Fridge Talks About Birds (Now featuring: The Passenger Pigeon)

Hello hi, Fridge here

If you've been around the forums for a while, you'll undoubtedly have seen me go on about birds.

I can unabashedly hijack threads to talk about crows, pigeons, parrots, puffins, any bird goes (even some fictional ones!)

So, in an almost certainly futile attempt to stop myself from doing that (the hijacking thing), I'll be making this thread instead.

Starting with our Lord and Saviour, Rainbow Birb, aka., the Feathers of Pride Bird!

Obtainable in DbD for free right now by using the code "CAWCAW" in the in-game store!

A bit of a personal story here. It turned out a bit longer than expected whoops.

This lovely fellow released on June 8th, 2022, near the end of the academic year. At this time, I was still in university, English Language & Culture. 2022 had been kind of a shite year for me up until then, in hindsight. I had something of a mental breakdown in January, induced by my complete inability to plan out things (I have been diagnosed with ASD in December of 2020) and getting overwhelmed with deadlines. I tried getting back into therapy to see if I could learn some kind of "lifehack" or whatever. They did offer some things I don't remember, but the main takeaway from them was that I needed to inquire at uni itself. There's a student psychologist, but contacting them became part of the "I'll get to it eventually". I never did end up contacting them.

Now, very early on in the academic year of 2021/2022, we had a course that was all about writing academic English. It covered all kinds of writing, including translating, from Dutch to English. It was a single assignment, but unlike every other assignment, I went through this one at rocket speed. Shocked at my own sudden capability at Doing a Thing, I quickly realised that I really enjoyed translating. In what I can only describe as a paradigm shift, my "intrinsic motivator", as my therapist called it, was discovered. I wanted to become a translator. That was my end goal. That's why I did this study. It would be nothing short of a battle, but there was a goal in sight.

It... didn't work out that way.

After the advise of a student councillor, I tried to do less courses in the next semester to "ease the load". A whopping 5 courses, out of the standard 8, or even 9 I should've done to keep up, but that didn't fare much better. I got sick with COVID on my birthday of all days. I could barely work up the motivation to attend hallway nights anymore. That, of course, became something of a cycle. I wound up flunking or even skipping those courses as well thanks to a complete and utter lack of motivation (but not without a crippling feeling of guilt :) )

Come April/May, I shifted into an even worse version of the "do what you can" mode to try to salvage anything. I wound up salvaging 1 course, and another one that had a weird deadline that allowed me to extend it into the summer break.

I didn't tell a soul how bad things were going. Not my friends, my hallmates, my mother. It was always "could be better", and for most, that sufficed. I shudder to think how many sleepless nights my mother had because of me, though. I never explicitly told her what was happening, always "I can manage". And, somehow, I believed that myself.

What I really needed was a goddamn break. No deadlines, no assignments. Nothing.

And then Rainbow Bird released. To me, out of nowhere.

There was something about that day. I don't know if it was the sun shining or whatever, but for the first time in over half a year, I was really happy about something. Specifically, something that made me happy. Here, on the forums, I got really excited about a silly colourful bird. Now, birds have been my weakness for some time, but for the first time in my life, I felt completely unashamed about it, because I was just that excited. For the first time in forever, I wasn't holding myself back because of some arbitrary self-imposed rule or because I trying to adhere to a persona. And people got excited with me, and started posting more birds. Because of me. That thread was a dumpster fire, but I couldn't care less. I got to be really passionate about birds, and people humoured and appreciated that. I specifically got tagged in the very important Cute Animal Thread a bit later, with a bird pic, because I was being myself. I don't think tippy has even the slightest inkling how important it was to me that he said "I remember someone saying they like birds", and I could go "me!" and not be ashamed of it, because yes, I do like birds!

That whole event kickstarted something within me. I started following bird accounts on other platforms, and started manureposting using our friend Rainbow Birb, because I wanted to do that, and it made me happy, made me smile, all that cringe stuff. I started to do things for me.

Going back to my academic... "career", summer break came. And there still was that one assignment. Deadline: the very last day of August. Assignment: a 2.5k word essay on "sustainability", using two very old American works of literature.

That deadline was so, so bad for me. For the entirety of the summer break, that deadline was on my mind. What should've been the time that I had absolutely nothing to worry about, instead became a very long period where that ######### assignment was on my mind every waking hour. For starters, it was boring as all get out. The works didn't interest me in the slightest, didn't even relate to the study (I did English, not American), and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.

But I had 2 months. Two whole months. It would be so, so laughably pathetic of me if I couldn't get that assignment done, when I had 2 months to do it, and literally nothing but the assignment to do. I did get it done, but my god those last two weeks weren't pretty. There's a different, smaller story there, but that's for another time.

I went into the new academic year already feeling like shite because of that 1 assignment. "Hope you're all refreshed and ready to go!" Hahah, I certainly wasn't.

I once again tried the "reduced load" approach. Once again, it culminated into 2 essay deadlines and 2 exams, the former being precisely what I wanted to avoid.

The first essay was already a slog, but surprisingly manageable, because I got to do it about a topic of my choosing (FoMO, specifically prompted by DbD's limited-time winter skin debacle). I didn't even bother with the other essay for the "new" course, because I really wanted to pass the courses I was retaking. There'd be a resit anyway. As for the exams, I passed one.

And then, one fateful morning in February, I found myself asking a simple question.

"Is this worth it?"

and the answer was a resounding no.

Yes, I still wanted to become a translator, but no, this is not worth it.

In arguably the biggest decision of my life so far, I chose for myself.

Because that's what I have been doing since June of 2022. I ignored the councillor's advice, and went with what I thought was manageable. I did that assignment in the summer break, because I would not have been able to do it at all had I not gone out of my way to request that third opportunity. And I passed the course because of that.

I started choosing for myself more and more, culminating in me putting and end to the cycle that made me so miserable.

And what started that trend?

The release of the Feathers of Pride charm. That moment where I was able to be myself, which allowed me to realise that I, in fact, do not have to maintain a persona to be happy.

Why am I trying to achieve academic prowess? Who am I trying to please? Myself? Why's that abstract me so hellbent on doing the very things that are making me miserable? I will have to do some sort of higher education if I want to become a translator, but I can make my life so much easier by switching to a dedicated translating course, instead of a uni study where translating is a very small part of it.

By now, I'm half a year into my new translating study, I have yet to fail an exam, all my assignments were on time and all but 1 were graded superbly. I'm doing fantastic and feel great. I've still got quite a few bad habits to kick, but we'll get there.

So, uh... Yeah.

That's why I'm so very fond of Rainbow Bird.

More (real) bird talks coming soon!