Queer Rascal

Nobody's going to magically swoop into rescue you. You can't just sit there and expect someone else to come save you. You have to get your shit together and do it yourself.

About 90% of the time, the "it" you have to do on your own is pushing yourself to walk up to someone else and use your words to say "hey I need help."

Image #2: tordenvejr: you can't avoid yourself into a life you love

Image #3: kosmogrl: #um guys, I think we need to stop waiting for 'the right time' and just start doing the things we want whenever because the right time's never gonna come, and if we keep waiting it's just gonna turn into an endless cycle

Image #4: proBuccalFat: #it's fucking wild because one day you're like i guess i'm not dying tragically young and you go to the store and you buy dental floss, ingredients for soup, and a bath mat

Image #5: northernstrcr: they were right btw. you have to dig yourself out of your grave over and over again

Image #6: soracities: some days you really do have to just find and wrench one tiny thing from the world w the determination of a hog digging out truffles and make it your anchor. raindrops on a window. smell of the bakery in the supermarket. single defiant tuft of grass between the cracks of the pavement. etc. hold it all w equally grubby and defiant hands.

Image #7: glowCowBoy: gonna take a hot shower and put on a big t shirt and my undies and i'm gonna sit on the floor and color at my coffee table like im 6 years old again and then i'll feel better

Image #8: superOrganism: you have to be annoying and do everything as passionately and genuinely as possible because we live in a world where everyone operates though sixteen layers of post irony and to love with recklessness is literally counterculture.

Okay, so when we talk about the meaning of words, we are talking about denotation, the dictionary definition of the word, and connotation, the context in which native speakers associate with the word. Connotation is why just looking up synonyms of words doesn't always work.

When teaching this to ESL learners, my favorite example is the word "accumulate." Accumulate means to gather or collect in the dictionary definition of the words. The error in the example is for someone to say "I accumulate things" instead of "I collect things." This sounds wrong, because despite the denotation of the word, the most common connotation of accumulate is that a process done over time and without intent. Water accumulates. Dust accumulates. Money accumulates. But a person cannot say they accumulate things, because that is not a natural usage of the word.

However! As a writer who likes to learn new words, you can now use this knowledge to your advantage. Consider the following sentences:

Bob collected unread books until they piled high around his bed.

Versus

Books accumulated around Bob's bed, turning it into a fortress of unread words.