What's so Beautiful about it?

I had a sales woman in furniture store try and tell me not to buy a hot bubblegum pink loveseat because she wanted me to “think about the future”

when I first bought my house, I announced my decision to paint my bedroom purple. I had wanted a purple bedroom for thirty damn years, you fucking bet I was gonna have one now. My friends decided, for some reason, that I meant what one of them referred to as “14 year old girl purple” (through what’s wrong with the colors a 14 year old girl chooses, I don’t know, even if they’re not what I want as an adult). They didn’t believe me until they saw the color on the actual wall, even thought they helped me pick out paints. My mother, meanwhile, decided to get worried that if I painted my bedroom a “dark purple”, it would be “depressing”. As if, with an entire house to live in, I would spend all my time in the bedroom, which I wanted to be dark because I would be sleeping in there. In the damn dark.

I’m thirty and my first big furniture purchase was a custom coffin shaped coffee table that opens up and is lined with purple crushed velvet. I would have loved it at 13 and I love it now. Growing up doesn’t mean you have to abandon what makes you happy.

GROWING UP DOESN’T

I have told this story before, and I will tell it again, because I am An Old now and repeating stories forever is our prerogative:

This is the door to

I’m 35. I have been told my place looks like maybe a LP fan lives there.

When I first moved into my place, I painted the spare room, that eventually became my office, lime green, the kind of lime green that glows down the corridor when I open the door - The colour was only available as an “accent colour” in the section of paints intended for children’s playrooms, and in the shop I got a lot of “Oh your son will love this!” And from people I knew I got a lot of “Oh well, you’re 21 now, you’re basically a teenager, this is a terrible idea, you’ll hate it and need to pull out all the furniture to repaint it.” And I have to report that I am now in my forties and my office still looks like this, and it makes me smile every time I see it.

this is such a modern idea, too

The examples of decorated homes above are both either modern or upper class, which makes it easy to dismiss because “sure the rich people have beautiful homes” and “sure, modern middle-class people have lots of color in their homes.”

I painted rooms in my house these colors and some people had doubts:

My wife painted the walls of my studio ORANGE. Glorious sunset orange.

When we decided it was time to paint our home, we wanted something that very much marked it as ours. I think we accomplished that!

When I was younger (around 13/14 I think?) my bedroom got water damage and fortunately insurance covered a new carpet and wall paint.

people always go "Instead of spending all that time on a study they could have just listened to us when we said these thing happen"

“When someone leaves your life, those exits are not made equal. Some are beautiful and poetic and satisfying. Others are abrupt and unfair. But most are just unremarkable, unintentional, clumsy.” - Griffin McElroy

its 2026 i cannot handle any more fucking "author A obviously ripped off author B" discourse by people Who Have Only Seen the work of author B and admit themselves that they have no further knowledge of the literary landscape they are moving in. like.

Folks really need to reacquaint themselves with this concept

i was in the physics lab today and we were working with lasers, so the Lab Freaks (legal name) were being very careful to stress that we Do Not Turn Around or Look Behind Us because we’ll get extremely blinded by the power of high strength lasers

okay i’ll be honest i 100% looked back at the lasers. actually multiple separate lasers multiple different times. they were pretty