If there’s anything I’ve learned in life it’s that being confident and having self respect will sometimes evoke some of the most irrational obsessive hatred and anger in other people. Particularly if you’re perceived as someone who doesn’t “deserve” to feel that way about yourself there’s a very specific type of anger that comes from people who can’t understand why someone who they think should hate themselves doesn’t

safety is such a foundational need that if you grew up without it, it easily feels like the end of the road, but you need to dream and reach beyond it. there is so much more available to you. not everything that makes you uncomfortable is dangerous. what is not an outright threat might not be nourishing either. there is a limit to the wisdom of navigating life by comfort, you need to also be guided by what lets you expand into the fullest version of yourself

dyslexic scholars, disorganized archivists, high-contrast photographers, producers with inadequate equipment, shortsighted mystics, placid hallucinators, pedestrians in empty parking lots, compulsive scribes, those whose work is poisoning them, indecisive traitors, prison tattooers, bored waitresses, new world geologists, functional alcoholics in useless professions, filename poets, amateur degenerates, anyone whose pet is really weird, street sweepers, those whose holidays are celebrated ironically, paranoiacs who have been right one single miraculous time, patchy shavers, sloppy conspirators, honest teachers, failed influencers, those wearing too many layers on a warm day, unqualified translators, prisoners making good use of their time, mendacious cartographers, generous bartenders, and so on, and so forth