Things To Remember - Blog Posts

Good stuff.

Regret is stronger than gratitude

Anne Frank

Because we all need to hear this sometimes.

I’ve been having a bad couple of weeks and I just really needed to hear these:

You are NOT a burden

You are valued 

You are NOT a shitty friend, even when you think you are

You don’t need to have it all figured out yet

It’s OK to have bad days

And it’s OK to hide from the world if you’re having a bad day

Because sometimes you just need to have some time to yourself

And that’s OK

You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to

What happened to you in the past is NOT your fault

Don’t feel guilty for not being productive

It’s going to be OK

Breathe

Relax

Recharge

YOU ARE WANTED

YOU ARE LOVED

YOU CAN DO THIS

I BELIEVE IN YOU

a lot of you aren't interested in identities as avenues for meaningful self-understanding, or for organization and solidarity with others. you're just shameless individualists cultivating a personal brand. the ultimate consumers, parading around, pretending to be leftists. how fucking embarrassing

also somwtimes when you dont understand a piece of art it's not bc ur dumb it's bc you havent had the very particular emotional experience that it's trying to invoke in you and you just cant relate. which is also why sometimes you will hear a mountain goats song and say Meh and then you go through some shit and you listen to it again and lose your fucking mind at how real and raw it is. art is how we communicate with each other about experiences that cannot be adequately represented straightforwardly with language. sometimes you have to abstract your representation of the experience in order to truly communicate how big and insane it felt

the one (perhaps only) thing i’ll always like about growing older and maturing is the never-ending opportunity to develop and refine your personal taste in pretty much anything. fashion, food, music, literature, art, design, furniture: the older you get, the more knowledge, insight and experience you acquire and it all adds up to a treasure of source material to create a new you from. carve, prune, distill, expand, sculpt, evolve - you can recreate yourself always and aging gracefully is all about endlessly enriching yourself through that recreation.

Source

i feel like the most important piece of wisdom i can impart on teenagers is that no one–no one–knows what the fuck they’re doing

my brother is 26 years old, makes $200k a year, and just bought a house with his fiance. he’s the success story you hear about but never actually meet in person, but it all happened by accident. he wanted to go to college for clarinet performance, but he got rejected from all the top schools. so he decided to major in physics instead, and then went on to get a doctorate to put off being an adult for a few more years. but then he ended up dropping out halfway through the program and accepting a job with google as a software engineer. so to reiterate: my brother majored in something he was not interested in, and then he got a job that had nothing to do with his degree. 

he isn’t successful because he had some master plan he followed, he just stumbled around blindly until something worked out. and that’s what we’re all doing–i majored in political science and now i do customer service for a company that makes industrial-sized gas detection monitors. the marketing director at my company has a degree in biology, and my mom has an MBA and works at a middle school.  no one knows what they’re doing, we’re all just trying different things until something works out.

so if you don’t have a plan, that’s fine. most of us don’t. and even those of us who do, don’t usually end up doing the thing they thought they would. it’s okay to relax and let life carry you wherever it’s gonna carry you. because even though a lot of us don’t end up doing the thing we wanted, most of us end up happy anyway.

part of what makes tragedies tragic is the story being preventable from the outside but unpreventable from the inside

Every now and then I stumble upon posts by artists discussing how to improve at drawing. Some are sharing experiences, while others are asking for advice… and sadly I often get the vibe that being scared and miserable is a requirement for success. Like, if you’re not ready to destroy yourself for your goal then you aren’t really trying and you don’t deserve any success. People are proud of how much they are sacrificing for their skill. Hard work and dedication are definitely important but some of the things I get to read on the internet are plain harmful. It really pains me to see people spread this unhealthy mindset and people as young as their teens believing it.

Please remember: You don’t need to hurt yourself to deserve success.

Be kind to yourself, eat and sleep regularly, give your hands some rest, hang out with friends, do activities that aren’t related to your goal. Staying healthy and balanced is the best way to enjoy what you’re doing – this will keep you motivated and allow you to get things done. We’re all different and if you’re someone who needs more rest and attention to their health then others – it’s ok! You deserve to be healthy as much as you deserve to succeed!

here's some more unsolicited adult advice as someone in her 30s who knows there are a lot of twenty somethings and teens that follow her: if you're trying to build a new habit you really want, and are struggling, you have to break it down to the smallest building block possible. If you're failing, you haven't thought small enough. I know it's possible to hear stories of people who just snapped into new life mode one day by "just deciding", but truly what's happening there is a confluence of events and experiences that force the brain into some sort of epiphany. You cannot will an epiphany. It'll never work. For most times of your life, you will need to build habits intentionally, and that means not working against yourself and to set micro goals. like laughably tiny goals. because once that easy tiny goal is met, you can build off it, tiny goal after tiny goal until you reach your big goal.

so for example, if you want to be a morning person that gets up at ass crack dawn so that you can work out, eat brekkie, shower, and get to work at a leisurely pace, and you're not that person because you will hit your snooze button 800 times, you have to get the big picture goal out of your head. think smaller. "I want to get up 15 minutes earlier than I normally do." If you can't do that, make it 5 minutes. "I want to cook breakfast every day" hell no too big. "I want to eat something, anything, before I leave the house" hell yeah, fantastic. When you go to the grocery store to make sure there are things in the house for breakfast, if you keep buying bagels and microwave sandwiches that you ignore, you gotta think smaller. SMALLER. What's something so easy to eat that you'll never say no to. Is it a yogurt? Is it a handful of grapes? Is it a hostess ho ho? is it hot cheetos? FORGET the big picture of the fantasy put-together woman preparing a full nutritious meal that you'd be proud to admit to. Think only of the smallest goal you can achieve. If you know you can't say no to an ice cream sandwich, put a ton of ice cream sandwiches in your freezer and have one for breakfast every day until it's so instilled in you that you gotta get up to eat something you can start diversifying.

It sounds like, from the lack of habit place, that must take forever. But really it doesn't take too long to form the habit once the discipline kicks in. the trick is that you have to give your brain something easy to become disciplined to. If it's too hard, think easier and smaller. No one has to know. Literally no one in the gd world has to know that for 4 weeks when you were 22 you had an ice cream sandwich for breakfast every day. who cares. If it gets you eating oatmeal with fresh fruit in a few months who cares. you did it, yay. smaller, easier. if you can't do it, think smaller and easier. smaller!! EASIER!!! You are not thinking smaller and easier enough. break your brain thinking how small and easy you can go. SMALLER. EVEN SMALLER, SIS.

RECLAIMING DISCIPLINE CAN LOOK LIKE:

• keeping small + manageable promises to yourself daily

• healing your attention span (ex: reading books, watching movies without scrolling, letting yourself be bored)

• moving from "I'll try" to "I will"

• reframing pain + difficulty as often where the growth happens

• showing up as the person you want to be

• making mindful & nourishing choices VS choices that result in instant gratification

Hey, take it from someone creeping towards 40:

Ignore the fun police.

If you like it, order your steak well done. Get your bagel toasted with jam and butter. Put ice in your scotch and ketchup on your hotdog. Get red wine with fish and white with steak. Who cares?

If you want to, listen to pop music. Watch blockbuster popcorn flicks. Read dime store novels. Enjoy them.

Dye your hair or cut it off. Paint your fingernails blue. Wear whatever the fuck you want on your own time (ie, when not at a job or school or whatever where you can get penalized for breaking rules) as long as you aren’t like welding or shoveling snow.

Anyone who tries to tell you you’re wrong? Say “okay” and go back to what you were doing. You’re not hurting them by enjoying yourself or having things the way you like them.

There are no caveats or addendums to this. No “but what about x?” Nah. You’re allowed the things you like. You don’t have to justify your taste or apologize for it if it’s not hurting anyone.

And likewise, let other people live their lives. We’re all dead in the long run, so tend your own garden before you become fertilizer in it.