A new day waits to begin.

First shitty, cliche USF Bulls picture of my college career. Go big or go home.

Did you know, you can quit your job, you can leave university? You aren’t legally required to have a degree, it’s a social pressure and expectation, not the law, and no one is holding a gun to your head. You can sell your house, you can give up your apartment, you can even sell your vehicle, and your things that are mostly unnecessary. You can see the world on a minimum wage salary, despite the persisting myth, you do not need a high paying job. You can leave your friends (if they’re true friends they’ll forgive you, and you’ll still be friends) and make new ones on the road. You can leave your family. You can depart from your hometown, your country, your culture, and everything you know. You can sacrifice. You can give up your $5.00 a cup morning coffee, you can give up air conditioning, frequent consumption of new products. You can give up eating out at restaurants and prepare affordable meals at home, and eat the leftovers too, instead of throwing them away. You can give up cable TV, Internet even. This list is endless. You can sacrifice climbing up in the hierarchy of careers. You can buck tradition and others’ expectations of you. You can triumph over your fears, by conquering your mind. You can take risks. And most of all, you can travel. You just don’t want it enough. You want a degree or a well-paying job or to stay in your comfort zone more. This is fine, if it’s what your heart desires most, but please don’t envy me and tell me you can’t travel. You’re not in a famine, in a desert, in a third world country, with five malnourished children to feed. You probably live in a first world country. You have a roof over your head, and food on your plate. You probably own luxuries like a cellphone and a computer. You can afford the $3.00 a night guest houses of India, the $0.10 fresh baked breakfasts of Morocco, because if you can afford to live in a first world country, you can certainly afford to travel in third world countries, you can probably even afford to travel in a first world country. So please say to me, “I want to travel, but other things are more important to me and I’m putting them first”, not, “I’m dying to travel, but I can’t”, because I have yet to have someone say they can’t, who truly can’t. You can, however, only live once, and for me, the enrichment of the soul that comes from seeing the world is worth more than a degree that could bring me in a bigger paycheck, or material wealth, or pleasing society. Of course, you must choose for yourself, follow your heart’s truest desires, but know that you can travel, you’re only making excuses for why you can’t. And if it makes any difference, I have never met anyone who has quit their job, left school, given up their life at home, to see the world, and regretted it. None. Only people who have grown old and regretted never traveling, who have regretted focusing too much on money and superficial success, who have realized too late that there is so much more to living than this.

Wunderkammer: Did You Know (via hollowwishes)

(via jillbiden)

1. push yourself to get up before the rest of the world - start with 7am, then 6am, then 5:30am. go to the nearest hill with a big coat and a scarf and watch the sun rise.

2. push yourself to fall asleep earlier - start with 11pm, then 10pm, then 9pm. wake up in the morning feeling re-energized and comfortable.

3. erase processed food from your diet. start with no lollies, chips, biscuits, then erase pasta, rice, cereal, then bread. use the rule that if a child couldn’t identify what was in it, you don’t eat it.

4. get into the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. fry tomatoes and mushrooms in real butter and garlic, fry an egg, slice up a fresh avocado and squirt way too much lemon on it. sit and eat it and do nothing else.

5. stretch. start by reaching for the sky as hard as you can, then trying to touch your toes. roll your head. stretch your fingers. stretch everything.

6. buy a 1L water bottle. start with pushing yourself to drink the whole thing in a day, then try drinking it twice.

7. buy a beautiful diary and a beautiful black pen. write down everything you do, including dinner dates, appointments, assignments, coffees, what you need to do that day. no detail is too small.

8. strip your bed of your sheets and empty your underwear draw into the washing machine. put a massive scoop of scented fabric softener in there and wash. make your bed in full.

9. organise your room. fold all your clothes (and bag what you don’t want), clean your mirror, your laptop, vacuum the floor. light a beautiful candle.

10. have a luxurious shower with your favourite music playing. wash your hair, scrub your body, brush your teeth. lather your whole body in moisturiser, get familiar with the part between your toes, your inner thighs, the back of your neck.

11. push yourself to go for a walk. take your headphones, go to the beach and walk. smile at strangers walking the other way and be surprised how many smile back. bring your dog and observe the dog’s behaviour. realise you can learn from your dog.

12. message old friends with personal jokes. reminisce. suggest a catch up soon, even if you don’t follow through. push yourself to follow through.

14. think long and hard about what interests you. crime? sex? boarding school? long-forgotten romance etiquette? find a book about it and read it. there is a book about literally everything.

15. become the person you would ideally fall in love with. let cars merge into your lane when driving. pay double for parking tickets and leave a second one in the machine. stick your tongue out at babies. compliment people on their cute clothes. challenge yourself to not ridicule anyone for a whole day. then two. then a week. walk with a straight posture. look people in the eye. ask people about their story. talk to acquaintances so they become friends.

16. lie in the sunshine. daydream about the life you would lead if failure wasn’t a thing. open your eyes. take small steps to make it happen for you.

Sixteen Small Steps to Happiness (via qoldlush)

(via dreaming-and-wishing)

Every year white people add 100 years to how long ago slavery was. I’ve heard educated white people say, ‘slavery was 400 years ago.’ No it very wasn’t. It was 140 years ago…that’s two 70-year-old ladies living and dying back to back. That’s how recently you could buy a guy.

Louis C.K. (via 30thcenturyboy)

Sylvester Magee, the (probable) last American born into slavery died in 1971.

The last living child of former American slaves, Mississippi Winn, died in 2010.

Slavery in the territory that is now the United States lasted more than 330 years. We will be 330 years removed from slavery in the year 2195.

(via fishingboatproceeds)

USF, in a photoset.

Tampa.

(spoiler alert: actual blogging and lots of positive adjectives below the break. you’ve been warned.)

Hello have a picture of me that was taken while I wandered around the USF campus this evening.

Not that anyone cares, but there’s one more thing I’d like to say following my little rant about Walmart. At the Winn-Dixie store meeting the other day when our store director referred to Walmart as “the evil empire” and all of that, he also went on to discuss how Walmart isn’t known for their customer service and how shopping experiences at Walmart gauged on social levels rarely field good results. In the spirit of the meeting, most of the Winn-Dixie employees in attendance agreed enthusiastically and discussion was sparked about how our store excels at customer service.

While it is true that Winn-Dixie and Publix and other such smaller chains tend to be known more for their quality customer service and I’m proud of that—it isn’t because of what they’re doing right; it’s because of what Walmart is doing wrong. Working at Winn-Dixie doesn’t have a whole load of perks and it isn’t the most enjoyable job in the world, but I don’t expect it to be, and I get treated well enough for the work that I do. Walmart employees just simply get shit on, no matter the quality of their work ethic.

And that isn’t something that I, as a consumer, feel comfortable bashing Walmart employees for. People don’t work at Walmart on a non-salaried level because they enjoy it or because they genuinely want to—they do it because it puts food on the table and clothes on their backs (but just barely, because Walmart’s wages are so disgustingly low). And their job experience is miserable.

So by being miserable to them as customers, what good do we do? By complaining to them about things that are far beyond their control, what good do we do? By furthering the efforts of their employers to make them feel insignificant, what good do we do? None. Absolutely none. I hate Walmart, but I pity their employees. That’s the point of this whole campaign to reveal Walmart for the monster corporation that it is.

Because as much as the GOP wants to believe that they are, corporations aren’t people. But their employees are.

potus2036:

“According to a Congressional study, $6,000 is the average amount taxpayers are being dinged per employee. Walmart’s wages and benefits are so low, it forces workers to go on Medicaid and receive housing assistance, childcare subsidies, food stamps, and more.”

— That Cheap Stuff You Just Bought At Walmart? Turns Out It Cost $6,000 More Than You Thought. (via robot-heart-politics)

Fuck Walmart so much. I work for Winn-Dixie, which is owned by a supermarket chain called BI-LO. Winn-Dixie and affiliate stores exist mostly in the south, along with our “rival” store chain, Publix. I complain about my job on a regular basis (though, to be fair, my complaints are usually tailored to my specific store rather than the chain as a whole) and I’ll admit to it. Winn-Dixie runs decent sales for customers with Rewards Cards, but on the whole, their items are more steeply priced than what you would find at Walmart.

And I understand that that’s inconvenient. My weekly paycheck is around $60 on average; I have a car that costs $40 in gas every week. I don’t have a lot of money to spend, and I don’t like spending what little I have on groceries that I could buy elsewhere for a cheaper cost.

But I do it anyway. Because Walmart fucking sucks. My mother worked for Walmart for upwards of four years when I was in middle school and high school; my mother has had a lot of jobs in the span of time that I’ve been old enough to remember them, and I’ve never seen her more miserable and despairing than she was when she was a Walmart employee. I’ve been watching the news of Walmart’s corrupted ways spread through the internet for months now, and while it sickens me that it is the way it is to begin with, I’m happy that the veil is being lifted—albeit slowly.

I recently attended a store meeting at my Winn-Dixie in which our store director referred to Walmart (who is opening a new store even closer to ours in the next few weeks) as “the evil empire.” While the statement is far from accurate in a factual historical context, I can’t help but agree with the sentiment (even as someone who openly and regularly bashes Reagan’s foreign policy) and I really appreciated the reference.

I’m aware that all that I’ve said here doesn’t accomplish anything, but I hope that if anyone at least reads it, they’ll know this: You don’t have to be deeply invested or well-read in matters of jobs or the economy to understand that Walmart being one of the three largest corporations on the planet is fucking terrifying. Sometimes you just have to be a 17-year-old girl who pays attention.

(via staystrong-stayamazing)