it hurts to become.

I’m still trying, but I’m tired. It comes and goes. I have my life, round and eager; I have my past, rotting, manic, full of malice. The present is a ruined watercolor; I go to parties but stay in corners feeling weirdly out of place, I find anxiety halfway through sleep, I go to concerts only to spend the whole time thinking about other things.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them.”

“Some days you will feel dirty. Some weeks, you’ll remember just how hard it is to breathe in public, like your heartbeat is climbing to the attic of your throat only to suicide itself on the pavement. But know this: the person who did this to you is broken, not you.”

I’m still trying, but I’m tired. It comes and goes. I have my life, round and eager; I have my past, rotting, manic, full of malice. The present is a ruined watercolor; I go to parties but stay in corners feeling weirdly out of place, I find anxiety halfway through sleep, I go to concerts only to spend the whole time thinking about other things.

“A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.”

this image made me quit my job.