

Meaning our options are really to:

1 – hurt and never achieve anything we want, everything remains the same

or,

2 – hurt and make the changes in our lives that we desire.

 

It’s like the difference between being punched in the face and going to the dentist. Both are going to hurt, but one is bad for you and the other is healthy.

I’d suggest option two. And if that sounds good to you, here’s step one of how to start on that path.

 

STEP ONE

1A) What do you want?
No, really. It’s kinda the whole point. If you can’t name what it is that you want, your goal is not going to work. What’s your dream, your hope, your absolute deepest desire? What’s the one thing you want, right now? And it has to be something you have the power to change.
And FYI – We can’t control other people, can’t fix them or convince them of anything. Pick something that you want for yourself.

 

1B) Get precise.
What exactly do you want? You can’t have it if you can’t really put your thumb on it.
Pretend you have a genie that’s just asked you for one wish. He will give you 100% precisely what you ask for. So be careful how you word it. And make sure its something you really want in this specific way. If you ask for a new job, he might give you a job you’ll loathe.

 

1C) Why do you want it?
What’s your reason for wanting this? Are you doing it to impress someone, get someone to like or respect you, get revenge, or because its what someone else wants you to do?
NOT a good reason. Your goal will fail. Sometimes the whole revenge thing works but there’s only a slight chance of succeeding and you might not end up liking how you end up achieving your goal. Or how you’ve changed as a person at the end of it.
If you want to achieve a goal, make certain its something you really want and for a good reason. That doesn’t mean you have to have some mind blowing, television show worthy reason. We are all about silly, small, melodramatic, vulnerable, and embarrassing reasons. We’re human and that’s beautifully okay. But things will go easier if you know why you want your goal.

 

1D) Form your goal in a positive way.
Here’s the same goal said in two different ways.
One – I want to stop eating food that makes me feel gross and fat.
Two – I want to eat to be healthy and feel good.
Guess which one is going to be easier and funner to reach for?

 

1E) Plan for unexpected issues, mistakes, adaptation.
It’s going to happen. And there’s nothing wrong or bad about that. Things are going to happen that you couldn’t possibly plan for. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to find that your plan isn’t working and you need to change things in order to continue to reach for your goal in a healthy way. All of these things are good. They mean you’re working hard, putting in effort. Simply acknowledge that these things will happen and you can handle it, while treating yourself with kindness and respect, will help immensely.

 

1F) Believe.
In yourself. In your ability, your capability. You can do this. But if you don’t believe you can, you won’t. So take the chance. Make the leap, have faith, believe, trust.

 

Stream of Consciousness

The Secret to Stories

Daphne Shadows

If I give it claws, we’ll talk about the monster in us.

If I give it fangs, we won’t look away from what society tells us is too uncomfortable to linger on.

If I make it a world we don’t live in, we can look at the things we don’t want to talk about. Perhaps we can find the strength to do something about it the next time we see it.

If I make its eyes glow, we’ll think about the pain we want to hide. Maybe we will find a way to deal with it too.

If we have to suspend disbelief, we can poke at our childhood programming, our insecurities, our secrets.

 

Stories don’t judge us. They open us up to the possibility of change, connection, hope, and purpose. They give us new perspectives on things society labels for us (as if we don’t have brains or hearts to decide for ourselves). Stories give us the option to define our own life, our own self, and realize we’re not that different after all.

A black grandpa can read the same story as a white single mom. They can both recognize love when it’s being denied, the pain of a child dying, the need for someone in this world to see us for who we truly are.

 

Stories show us what’s broken and what’s beautiful. They give us a safe place to peel back the layers of this life without anyone mocking us or telling us we’re wrong or bad.

Stories give us heroes with fantastic abilities, somehow making it easier for us to love them when they mess up, hurt, and prove they aren’t perfect. It gives us a little more leeway to be imperfect ourselves.

 

There’s a certain magic to a story, whether there’s anything fantastical or whimsical in it or not.

If we read a story about a monster with a heart, it doesn’t hurt so much to look at the monster within ourselves. Only then can we do something about it.